Explode Sales with Human to Human Marketing

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Jeff Bullas
00:00:06 - 00:01:45
Hi everyone and welcome to The Jeff Bullas Show. Today I have with me, Lance Tyson. Lance is coming from across the big ditch we call the Pacific Ocean. I'm in Sydney and he's in Ohio, in a city called Columbus. Now I have a slight idea where Columbus came from. It might be someone who crossed a bigger ditch to go from England to America. So just a little bit Lance, he’s a best selling author. His last book was on the best seller lists. He is an industry leader with more than 30 years focused on sales training and consulting for some of the biggest brands as well, such as the Dallas Cowboys. For those of you who don't know what that is, if you live in Europe, it's an American football team and they have a world series, which is only for Americans, which I find rather strange actually, when Americans talk about world series and he also worked for the Red Gold Tomatoes. I want to hear more about that. And Eli Lilly and Topgolf.
Now, Lance specializes in generating results due to the evidence based approach to subtleties, in the power of human connection. Lance has had the privilege to consult on negotiating strategy, multi billion dollar naming rights for some of the nation's biggest sports stadiums. Now, Lance has also been on stage since the age of 25 as I was also very in critical and had a business which focused on Dale Carnegie. And since then he started his own company called the Tyson Group. Welcome to the show. Lance.
Lance Tyson
00:01:45 - 00:01:51
Thanks for having me. I'm excited. I loved our pregame talk before this to get to know you. So thank you for having me.
Jeff Bullas
00:01:51 - 00:01:56
We got in the huddle and had a little bit of a chat. Didn't we? Sort of like?
Lance Tyson
Jeff Bullas
00:02:18 - 00:02:50
So Lance, I know why I got into sales, but would like to hear your story of why you got into this consulting business and selling business that you have today, the Lance Tyson Group. So the Tyson Group. Sorry. So what, what was the call to do this sort of thing? I'm intrigued by the stories of how people get to do what they do. Was there a call? Was it a drink over a beer? Was it desperation? What was it?
Lance Tyson
00:02:50 - 00:07:42
You know, it's kind of interesting. Right. I wish I could say that I have a rags to riches story. I don't, blue collar middle class, I guess you call it. Watched my dad run a couple of businesses, run a couple of businesses on the ground, but I knew he could always get a deal. I went to college a year after, two years after I joined the Marine Corps and I was not a good student in high school, I was even a worse student in college. But the deal I cut with my parents was like, look, we didn't have a good experience with me being in high school, so we're not gonna have a good experience in college. So don't ask me what my grades are, I just need a place to live if and I was the oldest of three boys. And so we struck a deal and they said that's fine. I went through college and I realized that like, hey, I want to go to law school. So I did everything in college that I didn't do in high school. I joined things like speech and debate, government blah.
Then I ended up quitting school right as the wall came down in eastern Europe because I was so, I have a very, very, very much an entrepreneurial spirit. I got it from my father. My father taught me, you know, we have two arms and two legs, good head, you can do anything anybody else does. He taught me that the world's my oyster, right. He said you'll never make money working for anybody else. And I took that to heart, not everybody in my family, but I took that to heart from him. So I formed my own business import export company called, I went out of the way and called it the Lancet Group. I still had my letterhead here and that was back in like ‘92 or ‘93. I was able to win some business. I did so well that I actually want a job with a company that I was calling on and I went into sales with those folks, but going back to, had to have a reset with myself. When I was in college, I wanted to go to law school. The only reason I wanted to go to law school is because I saw myself as some great trial lawyer public speaking. So as I was in these sales jobs that they didn't enjoy, the last one I was in was I was selling high filtration products, filtration products to manufacturers and the only thing I knew was that water ran downhill. I needed a sales engineer with me, I wasn't very technical and then I started to get into a little bit personal development, I start to look at like Anthony Robbins company that was the time Stephen Covey was popular and I had all my jobs at that point were serving tables, so I was always good at selling a dessert and connecting with people. So I approached those companies and then ultimately Dale Carnegie to try to get a job because I wanted to be a public speaker. I said well maybe if I can get an insult for these cats, maybe I could figure out how to be them and end up landing a job with Dale Carnegie training and quickly did not have my college degree, quickly rose up through the ranks by just getting deals and bringing training deals to the table and ultimately moved my way up, you know, as to sales manager, director of sales, VP of sales and I had, when I got married, I was leaving money on the table a straight commission, so I'd get a big percentage of every deal. And my wife Lisa said, you know, you're leaving money on the table, you can't really train for Dale Carnegie's, you don't even have your degree and it was like a college accredited class. And so I went back up my degree and I just kept selling and then I started to really sell sales training and got good at that. And then ultimately Carnegie has like a franchisor sponsorship system, became a partner in the business in Philadelphia, ultimately broke off and purchased several of their operations in the midwest. So that's how I got in sales, like I would tell you that, I don't think sales people were born, I think they're built, I really believe that as a core philosophy and so when you ask like kind of my why I've watched so many entrepreneurs and sales people struggle and not, I'm not talking, struggle with not wanting to do their job and things like that. Just, maybe some tactics of leaving money on the table, not hitting a goal, You know, sometimes it's personality based, I mean you got to be likable at some standpoint, you know, the best book you ever read on sales is probably How to win friends and influence people even before my own, that's 30 ways to deal with people, but that's the art side of sales, the process side of sales, there's a science to the whole thing too. So you're kind of half scientists, half artists, so it kind of makes you an architect a little bit, so nothing is built to scale. So you gotta be good at dealing with people, but you also have to be good at process sales can be complex at times being with yourself. So I just felt like I found my calling, I was good at being in front of people. I enjoyed coaching people. I still, always in my own business, I, you know, I don't deliver everything in our business, but I always will keep fresh. I love teaching people sales or coaching sales, so, but that's kind of my why.
Jeff Bullas
00:07:42 - 00:08:00
Yeah, you're selling interesting and I basically started a side hustle when I was teaching and my first sales job, listen to this, I sold subliminal suggestion tapes to stop smoking and lose weight.
Lance Tyson
Jeff Bullas
00:08:04 - 00:08:25
And what was really fascinating was I made more money in three nights a week than I did an entire 40 hours in the classroom and I went, I'm sort of enjoying this, right. And I said, and I'm making some money and that means that I've got, I said, okay, so look, I think the tapes worked.
Lance Tyson
It works for something, right? They definitely did.
Jeff Bullas
So, that's how I got into sales and eventually moving to technology sales.
Lance Tyson
00:08:38 - 00:09:23
I'm glad you said that because I don't, I share this in my first book. In college I had responded to one of those newspaper ads to, you can make $1,500 a week in the summer. And it was a Cutco knife seminar and I went to the seminar and I was so excited. I was so impressed with the knife and I bought into it. They asked me to leave the room, they said I didn't meet the profile to be able to sell these things. I was absolutely, I was like a freshman or junior or sophomore in college and then I got a job at Rainbow vacuum cleaner and I paid for my second year of college from Rainbow vacuum cleaner. So I'm with you. Like I, I realized then that you could, you could play ball and really kind of make up some ground. So I'm 100% with it.
Jeff Bullas
00:09:23 - 00:10:06
I think as an entrepreneur, you've got to be a sales person. So, and we were talking before in the pregame huddle, which we need to use more sports metaphors during this because that's where you play. So I got into tech sales, but we're talking about some of the important things in life and one of the skills, I think we don't teach our children enough at school or at high school or college is the art of listening. How important is listening skills for a salesperson?
Lance Tyson
00:10:07 - 00:12:55
You know, as we were pre gaming a little bit, you know, it's one of the things that you said that I thought was profound is we were talking about counseling and and the importance of, you know, and it kind of brought me back to when I was in college, I was in R. A. and I had to take a counseling class there and that's probably where you made me think about how important to that becomes. And I think you suggested and we were talking, you know, one of the great tactics is like looking somebody in the eye and really listening. And then we got onto that listening to understand versus listening to respond. And it becomes so critical especially, you know, because a lot of people listen to respond as opposed to listen to understand. And I have three sons and a good listener is always coachable, right? My oldest son, Zachary, if you would talk to him, he is such an engaged listener. He's very active with he’s listening. He's shaking his head and he and millennials and this is not, I'm not one of those guys that criticized millennials. Millennials and zears were taught to do multiple things at one time. So they were taught very active listening skills. So you'll hear a lot of things like “absolutely” or “100%” right. You hear a lot and they're not necessarily great. Listeners are very good active listeners, right. So, listening, pretending to listening, listening are two very different things, right. Or if you're worried about, I would say next. And if you are an entrepreneur and you have a complex or a semi complex sales process, right, you may get away with being able to finish somebody's sentence because you're so passionate enthusiasm about your business. But as you start to hire sales people, you know, they have to kind of listen because if you don't, if you don't, if you listen to respond, you're giving prescriptions before diagnosis and that's not a good thing, right. So I think that becomes important, but it becomes important leadership to write. Like it's, you got to see him engage. You gotta, you gotta seem that people, you're listening to your people truly and empathetically and deeper levels of listening allow for EQ, right? So the emotional quotient where you're reading your audience and things like that. I think that becomes very important in my newest book. I talked about the Greek Mirror and the Greek Mirror gets into ethos, pathos, logos, and then how you design your message. But you got to really understand your audience in order to design your message. Well, that means you gotta listen, right. So, and you know that, you know, last thing is from an allergy standpoint, they sell this, they sell hearing aids, but they don't sell listening aids, two different concepts.
Jeff Bullas
00:12:56 - 00:14:18
Yeah, and a good listener and a good communicator we're talking about is taught, I don't think it's natural. And the other thing too, I was listening to respond there. I'm sorry, one of them was what crossed my mind as I was listening, not wanting to respond, but trying to hear what you're saying is that the millenials are very active listeners. So they go “Absolutely!” “100%” and that's one type of active listening. But we can almost call that superficial listening, superficial active listening.
What I think is important is listening to hear and understand. And that is where you check in, isn't it, here you go? So what I think you're saying, and you do it very tentatively, you're saying this this and this and they're not quite what I really meant so act really good. Active listening is checking in and rephrasing and if you do that well rather than parenting. I've had people talk like if you do it well, at the end of 30 minutes someone says, who are you? I haven't heard about you and said, but I just love hearing what you've got to say.
Lance Tyson
00:14:19 - 00:16:05
No, you're dead on, you know, to bring that a step further because I think that's well said. I think it's, you know, you can add things to that sounds like looks like what I'm hearing is right. And then you start labeling it. And if anybody's interested here, I got my son turned me on to these debates by these two intellectuals. This guy named Sam Harris, who is a famous atheist, right? Very deep thinker. And this guy Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist out of Canada. Yeah. And so they do this debate on the and for your audience. So, you know, I'm not suggesting anything here. They actually debate the existence of a higher power. So they do three debates, two in the UK, one in the US. And what they did at the beginning of the debates, which was phenomenal. They would steal man each other. And what a steal man is where before they would present their part of the case Jordan would start off. So Sam, this is what I heard you say and that he would build his art. He would build Sam Harris's argument and Sam would have to do the same thing before they responded. So they had to demonstrate this high level of listening, which was exceptional, which did a few things, number one, it showed civility in a debate. That's number one. Two, it showed deeper levels of listening and three it mirrored back. So, the opposition had to confirm or deny what they said, and that's a level that you're talking about, Jeff, that, like, has to be done if you're gonna be great at business, you know, negotiations, selling really anything. And if you could be selling an iPhone and you'd have to do that.
Jeff Bullas
00:16:06 - 00:16:16
Absolutely. And one of your books you called Emotional Quotient. So, tell us a little bit about that and why you wrote that book.
Lance Tyson
00:16:16 - 00:19:24
That was actually written in the pandemic and it was what was happening. And since so much of our business was in pro sports, we didn't, people were starting trying to sell. And you know what you're dealing with in Australia, right. And business and businesses are shutting down. So you couldn't show people that you were emotionally detached from their situation because you could never tell what you were dealing with, right. So, you might have been, you know, you were dealing with groups of people that were saying it wasn't real. You were dealing with groups of people that were had sickness themselves. You were dealing with people who maybe have a relative that was going to die. You're dealing with people that had gotten massively laid off and to not show as a leader as a salesperson because a lot of people, sales jobs have changed at that point. A lot of their businesses changed because they were haves and have nots and inside that business wise. So I wrote it from the standpoint that like look you're going into every one of these situations and you got to check in the right way. And we also developed inside my new book. And in that book we started to develop this concept called the read offense a little bit right where you had to really kind of sense very quickly. You could have a play set up. So, you know, you have a certain sales price certain way, you would do business but you might have to get up to the you know, think about it this way. Probably the best analogy, say you’re a surgeon, right. And you're doing a knee replacement on a 65 year old with high blood pressure. You and your team are going to deal with things a little bit differently and you're gonna be ready for like the person bleeding profusely, being healthy, you're gonna deal with that person much differently than an 18 year old that was getting a knee replaced. Okay. So you would have to be very good in the moment and what we were saying at that point and we really believe in EQ. And I wrote more about in my newest book, this concept of being able to move very laterally very well, right. I interviewed a SEAL team member, a Special forces member and I said, how many situations, what was your success rate when you were in the SEAL teams? And he said, mission wise, Lance, it was over 80%. I said, okay. I said, did you prepare for your missions? What percentage of the time did your preparation represent the mission you're gonna be on? He said less than 30%. So I said, what was it? He goes, it was all decision making, it was all lateral movements, right. So we were able to make decisions in the moment. So I wrote the book on that because I saw so many business people and sales people and leaders just struggling with what to do because for a minute, the minute you could be, you could be going from a, like in sports sales for instance, like sponsorships, right. Like Dove soap coming in and doing business with an NBA team or a premier team in Europe, they were spending a lot of money on brand recognition, but there was no ticket sales. So you just never know who you were dealing with, right. There hasn't had not. So that's kind of why I wrote the book and I felt it was important. So we couldn't be emotionally detached to what was going on.
Jeff Bullas
00:19:25 - 00:19:36
So that's why you wrote this during the pandemic. So your latest book is a The Human Sales Factor book which is on influence and persuasion.
Lance Tyson
So what might have added you to write that?
Lance Tyson
00:19:43 - 00:24:19
You know there's too many, here's what's happening and it's probably my ties to early Dale Carnegie in the past. There's a lot of talk about B2C, B2B or B2C. Business to business or business consumer. You know what it's really about? HH, why do we need sales people? It's all about being human to human, right. And in as much AI that's being sold right now you still need a human to sell the AI, right.
I had a woman calling me in the pandemic. She was working for like Marcato or Salesforce or something. One of those marketing automation systems and she worked all usually give an appointment to a sales person that works hard. It's a little bit different because I like to hear with their pitches and this woman got me good because she went into one of my blogs. Read one of the blogs, used what I said, quoted the blog. Left me at least four voicemails, an email and then quoted my blog and like you got the appointment. So then she opens up and she says, you know, I just wanna, I wanna let you know prospecting is dead, right. Prospecting is absolutely, it's kind of fake news at this point, I go,
well, that's interesting. I think her name was Sammy and I said that's interesting you say that, I think you get paid to say that though, it's in your best interest to tell me that the prospect that she goes, what do you mean? I go, well, I mean, you work for a marketing automation company. Of course, you would say that. I would say that too. Probably. I said a good way to catch my attention, but it's not true and it's not true, and I can prove it. And she goes, how? I go, well, you didn't use any marketing automation to get the point with me based on what you're saying should have got it. I said you still need a human to sell it. So I kept seeing these repeats. I don't think it's one thing, it's multiple variables that I said, you know what, that book at first and was going to be a prospecting book. And then my team, we start to look at it and my publicist at the time said, her name is Charlie, she said, you know Lance, with this prospecting book, you're preaching to the converted. And I go, what do you mean? It was profound to me. Because you're preaching to the people that would already buy prospecting book, who's your audience, your audiences to people that need to influence, it can be much wider than that because a lot of the concepts that had to read offense in there and some EQ stuff in there, you're right, and she goes, it needs to be wider. And then I start to watch more shows. I was watching a lot of Shark Tank at the time, just kind of watching presentations and you know, those concepts, those pit shows and I'm like, man, nine times out of ten those sharks and those investors, they're buying the person, not the product, they're like, I want the person behind us. So that's kind of how it started to generate and we start to look at it. And then I think the other thing that's kind of interesting that we took it in an interesting twist on, we spend as much time on the human that forms the influence and persuasion as much as pitching the message. So there's statistics and there's a Wall Street Journal statistic and there it says, and I'm gonna, I want to tie this back to something you said earlier, I think it's interesting, it says, you know that over 40% of the presentations that executives watch, they would categorize the presentation is boring, that's a scary, right.
And you think about how many presentations are being done face to face or in a hybrid version like this, right. This is the norm, this is the new normal, right. Then I started to think about it. I go, well that's important. But how is that person preparing themselves to deliver a message? What does that look like? Do they know their audience? So that's where we started to get back into a little bit of thought around oratory, which was taught up until probably 1930. That's what public speaking was taught through oratory, not public speaking. It was how to really land a great speech in this big like four score and x amount of years ago type thing or have a dream, right. We start to look at that. So we connected like the internal messaging with what's going to come out of the bullhorn. And the books are short read too like my publisher gets really frustrated. Why are your books so short? Because salespeople and business people want to read them so they're more apt to go into an airport and grab a thinner book than a thicker book. So a lot of pictures too, I do like a lot of pictures.
Jeff Bullas
00:24:20 - 00:24:31
There's a lot of what I call, they've got to write 300 pages or their right to 80, whatever it is, it's like this formulaic approach to book writing and you've got to hit 50,000 words, whatever it is.
Lance Tyson
-30 in a buck 30 page wise. So, get over it. There you go.
Jeff Bullas
00:24:37 - 00:24:56
My book blogging the smart way, which I wrote in 2012 was 30,000 words. About 100 pages. One of my favorite authors is Stephen Pressfield who wrote one just this fantastic, called The War of Art.
Lance Tyson
00:24:56 - 00:25:01
I love that book, I love that book and sit on my shelf, love that book. Great book.
Jeff Bullas
I've read it more than once.
Lance Tyson
It is worth the read several times.
Jeff Bullas
00:25:05 - 00:26:07
And just the craft, the craft of writing. Watching Stephen Pressfield, I saw an interview with Tim Ferriss actually a few weeks ago and he talked about a story about how he was writing in the woods and a cat. This random cat came out, a stray cat and the cat wouldn't let him feed, which was a real sort of like, I'm so independent, I don't need human to feed me. And Steven Presley was 53 and he said, you know what, if a cat can be independent, so can I. So because the reality is that he was searching for, sharing his gift with the world, which is being paid as a writer and to be independent. And it took him to the age of 53 to actually start to be independent as a writer. And I went, wow.
Lance Tyson
00:26:07 - 00:26:23
No, no, I'm sorry, I was, I wanted to hear what you were saying there because it's, that book had a profound effect on me and I didn't know, I didn't know Tim had interviewed him. So it was that the last couple weeks and definitely
Jeff Bullas
Just recently within the last 12 months.
Lance Tyson
00:26:25 - 00:26:29
Okay, I gotta look at that. I need, I must have missed that somehow. I'm a big Tim Ferriss fan.
Jeff Bullas
00:26:29 - 00:27:18
It's just, yeah, I just, he inspired me to start writing, start my blog in 2009. Tim Ferriss is one of the inspirations. Another one was David Meerman Scott who wrote The New Rules of Marketing & PR. I don't know if you read that book. He introduced the, well helped validate well, and also promote the idea of inbound marketing when he was working, especially with Hubspot, which basically became also coined today content marketing, 60% of the selling is done by content before you maybe start the prospecting.
Lance Tyson
Jeff Bullas
00:27:21 - 00:28:09
But yeah, that was some of the inspiration for me to get me going. So, so you've mentioned to, let's go back to, because you do a lot of sales consulting. You've also negotiated big deals for stadiums and you use an approach to team development for sales and the framework you use is assess design, train and coach and tell us a bit about that approach to sales that I think our listeners need to understand because every entrepreneur is going to be trying to sell a deal. So can you take us quickly through that? What is the best systematized approach to sales?
Lance Tyson
00:28:10 - 00:32:33
So when, so assess, design, train, coach, so that process we use to do a deep dive into an organization's business. So if we were going to for instance, let's pick some something obscure. We were talking to Peloton. Peloton was struggling to sell their bikes once they got a lead in. We would assess the kind of the process and then design and then execute a training coach for people. That's our approach there. The sales process we teach is very simple, it's six steps and it's a viewpoint of if you're listening, just kind of think of this analogy, if you go to a doctor or a dentist or a hospital or so you had to get your shoulder replaced right. What would happen is you would connect with a doctor that you felt comfortable with or you were recommended to so that the connect would be the first step, you would go down and sit with the doctor, so say it was your labor and that you're getting fixed and that doctor would evaluate, right. It would evaluate your current situation, your health, all your, you know, your heart rate, blood pressure, everything, your age or demographic. They would evaluate and then they would diagnose and a diagnosed would be their best guess at the best guess estimate to what your situation is and you're listening here, you're going alright Lance, that's fair. And now what we know about law and medicine is everybody says follow the science. My thing is if it's followed by science then why do they call it a practice? So that's always my argument because you may have two doctors that prescribe different methods to get, some might prescribe, you don't need surgery, some might prescribe you don't need medicine. You know, you need PT whatever it is, they're all going to come up with a variation. So it's that doctor's best estimate and diagnosis. So they're gonna prescribe something. Once you get a prescription you'll dialogue. Go back and forth. And then they'll close or bring it down for landing. Our argument is most sales processes, whether it's a semi complex or complex sales process probably follows that trend at some level. If you went in to buy a new iPhone, they would evaluate, you know, an apple person, you're not? What do you have before this? You have an android. What are you looking for? So it sounds like you need this here. Let me show you this iPhone 13, here are the storage, here are the costs blah blah blah. Here's the plan, closed. Even if you went into buy a phone, you probably follow that. It's reasonable to say if you bought a car, you'd probably follow that. If you were selling software, like we're talking about Mr. Merriman or Mr. Scott. Excuse me Merriman Scott. If he was selling Hubspot right, he would probably go into a company and sell it a very similar way. Now that process might be very elongated as opposed to the iPhone process.
Either way, that's the sales talk that happens today, if somebody buys something online, I would make or like you said that inbound piece, those people are connecting and evaluating and starting to diagnose their issue and then there's a call to action which gets the next part of the funnel. So when we do go in, we teach a version of that and we find that analogy people, people really that makes sense to them because they experience that at some level. And we talked, I talked extensively about that in my book selling is an away game. I lay out the whole process there and when we introduce that to a software company or sports team. Now when you're selling a big partnership deal, you are literally following that process. Now it's fair to argue that that might be several steps, you'd have to identify the companies, you would probably have to evaluate and get a first meeting where you evaluate and diagnose or do other words for that, our discovery needs assessment, opportunity analysis, then you'd have a second meeting, a pitch meeting and then they come back and they haggle with you try and negotiate or throughout objections. Then you close that might be five months. That might be a year. Doesn't really matter. So that's what we prescribe. But our approach is asses, design, train, coach, that's our approach.
Jeff Bullas
00:32:33 - 00:32:43
Yeah. And you mentioned too, I think a really important thing that B2B versus B2C at the end of the day, it's human to human.
Lance Tyson
Right. It is. It's a, the salesperson is the equation, they are the factor.
Jeff Bullas
00:32:54 - 00:33:04
So from that then one of the most powerful ways to connect with another human is to tell a story and then like, and then make a point,
Lance Tyson
Jeff Bullas
00:33:05 - 00:33:36
Because by telling a story, you are connecting with them from the heart rather than just the mind. And we talked about, you just talked about oratory before, which was and also, and when I start doing presentations, they're all about facts and figures. And I realized that I was going to put people to sleep really quickly if I did that. How important do you think it is in the art and science of selling? How important is storytelling?
Lance Tyson
00:33:37 - 00:35:32
So some would argue that stories are actually part of the human experience. I mean it probably goes back to sitting around the campfire, you know, on any continent that we've been to in our prehistoric days that we told stories. That's how we shared history. It's part of us. If you like, if you watch TikTok at all right, I'll sometimes hit a TikTok and what's usually good about that story. Now when you, let's look at stories for a second, every great story has drama and conflict right now in America, this new Top Gun is out, there's some conflict and there is an individual conflict between countries and there's drama and then there's a solution or called action, right. I think that's in our DNA, I think sales people, sales people now have been taught so much to share facts and figures. I would just say and simply put story, sell facts, tell what's your job, your job to tell somebody something, your job to sell something. People buy a story. And then let's take that step further because I think you hit on something there.
A story humanizes the experience. I think Daniel Pink said to sell is human, right. That humanizes the experience. So like storytelling. And now there's versions of storytelling like a good metaphor is kind of a story, good analogy. And you know, back to my Dale Carnegie days. Dale Carnegie always taught a concept of incident action benefit. He called it the magic formula, right, share an incident, put people right there. I was, I was on the phone, but blah blah blah. And you tell 80% of it, you're telling the story and then the action I would have you take is X. And here's the benefit if you do it, right. So like you can really structure a story to persuade people to do something or to influence them to take action whatever you're trying to accomplish.
Jeff Bullas
00:35:33 - 00:35:42
And Russell Branson made it clear for me, he said, tell a story, make a plan.
Lance Tyson
In fact, selling can be almost summed up as almost.
Lance Tyson
00:35:49 - 00:36:23
Okay, well, if you think about the process, I laid out your understanding of somebody's story of where they are, whatever you're selling and you're taking their story into consideration and it becomes a sales talk when you think about it, it's a sales story. This is you. So it's them, us, we, right. Them as the prospect, us as the seller and then we, together, we wrap the story up. I agree. 1000%. So now I'm being a millennial. 1000%.
Jeff Bullas
So what I hear you saying is
Lance Tyson
Yes, you heard me, definitely are listening to me, thank you.
Jeff Bullas
00:36:32 - 00:37:05
But yeah, it's human to human term, I don't know where you got it from, but one of my great friends who I've interviewed as well, Brian Kramer, I don't know if you're aware, but Brian Kramer is a big proponent of human to human, not B2C or B2B. And the power of story comes in and that's why I'm a bit of a Joseph Campbell fanboy, The Hero's Journey, which was the story arc that built an incredibly successful movie franchise called Star Wars.
Lance Tyson
Yes it did, yes, it did.
Jeff Bullas
00:37:07 - 00:37:28
The funny thing about that is the power of those sort of stories as they go right to the DNA of being human and in essence, it's the call. In other words, someone who's ordinary gets the call, they have mentors along the way, they learn they have pain, they have drama and then they bring
Lance Tyson
Jeff Bullas
00:37:29 - 00:37:53
They're suffering, they learned so much along the way. And then because of that learning they become wise and then they bring the last part of the story arc is then bring back to share that gift with the world and your gift obviously is basically the art and science of sales.
Lance Tyson
00:37:53 - 00:37:59
I think, I appreciate you saying that very well articulated. So thank you. Yeah, I think so.
Jeff Bullas
00:37:59 - 00:38:05
And that's what you're passionate about and this is what I think all our calling is to try and discover while we're here on the planet.
Lance Tyson
00:38:06 - 00:38:19
You put it in, you definitely package that correctly that is I couldn't have said it better myself and it really is because it's both, it's not one or the other, it's not the science sales, it's not just art, it's a combo of those things.
Jeff Bullas
00:38:20 - 00:39:01
And I think all of us as humans have that call is whether you act on the core is where the magic happens or it doesn't. And so for me, the most important thing in life is to discover why you're here. In other words, discovered why you're here. That's it and then they're acting on that. But yeah, that's why I wanted to hear your story at the beginning. Is that why are you doing what you're doing today, Lance? And you're obviously passionate about it. You read about it, you're learning about it, you're growing from it. Then you are transferring your gift to your team. And you're making a difference.
Lance Tyson
00:39:02 - 00:39:27
I appreciate you saying that I do really, I like the signature you put on that or like my signature they put on that. That was really well, well said and I appreciate the opportunity to be on and share my story and learn about you. And it sounds like we have a lot in common with strategy and tactics, especially around listening. You and I are 1000% on the same page with that.
Jeff Bullas
00:39:27 - 00:39:30
Well, if you learn to be a listener, it will change your life. I can promise you that.
Lance Tyson
Jeff Bullas
00:39:33 - 00:39:38
Okay. And will help you not just about winning sales. It also helped me with dating.
Lance Tyson
00:39:39 - 00:39:50
Yeah, that's how I'm pretty sure that's how I landed Lisa, my wife. So I'm pretty sure it might have been my greatest, my greatest sale.
Jeff Bullas
00:39:51 - 00:40:12
I’m sure it was. So anything else you want to share in terms of, what would your recommendation be to our listeners and viewers? What's the most important thing to be a great salesperson? What would be your top tips that will help them in making their business more successful or start to make their side more expected?
Lance Tyson
00:40:12 - 00:41:49
You know, I would say two things and I'll land it, the one into the other. I think Dr. Seuss said it well and summarized sales for me. He said, you'll play lonely games too. Games, you can't win because it will be against you, right. I think when you sell or you're an entrepreneur, the toughest game you play is what's in your head. It really is because you are trying to talk to people and engage with people that don't necessarily want to engage or talk to you. Right. That's number one, I think. Then the other thing is, and this is often overlooked. There's a word called enthusiasm and enthusiasm and in latin, I believe, enthuses gift of the Gods. I think it's in greek. It's God from within and then the last four letters of enthusiasm are -iasm. And the acronym for that is I am sold myself. That's really what enthusiasm is, your soul. You don't have to be a cheerleader. But are you sold yourself? Whatever you're doing, your side hustle, your business, your career, your brand, right. A younger salesperson said to me a couple of weeks ago, I'm not really excited about what I'm doing. I said, yeah, but you're committed to the job but I'm not excited about. I go, are you excited about your career? And he goes, yeah, I go, then you can be excited about weird though because you don't have to stay here forever. But you can be excited about your story. So follow through on what you promised. Stop looking around, get the job done and good things were happening. Don't chase money, chase what's right.
Jeff Bullas
Yeah, I love that. Don't chase money.
Lance Tyson
Right. Money follows, never leads.
Jeff Bullas
Totally agree. I think that's a great way to finish. Thanks Lance for sharing.
Lance Tyson