Sales Fundamentals, with Brendan McAdams [Episode 754]

Brendan McAdams, Co-Founder at Expertscape, and author of SALES CRAFT: Proven Tips, Practices and Ideas to Advance Your Sales Success, joins me in this episode.

Key Takeaways

Expertscape is a website that ranks medical experts by 29,000 topics using the NIH PubMed Repository. Expertscape’s algorithm identifies the most knowledgeable people by the quality of their publications.
Brendan explains the business model of Expertscape. Advertisers and large academic and medical centers support it. People use the site for specific reasons and advertisers advertise on the pertinent pages.
Andy enjoyed reading SALES CRAFT. Brendan and Andy agree that success in sales is based on fundamentals like consistency and followup. Brendan wrote the book after years of making notes from his observations.
The book offers practical tips every salesperson needs to know. It is not a sales methodology; you don’t need to read it front-to-back. It teaches decent human practices to help you engage as a good human being.
Brendan talks about interviewing for sales positions, compared to selling. The job you are hired for is often not the job you are going to do. Brendan suggests you find out what would kill the deal and confront that.
A sale is never over, especially in enterprise-level selling. The contract is just one stage. Andy talks about the stages of a relationship: fledgling, steady-state, and transition. Decisions are made early in the relationship.
Be on time. That means being a few minutes early. Initial impressions matter. Be reliable; it will make your customers look good internally. If you’re going to be late, show consideration by texting before the time.
If your customer is late, ask if you can reschedule, offering two times you can meet. If the customer is inconsiderate of your time, that’s an indication of what kind of customer they will be. It’s OK to walk away.
Andy talks about maximizers and satisficers, using Herbert Simon’s terminology. Maximizers don’t make the easiest customers and they experience more buyer’s remorse. Brendan talks about selecting your customers.
Be honest and direct. Customers want sellers to lead and inspire. Brendan explains limitations and where you wouldn’t use his product. That defuses a series of objections in the buyer’s mind.
Brendan describes meaningful touches. Move the buyer closer to a decision with each touch. Attention spans are short; people want to understand quickly. Summarize, use humor, and be humble. Andy recommends the book.
Brendan’s book is for new salespeople who want to learn the craft and for seasoned salespeople to add new ideas to their self-improvement program. He may write a version targeted for introverted startup founders.

Episode Transcript

So, we’re going to delve into the book that you’ve written, a really nice book I thought was called sales craft. And before doing that, you want to learn about the business that you’re in right now, which I think is a fascinating business as well a company called Expert’s Take, which I spent some time on last week actually, and why don’t you tell us what it’s all about.

Sure. So, it’s a website that identifies and objectively ranks medical expertise by specific topic. And the way we do that is we use the PubMed repository. And that’s part of the National Institute of Health, which is really kind of a national treasure, it’s where anything of any consequence that’s written about any biomedical topic, ends up there and gets indexed there. And we take that data and analyze it by specific topic, which there are now 29,000 different topics. And, and we identify who the most knowledgeable people are using an algorithm that we patented. And there’s just really nothing else like it. And so, you’re having to rank their expertise. Are you, you know, looking at, you know, mentions online sites and citations and publications and so on, is strictly based on, on what they publish, and not just the amount but the quality, the importance of what they publish? So, there’s a thing in publications called the impact factor of a journal. And so, the New England Journal of Medicine in The Lancet, I have a very high impact factor. And so that’s one of the components that goes into the algorithm is how prestigious How important is that? Is the journal where you are published? What’s the, what are you publishing on? Like, what kind of a paper? Is it a clinical trial? Is it a guideline? Is it an editorial, that sort of thing? Are there attractions, all those things kind of go into it? And then we compute those for 29,000 different topics. And so, you’ll appreciate this, where we’re moving, we are moving into what is an expert economy, it’s what you do, you basically are trying to make people experts in sales, right. And in medicine, it’s the same thing as an expert economy and, and the people at the very top are in tremendous demand and they’re very important and so people are looking for experts. In serious condition, so when someone looks someone’s diagnosed with a serious problem, you don’t go to them, you don’t go to a cancer specialist. You go to a lung cancer specialist; you go to the right somebody really knows multiple myeloma anymore. Well, that’s nice

Looking at last week, because a close friend has brain cancer. And so glioblastoma so I was looking at the experts. And , yeah, the expert that she’s been consulting here in the LA area is right at the top of your list.

That’s great, too. And that’s great. We hear those stories over and over and over again. So it’s really encouraging when we hear that, and I always lead with I hope you never have to use our site, really, because it’s ideal as it’s you go to our site when you’ve been diagnosed with a chronic problem that’s not getting resolved or you’ve got a serious complication. You don’t use our site if you’re trying to find a primary care physician or Need a color? You know, you know there are people that are really good at those sorts of things and they go public, but so we don’t know about them. So, what’s your business model? How are you making money on this? It’s a combination of things. And that’s kind of the complexity of it is it’s there’s a reputational component. So, we like it ourselves a little bit to like JD Power. If you took JD Power and crossed it with a global provider, physician directory, that’s kind of what we are. And so, there’s a, there’s a kind of advertising promotion component, and that’s where we’re doing a lot of work. I’m selling to working with large academic medical centers on their awareness campaigns and reputation, that sort of thing. That’s one model. There’s an advertising traffic model, you know, for sure.

Yeah, you’re there for a very specific reason. And, and, and so when you get to a certain page on the site, which there are, frankly millions of pages, we, you’re highly self-qualified. You know, you, you’ve identified yourself as, you know, I have, I have Crohn’s disease, and I’m looking for someone in California or, or Alabama and, and in, you know, and so who are the experts in that geographic area? Right. And some people will fly long distances to get there even some people won’t. One thing I will say is that it’s kind of really important for us that we want to stress that there are Centers of Excellence all over the world. And there are people that are really knowledgeable about this stuff in very different, very unsustainable, unpredictable areas. We got experts from the University of Khartoum.

Excellent. All right. Well, that’s experts’ escape and I’ll give you a chance to give some information about that later on. So, we’ll talk about your book. Sales craft. Yes, proven tips, tactics and ideas to elevate your sales success and, and priorities. I really enjoyed reading the book as I was going through it as is. You weren’t trying to boil the ocean; you weren’t trying to cure everything. It was just some is that sir, practical reminders about ways that things that are so important, I think in sales that don’t get enough attention, which are sort of values and character oriented. You talk about two sorts of basic human decency, and how far that takes you.

Yeah, it’s so true. And I, you know, I listen to your podcast with some frequency and, and I know that, I mean, we kind of agree on a lot of things. But to me, a lot of success in sales in particular is just as fundamentals. It’s doing little things consistently and you know, it’s follow up and, and, and they’ll and the like, and so I’ve kind of collected over the years, a number of these little kind of ideas and, you know, practices and techniques that I just think are kind of fundamental to the to the profession and I’ve just been writing them down forever and I just and so then I decided I wanted to kind of compile them in a way that you could pick up the book at any point and read something you don’t have to sit there and, you know, plow through it from start to finish. And it’s not an it’s not a sales system. It’s your things, your kind of reminders, things that came about.

And I think this is such an important lesson for people to keep in mind who are in sales. Yeah, there is a sales methodology. But beneath it, there are these just basic, as you said, human decencies, human kindnesses, practical tips that you need to be practicing . If you don’t because love has to do with sort of the first impression you create with another human being. And I think I sort of lump a lot of what you talked about into this really important category called just being a good human. And it’s surprising how far that can take you. It’s just to be a good mark of a good human, I just start with that. And if you aren’t, and you can, you can layer all the methodology on top of that, you know, that human connection you need to make with your buyer. It just won’t happen. And as I like to say, you’ll be fighting for second place from the beginning you won’t even know it.

Yeah, that’s it. I can’t agree more. It’s just amazing how, how far you know, I have just done certain things over and over again consistently . It’s like in, in football and you know, American football. I know your kind of a football player.

A big soccer fan. Yeah, yeah. Visa, right. So American football is like if your alignment footwork is critically important. I mean, just have boxing the same. Yep. You know, boxing, so much of his success is in footwork because it just positions you and so forth. And It’s true in sales. If you do certain things over and over again, consistently, you can differentiate yourself with a large percentage of the sales population.

Yeah. Isn’t that amazing? And, but that is absolutely true. And I’m having this conversation. I was having this conversation with somebody this week and it is sort of Okay. Well, what had been, I don’t say the secret to my success, but the things that I thought made a difference when I was selling. And it was some of the things that you talked about in the book that are just these basic human values and character issues that really reflect who you are as a person. And that’s, that’s the first thing people judge you on. It’s not your knowledge. It’s not your credibility. It’s just Are you a person I want to connect with and interact with them? And perhaps find you trustworthy enough to a degree that we can do business at some point? That’s right. Yep. All right. Let me run through some of these because it’s, it’s because I just want to stress him. I just like the way you wrote about her, or what Yeah, so what he’s talking about is portance of being prepared. And I thought you had given an interesting example about an interview because you said, there’s a great chance that the job you interview for won’t be the job you end up doing. And so, explain what you mean by that.

In terms of the first sales gig or like we do, yeah, it’s happened to me so frequently now that I’ve been, in fact, what’s happened is, I’ve been on my own as a sales consultant for the last nine years. And prior to that, I had gone in and interviewed with companies where, like, I knew the people on the board, I knew the CEO, I knew, you know, these were these were like, cold, you know, these were referral. These were references, you know, opportunities. And, and the surprising thing to me is, is until you’re on board, my experience has been that you just don’t, you don’t have any real confidence. That the job you’re going to do is that the job you’ve been hired for the job you’re going to do, and I and I don’t know exactly what the defense is, except that it’s a sales opportunity in the same way. And that is why qualification is so important. And at some, I think one of things that I find that salespeople, especially experienced salespeople tend to do is they get worried about losing a deal because they ask the wrong or they ask a difficult question. And ultimately, that’s going to come back and bite you. And so, there’s a chapter in the book where I talk about killing a deal. And one of the fundamental things is you have to find you have to discover what the thing is that’s going to kill the deal for you. And you have to confront that you have to find a way to really uncover that deal to get the person on the other side to agree with you. This is an obstacle and you can’t overcome or to dispute it and argue in favor of hiring you or buying from you. And I think I guess the one lesson I would take away from those, those employment experiences are you really have to be hyper aggressive, I think. And in trying to uncover what could go wrong before you take the job. I don’t know how helpful that is. I mean, what’s your experience?

Well, I think, yeah, I think it’s a very common experience. And I think it’s very analogous to customers buying a product, right, is there’s always this gap between the expectation and the reality. And what I took from a book we’re saying, be prepared for that as being prepared for the fact that Yeah, once you bought it is different from what you’re actually going to be getting. And so, to your employer, what they thought they bought, as a result of you selling yourself to them as probably a difference as well, not so that bad way. But it’s just, you know, it’s so hard to align the expectations. And, and just, I, the point I took from that part was just yeah, got to be prepared that this is reality this is this all happens. So, you have to be resilient, you got to be tough, aggressive, as you talked about, and just understand that you’re not ever as clear as you think you are.

And I guess a corollary for me is that I’ve kind of come to the conclusion, you know, as a result of my experience that the sale is really never over. You’re never like, you may get the contract signed. But like I’ve had a number of contracts signed, where you don’t implement them, you may even get the money, but you don’t have the satisfaction of having a successful customer. And so, in a lot of cases, I find most cases the sales are never over. And especially in the kind of work that that kind of selling I’ve always done has been enterprise level selling and so you’re always working on that engagement, you know, you may have gotten the contract, but that does not mean that all the work is done.

Yeah. Well, I think that there’s a way for people to think about this is that there’s sort of these multiple stages in our relationship that that sociologists and psychologists have defined, and the first stage of the relationship is they call a fledgling relationship stage Yeah. And fledgling burdens on a fly just getting to know each other. But the fact is decisions take place in that stage, the purchase decisions and then you sir, the steady state stage and then you have what they call a transition stage where eventually the relationship evolves and changes. What sellers have to understand is that Yeah, you your buyers are making decisions before they have this fully formed relationship with you. Right and, and yeah, if you want to maximize the value, you can provide the customer and the revenue value of the opportunity. You got to build on that relationship, that building doesn’t stop when you get the order effect. It’s still in the early fledgling stage of a relationship.

Yeah, right. Show up when you say I’m going to show up, as you know, just, you know, it’s like a buddy of mine always uses the phrase, Lombardi time. Yeah. And, you know, you know, be a few minutes early. So, you’re, you’re prepared. And you’re and he’s the early stages of going back here, the last point in the early stages, that’s the sledging fledgling stages of the relationship. It’s those little things that really matter. It’s like those initial impressions. And one of the things that has always served me very well is because my follow up and because I’m on time and people rely I’ve been largely reliable is it gives you control This, this sense of competence, it makes them look good internally with whomever they are dealing with because, you know, a lot of cases in most cases a customer, you know is buying from you individually and they’re an individual and, and that decision to choose you and your company reflects upon them, if you’re making it look good. And, and they know they have confidence in you then that that really kind of can solidify you inside the account in so many of those little things is showing up on time doing what you say you’re going to do and, you know, just critical.

Yeah, what I like in the book really points out that I hadn’t thought about it. That’s probably true, as you said, yeah, it’s unavoidable. Sometimes you’re going to be late, but that’s what cell phones were invented for. And it still drives me nuts. Yeah, when I’m talking to somebody selling something to me, and it happens quite frequently. It’s like Okay, you’re late. You could have texted. Yeah. I’m, um, this is a bouncer. Yeah. I was going to say, maybe to do a follow too much. Yeah, if I’m going to be late, even five minutes, two minutes. I’m going to say that text ahead of time or call somebody and say, you know, hey, forgive me if something’s happened but I’m going to be there. And you’re showing that you care enough, and you respect their time enough. Yeah, do that.

Yeah. Yeah, you’ve just used a problem because I’m that I’m totally that way. And that is, you know, if someone if I hadn’t been with someone at a certain time, and they’re 10 or 15 minutes late, I’m oftentimes I’m just I’m weird in the sense that I I’m kind of stalled on waiting for that. So, I can’t really be productive if someone says, Hey, I want to be 10 minutes late. Oh, I know. I can pick up the phone call someone quickly or I can write an email, or I can I can, I can do something.

Well, so here’s a question for you. This is because this Yeah, this happens all the time to sellers. As the customers lead. So, what you’re seeing is the customer doesn’t seem to respect my time as much as I’m trying to respect theirs. So, in those instances, what do you Brenda McAdams say to a customer? Or do you?

I have a delicate but I have a kind of a rule of thumb, that if they, if they’re, if they’re within a few minutes, 10 minutes or something like that, you know, I tolerate, you know, that happens every time I may actually say something. If it’s more than like 15 or so minutes, I will send them a message and say Let’s reschedule and now and then I’ll basically kill it. You know, it depends on whether I’m traveling, you know, if it’s a phone call, those sorts of things. I’m, you know, if someone tells me five minutes saying, Hey, I’m running late, sorry, you know, I will oftentimes give them the out. Hey, let’s just reschedule. What’s your name? I’ll serve up a couple options my, one of my standard sentences is, give me a couple time slots, and I’ll make one of work. And that saves me the trouble of going back and forth with calendars if they just say, hey, here are two windows a time, I will I will find a way to make one of them work and I use that as a way to kind of short circuit that but if I can give someone an hour Hey, they’re backed up with reset then I’ll just tell them reschedule if someone consistently is inconsiderate of my time at that tells me something about the state of the relationship and the deal and I have walked away from deals where I just thought even if we won it wouldn’t be good for the company, our resources my time my you know, and so I Great point. You know, I think there are deals that you’re better off losing to somebody else or walking away from Walking away from.

And that’s a part that you bring up a great point. And I think that too many salespeople don’t think about it in this context, which is, you know, much as customers are choosing you to some degree, you choose your customers. I mean, absolutely, if you’re way underwater on quota, you’re going to be less discriminating. But yeah, if you’re performing the plan, or you’re close to plan, you’re building a book of business. Yeah, the tour, our customers are people at customers who are just not worth dealing with and they’re not worth the time. And it’s okay to choose not to do business with them, even though they could buy from you. It’s your point. They could be, you know, hugely time consuming as a customer, hugely demanding, unreasonably demanding. Yeah, Herbert Simon has talked about how a Nobel Prize winner economist said people sort of fall into two categories maximize or satisfices or maximizers or buyers that we’ll look at every single operative option or to convince themselves they made the right decision. Yeah, yeah, you may find in your business if you run across somebody who’s a Maximizer you don’t want to work that deal because you may never close that deal because they’re always going to think there’s something better around the corner even though they sincerely and one part of the mind they sincerely intend to buy something. Yeah, they just can’t bring themselves to do it because that must be something better out there. I didn’t see. And there’s been studies done I think Simon did it saying that Yeah, man. maximizers do make perhaps more optimal decisions, but they’re also more likely to be unhappy customers have buyer’s remorse because Muslim something out there.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I’ve always, I’ve always thought being in sales and is just a tremendous, tremendous career option. It’s just I love being in sales. And part of the part of being in sales means you have to make it enjoyable for you. And if you’re not Selecting customers to some degree, even not being somewhat having a code a standard, you know, you’re talking about Yeah, yeah, your own, like your own cut like this. If you’re going to choose to have customers and you’re going to put up with customers that are disrespectful to you, they belittle you that, that don’t waste your time. Then you kind of you’re kind of creating a sales environment that it’s, it’s, it’s reducing the what’s great about being in sales and I worry things about sales is I can to some degree, choose my customers, especially as a consultant as a certain independent. I’ve had customers that I have a three-month engagement with. Hey, this has been great, thank you very much. And I go a different direction. And because they’re just not, they don’t want to take advice. They don’t want to execute them, they pay the bills, but they don’t. They’re not referencing They’re not happy. There, you know, those sorts of things. Yeah, I think I think you have a lot more control over your destiny than and sometimes people give credit.

Well, you have to trust in yourself. That’s a confidence thing, right is you have to have confidence that if you choose not to do business with a prospect that you’ve got enough in your pipeline, or confident enough that you can build your pipeline to the point where it’s not going to hurt you. Yeah. Which it certainly is another point you talked about, which I think is something that isn’t worth discussing and not talked enough. Enough. Enough about us is, you know, being honest, being direct, being blunt with customers, you don’t have to sugarcoat everything. In fact, I think you create the impression of being unnecessarily subservient. Oftentimes think sellers put themselves in a certain position like a puppy, they won’t be potted, petted, and yeah, people say nice things to them. When really the situation calls for what the customer really wants is, they want the seller to lead and inspire and be honest and direct about Whenever issue comes up,

yeah, right? When I use, like the expert’s tape example is a good one for me. And that is, we, we do a certain thing, we identify these experts objectively. And then I, in a presentation with people early on, I immediately explain, these are some of the limitations. This is where you wouldn’t use us. And, and, and by doing so, it diffuses that whole series of objections that people are naturally, you know, creating in their own mind, you know, it does do this, or it’s limited because of that. And if I sit there and can say right up front, this is what it doesn’t do. You don’t need us for these things. We’re, this is where we’re good. This is where we’re not good. And it immediately does a couple things, it diffuses that are the objections that might come up and it also lends it gives you a lot more credibility. Right, fine. There are circumstances that where I will not sell to you is basically what you’re saying.

And that’s okay. I think we don’t say that enough. And I’ve learned to do that from a mentor early in my career to say, it’s okay to tell people who you’re not good for. Yeah. And buyers and just be upfront about that. Yeah. And, you know, you’re setting up a negative image or image you see on a negative photograph, but it’s, yeah, you’re just saying, okay, yeah. Just winna see, this is who we’re not good for it. This is not a fit for us.

Yeah. Yeah. I say explain that to a doc. You know, a doctor the other day I said, you don’t, you don’t need us. Here’s what you do. I mean, you got what you need. You know, we’re, you know, and you know, if I can help if I can help you at some point down the road, by all means, and I know your favorite Whatever, that’s fine, but you don’t need to buy anything from us. I mean, you’re doing great. And it’s, you know, it’s half the fun of that is they? They are so accustomed to seeing that reaction. It’s

worth the farmer reps and so on. Yeah. Yeah. Well, another thing that that I want to touch on was, and this is something that I read in several things recently, and I’m a huge believer in this and I’ve written about it is that it’s about being purposeful, right? It’s not just following a script, find a playbook. You talk about from the context of meaningful touches. And I talked about it from the context that Yeah, every touch you have with a buyer should move them closer to making a decision. And if you don’t accomplish that, then it wasn’t a meaningful touch. There’s no value for the buyer. And friend, Dave Brock writes about design Meaning high value touches, which is very similar. So, talk about what you describe that you’re talking about certain contexts to talk about brevity levity value and being on target. And I thought that’s a great sort of little simple framework to think about designing a sales touch.

Yeah. So, I wrote the book with the idea that people don’t have a lot of, you know, people are, you know, attention. There’s just this Attention Deficit issue that’s going on, there’s just so much information out there and people don’t have attention spans. And that’s certainly true when you are delivering any information to your customer. So, in terms of brevity, you know, like, like, nobody wants to have their time wasted. And at the same time, people like to look smarter, they like to feel like they want to be able to look smart or get smarter, in the least amount of time, possible, least amount of time and effort. And so, to the degree to which you can help your customers understand things better, quickly, simply, is really important. So, you know, marketing departments often generate all this great material, you know, very sexy, you know, highly, very visually appealing material or white papers, what have you. And they’re great, and there, they’re good background material. But, but I find that what I’ve been very helpful, it’s been a very much appreciated because when I can send to a customer, here’s a white paper, here are the three takeaways that that I think are that be of interest to you that are important given you’re given the project and then explain me how it would apply. And, and so, so I, you know, I’m an early adopter to you and one of your podcasts you talked about some technology I gave you that indicated how old you were right so I’ve been around Since that started email, so I, I like I typed the email on a computer on a character based machine in Unix and, and so I have been there from the early days of Unix and email and so I can appreciate how important is to do something in a way that’s timely and, and very condensed because people don’t have time to read stuff. And so, I put a try, I just think people need to be constantly aware that they’re getting bombarded with stuff so the degree to which you can deliver things in a really simple, easily digestible manner is invaluable.

Right. And that’s a perfect example as is and I think that needs to be used more frequently is Yeah, you may have a white paper you want to send to a buyer. Yeah, the customer is. summarize it. Yeah, yeah. The three key points as you pointed out, is if they want to go back and read the whole thing later, they will but the point is everybody’s crunched for time. summarized. So that’s a very simple technique that I see people do very rarely, has let me just summarize this for you in a paragraph, three bullet points, bullet points preferred something that can scam. And you still get credit for giving them something of value that Yeah, they’ll say, Yeah, don’t get me I want to dig into this later. Oh, these are great points. And that’s fine.

And this in this day and age, too, is they see that. It’s, it’s succinct. It’s well written. They’ll cut and paste that and and put it into something that somebody else. Yeah. And, you know, which they can’t do with a white paper, because now they’re making a colleague read some, you know, multi-page document that they did read, you know, and so this way they can, they can say, Hey, here’s this and, you know, and it’s just another way for them to look smart internally and to be informed internally and be responsive,

Right, and then you talk levity, which I think is important is we have a tendency to want to take ourselves too seriously. And we talked to the beginning of the show about being a good human being yourself, you talk in the book later about, you know, being your authentic self is, has nothing wrong with injecting some levity into the situation and showing that you’re not again not taking yourself that seriously.

Well, yeah that’s deprecated. I think it is a great tool. I mean, obviously it can be laid on too thick and then it comes across as inauthentic. But yeah, but I guess this gets back to the point you were talking about which began a little bit later in the book about being your authentic self is when you need to develop a sales personality. If you’re in sales, and it has to be congruent with who you are as a human being. It doesn’t mean it’s exactly the same as who you are. I mean, in my case, I’m very much an introvert but in sales situations or in situations like this, I’m more outgoing but that’s part of me that’s part of my sales personality. And having a little levity not taking myself too seriously are willing to make jokes at my own expense. Yeah, it makes us just seem more human and more relatable, which is really, that’s where that connection with another person comes from, as I said, Well, yeah, I can relate to this person.

Yeah. And it’s in a good way. Yeah. So, ring a little bit at a time I know you’ve got a time. Yeah. Just if you could sort of summarize the book for people so if people say yeah, I want to decide to pick up this book and read it. Who are you really? Who did you really target with it as a beginner as everybody is that you know more, and I have my own opinion, who would benefit from it?

So that’s fascinating because I wrote it for the, for the salesperson, it’s just, it’s, it’s that wants to stay read that reads on a regular basis and sees that as part of the just part of their kind of ongoing self-improvement program. And this is a way to kind of reinforce and, you know, introduce new ideas or reinforce existing practices at now. So, for new salespeople, I think it’s a, it’s a very good book in the sense that it just, it condenses a bunch of fundamental ideas that are, I think, very digestible, they’re very easy to understand. And it helps to have kind of a context, the story behind it, something a lot of them do have a story behind it, that kind of explains, you know, how, you know, how I came to this conclusion or how it applies. And so, it’s really useful for new, new to sales or, you know, sales professionals. The one other thing that someone told me is nice. In fact, I’ve heard this more than a couple times now is that it’s really good for, I should write a version for founders, for fat like, founders, because founders often are, you know, introverted, you know, type individuals, they’re, you know, technical, they oftentimes come up with an idea and build on it, but yet, they are responsible early on sure for selling and, and so I’m going to probably going to write a version that’s specifically targeted for founders, like just fundamental, you know, you know, practices, but with more of a founder, kind of a perspective, woven it.

Yeah. I think a recipe for how to be a good human for some, many of those founders would be great. And so before we go, I did want to touch base on your one thing this is, I would say is the most important but it’s a pretty critical part in the book as you said, there are five things not to order at lunch when you’re with like to buy. So, five things not to eat at lunch when you’re with a customer. Spaghetti, a second Martini breakfast, approved smoothing and chocolate cake. So, I understand the issue with the second Martini. So why a prune smoothie? Why shouldn’t your order prune smoothie? Lunch?

Well, you know, I’m fascinated by the whole idea of like, this probably dates me as much as anything that is people who call them prunes anymore, they rebranded them as Dr. plumps your hand so it’s a little bit like the What was it? The Patagonian two fishes now. What is it? Gamma? And so, it’s Oh, it’s another fish. It’s a Chilean sea bass. So, they didn’t like the name. So, I just, it was just a, you know it is I wanted to introduce a level of levity and I thought that’s the like the least likely thing and Telegraph’s it seems to me a very kind of a.

Yeah, I think if you’re, you know, traditionally people resort to prunes if they’re constipated, and they need a laxative, so, yeah, you probably don’t telegraph that necessarily a meeting with their lunch with your buyer. A chocolate cake though. Yeah, that seemed pretty harmless.

Well, anyway, yeah, I recommend people. Take a look at the book as Brenda says, really a reference more than us. A start to finish reading through yourself. I can do it. It’s easy enough to read. But yeah, yeah, just find one thing, research finds one thing that helps remind yourself. Yeah, laughs I serve that my attention is lapsed on this particular issue. I’m being a little careless and I need to pay more attention to what I’m doing. And it could just be something as simple as just being on time. Just let that slide. Yeah. Everything makes a difference, because, yeah, sales, people really want to think about it. Sales is not a continuum, when you’re selling to a customer, they are talking about a process it’s on, but it’s really a series of moments, to series moments. And at each of those moments, you’re creating an impression on this person. And the things you really deal with in the book are really a preponderance of our that how do I how do I create that right impression in the eyes of the buyer to make them want to choose me to do business with and so I think we all can sort of pay close attention that

That’s exactly right. And thanks that’s a that’s a great way to kind of, uh, to kind of summarize sales craft and, and the kind of reason I wrote it and, and who it’s for and, and no, that’s I mean I couldn’t do a better job of Alright, summarize, yes send an address or you can send the check.

I’ll be your publicist. So, all right. Well Brendon it’s been a pleasure to talk to you last night that we’ve been having us in the works for a long time. Tell me what they can learn more about the book and learn more about expert scape?

Well, the book is the best way to get the book on Amazon sales craft and Brendan McAdams is the author. That’s how you basically find it. It’s on Kindle and also on a hardcopy, and then hopefully you never have to use expert scape but if you do, it’s experts kake.com scape because My partner and I both work at What became Web MD was called? It was called. Healthy on. But the name before healthy ones was hellscape. Because the founder, Jim Clark, was one of the founders who started Netscape at Marc Andreessen. And so, we’re experts came as a result of that because that’s how we got our start. So, alright, that’s what experts get back on. Yep.

Sales Fundamentals, with Brendan McAdams [Episode 754]

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