When I was 15, I got grounded for losing my virginity. This episode is about staying grounded. This episode is sponsored by Zach's mom. Are you ready? Mark's ready. Make sure you're not made emperor. Avoid that imperial stain. It can happen to you. So keep yourself simple, good, pure, saintly, plain, a friend of justice, God fearing, gracious, affectionate and strong for your proper work.

Fight to remain the person that philosophy wish to make you. Revere the gods and look after each other. Life is short. The fruit of this life is a good character and acts for the common good. That was beautiful. Moxarellis that. Really beautiful. So let's go into talking about how our jobs as salespeople are not to convince them that they are something they're not. But instead perhaps to get deeper into

I mean, we talk about the therapy character, don't we get deeper into what is the real reason here? And I think sometimes much like therapy, people go into a therapy session with a problem that they think is here's the problem I've got, but really it's the, it's a symptom. There's a deeper underlying issue. I know as a salesperson, sometimes those deeper underlying problems that I've come across with prospects have been pretty uncomfortable things to face them with. You know, there's been times where actually what we figure out is the person you're talking to, the prospect is the problem. You know, like you're, you thinking you're really good as a hiring manager or something. What we're quickly finding is no one's stick. You're actually not that great as I, and then you'll, you've got to be the one to kind of relay that back. So I think what might be a good exercise is why don't we demonstrate perhaps how the therapy character might play out in a, in a call. Um, so what do you think's a good frame to go with?

when you were saying that it might be them, a lot of the time, maybe they're looking at software, typically they might have brought something in already that hasn't worked. And a lot of the time we are dealing with ego and personality that is they may have made mistakes, they may have tried to solve this problem. So you've got to be fragile at point, but also get them to a point where they might realize that the problem is them. So I think that's a nice framing for where we are. Let me give you a situation. I am...

Give me a symptom and I'll let's get deep to what the core problem is. Let's use the therapist to do that. So symptom in the world of we have a meeting. Could be. I would say deals aren't closing. All right, good. Deals aren't closing. Deals aren't closing. And you've come to me to help with that. Yeah. OK. Would you like to give me the sentence? Deals aren't closing. Wow. OK. I wasn't expecting to hear it like that. OK. Well, thanks for being honest. When you say deals aren't closing, what do you mean exactly? Got deals in the pipeline. Nothing's really moving through it.

Nothing's really closing. OK. And how long has this been going on for? Some of the deals have been in there a year. OK, but it sounds like that's not unusual. And now I said our sales cycle typically is around two to three months, but we just keep getting pushback from a lot of the clients and then there's not more stuff topping it up. OK. And you've noticed it for about a year. How long you been in business? Ten years. Ten years. OK. So what was happening those other nine years and what was working?

We've been quite lucky with like referrals and inbounds and stuff like that. But I think like there's definitely been like a change of focus from like outbound to more like focusing on referrals because that's where most of the business comes from. Yeah, it's just a bit up in the air at the moment. OK, and you sound quite beaten by this. I'm really missing the line. It's a hard place to be. We're trying to we're trying to generate your business to keep the lights on.

If you were working for someone like me and you could build the ideal solution for you to fix this, what do you think it would need to look like? Maybe somebody to come in and help close deals, whether that be doing it themselves or training the team and getting them effective. So improving the closing rate. I'd also probably say that someone to help fill the top of the funnel. So there's more stuff coming through. So whoever's sitting in those meetings is getting more qualified opportunities in the CRM and that can lead to obviously we want to close them so it starts with that. Okay that sounds reasonable. What's the closest you've come to finding something like that? We hired somebody that was okay then they ended up moving to London and they didn't want to be in the north so we've not managed to find anyone as good yet. Okay what else have you tried? That's kind of it. Okay so you've got this big problem, definitely feels painful.

But you've worked with one person to try and fix it so far. Well, no, we've been trying to hire them for the last seven months. Right. OK. OK. So you've been trying to hire. It's been a problem for about a year. You've got an idea of the ideal solution. Probably a of a sticky, uncomfortable question to ask. Go on. What do you think is really stopping you from fixing this? I don't really know what the solution is. I couldn't promise you the world. I don't know enough about you just yet.

I have helped companies that are in somewhat similar spots before. If I could help, would there be any reason not to some time in the diary and explore it further? Amatch. Yeah. Amatch. Bang. Amatch. Very good. Very nice. You want a hammer? Jack. Soft hands. Thanks. Very good. Very therapeutic. I thought it was wonderful. thought the questions that you asked, but you're just going a little bit deeper. You're going a little bit deeper. You're taking their hand. You're taking their hand. You're going a little bit deeper.

I it was really nice. Really nice. Thanks mate. I've been Jack Frimston. I've been Zack Thompson. Remember you or die? Yeah man.