Diane Helbig on Succeed Without Selling

Diane focuses on small business owners and salespeople who want to improve their business development strategies. She provides workshops and presentations on various topics, including sales, social media leadership, and business planning, in her book “Lemonade Stand Selling.” She provides a straightforward, common-sense, and clear guide to the sales process. However, today, her session is based on “Succeed Without Selling.”

I remember having a conversation with her while I was traveling in the UK, and I think I was in Bristol, if I remember correctly. I was like, “Oh God, this is what we are trying to do. This is what we believe.” We had a wonderful session that day.

Diane, welcome! Thank you so much for joining us. Take it away!

Diane Helbig    01:06

Thanks so much for having me. I’m thrilled to be here.

This has been a great day so far. So good! Good on you for putting this all together. It cannot have been an easy task, but I am thrilled to be here to talk about some tips from the book “Succeed Without Selling.” And I will say that if you are thinking to yourself, “Wait a minute, how can I succeed without selling? Like isn’t selling the point?” I mean the traditional sense of self, I mean that selling that somehow we were taught to do. None of us like it when people do it to us. We don’t feel comfortable doing it to other people. And so I am suggesting that we change our mindset and that the book starts with a mindset shift from being in selling mode to being in learning mode. Okay, being curious instead of trying to convince, persuade, all those things that supposedly work when we’re pretty sure that they don’t.

So one of the things that I think is really important is, what do prospects want, right? So we know as prospects we don’t like being treated a certain way. So let’s not treat other people that way. It is sort of that simple. Prospects want, and you know this because you are one, we want honesty. We want to know that the seller is really interested in us specifically, not just any company or person. And we want to know that the salesperson is really interested in helping us solve a problem, and they are more interested in helping us solve a problem than they are in gaining the sale. And the way that we show that is by being curious, being intentional, really sitting in the moment with them, no matter where we are, no matter who we’re engaging with.

So you know, there was this weird period of time that was probably too long where, and you’ve probably heard this before, I’ve been taught this “always be closing.” Well, the mindset shift is to “always be curious.” Because if you think about it, when we are always closing, that means no matter where we are, no matter what we’re doing, we are looking for the sale. We are in total sales mode. It’s really off-putting. No one likes it. They don’t like being confronted with that. So it doesn’t really work because it telegraphs that you are only interested in selling. And that you think as long as you can be convincing enough, you’re going to be able to sell everyone in the room, and you think that’s what you’re supposed to do. But if we switch it to “always be curious,” then we aren’t thinking about selling, right? We’re succeeding without selling. We aren’t thinking about the sale. We’re thinking about learning.

We’re focused on learning as much as we can about whoever it is we’re talking to or the organization that we are involved with, so that we can identify whether we have a solution for them or not. Because that’s one of the dirty little secrets: we’re not right for everybody, and everybody isn’t right for us as a customer. But if we’re always in sales mode, we miss those signals and we end up with really bad clients. And if you think about it, if you’ve ever had a bad customer or you know what I’m talking about, right?

So, what does this really mean for me? It’s all about discovery, right? Discovery is the key. When we’re networking, we should not be looking for customers or working for clients. We should be totally open to just being in the moment and getting to know a couple of people in the room. Because when we are in discovery mode, when we are curious, we are really discovering how these people fit into our world and if they fit into our world. Because, you know, there’s the possibility that they don’t, right? No one likes the salesman at the networking event. We all know it. We don’t like them. We avoid them like the plague. Right? I just got a thumbs up on that. So let’s not be the salesman in the room or the saleswoman in the room, right?

A lot of people tell me they’re uncomfortable networking. No kidding. If you think you have to be “on” and you have to be slick and you have to be persuasive and you have to be all of these things, why would you want to go? And the other thing I will ask you is if everyone went to networking events to try and sell everyone, there, was behaving that way, would you go again? You wouldn’t because it’s awful and because you think to yourself, “Why is this guy trying to sell me insurance? I don’t need insurance. I have an insurance agent.” If he had not tried to sell me insurance but asked me if I had insurance and about my relationship with my insurance agent, he wouldn’t have bothered. If he’d asked, if he’d been curious, if he had been in discovery mode, right? This is what I’m talking about. This matters.

Go to networking events to discover who might be just a business friend, frankly, who might be a good resource, who might end up being a referral partner, who might be someone you want to avoid, someone who doesn’t fit into your world. The only way you’re going to know is by not being in sales mode, right? And then there’s prospecting. We should be doing an awful lot of research when we’re prospecting before we ever reach out to a prospect. Because the more we know, the more discovery we do, and the more we know about that prospect, the more we have to talk to them about something that is resonant to them. They realize that we have really done our homework, that we really care about them. It gives us something to start the conversation with, but it also tells us if they are someone that we should cross off our list. Not every prospect in your prospect pool is going to be a possible client, okay? They’re not. Sometimes just doing your research will help you figure that out. Okay?

And then there’s, we’ll talk about being in the sales meeting in a minute, all right? Because that’s a huge topic. But what about after the sale? How many salespeople sell? Thank you very much and then move on because we’re taught to be hunters. Okay, you can be a hunter all you want, but you also have to be a nurturer. And nothing is constant. Your customers are constantly changing. I mean, the only constant is change, right? So we want to be engaging with our customers after the sale so that we can keep learning about them and their needs and what’s going on with them. Then we take the resources that we’ve developed through networking and we can offer them to our customers, further solidifying our relationship. We are of greater value to our customers and clients when we are helping them solve problems that have nothing to do with what we sell. It’s about the relationship. All this is about relationship building, growing, nurturing, and solidifying. Remember when I said, “What do prospects want?” They want to know that you want to help them solve a problem. That’s what your customers want too. And sometimes it’s a problem you can’t solve yourself, but you can help them solve. Okay, now I want to talk about when you’re in that sales conversation because this is a biggie, and I spend a lot of time on this in the book. When you are in that selling, what do we do? We walk in. They say, “So tell me about your product/service.” And then we do. We put on this big presentation. We talk, we explain bells, whistles, benefits, features, all that stuff. And the truth is, they stopped listening. They stopped listening when we started, and we got to a place that had nothing to do with anything they cared about. So we’re not telling them anything because they’re not even hearing it, okay? We can’t really tell them anything until we know a lot. So being curious and in discovery when we’re in the sales conversation is critically important. What we want to do is have a lot of questions, and it’s not just questions around the situation, the thing that we sell. It’s questions about them, about how they make decisions, about how they’re planning to make this decision, about whether they’ve worked with a company like ours before and what that experience was like, about whether they have considered a budget, if they would share that information.

And I’ll tell you something else we do that we shouldn’t do. If they won’t share that information, we let it go because we don’t want to be uncomfortable or whatever it is. There are plenty of polite ways to say, “Would you mind telling me why you are hesitant to share that information in order for me to really identify whether I can help you?” That’s part of the equation. Because if your budget is this and I know our solution is this, we need to talk about what other possibilities there are. But the only way we can do that honestly is if we are having this conversation and you are sharing that information with me. And then if they still don’t want to, then stop. In order for the relationship to work, it has to be equally connected, right? They should tell you about how they problem solve, and I’m going to give you two questions that I think we should all be asking all the time. They are critically important, and they go like this. The first and they go together, okay? And I use very specific words when I ask these questions. The first one is, “What will the impact be for you or your organization when you move forward with this decision, whether it’s with me or someone else?” Okay, so I’ve taken “me selling to them” out of the equation, but I want to know what it’s going to do for them. This solution, what is it going to do? And I want them to know and for them to say it out loud, for them to articulate it.

The second question is, “What will the impact be if you don’t move forward with this, whether with me or someone else?” Because if there is no real impact, then there’s no big urgency or reason for them to go ahead and part with money, okay? But if there is, you can ask these questions before you ask the budget question because it will give you an idea if you keep moving with the question. It’s quantifiable, and it will help them and you identify what investment is worth it. Because if they say, “Well, if we move forward with this, we believe we’d be able to increase our client base by 20%, which would look like, you know, an additional $2,000,000 in revenue.” Ok, great. You know, what if the thing that I’m going to give to them is twenty thousand dollars and they’re going to make $2,000,000? I have something else I can talk to them about, right? Because I know the answers to the questions, and then I can use that information to decide, can I help them, and do I want to help them? And if the answer to both of those is yes, then I’m going to connect what they told me to my solution, and it’s going to make perfect sense to them as well as to me. No objections, right? They get it because everything connects, right? So this is why I believe we have to forget about selling. We have to get all of that out of our head. We have to take a completely different path toward being successful that’s easier for the prospects and clients, that they like more and is more comfortable and natural for us. So we’re more likely to do it.

So that’s my spiel, that’s my story, and I am happy to answer any questions about that. “Oh, this is great. Bring your off that dreaded no decision outcome.” Yeah, well, it’s easy for people to make a decision when you’re taking them down the road with you because then both of you are making the decision at the end of the road, right?

Subhanjan Sarkar    15:47

Great, Diane. I was sort of having a deja vu. Yeah, this is great. So, we will look out for some questions. So this is where you can find Diane’s book, Yeah, Nilsour says people buy from people absolutely absolutely.

Diane Helbig   16:14

That’s right. That’s right. They buy the person first, the product or service second, the company third.

Subhanjan Sarkar    16:24

Yeah. I mean, we’ll give a minute for questions to come, but this is an interesting thing you say. What is brand building about then? I mean, I thought that when people are buying computers, they buy IBM first. I mean, those days IBM first and then the person and then the computer perhaps?

Diane Helbig    16:47

Yeah, but you know, being from IBM can get you in the door potentially, like you know, brand can. That sort of brand awareness can get you in the door, but they’re still going to want to buy from someone they trust. So they can trust the brand, but they also need to trust the salesperson, and that’s you.

Subhanjan Sarkar   17:07

Yeah, yeah. Are we getting some questions coming in? Looks like, okay, we’ll wait for a bit. Okay, okay, someone, yeah, there. Somebody asked.

Diane Helbig    17:30

How hard is it to build trust today when the entire environment is full of noise?

So, that is such a great question, and I’m going to tell you that I – this is why I think what I’m talking about is so much more important today because there is so much noise. The people who stand out from the noise are the ones who are genuinely and authentically interested in other people. When you radiate, when you telegraph that you are only there to have a conversation with them, when you’re prospecting, all you want is the meeting, not the sale, right? You’re not that pushy. All you want to do is have a conversation. Listen, when I was in direct sales, I would say to people, “Listen, is it worth having a meeting if I can’t help you? I’ll tell you if I can’t help you. And if I can, I’ll tell you that too. Is it worth a conversation to see whether it makes sense for us to take this further?” It takes the temperature down. They knew I wasn’t going to sell. I was totally honest with them. And even if I didn’t do business with them, I got referrals from them because that stood out. So unfortunately, I guess you can use the noise to your advantage. Be the other person, be the person who is not trying to sell whatever you have to everybody. Everybody’s not a target market, hopefully.

Subhanjan Sarkar    19:06

Yeah, this is such a great answer and I completely agree because it is pressurizing… I mean, you see LinkedIn is full of this kind of advice, right? “Use this script, 30 seconds, you need to get them. You need to overpower the customer because you need to be in a position of dominance.” I honestly don’t get it at all. I mean, these guys don’t understand. They buy themselves, exactly what you said. What do you do if somebody corners you in the street and says, “Hey, you need to buy insurance?” I mean, you’re not going to buy it.

Diane Helbig   19:45

Right.

Subhanjan Sarkar   19:45

How crazy, isn’t that? Exactly.

Diane Helbig    19:49

It is so funny. Would you repeat the question you used to ask people at the beginning of the conversation? You know, I’m not sure it’s necessarily at the beginning of the conversation. I will tell you this: when you are meeting with a prospect and they say, “So tell me about your product or service,” instead of telling them, say to them, “I am happy to. If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you some questions first. So I’m sure that what I’m telling you is relevant, that it’s what you’re going to be interested in.” If you’re asking me about the two questions that I suggested everybody ask, the first one is, “What will the impact be when…” and I use “when” specifically, “What will the impact be when you make this decision, whether with me or someone else?” And then the second one is, “What will the impact be if you don’t, right?” So you’re getting both sides of that equation.

Subhanjan Sarkar    20:54

Yeah, this is great. The other thing that came up, one of the other sessions, and I just wanted to touch up on that is that if there are multiple stakeholders in that decision-making process, each is likely to have different outcome requirements, and the same two questions need to be asked to all three or four people to get very different, divergent answers for you to be able to stitch together a cogent proposition which will actually satisfy everybody because, as we know, in a buying committee, no one person can take the decision to buy, but everybody has a veto.

Diane Helbig    22:37

Yes, yeah. Boy, what a great point. That’s huge. That’s exactly right.

Subhanjan Sarkar   21:44

Ok. It’s like something else. Let’s see. All good points being made by my friend.

So, Diane, thank you so much. This was great. I loved it because I totally believe this. I totally believe this. And I think people are tired of this high-pressure selling business, and it has to be more about discovery, more about empathy, more about trying to understand what… I mean, can I, at all, like you said? I mean, I may not have anything to say to you, but you may give me a referral to somebody who may have exactly. I mean, how good is that, right? Instead of burning my bridges and saying, instead of you, you’re sending out messages in the dark social saying, “Stay away from Subhanjan.”

Diane Helbig    22:36

I would never do that.

Subhanjan Sarkar    22:39

And I know. Ok then, thank you so much. Ok, guys, we’ll be back with Ramesh Dorairaj. He has counterpoints to some of what we discussed today, and he talks about managing customer relationships and the games customers play. That’s another perspective coming up next.

Diane Helbig    22:58

Excellent. Bye.

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