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Skeptical buyers are everywhere these days. With a mountain of information coming at us from all directions, it’s really no surprise.
But what if you’re trying to sell to skeptical buyers? Jeremy Miner, today’s guest, shares what do you absolutely need to know to be successful.
What You’ll Discover About Skeptical Buyers:
* Why all of us are skeptical buyers
* Brain triggers that happen in the first 7 – 12 seconds of any sales interaction
* How to disarm the biases of skeptical buyers
* How to use Neuro Emotional Persuasion Questioning (NEPQ) when speaking with skeptical buyers
* And MUCH more.
Guest: Jeremy Miner
Jeremy Miner is the Chairman of 7th Level, a global sales training company, an organization that was ranked #1 by INC magazine in 2020 and 2021 as among the fastest growing companies in the USA.
He has been featured in Forbes, USA Today, Entrepreneur magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and a host of other publications on the topic of sales, persuasion, and the role of psychology and human behavior in the buying process.
Jeremy’s particular brand of sales training pioneers the unique use of behavioral science and human psychology within the sales process and reflects his extensive study of the subject from Utah Valley University.
He says his scientific method of selling has helped over 393,000+ salespeople in 37 countries over the last three years, helping them achieve 3x, 5x, and even 10x more sales results. And he’s put some of that wisdom between 2 covers in his new book, The New Model of Selling: Selling to an Unsellable Generation.
Related Resources:
If you liked this interview, you might also enjoy our other Sales episodes.
Contact Jeremy and connect with him on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
Check out his latest book — The New Model of Selling: Selling to an Unsellable Generation
Visit Jeremy’s website for free resources to start selling more of your products and services.
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WHAT YOU ABSOLUTELY NEED TO KNOW WHEN SELLING TO SKEPTICAL BUYERS WITH JEREMY MINER
Skeptical buyers are everywhere these days with a mountain of information coming at us from all directions, it’s really no surprise but what if you’re trying to sell to skeptical buyers? What do you absolutely need to know to be successful? Today’s guest has some answers for you. Stay tuned.
This is Business Confidential Now with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner helping you see business issues hiding in plain view that matter to your bottom line.
Welcome to Business Confidential Now, the weekly podcast for smart executives, managers, and entrepreneurs looking to improve their business performance, and bottom line.
I’m your host, Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, and I’ve got an amazing guest for you today. He’s Jeremy Miner, the Chairman of 7th Level, a global sales training company that was ranked number one by Inc. Magazine in 2020 and 2021 as among the fastest growing companies in the USA.
Jeremy has been featured in Forbes, USA Today, Entrepreneur magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and a host of other publications on the topic of sales, persuasion and the role of psychology and human behavior in the buying process. He says his particular brand of sales training pioneers the use of behavioral science and human psychology within the sales process and reflects his extensive study of the subject from Utah Valley University.
He says it’s helped over 393,000 salespeople and counting in 37 countries over the last three years, helping them achieve three, five, and even ten times more sales results. Lucky for us, he’s put some of that wisdom between two covers in his new book, The New Model of Selling: Selling to an Unsellable Generation.
I am looking forward to learning more about how this works with skeptical buyers. Let’s have him join us now.
Welcome to Business Confidential Now, Jeremy.
Hanna, thanks for all those kind words. I’m going to take all of that as a compliment because my kids say I’m pretty boring. So, thank you very much.
The subtitle of your new book, Selling The Unsellable Generation makes it sound like some generations are more skeptical buyers than others. Can you tell me more about that?
Yeah. Well, it kind of all goes back to this. Just one thing that we all have to understand is the amount of information and distractions that are going through our prospect’s brains pretty much 24 hours a day, seven days a week, probably even why they’re sleeping in their subconscious mind.
I talk about this when I do a lot of keynotes, workshops, and different things that we’re constantly being sold to all of the time. One of our clients, Brendan Kane, he’s the author of a New York Times best seller, Hook Point: How to Stand Out in a 3-Second World. He’s a huge social media marketer in Hollywood.
He actually says in the book, I could be misquoting him, but he says that there are actually over three billion content creators that you, as a company, as a business owner, or if you’re a consultant, salesperson, or whoever you are listening, are competing with you, pulling away your prospect’s attention from what you’re offering.
And a lot of times when I say that, people are like, “No, no, no. That’s not the case,” but the problem is you’re really competing against 15-year-old kids on TikTok, right, because they’re distracting your prospects away from what you’re trying to present to them. And I think when I say that people like, “Oh, I’m not being sold to all the time.”
And I’m like, “Well, I want you to think about it in a different way.” When you wake up in the morning besides going to the bathroom, what’s probably one of the first things you do? Well, you get on your cell phone, you get on your social media, you start scrolling down and what do you see? You see ads trying to sell you something. Right? Right from the get-go.
Sometimes you do it before you even go to the bathroom when you wake up, right? You walk into your kitchen because maybe you’re getting some coffee, making some breakfast, and you turn on the TV and what do you hear there? What do you see? You see commercials trying to sell you something, right? Well, it doesn’t stop there.
You get in your car, you turn on the radio, or you’re driving to work, and what do you hear? Radio ads trying to sell you something. And oh, by the way, you’re driving down the road and you see these big things off to the side. They’re called billboards, and what are they doing? Trying to sell you something.
You get into work. What’s one of the first things you do besides checking your email? You get cold emails, trying to sell you something, right? Then, you get back on your cell phone, start going through your social media, and then you see your aunt pitching her latest greatest network marketing opportunity.
So, you’re constantly being sold something all of the time. And because of that, human beings have built up this wall of resistance that any time they hear lingo that salespeople use or words that most companies use when they’re trying to sell, it immediately triggers sales resistance, the wall comes up and they typically emotionally shut down. That’s what I mean by that.
So, are some generations more susceptible to all of these marketing messages in terms of tuning them out or not?
Yeah, I don’t know if there’s really any studies that prove that it would just be everybody that’s alive right now. I mean, we quite literally live in the information age, right?
Information is abundant. Twenty plus years ago, it really wasn’t, right, before the – I mean, the Internet kind of was there but you didn’t really have social media like you have it now.
Right.
So, because of that, your prospects are distracted all of the time.
So, you have less time to build trust, right, and you are far less credible because they feel like they’re being sold to all the time. So, you have less time to build trust. And they are far more skeptical and cautious about making the wrong buying decisions than they have ever been before, and that will only keep going that way.
Well, maybe that’s why some schools are starting to create misinformation courses to help people ferret out that not every message they receive is of equal weight or equal value but let’s talk about how…
Well, that’s the same.
…these skeptical buyers create challenges for the sales process.
Yeah, and let’s talk about kind of what you just said there. I think that’s quite interesting. Schools are trying to teach about misinformation, but the problem is, is that everybody believes that their information is the correct one. So, how do you actually even do that? Everybody has their own opinions and thoughts.
So, when you’re living in a world where there’s all these different opinions, you’ve got 24 hour cable news, 400 plus channels, all these different social media platforms, all these different opinions from the so-called experts on every side, how do you know who to believe? That’s the problem. That’s a whole other subject there.
So, what do you want to know about these skeptical buyers?
Well, what challenges do they create for the sales process? Because ultimately, people buy from who they know, like, and trust. There’s not a lot of time to build trust.
So, where do you begin if you have a product that is factually accurate? We’re not trying to scam somebody. We’re not a prince from Nigeria. We’ve got the real deal. In the short amount of attention span that people have these days, how do you recommend we start building trust?
Well, that’s a really good question. You only really can build trust by learning how to disarm your prospect, even from the very first words out of your mouth, and I’m not going to be kind of a background of what I mean by disarming a prospect. Okay.
So, just behavioral science one-on-one because like you read there, my background in university was behavioral science and human psychology. And the way our brains work is a human within the first 7 to 12 seconds of any sales interaction, we’re involved with the prospect. Just so everybody listening understands what’s going on in a prospect’s mind, okay? Your prospects are subconsciously – now, they can’t even help it. It’s just the way we’re wired.
So, your prospects are subconsciously picking up on your verbal and nonverbal cues from your tonality and what you are saying and/or asking that triggers their brain to react in one of two ways, and that’s a scary thing if we don’t understand how they’re reacting, okay? Because if we come across too excited, you know what I mean? Like overly enthusiastic, it’s that like sleazy salesperson type of thing.
If you come across needy, everybody knows what I mean by that. You can tell when you’re needy on a call, in internet actually, or if you come across attached, that’s the key word, and you don’t know the right questions to ask, you don’t understand the right tone.
It triggers the brain to go into what’s called fight or flight mode. Now, I think everybody’s heard of fight or flight mode, but do we understand that is a triggered reaction from us? It’s not the prospect doing that. We’re saying something or we’re asking something or a tone is triggering them to go there.
And that’s where they try to get rid of us, right, where, “Oh, I’m too busy. Can you call me back next week,” “We already have somebody for that,” before they even know what you’re doing, or, “We don’t have the money for that,” before they even know if they have a problem, or, “Hey, just get to the point.”
“Enough with your questions, just tell me how much it’s going to cost and I’ll tell you if I’m interested.” That’s because we’re triggering that reaction from it. It’s not like they woke up that morning. They’re like, “You know what? That salesperson calls me at 3:15 today. After they ask me the third question, I’m going to go into fight or flight mode and try to get rid of it.” It’s a triggered reaction. Okay?
Now, once we learn, okay, and this is all taught, how to come across more neutral. And what do you mean by that is more unbiased? You’re not quite sure you can help yet because you don’t know enough about what’s going on, especially at the beginning.
You come across more calm, and more collected. And here’s the keyword, Hanna. You come across more detached. You understand the right questions to ask.
Do you understand the tone? It causes their brain to become curious enough where they feel like they want to engage. They want to open up to you because they feel that you might have something important to them, that they don’t know what that is yet but there’s a different – the way you’re coming across.
So, we have to learn as a business owner, or if you have salespeople that you’ve trained how to come across more detached from the expectations of making a sale and instead focus on whether or not we can actually help them solve their problems. Now, do I mean, when we get into a sales interaction that it’s not our goal to make a sale or at least progress it to that buying decision? Of course not. Okay.
Of course, that’s what you’re supposed to be doing but you want to keep that to yourself. You don’t want to communicate that to them because the moment that they feel you’re just there to sell them so you can make money is the moment they emotionally shut down. So, that’s kind of the first part of that is we have to understand what’s going on in their mind. Are you with me on that so far?
Yes, I can follow. The question is, though…
Yeah.
…it’s one thing once you get their attention, but some people shut it out before you even get a chance to get the first word out. So, how do you recommend you even get on their radar?
Well, that’s because of what I just went over. They’re shutting you out by what you’re saying initially. I mean, it’s not like they’re going to shut you out before you even say a word. If you say, yeah, it depends on if you’re cold calling, calling, outbound, meet inbound. There’s some differences right there.
But what you want to learn, we call this the ABDs of starting, and that stands for Always Be Disarming. Okay? ABDs instead of the ABCs. All right?
So, from the very first words out of our mouth to the middle of that sales process, to the conclusion that whether you sell B2B or you sell B2C, you’re asking the right questions with that right tone that causes the prospect to relax. It causes them to feel comfortable. That is how trust is built. Trust is not built, and this is a common misconception by so many salespeople.
And I’ll tell you where it comes from. Okay? When people say that you were kind of alluding to it a while ago, you probably need something different but people buy from people who they know, like, and trust. Well, that comes from a book from Dale Carnegie, which is a really great book. I mean, the principles in there are very valid. However, that book was written in 1936. We’re in 2023. Okay.
In 1936, they didn’t have the power of the Internet. They didn’t have social media. They didn’t live in the information age. They expected a salesperson to educate them about their products and services. And yes, people bought from more of the people who they liked, who they already trust because of that likeness.
But in our day and age, people buy from companies and people who they feel can get them the best result. If they like you, it’s just a bonus. They don’t necessarily say, “Oh, I like this. I love grandma, but you’re not necessarily going to buy from grandma if you feel somebody’s a complete stranger who owns the same type of business can get you a better result than grandma, you’re buying from that person.”
It’s not that you love Amazon per se, or you love Jeffrey Bezos, but you’re buying more from Amazon than your neighbor, who you really like, who owns the local retail store down the street. Right? So, people buy from people who they feel can get them the best result. And if they like you, it’s just a bonus. That’s how kind of that whole conception.
So, I’m always very careful when people say like, “Oh, you’ve got to get people to like you.” No, you got to get people to trust you. Trust and liking is completely different things. You can like your neighbor. It doesn’t mean you’re going to trust him or her, that they’re going to get you a better result though.
That’s much different. Okay? And so we build trust by triggering the prospect to let their guard down. So, I’ll give you – just let me give you an example. So, let’s say if I don’t know – I’m just throwing something random out there.
Let’s say that you sell business consulting, and let’s say you help a small SMB type of company scale their businesses. Your company helps them build better operations, processes, and marketing. I’m just throwing stuff out there. Okay? So, let’s say that you start talking to a C-level executive.
You do a cold call. Within the first 30 seconds, they say, “Well, hey, why should we go with you? We already have a company that does that or we already have somebody that does that. Well, what do you do?” Most salespeople like, “Well, the reason why you should listen to me is because the X, Y, and Z. We have the best of this, and we have the best of that, which every salesperson says they have the best, right?
So, the prospect just automatically tunes that out. So, instead, you want to find out why they even ask that question versus why they even said that. We have to first disarm them. So, instead of trying to prove to them why they should listen to you, you want to basically get them to lower their guard down first.
You would say, “Well, I’m not quite sure that you should yet.” We’d have to understand a little bit more about kind of what you guys are doing right now to build out your operations and the results you’re getting from that company compared to maybe where you’re trying to be.
You know, just to see if we can even help because maybe you’re better off staying with that company. Are you opposed to having a brief conversation around that? See? What I’m doing is I’m disarming them by saying, “Well, I’m not quite sure that you should yet,” and then you pause two seconds.
You’re going to watch your prospect’s body language. If you’re in talking to them, completely lower the guard. If you’re on the phone, they just relax because you’re basically admitting that you don’t know enough about their situation to see if you can even help them because maybe they’re better off staying with who they already have.
When you do that type of reaction, it causes them to just relax and let their guard down because they’re not used to salespeople being that way. It portrays that you’re more of an expert, more of a trusted authority who doesn’t need their business. You’ve got lots of clients that you have. That’s just kind of just a basic example. See what we’re doing there?
Yeah, I see what you’re doing there, and that’s fascinating, Jeremy. It really is very interesting. In terms of the overall sales process, are there certain milestones that sellers need to keep on their radar when selling to a skeptical buyer?
What we find when companies bring us into audit their salespeople and this is even in Fortune 500 companies, okay? We find that most of their salespeople, for the most part, are personality selling, and what I mean by that is they’re just pretty much winging it.
They each have a few different questions they ask. They try to find a problem. As soon as the prospect tells them a problem, they immediately go into their pitch on how their solution solves that. And most of the time, it’s way too early in the conversation.
They haven’t built enough trust or credibility yet, and the prospect says, “Well, I need to do more research. I need to keep looking around.” So, you want to follow a structured sales process. So, what we train salespeople to follow is what’s called NEPQ.
Now that stands for Neuro Emotional Persuasion Questioning. Okay? It’s our methodology based on my behavioral science background and my sales career before I retired to start 7th Level. So, we’re going to start off by asking our prospects what are called connective questions.
Connective questions take the focus off of you, the salesperson, and put it immediately on the prospect which causes them to feel more comfortable because they’re talking about themselves. There’s different examples for different industries in that, then we’re going to move into what’s called situation questions. Situation questions help them the prospect and you find out what their real situation is.
Most prospects when they first start talking to me, as you know, Hanna, don’t even know what the real situation is. They might have an idea, but they don’t really understand the full breadth of it because they’re an insider, whereas you’re an outsider looking in at it. Okay?
So, we’re helping them find out what the real situation is. Because before you can build a gap from where they are now compared to where they want to be, you have to first help them see what their situation is. Now, you can’t tell them what their situation is because you’re biased. You’re the salesperson that will just go in one ear, out the other.
But your questions allow them to tell themselves. So, you’re almost like the guide or facilitator of that, then we’re going to move right into what are called problem awareness questions. This is all structured. Now, I don’t want to say it’s you have a sales structure or a script, but you can’t sound like you’re reading.
It has to be natural. You have to memorize your lines like an actor or actress would, right? So, you’re going move into problem awareness question that basically help the prospect find out what their real problems are.
Just like their situation, most prospects don’t know what the real problems are when you first start talking to them, or maybe they know they have a problem, but they don’t understand the depth of the problem. They don’t understand how bad the problem really is.
Maybe they don’t understand what the consequences are if they don’t do anything about solving the problem. Okay? So, basically a problem, whereas questions help them see what their real problems are, and not only that, the root cause, like what’s causing the problem, and not only that, how are those problems affecting them even personally?
That’s where we start getting them into what we call their emotional state. That’s when they open up. They go below the surface.
Okay, then we’re going to move into what’s called solution awareness question that stage in the process that basically help the prospects see and feel, most importantly, what their future is going to look like once all these newfound problems from your question are actually solved, what we call that their objective state. Then we’re going to – once they feel that they see that, we’re going to move into a consequence question that basically gets them to question their way of thinking of what the consequences are.
The ramifications are, if they don’t do anything about solving these newfound problems, that builds massive urgency for them to want to do something now, not months or years down the road. Okay?
Then if you sell B2C, you’re going to transition into your presentation. If you have more B2B of complex environment, you’re transitioning into whatever the next step is. It could be a demo, [Unintelligible], it could be meeting of the department head. It could be meeting the board. It just depends. It just could be going over a proposal.
So, you’re following that structure. You know where you’re going from Point A to Point B. So, when companies put in that sales structure with their entire sales department, they know if they’re having problems in certain areas, they know where to fix it.
Most companies just have all their salespeople winging it, and they just don’t know what to fix because everybody’s doing something different, if that makes sense. So, our process is very duplicated. We train 158 different industries. We’re able to go in any industry. It doesn’t matter what it was and duplicate like that because of the process.
And if they’re salespeople struggling, we can identify what part of that process they’re struggling in and correct that, and then they can help scale that. So, it’s more duplicative, if that makes sense.
Well, that sounds like a great process. Jeremy. I’m curious about your book, The New Model of Selling. I think you’ve sort of alluded to what makes you different from the Dale Carnegie method and what inspired you to write it?
Sure. My coauthor and I, Jerry Acuff, he’s the CEO of Delta Point. It’s a major sales consulting firm on the East Coast, and they kind of more specialized in pharmaceutical sales and that type of thing. They’re very huge in that industry.
We got together and Jerry has written five bestselling books and we’re like, “Let’s write a book of all books. Let’s write a book where it’s not just theory, because that’s typically what most sales training books have, but there’s actually tactical training, like what questions to ask, why you’re asking them.”
And so, we wanted to do that just for the everyday salesperson, selling anything that could be selling cars to life insurance, to real estate agents, to staff, to medical device, I mean, just all over the board. Pretty much every industry at this point, and we wanted to give them some ammunition.
And like I was saying earlier, I think that I always ask, “What’s the biggest problem in sales to companies?” And they’re like, “Well, they’ll give me a list of things.” I’m like, “Well, okay, those are problems but the biggest problem in sales is the problem that you don’t know you have. Because if you don’t know what your problem is, then how on earth do you ever know what to do to change or fix it?”
And so the book, from what our clients tell us and this is all the way from Fortune 500 companies to SMB down to individual salespeople to sell anything you can think of is that once they go through our virtual training and group training programs, and once they go through the book, it’s like they took the red pill in The Matrix and they see sales completely different than how they used to see it selling the old way or like consultative something. They see it completely different.
And so, that’s really important to us when our clients say that because it gives them a whole different take of what selling really is and the tactical skills necessary if they want to do exceptionally well as an individual salesperson. Even if they’re already doing good, how do they double or triple what they’re doing?
And if they’re a business owner, how do they scale from where they’re at? And that book is kind of the first step in that direction, if that’s what they want.
Well, that sounds like a great resource that everybody really should have on their shelf to come back to, because as you say, it’s a different process, one that they may not have been trained in.
So, it’ll take some time for them to get comfortable and familiar with the way that you’ve laid this out.
So, this has been great, Jeremy. Thanks so much. I appreciate your time and especially everything you do to help sales professionals and their organizations be more effective and successful in connecting with skeptical buyers.
A hundred percent.
Because as you point out, they’re all over the place. They’re being bombarded with messages and we need to find a way to get through.
So, if you’re listening and you’d like to know more about Jeremy Miner and his book, The New Model of Selling: Selling to an Unsellable Generation, that information, as well as a transcript of this interview, can be found in the show notes at BusinessConfidentialRadio.com.
Thanks so much for listening. Be sure to tell your friends about the show. Leave a positive review. We’ll be back next Thursday with another episode of Business Confidential Now. Until then, have a great day and an even better tomorrow.
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