#207 Keenan - 54 Minutes of Sales Training to Explode Your Sales

What’s the most common trait we see amongst successful entrepreneurs?

They’re all masters of sales.

Today, we're sitting down with Keenan, author of Gap Selling and CEO of A Sales Growth Company.

Keenan has helped companies increase sales by 300%, built sales teams for multi-million dollar mergers and stopped negative sales growth for all types of companies, from start-ups to Fortune 25.

In this episode, we explore the art and science behind effective sales strategies that resonate deeply with customer needs.

Keenan reveals the secrets of 'Gap Selling,' debunks traditional closing myths, and shows us how to genuinely address customer problems to drive sales. He also shares his insights on assembling a top-notch sales team and the importance of a value-driven sales process.

Discover how reactivating dead leads, building relationships, and establishing credibility can transform your sales approach today.

Found value in this episode? Make sure to like, comment and subscribe for more!


Keenan's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimkeenan/

My Socials:

Instagram: Darrenlee.ks
LinkedIn: Darren Lee
Twitter: Darren_ks

(00:00) Preview and Introduction 
(01:18) Decoding The Byers Psychology 
(05:12) There’s No Such Thing As Closing?
(06:38) The Biggest Mistake Most Salespeople Make
(11:13) Handling Sales Objections
(15:31) The Art of Gap Selling
(19:30) How To Reactivate Dead Leads
(22:30) Do Relationships Really Matter?
(28:01) How To Get Positive Responses
(34:50) The Impact of Sales on Keenan’s Life
(38:10) Dealing With Negative Prospect Interactions
(43:00) Building Confidence For Sales
(48:33) How To Build A Winning Sales Team

Transcript

Keenan: 0:00

I think everybody needs to understand. Whether we recognize or not, we're all selflessly motivated. So if I'm starting a sales call, even if I'm quote unquote excited about the product, I'm not excited about the product, I'm excited about what the product's going to do for me. You're fucked that sales going nowhere until you figure out how they can see the value in the next year.

Keenan: 0:17

So that's your sale, like every sale has about seven to 50 little sales in them and each one of those little sales everybody paying attention to the podcast every one of those little sales requires value.

Darren: 0:30

Meet Keenan. He's all about getting the customer to say yes. As the owner of GapSelling, he's here to increase your sales by changing everything you know about relationships, overcoming objections and closing and pricing. Does any of this sound familiar to you? Long sales cycles, price objections, no decisions, prospects going dark and ghosting you and continuously missing your quota. This podcast is for you. Keenan has sold over 100,000 copies with GapSelling and he's here on kickoff sessions to help you do the exact same thing. What's up, people? Before we get into this video, please make sure to subscribe, like and comment down below so we can get bigger, better guests for you every single week. Let's get straight into the video right now. All right, man, let's kick off. So where I want to start is one of your quotes. And no one gives a shit about you or your product. Why is that?

Keenan: 1:24

I mean, I think everybody needs to understand, whether we recognize it or not, we're all selflessly motivated, okay? So if I'm starting a sales call, even if I'm quote unquote excited about the product, I'm not excited about the product, I'm excited about what the product's going to do for me. It's not the product, it's what the product's going to do for me. So if I'm all excited to get this new Lamborghini, I'm not excited about the Lamborghini. I'm really not, because if I'm excited about the Lamborghini, I would just sit in it and drive in it and wouldn't care if anybody saw me right or I might just sit in it right, but I'm excited for what it gets me. So if I want to drive for its performance, I'm excited to get it on the road. I'm not excited about buying it, I'm excited about getting it on the road and feeling what it's like to go super fast or feeling what it's like to hug those turns and feel the G-forces and maybe, on a closed track, work my driving skills, like that's what excites me. Well, but for most people, I'm excited about the feedback it gives me and the validation it gives me, because I'm insecure and I want people to know I'm rich. I want people to look at me, so I'm excited about the feedback it gets me.

Keenan: 2:29

Do you see what I'm saying? So I don't care what it is someone's buying. They're not buying the product, they're not buying your company. They're buying what they perceive and their little brains is what the desired outcome is or the objective of that purpose. And so if you start talking about you and your company, you're slowing the sale down. You want to keep them anchored in what it is they hope to get from this and keep them focused in their world, their outcomes, their current shitty situation, what they're not having when they use. Keep them focused on them and then, by default, they will be excited about your product as you show it to them as a method to leave where they are today and get where they want to go tomorrow.

Darren: 3:10

I'm curious to think talk about how you think about psychology with the actual buyer. So you mentioned there about the personal desires. How much of that plays much more of a role than maybe the professional desires of increasing revenue or decreasing costs or increasing efficiency?

Keenan: 3:26

They're the same. They're the same. So if I'm working for a company and I might remit to be good in that job, would it be successful in? That job is to reduce lawsuits, or it's to reduce the defects of a manufacturing plant, or if it's to drive revenue, or if it's to make better investments or create better hedging, whatever it is, and you're selling me a product that is somehow way shape or form going to allow me to do that easier, faster or cheaper, because what I'm doing now isn't working, then I'm super excited because I'm attached to that outcome. I'm personally attached to the outcome of better production. I'm personally attached to the outcome of reducing lawsuits, et cetera. So the personal and business to me you can't separate them. I signed up for a job and I'm attached to the outcomes of that job. So if the outcomes of that job are perceived as superior, more effective or whatever, the outcomes as measured by that role are better than I'm looking better, they're one to one. So to me there's no difference. They're attached to each other.

Darren: 4:28

Do you actually walk through that process with them and get them to kind of maybe allude to those points being like, oh, like this is something that you want to achieve, like personally, is that something you're trying to connect to or subconscious?

Keenan: 4:40

I leave it to the subconscious. No, because if you start trying to settle the person, that's not scalable. So if you have more than one buyer, you can't take that and go over here and say, look, Johnny's gonna get promoted, so so will you. It's not scalable, right? But if you make it super clear about where are you now and why that bothers you as a person responsible for these things or the person with the remit to fix these things and where you want to go, it's so closely tied that you don't have to call it out. They get it.

Darren: 5:12

It's happening underneath the surface. Basically, you also have a quote saying there's no such thing as closing. So I know a lot of young high ticket closers and they will be very pissed off with a statement like that. Where did you come to that conclusion?

Keenan: 5:27

The concept of closing is in a traditional sale is. I got done with pitching my shit. There's nothing more for me as the salesperson to do. So now I'm trying to get them to close Like I'm done. So now give me your money right 99% of the time.

Keenan: 5:42

If you're at that stage where you're done doing whatever you think you need to do and the buyer isn't at a place where they can make a decision, you fucked up. You've gotten way ahead of the buyer, way ahead of the buyer. The buyer should get to the place where they want to decide to close at roughly the same time that when you're done. It should be crystal clear. They'd be like oh yeah, okay, when do we get started? Right, if you have to ask for the close, you fucked up. You've completely fucked up. So the key is if you do it properly, it's really clear and by the time you're done, everything's on the table and you've laid out the gap and they completely agree with you. They simply say, all right, where do we get started, or no, and if they say no, you go. I'm confused. This is gonna solve the problem. You lay out the whole problem, what am I missing? And then you go from there, but you never have to close a customer.

Darren: 6:38

What I love about gap selling is the fact that, basically, you've done all the work in the beginning, so you've identified the numbers, the impact, the problem, so that you can always reference it. So for people that don't know where you're a process with the current state, if you're getting the numbers checked, the problems that they have, the impact, the root cause, you can always use it as a proxy to go back right and to reverse engineer. Now my question for you, off that is, when you analyze salespeople, their process and everything, where did they fall down on? And at the most, is it numbers?

Keenan: 7:09

They're fully getting the information and defining it, falling. The big one is defining it. So they'll come back and say, oh, the problem is they're making too many mistakes in the manufacturing process. Okay, well, what's too many mistakes? I don't know. They just say a lot. But what's a lot? Oh, I don't know. I didn't check. Well, how many widgets do they make in a year? Oh, I don't know. How many different types of widgets do they make? About seven or eight.

Keenan: 7:31

So when they're making too many mistakes, is it across all the widgets or just a particular line of it? Oh, good question, I don't know. Like, they just don't think, they don't think about the environment they're in, they're only thinking about the sale. Oh, the customer said they make too many widgets. That's a problem. I can fix that problem. Right, they don't stop and say wait, I'm talking to a manufacturing company. So how many products do they make? How many? Is it one widget or a hundred widgets?

Keenan: 7:57

Do they make their own widget and they sell the widget, or they manufacture it for clients and so clients come in, hire them to make the widgets and they send the widgets to them and that client sells it. That's very different. If it's my own widget. That's one thing.

Keenan: 8:09

If it's so, then if I make too many mistakes in the widget, that watch what I do. If it's my widget and I sell it to the market, or my number of widgets, and I make too many mistakes, that affects my profit margin Right. And if I ship those widgets, it could affect my customers, but one customer at a time, my brand Okay. However, if I make the widget subcontracting out to someone else and I fuck that up, I lose that whole contract. See, I make a widget, I make too many mistakes in the widget, but the outcomes and how that affects those two companies are entirely different, based on their business model. You see what I've done there and most sales people have no clue about the business model they're in, how they do their business, the interconnectivity, and so they're clueless, absolutely clueless.

Darren: 8:56

Why do you think that is, though? Is that a lack of training or a lack of conscientiousness Lack?

Keenan: 9:03

of training, hands down, lack of training, and then I'd say, and then lack of conscientiousness. But I would take a step back and say, because they're trying to sell, trying to sell gets in the way you should be trying to solve A sale is nothing more than a solution to a problem. However, if you are not properly diagnosing the problem by offering a solution, you are effectively potentially solving the problem wrong. And so if you don't understand why you're solving the problem, the customer has to do that themselves, because they will, unbeknownst to you, take all the information you gave them about your product and how it's made and blah, blah, blah, and they themselves will try to figure out will this solve my problem? And sometimes they say, yeah, I think it will, and they buy it. And you're like, oh, I'm the great salesperson, I sold it Other times and yet they shouldn't have bought it Other times. It was the right product, they bought it.

Keenan: 10:04

You feel like a great salesperson, but you actually didn't make that. You didn't do anything. You took an order because you don't know what their problem is. You just do a bunch of shit. And then the worst case scenario is they buy it. It's not what they need it. They're like, oh, we think this will work, and yay, we bought it, and yay, I sold another thing. And they start to go implement it and they're like this is fucking working. This is what doesn't do. This doesn't do that, and I don't understand it. Just because nobody took the time to understand what they're trying to do, what the current problem was, what was causing it, and you sold the wrong fucking thing. And they're pissed.

Darren: 10:32

Well, that's always a problem when people don't know why it was right or why it was wrong. So let's say, I sell to you and you're like, okay, it obviously worked right. And if you ever played poker, there's a big thing in there being like you could play the right hand but still lose. You can play the wrong hand and still win, but you have to understand if you can step back, being like okay, I was actually trying to play the better hand and if I still lose, then so be it. So I think, without that knowledge and without that reflective, without that way to look back on your work, how the fuck do you know you're moving the right way and that's how you're going to move sideways throughout your entire career, right?

Keenan: 11:06

100%. Yep, that's a great way of looking at it. I like how you did that. People have no idea why they sold it. They just know that the person bought.

Darren: 11:13

Yeah, exactly, and again, that could probably come from the company. So before I started my own company, I was to work for big tech companies, especially in FinTech, and I was the buyer. You might find this quite interesting. So I was the buyer, buying like vendor services, whether it's like fucking some software or whatever. And I remember because I knew what my problem was, because I was a product owner.

Darren: 11:31

I would get on a call and be like right, we have this issue, some fucking API is like fucked up. We need someone to come in and fix it. And that company will be like okay, okay, let me walk you through our demo pack and we'll go through like a 60 slide pack. I'm like I don't need this. I don't need and bear in mind, these are huge financial institutions coming out of New York and I was like I don't need this shit. What I basically do is I need someone to tell me that these particular areas can be solved and so on. And that was the buyer coming into it. So that was interesting observation and that's kind of how I started my sales career was like, well, I don't want to be that fucking person when it's like that.

Keenan: 12:09

Yep, Yep, no, you do not. No, you do not. I mean, look, I like those situations where you would call me and said oh, my API is fucked up, blah blah. The first thing I would say is what do you think I would say?

Darren: 12:18

my first question would be the impact, going back to the current problem of that right.

Keenan: 12:22

So tell me what do you think the question would be Like what do you think my very first question would be we're on the phone, you tell me that my guys are all fucked up. Blah, blah, blah. The first question out of my mouth.

Darren: 12:32

What's like the? What's the impact it's having on your business?

Keenan: 12:36

No, no, I'd be like. I would literally say what do you mean? The API is a fucked up. Could you explain that to me?

Darren: 12:44

And you're trying to get them to walk through the numbers of it, the situation of it, everything, yeah.

Keenan: 12:49

Yeah, I want you to explain to me. I just want a definition. What do you mean? Your API is fucked up and you're going to start telling me now I'm not a techie so I can't play this out much further but you're going to start telling me that they're not connecting properly, or they're not pulling the right information, or they don't stay connected, or or or it's too. It's too difficult for other people to write to them, so they start to write to them. It can't get it done. You might say it takes too long to write to them. Or if we make a change to the application, the API goes down. We're going to write a whole new API, like it's something, and then a million other things I don't know anything about. But notice, the definition of API all fucked up to a layman. I already gave you like six different reasons why they could be fucked up, and if I don't know those reasons, I think I'm going to start selling you on how I can fix your smoking crack. So as you start walking, you start walking me through why they're all fucked up and you explain it. Then I should be able to connect that to the business problem.

Keenan: 13:50

So I might say something like you might say, well, every time we change some of the application, the API goes down. We got to rewrite the application. So I'm like then I might say, well, then, understanding that, who's using the other application? You might say our end users. And I say, okay, so when this goes down, you're telling me that your end users cannot access this application until you rewrite the API. Correct, yes, how long does it take you to rewrite the API? You might say it could take two to three weeks. Each time I say, right, well, tell me more about these end users. What are they using the application for? And you might say banking. I'm like, wait, what You're telling me every time you make a change that the API goes down, these people don't have access to their fucking bank account. They have to go into the bank, right? And I'm like, yeah, and I'm like, okay, how many of these people change accounts every time this happens? And that's a fucking great question. I just got an email the other day. So every time it's down, we lose anywhere from three to 500 customers. You see what I did right there.

Keenan: 14:45

Now you asked the question what's the impact? You jumped the fucking gun and went so far down the road. That one question and that person may not have made the connection to them leaving Right, they might not have known that they might have stayed in a technical impact. Well, it takes us a really long time and costs us a lot of money to rewrite the API. When you ask that what's the impact question, that's where it could have taken you when I started with. What the fuck do you mean by it's fucked up? Then you tell me, like well, that happens and this happens. And I asked that question and I got to 300 customers how long has it been happening? What's the average deposit? You mean to tell me since this started happening, you have lost over $70 million in deposits because this API problem. Yes, they fucking love me because I helped them scope that piece out and now I'm leading the sale.

Darren: 15:31

How long does that process take you to map out everything so that those scenarios come in? So when you're usually in that gap selling process, so current state, future state and identifying the gap and quantifying the gap, how long does that generally take you?

Keenan: 15:44

It depends on how well the customer knows their information.

Keenan: 15:47

It depends on how well the customer is willing to be open. So we're working on a big deal right now that we're probably going to walk away from, but, after multiple conversations with multiple people, they cannot tell us what the business problem is and so therefore, they can't tell us the impact and this is going to be a multimillion-dollar investment they're going to make and they are unable to tell us the business problem, the impact. They know the root causes, but the business problem, the root cause, I mean the impacts across the whole organization. So that's what I still haven't got, and they're almost ready to make a decision. They're so bad at it and we pushed them so hard to get it. They're getting irritated with us and I don't think we're going to win it anyways, because we are just not letting go with a dog with a bone, because we don't understand why you would make this investment if you can't explain what it's costing you. If you don't change and they can't do it Other times you can get it in less than an hour.

Darren: 16:41

It's interesting that these companies can grow so fucking fast and so big, but they're not having an understanding of their numbers and their data, because otherwise you're kind of pissing in the wind, right. I don't understand that, as a small startup, we tried to have an enterprise view, whereas I don't know what's going on. To some degree, right, but how the fuck could you grow these companies without having that foresight?

Keenan: 17:03

I got it out of some of the individual business units, but I couldn't get it company-wide right. And so and it was a company-wide investment so I was like, okay, that's this one. And even then all I got was this is where we are now. Next year we want to be this. There was like a half a percent growth and I'm like that's what you want or that's what you believe you can get. That's very different right. That's very, very different right.

Keenan: 17:25

I mean, a good example is I know you're Bali, but it's like baseball. They have sometimes they have these years they call rebuilding years, right. So they basically scrap the payroll, they get rid of the most expensive players, they retool and they want to win the World Series. But they realize that this year they're only they just got to get past 500, right. So you don't build a plan or bring in consultants to bring in new people to get to 500 that year. You're bringing these people in so in three to five years you can get to the World Series.

Keenan: 17:57

Do you see what I'm saying? So this company told us what they want to get to next year, but I'm like you're not hiring us and investing $3 million to get here next year. That's not a sales transformation effort. You're hiring us because somebody believes you're leaving a lot more on the table, but no one can tell us that. So why the fuck are you doing this Like? What are you expecting to get? And every time this we want our sales people to be better. We want to have the best sales organization in the world. We want our sales people to stay longer and not a trade. Well, what's your attrition rate? Well, not really sure.

Darren: 18:36

A lot of them are assumptions, right, and they could come from like boring senior management. They're just like, oh yeah, like we just want more, right, and that's the whole problem. So similar in us when we come up to a company, so we do like B2B podcast. So let's say, let's take an example of your podcast. We basically just like run it, we run the shit out of it and then we connect the business in the back end. But ideally, when we're looking at people's numbers, they don't know where the numbers are and then they will say we want more. But they don't know what the difference is of what they want percentage or numeric, right? And if they say a numeric, it's fine, we can calculate a percentage. But it's just an interesting observation, right, the fact that most people don't know what they want and then when you try to walk through that process, you could be met with resistance as a result, because they haven't even thought about themselves.

Keenan: 19:22

And they don't know why they want it, and they don't know why where they are is not good. What's wrong with what you got now? Just keep doing what you're doing.

Darren: 19:30

I want to ask you about how you reactivate, like, dead leads. So this would be quite interesting. So you know, as I mentioned, what our business is, last year we had a bunch of calls that like, let's say, our deals that maybe fell true or went cold, and then this year I did a check-in and I did an observation of where they were and where they are now and I would say 95% of them haven't changed, 95% they haven't improved, they haven't got better, it doesn't look better. And then resurfacing that to people is kind of painful, right. So I want to kind of get your process in terms of like how you'd reactivate dead leads.

Keenan: 20:04

The same way you did. So you already know the answer. Like the same way, if you did a proper discovery, I'd call them back and say hey, john, last time we met last year you said that you would do your doing. I'm going to go on a limb here. But you were doing one podcast a week and you had been doing that for two years and you had seen a 20% growth year over year for the first year. But you had flattened out to about 5%. You said you were making less than six figures in advertising. You said it was harder and harder to get the advertising dollars in because you hired an assistant. You weren't as profitable in that.

Keenan: 20:35

You wanted to get to 300, 400,000 viewers or downloads, whatever. You wanted to get to almost $200,000 in podcast revenue and we didn't work together. So I'm checking to see have you hit those goals? How are you coming on that journey? And I leave with have you hit it? And hopefully they get back with me. If they did get back with me and they said no, then I would say all right, are you comfortable staying here or have you come to the conclusion that you need to do something different?

Darren: 21:05

That's what I'm missing. It's those small triggers I think that people struggle with, including me is like okay, if you understand it, how do you bridge the gap to get people to reengage? All right, people, we're just gonna take one short break for a little update about podcast university. So if you enjoy podcasts like this and you want to start your own podcast, head down to the links down below the podcast university. This is a learning platform that I've built to help people like you build, launch and scale your own podcast. I wasted many years doing this, making it all up as a lot as I go, so I put everything together in a very seamless and easy to follow course for you guys to follow and just learn exactly how to do it. So if you want to bypass a lot of the mess with your podcast, check out the links down below the podcast university and we'll show you exactly how to launch and scale your own podcast.

Keenan: 21:54

Well it all comes down to are you happy with where you are? Like that's the first step in gap sign, whether it's the first time you're trying to sell them or the second time or the third time. The question simply becomes are you happy where you are? And if not, why? And then if so, I mean if not, then why? And what do you want instead? How big is that gap? And is what I'm asking you to buy and what is required of you to do, is that worth right? The outcome is that worth the gap? Is the gap big enough to warrant that? And if it's not, they won't buy it. If it is, they will.

Darren: 22:30

The willingness to change right, Making the decision to be able to change. That's super interesting, man. I want to ask you about relationships. So why do your relationships not matter?

Keenan: 22:40

I do that to poke people in the face and irritate them, because a lot of people they build relationships and they think relationships are everything. And look, I'm not going to bullshit. Relationships provide you access, right. So likeability more importantly, but relationships provide access. But the truth of the matter is relationships don't make the sale, they just don't. And I'm using relationships primarily in the concept of likeability. Relationships built on credibility are extremely valuable and they drive the sales. Relationships and likeability do not drive the sale. Relationships and credibility do drive the sale. And the way you build credibility is you show them value, value based on their definition, not yours or ours, right. So back to that. If you identify the gap, you have shown them the value of change. Here you are today. So I don't know where I came up with this. I don't know why I thought about this, but I did this the other day in a training. I think that I wasn't in the room.

Keenan: 23:40

I'm not trying to judge these doctors, but I feel that the doctors who had Steve Jobs they're his oncologist when he was found to have pancreatic cancer did not do a good enough job of showing him the size of the gap, right? So, in other words, if you don't know the story. They found it by accident, like he had gallstones or something and they found it by accident and they wanted to do a Whipple surgery. And they wanted to do surgery and you know, jobs being Jobs, he didn't want to go through it. He thought there was some homeopathic ways to beat it and some alternative medicine ways to beat it. So he took nine months doing alternative shit and then it's spreading up bigger and then he went back to the regular doctors and they did the Whipple surgery and all that and unfortunately they didn't get it all and so he died five years later.

Keenan: 24:42

My point in that story is I believe if they were good gap sellers, they should have explained it a lot better. Like here's your cost of change, your ego and your belief in these medicines right Against almost guaranteeing saving your life. Every day you go longer that you're wrong, you increase the probability that you die from this disease, right? And then say listen, do you want to live? Yes, so when you tell me you're going to wait nine months, let us tell you, based on what we're seeing because he's a fucking scientist you can expect this to grow this much Right now.

Keenan: 25:27

Could you be successful? Could it work? Yeah, yes, but what we know is when it this small and we take it out, the problem is getting it all is larger than the probability of it being bigger and spreading. We don't know how it's going to spread. We think so. To us, this is a the cost. What's his name, steve? The cost is phenomenal. I get you believe this and I get you don't like this, but the cost of you being wrong is far, fucking greater than the cost of you being right.

Darren: 26:02

It's dead yeah.

Darren: 26:04

It's life or death right, and that's that's the biggest fucking gap you can have, right, yeah, yeah. That goes back to the first chapter of your book, which is like the pill right, when it's like a pill that you use to like alleviate this small pain is like oh, I don't give a shit about it, I get it for $1 and CVS, but then if it's a pill that saves your life, you're willing. This paid at fucking 30, 40 K. And man, that actually happened with the insulin, was it? I think I'm going to get this kind of wrong, but there was that hotend someone had of like insulin and it was like 18 fucking thousand, and guys like I don't give a fuck Like, if you need it, what you do, you're going to pay it and people paid for it.

Darren: 26:41

Obviously, whatever you could say is unethical, but it was fucking. He was able to articulate the difference. Question for you off. That is like so you're like a master at this and it's really good to see, like, how your brain works with us. Do you convey the message of gap selling through your writing, so let's say, your sales letters, or your websites and your content, because it sounds like you can do this and let them, through a copywriting perspective. Uncover these aspects while they read.

Keenan: 27:10

Yep, I mean, look, if you can get the people to read it. You want to do that right Now. Look, if I do a revision, I'm going to change the emails in it. I don't like them in hindsight and how much has changed and stuff I don't like them. But still, I just think they need to be creative. Right, they need to be creative. They need to be very, very personal and, just as seamlessly as possible, get the buyer to be like yeah, that one, that right there, I can't stand that, or that's been creeping in, or I've been feeling that. Or, yeah, what do you stand on my plant? Yes, like, yeah, you get me. That's what you want them to feel when they're either yes, you get me, I hate that, or this is happening and I don't want it to keep happening. That's what you want them to feel.

Darren: 28:01

One thing I thought was amazing was the fact that you mentioned is eight to 12 touch points on average to get someone a response.

Keenan: 28:08

I think there's a lot more than that now, but yeah.

Darren: 28:12

How? What type of reaction do you think you get from people as a result in that process? Because some people think, oh, if I contact someone 12 times, they're going to fucking freak out at me if they don't want to buy.

Keenan: 28:22

Let them fucking freak out. I don't give a fuck. Let them freak out, I'd rather. I'd rather them freak out. I'd rather have a hundred freak out and get two than lose all hundred and two. Hmm.

Darren: 28:34

That's interesting Because like and also I think it's some of a go back, and what I was saying was like, if you do the job right, then it should be. It should be clear you're pulling out a potential problem right, you're able to articulate that problem for them. And with a lot of companies that maybe you work with, I say the data is quite sensitive and private, whereas for me a lot of stuff is public. I can visibly see when someone is doing well or doing bad, because you can just see it with their content. So I think that's quite interesting is the fact that if you're able to find out and pick holes in a problem, they shouldn't give a fuck once you're able to actually articulate it.

Keenan: 29:08

And even if I know they're having the problem, I personally, personally, unless it's super clear and I have specific numbers and I can, and I can point to the source, right, I don't like telling people that what problems they have, no one likes that. Right Now, if I can point to the source, I'm like hey, I just saw in your report, okay, I would have done this for Wells Fargo. I would have said, hey, I just saw what happened with your thing. I saw you doing this. I saw your commission structure. I saw it created this Wabba Blah, understanding that I love to talk about how we built the way to keep those conversion rates without doing this Right, so so now I've got you there.

Keenan: 29:46

But if I, if I have heard it, third party or I think it, I don't tell people. People never like being told they have a problem. But what I do do is I'm never going to call up a person with an eating disorder. I know you have an eating disorder. What I'm going to do is say hey, I know that people in your position, right, it's tough because I'd like to be very personal, but I have to make this up on the fly. Hey, I, I, I, knowing you XYZ, right, knowing you have struggled with weight before because you attended XYZ right, let's have a list of people attended something I know for fact that staying on the diet is extremely difficult. I know the frustration of trying to maintain that consistency is difficult.

Keenan: 30:32

Having that, we have come up with a way that makes it easier to stay on leveraging psychology, or makes it easier to stay on leveraging a friend network or whatever. A little hint we love 50 minutes. If if you're struggling with with this, if this is something you're having a hard time with, I'd love to talk to you about how we can address it. And I just leave it there. Right, I just leave it there. I want them. I don't want them to buy into me, I want them to buy into the problem.

Darren: 30:59

That's interesting, man, because basically it's like an indirect way of doing it versus like shoving it down someone's fucking throat right, because people don't want to hear.

Darren: 31:06

People don't want to hear that. But at the same time you're kind of like. I remember my my partner's partner's dad is like he's like kind of old school sales, like medical sales dude, like nineties whatever, and we have like these conversations always and he was saying to me that his role always was the trusted advisor I love that term is that he would. He would just basically kind of walked him through and be like he put it really well is that if they would say, oh, should we put $5 million into this fucking medical sales device, he would just say, like you know, if I was in your position, if I had the budget you had, I wouldn't do it that way, I would do it this way and just be able to kind of walk them through, because it doesn't make them feel like a Thomas, but at the same time it's winning people through your way of thinking and many have to persuade them to an ultimately better decision.

Keenan: 31:54

So watch this. So what he did I get, okay, but I'm going to see how quick of a study you are. If I'm medical sales and a doctor says to me, hey, I get this $5 million, should I put it here? Should I put it here? You know, what do you think? What do you think? My very first, very first thing I'm going to say is why do you want to do it in the first place? Fuck getting them all wrong.

Darren: 32:16

You've done this twice.

Keenan: 32:18

You've done this twice. You said what is the impact and why would you? You put both times, you put it back on the bike.

Darren: 32:24

Okay, okay. So tell me more about the problem. Tell me more about the problem you're facing.

Keenan: 32:28

Close, close, yeah. What I would say instead is very first words out of my mouth I don't know, I don't know. Tell me more about what's going on. Or, in that case, I want to spend $5 million. I don't know. Tell me what you're trying to accomplish. See what I did there. Should I spend $5 million here? $5 million here? I don't know. Tell me what are you trying to accomplish.

Darren: 32:56

So basically that in the scenario you're pretty much looking at the goal and the outcome and then they'll walk back to the problem and the situation.

Keenan: 33:03

Yes, I'll walk you all the way back. What we want to do is we want to. I don't even know where to go with this, but $5 million of investment in XYZV joke, All right. So we want to be able to drive more patients in our cardiac division, Okay. So how many pages are you getting your cardiac division now? 50,000. Why do you want more? What's going on with the cardiac division, Right? Well, what we're learning is cardiac division is the most profitable part of the entire medical industry. Oh shit. So in comparison to other hospitals or whatever, 50,000 pages at small. Oh, that's tiny. Most of 2 million.

Keenan: 33:40

Oh, so now, because you don't have a cardiac division, what is your profit margin now? And what's it been trending? I'm making shit up Less than 20% and it's trending. It's been flat for however long. What is most hospital? I know this is off, so any hospital people leave me alone. What are most hospitals profit margins? Well, if they have a cardiac unit, they usually drive in UF from 5% to 7% higher operating margins than those who don't. Oh, so this is about getting the hospital more profitable. Yes, See what I did there.

Darren: 34:11

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so interesting because they don't even know where they currently sit right. They just walk in and show that process to begin with and you would remember you were in time.

Keenan: 34:22

Even if they do, I'm still not going to. And they nailed it and like, yeah, I would do this, you're right, you should do it, but I don't know it. So I'm going to give nobody advice. Even in my personal life, I give nobody advice until I start with. Always, I don't know. Tell me what's going on. Should I break up with my boyfriend? I don't know. Tell me what's going on. Should I invest this money over here? I don't fucking know why you're looking to invest. Should I move to a smaller apartment? I don't fucking know why. Do you want to move to a smaller apartment?

Darren: 34:50

It always starts with I don't know, my question from that is like how has sales like helped you in other aspects of life like that?

Keenan: 34:59

I think it's the other way around. How has life helped me with sales? I've just always been there to help people. I'm a problem solver and I realize that I can't solve a problem if I don't understand the problem Right. So so I have a tendency not always because no one's perfect or no one does something 100% but I have a tendency, before I act, to try to understand the problem Okay. So, whether it's an emergency situation or whether it's in a business situation, now my execution always needs help, and the longer it takes, the worse my execution gets. I'm definitely a spurt worker and I like things to go fast. So longer bigger projects I'm not as good. I need people around me to help with those. But the initial problem and figuring out what to do initially, I'm very good at. I'm very good at assessing problems and I'm very good at stopping and looking. This is nothing to do with sales, but it's the idea of the idea of a problem Right.

Keenan: 35:56

So when I had my first kid, I don't know how it happened or what I was doing, but I just happened to be reading about childhood choking. Now I didn't go looking for it. I'm not really worse in parent, but I just saw an interesting article somewhere on choking kids and what to do, right? So you can't do the Heimlich because they're too little and you can break their ribs. You got to hang them upside down and all kinds of shit, right? But I also learned that you don't do any of that if they're making a sound, because even if it's not a lot, that means air is getting through. So if it's a full blockage now, you got to do that because air is not getting through. But if air is getting through, then you can pat them on the back or give them a minute and it'll usually dislodge itself because that air is coming in and out. You know what I'm saying, right? So I'm going to tell you a story.

Keenan: 36:40

My wife at the time, my ex-wife now, and I were at a restaurant and our oldest at the time, our only kid, started choking and my ex started freaking out. Oh my God, oh my God. And I sat and I was trying to hear if any air was. It was amazing. I was like, oh shit, I know what's going on here, right? So I started to try to hear if any air was coming out. But my ex was screaming at me and I said shut the fuck up and she's locked her shit, but I couldn't hear the baby. You know what I'm saying. Because I couldn't hear, I was uncomfortable acting because I couldn't diagnose the problem.

Keenan: 37:27

See what I did there? Right, had it been a full blockage, I was going to yank the baby out of that seat and stop pounding and tell someone to call 911 and all that. But if she could get the air through and I heard enough and she's coughing and stuff I was going to pat her back right, maybe push a little on her stomach and give it time to dislodge and it still didn't dislodge, then we would call 911, make sure she's getting air, make sure she's not turning purple she did start turning. Then I'd stop pounding. You know what I'm saying. It's a different solution. You see what I'm going with this whole thing. So this is just how my brain works. It actually went from this to sales, not sales to this. How do you solve a problem? How good are you at diagnosing what the fuck is going on before you try to fix it?

Darren: 38:10

And that's before jumping to any conclusion. Right, that's the perfect example because it's been able. Most people will just jump so super fast even when ex-wife didn't in that example just to try to get any sort of solution, versus like it's getting the right solution for the actual problem that you have. That's the biggest thing, right? Because I think generally in life people can try to put any sort of solution that's like better than what they have. But if you're selling something to someone, that's completely different, right, like, for instance, like we're building out different systems because I can fail forward, I can iterate on it and get it better, but I can't necessarily just like fucking sell something to someone as a result of that. Does that make sense? It's like there's a different mentality that has to be there. But it's basically understanding that. And what I want to ask you from there is about your four favorite words. So I'm confused. You said what type of reaction do you generally get from that, from people?

Keenan: 39:03

Generally speaking, if it's with an existing client and they said all of that, it's usually pretty good. The only time I got a real negative reaction is when I told someone about the process in a sales call and she freezes oh that's not our culture, we would never do that. And she goes we're not a good fit, and then she hung up. That's the only time I got a negative reaction. But from an actual client, no, never had a bad reaction.

Darren: 39:25

That's interesting. So when they're still like a prospect and you're kind of walking them through, what is it they don't want to kind of like align to those values as much, or how does that kind of happen in their brain for them to have a negative reaction?

Keenan: 39:39

Oh, I mean as a prospect. I think she thought this woman was enablement probably never sold a day in her life. I think she just felt it was too intrusive.

Darren: 39:46

Yeah, Okay. So it's like you're using like data against them to some degree. I know you're not, but that's kind of like how she felt.

Keenan: 39:53

Yeah, yeah. And I said, well, fine, use the word I'm concerned, I don't give a fuck. But she just didn't get the concept. All she zeroed in on was whoa, that's too aggressive, we don't sell like that here. And I was like did you not hear everything that led up to that?

Keenan: 40:09

The idea with the I'm confused is basically to help the customer understand the decision they're making. I do with my own kids, like you know. My, let's say, my kid wants to go to Stanford and she's got a four, four, right, and she went out with her friends. Or she's asking me dad, should I go with my? I'm going to go out with my friends tonight? And I got it and I don't get that big final tomorrow. And she's like, yeah, I'm like, why aren't you studying with I? You know I'll be okay. I'm like, wait a minute.

Keenan: 40:36

You told me this, this, you I'm confused. You told me that you want to go to Stanford. You got a four, four. You told me that this test is 50% of your grades. If you fail this test, then that four, four could fall as low to as low as a four, which could take you out of the range of Stanford. Why is it so important to you go out with your friends tonight when that could put Stanford at risk. Notice, as a parent. I didn't tell her she couldn't. You're going to Stanford, take the test. I flipped it onto her and said you explain to me based on what you said you want. What you said is going notice. I said nothing. You said it's 50% of the grade. You said it could drop you to a four. You said it could take you out of Stanford. This guideline said it could take you out. You said Stanford is the school you want to go to. I'm just painting the picture.

Darren: 41:22

Yeah, there it is. Tell me, man, that's so, that's so like impactful, because, again, it's not saying that you did something, it's just walking them through that process, right, being like you said it to me, we walked through this, that's what you wanted and they were. We're trying to get to that crunch type and it's always at the end, right, have you noticed that it's always? It's always at the end that there's always that conflict. So having those numbers and plays keeps people honest, basically more so than anything else. All right, guys, one short little update for Vox.

Darren: 41:49

I want to give a short little overview about my own company, my media company called Vox. So if you are a company or you are an enterprise looking to grow your brand and looking to grow your podcast, feel free to reach out to work with us at Vox. What we do is a fully fledged end-to-end management of our podcast. We take care of the strategy, the consulting, we take care of the growth, the management, we take care of all the editing, all the boring stuff that you can focus on creating good podcasts and create and growing your brand If you want to grow your podcast and get to new users, if you want to grow your business, generate more revenue and all that good stuff. Check out the links down below to Vox. You can follow through to schedule a call with our team, or else you can fill out the application form to see if you qualify to work with us. Thank you, it keeps them accountable.

Keenan: 42:31

You're just asking people to be. Now look if people can change. Look, I may not like it, but that's fucking. I don't want to go stamp anymore. It's too much work, are you sure? Yes, I'm going to get into USC with a 4-0. All right, fine, fuck it. Go all with your friends, but don't you dare come back to me and be bitching Two weeks later oh fuck, I wish I had done that. I want to go stamp it, don't. You've lost that right. You've lost that right I put in front of you. You consciously made that decision in the moment. You've lost the right two weeks later to say, oh fuck, I made a mistake. No, no, no, because it's not a mistake. It was clear as day, it was a conscious decision.

Darren: 43:07

That's very interesting to hold people accountable, because if you were speaking to a client and they were they had feedback that they wanted to do something. You showed them the path. They didn't do it, and this is the way for them to be accountable, right, and I've actually seen that in our business quite a lot, because if there is a lot of touch points like it's a lot going on, it's like in every business, so people need to hit their own milestones. For us to hit our milestones, does that make sense? It's a domino effect. We need to basically all be bought into that process. So when one link breaks in the chain whether it's a fucking kid going to school, whether it's a company, whether it's a sales company, it's all the same right, you just insert your own vehicle.

Darren: 43:48

Basically, what I really appreciate about your book as well is the fact that you wrote in the way of getting a series of yeses. So sales is getting a constant stream of yeses, and I think that's super helpful because for a lot of people they just focus on the outcome. Or even when you're speaking to people that say, oh, I've sold this much or I've made this much, or I've this much in pipeline, but really the real winning comes in opening the fucking email and then watching the lead magnet and then responding to the lead magnet. That's kind of the way of kind of changing the philosophy now. So how do you think about that in terms of getting this series of yeses to build confidence in yourself as a salesperson?

Keenan: 44:28

The next yes isn't designed to create confidence in salesperson. The next yes is to make sure you understand where you are in the sales process, because no one says you want to buy yes, well, almost no one. So the yes is what is your sale in the sale? So the sale and the sale in the very beginning is yes, I'll meet you. So your goal is to hopefully get them to buy your software, whatever it is right. That's the end close. But in order to get them to buy your software, the first thing you got to do is get them to say yes to me. So how do you create enough value for them to meet? Once they meet, then the next thing you have to do is say what's my next yes? Is it to bring in new people? Is it to do a demo? Is it to get them to get to sign an NDA? What is the next yes, because nothing else is happening to you. Get the next yes. So if they don't perceive enough value for the next yes, that's where a deal stalls. Or if you don't know what the next yes is, that's where the deal stalls. So your job is to figure out.

Keenan: 45:29

Okay, my next yes now is to get them to sign the NDA. So you're like all right, tom, I'd like us to sign an NDA which will allow you to give us all this information and if you can give us this information, this would allow us to A, b and C and that would allow you to see this or do this or check this. Do you think that makes sense? Yeah, I would like to see that out. See, I will get the NDA signed the cost if you give me or to get me this. You see, I mean that's a transaction.

Keenan: 46:00

So once you have that next yes, and I give you that, then you say, okay, now that he's got that, what's the next yes? Is it to get him to agree or could solve his problems? Is it to get him to bring the CEO in? Is it get him to do like I don't know what the fucking next is? I'm making this shit up as I go. But once that's done, okay, what's the next yes? You're trying to show him enough value to do that, and every one of those should get you closer to the close. So the final yes is I'm buying.

Darren: 46:27

Hmm, that NDA part is super interesting as in. You could open up so much more doors with that. I know, obviously in a B2B relationship that might be more regular, but I guess in smaller companies they might not have that in place a lot of times, so then people will not give them the information they need Like that. This is the best way to bridge that gap, to get more information, to be able to help them even more.

Keenan: 46:49

I mean, if that's the buying cycle. I just made all of that up Like I'm just trying to think of, yeah, I'm just trying to think of common steps that I could use to illustrate what a next yes is. But if you don't need an NDA, don't make that an unnecessary yes. The next yes could be I agree to you coming out to my plan. Right, a lot of people don't have time. I don't have time to fucking have someone come walk through my plan. So I've got to convince you to agree to give me a plant tour, All right.

Keenan: 47:15

And then, if that's my next yes, all I should be focusing on in my sale right now is how do I show this guy or girl that it's worth three hours of their time for a plant tour? Just see what I'm saying. Like that's a sale. Let's literally a sale. Will you let me come out? Let me show you why it's valuable to you. If you let me come out, I'll do this, this, this, and I'll be able to provide this, and by providing this, you'll get ABC and D. Can't you see how that'll be able to fit you? Hey, that's a good point, I'll go with that. Let's go.

Keenan: 47:42

No, I don't see the value in that? I don't need it. I don't need it Like that sales going nowhere until you figure out how they can see the value in the next. Yes, so that's your sale. Like it's just. Every sale has about seven to 50 little sales in them and each one of those little sales everybody paying attention to the podcast every one of those little sales requires value. It requires value. So you demonstrating or highlighting the value of that little sale, the value of doing the NDA, the value of the tour, the value of the pilot, the value of an introduction to CEO, the value of sending a product demo, like I don't fucking know. The value of the next meeting, like the value of introducing you to the team. You need to show the value of getting them to do something else.

Darren: 48:33

Man, I love that. It's basically a way for people to just not get stalled, because they're always focused on them. Again, it just seems so logical. I'm gonna have to listen back to this like about 15 different times, I think, just to see those steps, because that's where things get stuck in the pipeline. They're just getting stuck continuously. Before we finish up, I wanna ask you about building a sales team. Now, I know this is exactly. This could be a podcast in itself, but what are some of your kind of first principles for building out a sales team, especially a gap selling team?

Keenan: 49:04

I want smart people, super, super smart people with strong business acumen or critical thinking skills, tons of curiosity, tons of personal development, what I call deliberate learning, people who find their weaknesses and go out and deliberately try to fill those holes. They gotta be super coachable. Those are the ones that are most important to me Coachable critical thinking skills, business acumen. I know I just forgot a couple, but yeah.

Darren: 49:38

And in terms of the processes, is it on the sales leader to build out that kind of framework in the back end? Just for context, we're currently building a sales team and it's interesting. It's a lot of fun. There's a lot of challenge with that. And first, my first kind of protocol has just been put the pillars in place for what they need to fucking know, learn, understand the product, understand everything that's happening in there. From my perspective, before we could even start engaging with them, engaging with prospects, like how do you think about that?

Keenan: 50:11

Yeah, so there's the decision criteria on the person. So the first thing you need to do is show what type of people do you want. Be very, very clear. What are the decision criteria in the people you want? Then you have to ask yourself what is the evaluation process to determine? Do they actually have those criteria?

Keenan: 50:32

So if you're looking for business acumen and you're looking for drive and you're looking for personal development and you're looking for deliberate learning and you're looking for critical thinking skills and you're looking for curiosity so those six how are you going to evaluate that? Like, what process are you gonna put someone through to determine if they have those things? So, once you have that, that's your hiring criteria. But then your training criteria is what you actually need them to do? What are they supposed to learn? And that's the skill layer of the sales or the skill management layer. So, yes, you need to lay that whole thing out. What am I going to teach them? What do they have to know? How are they supposed to execute? What are the steps? What are the process they have to gauge in what you know? And, yeah, and that becomes very, very scripted as far as the framework is concerned, in a way that they can execute on that framework.

Darren: 51:23

How do you measure success of someone like that then afterwards, when you release them into the world?

Keenan: 51:29

They've hit their goals. You've got to be very clear on what they're expected.

Darren: 51:33

Very, very clear.

Keenan: 51:34

I mean, at the end of the day it's their performance goals, but you have to decide what they are. But they can hit their goals.

Darren: 51:39

Hmm, I get it. That makes sense. So basically that can be a combination of like working closely with them, reviewing their work Like I remember watching some like sales content on this, which was like you want to be checking in, reviewing their calls or reviewing their messages, maybe once or twice like a day in the beginning, and basically just making sure that they're hitting their criteria.

Keenan: 52:00

Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, if they're new and you're coaching them, you want to be observing how they're applying what you taught them. Right, you want to be observing how they're applying what you taught them and you want to keep guiding them and steering them in the right direction. But you should be seeing a modicum of improvement as you go, and as long as they're improving and those improving and turning into results, then you should be OK.

Darren: 52:28

That makes sense? Do you have any principles on, like you know, I've heard previously like hiring two people and then basically like firing those like the person, like that's not performing or it's like a benchmark, versus like hiring for one, because if I were for one they don't have like any benchmark. Does that make sense?

Keenan: 52:44

Yeah, no, I've always been a fan of hiring too, but not everybody can afford to Right, not everybody afford to TWO, not afford to. But yeah, I mean, look ideally and not even firing one. I don't like the idea of firing one Like you hire two. Think about a four quadrant matrix. Hiring two minimizes the risk. It's higher risk but it's a greater probability of success. So the point being is simply, if I hire two people, four quadrat matrix, they both make it. I win Big time. Yeah, guy A makes a guy B doesn't? I still win. Took a little bit of a hit on the three months. The other guy didn't make it, or girl didn't make it Right. Took a couple of months hit, but not the end of the world. Scenario three girl makes a guy, doesn't I win?

Keenan: 53:31

Someone's working, I got a peed person's making it, I took a little bit of a hit right that that person, you know whatever two, three months salary, but it was like six, 10 grand most. That shouldn't kill you. Then the worst case is neither one of them make it. Then you can ask okay, what's wrong? Should we like? Is the criteria wrong? Is the product even got a chance? Like you know, if both of them fail, that should be a big red light.

Darren: 53:53

Man, that's amazing. I wish we could. I could pick your brain for much longer. I think we need to come back to it for your second book. Right, when you come up with another book, we'll do another one. But, man, I want to say a big thank you though. I really appreciate this and I'm gonna do it for you in the future. Always let me know.