If You Still Get Objections, You Opened Wrong (Peter Strohkorb)

Did the idea of buyer-focused selling system, which is one of the things that you have on your website, comes from some kind of experience that you had? Or how did that come together?

Okay.

So before starting my own business out in 2011, so 15 years ago now, I had spent 25 years in the corporate world.

Okay.

And if you know the corporate world, it's pretty ugly.

And, um, you know, the, um, the politics, the, um, the meetings, the permissions, the, the budgeting and all that stuff.

You don't, you're never really in charge of your, your own yourself.

You're always in charge of the, you're always in charge of a business and you always have, uh, no matter how high up the ladder you are, you always have a boss ahead of you who knows better and wants to tell you how to do things.

And, um, I reached a point where I had a discussion, a debate with my boss at the time who wanted more volume in sales outreaches.

So I was a senior sales executive and the question was about our sales target and our prospecting.

And to him at the time, it was all about numbers.

Like the more people we reach out to, the more people we'll hit up that actually want to buy our products and the more we'll sell and we'll hit our sales targets.

So you've got to have this thing that's called coverage, five times coverage, which means if we win one in five deals, then we need to have five times our revenue target covered in deals down the pipeline in order to reach our sales target.

So it's all about volume, all about quantity, and there was no talk about quality.

And I really didn't want to ambush more people cold in the hope that they would buy something from us and just make it a numbers game.

I felt that was really ruining my own personal brand and my own personal reputation.

And I was going to sacrifice my personal reputation for the big company.

So that they would make more money.

So that conversation led me to believe that the buyer experience is super important.

And that you can't just burn 10,000 prospects in the hope that two or three will buy from you.

So the idea was that the way you reach out and the way you engage with your prospects, and I purposely use the word engage as opposed to reaching out, is super important.

If I reach out to you and basically say, buy my stuff, open your wallet and buy from me, that doesn't do anything for the buyer.

They just feel harassed and they'll just say instinctively, they'll react to with a fight or flight response and they'll say, go away.

And once I've done that to them, they'll probably never want to hear from me again.

So it's really easy to burn your prospect list and actually reduce your chances of selling something.

Did the idea of buyer-focused selling system, which is one of the things that you have on your website, comes from some kind of experience that you had? Or how did that come together?

Okay.

So before starting my own business out in 2011, so 15 years ago now, I had spent 25 years in the corporate world.

Okay.

And if you know the corporate world, it's pretty ugly.

And, um, you know, the, um, the politics, the, um, the meetings, the permissions, the, the budgeting and all that stuff.

You don't, you're never really in charge of your, your own yourself.

You're always in charge of the, you're always in charge of a business and you always have, uh, no matter how high up the ladder you are, you always have a boss ahead of you who knows better and wants to tell you how to do things.

And, um, I reached a point where I had a discussion, a debate with my boss at the time who wanted more volume in sales outreaches.

So I was a senior sales executive and the question was about our sales target and our prospecting.

And to him at the time, it was all about numbers.

Like the more people we reach out to, the more people we'll hit up that actually want to buy our products and the more we'll sell and we'll hit our sales targets.

So you've got to have this thing that's called coverage, five times coverage, which means if we win one in five deals, then we need to have five times our revenue target covered in deals down the pipeline in order to reach our sales target.

So it's all about volume, all about quantity, and there was no talk about quality.

And I really didn't want to ambush more people cold in the hope that they would buy something from us and just make it a numbers game.

I felt that was really ruining my own personal brand and my own personal reputation.

And I was going to sacrifice my personal reputation for the big company.

So that they would make more money.

So that conversation led me to believe that the buyer experience is super important.

And that you can't just burn 10,000 prospects in the hope that two or three will buy from you.

So the idea was that the way you reach out and the way you engage with your prospects, and I purposely use the word engage as opposed to reaching out, is super important.

If I reach out to you and basically say, buy my stuff, open your wallet and buy from me, that doesn't do anything for the buyer.

They just feel harassed and they'll just say instinctively, they'll react to with a fight or flight response and they'll say, go away.

And once I've done that to them, they'll probably never want to hear from me again.

So it's really easy to burn your prospect list and actually reduce your chances of selling something.