Stop Selling and Help People Solve Their Next Biggest Problem | Keith Gillispie - 2035

A former Marine who did eight combat deployments in eight years now spends his time teaching people to stop pitching and start asking better questions. Keith Gillispie https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithgrei/, founder of REI Automated, left the Marines in 2020 to build a real estate investing and coaching business that's helped more than 1,200 people, with close to 580 of them closing their very first deal. He broke down exactly how he qualifies, questions, and consults his way to the close. Why "Selling" Is the Wrong Mindset (Stop Being House Horny) Keith's blunt term for pushy sellers: house horny, chasing the deal so hard that they force the wrong solution onto someone just to close it. His fix is simple: stop selling, and start asking great questions that guide the prospect to the answer on their own. He reviews sales calls with his own team every week, and the biggest issue he catches with newer reps is a used-car-salesman energy that shows up the moment they stop asking and start pitching. Qualify for the Right Industry First Keith gets over a hundred Facebook messages a day, and his team has to pre-qualify people before he ever gets on a call. A recent example: a rep flagged someone as "qualified" who actually wanted coaching on commercial real estate, which Keith doesn't teach at all. Same broad label, completely wrong fit. Even inside a niche that sounds close enough, being in the wrong specific industry wastes everyone's time. Qualify for the Right Problem: Your Core Competency Must Match Their Core Constraint Keith's rule: everyone has problems, but that alone doesn't make someone a fit. What he's good at has to be exactly what the prospect is bad at. He calls this matching your core competency to their core constraint. If there's no real gap for him to fill, there's no real reason for the two of them to work together. This is what separates a win-win engagement from a sale that shouldn't have happened in the first place. Qualify for the Right Money (Or Every Call Becomes Charity) Even with the right industry and the right problem, a prospect still has to be able to afford the solution, or the call turns into free coaching. Keith shared a recent example of two prospects who badly wanted to join his program but couldn't spend even $300, when his coaching runs into the thousands. He's direct with his own team about this: sending him financially unqualified leads turns every call into charity work, which isn't sustainable as a business, even though he's genuinely happy to hand out free value when it makes sense. Diagnose Before You Prescribe Keith estimates that more than half of the people who come to him think they know what they need, and they're wrong. His example: prospects ask for automation when they don't even have leads coming in yet, or don't know how to structure a deal. Automating a broken process just scales the chaos faster. He compares it to a patient self-diagnosing before seeing a doctor. The seller's job, like a doctor's, is to ask enough questions to find the real issue before recommending anything. Get Comfortable Asking Uncomfortable Financial Questions Keith walks straight into questions like current income, whether that number is gross or net, and total debt, early in a call, because he can't build a plan without knowing where someone actually stands. He compares it to Google Maps: you need a point of origin and a point of destination before you can build the route in between. Roughly one in twenty-five or thirty people push back on how direct these questions are. Keith's response is straightforward: if they can't handle these basic questions now, the program itself is going to be a rough fit. Build Yes Momentum With Small Asks Keith structures his qualifying questions to build what he calls yes momentum: each small, reasonable question makes the next one easier to answer. He starts broad, what do you do, how long have you done it, before narrowing into income, debt, and financial specifics, so the conversation earns its way to the harder questions instead of opening with them. That same sequence doubles as training. The financial questions he asks on a discovery call mirror the exact questions his students will later need to ask sellers and private lenders. Ask Questions, Don't Make Statements Keith's rule for himself: don't make a statement for the first 60 percent of any sales call, aside from short softening statements like "I'm glad you asked that."The only exception is a brief acknowledgment before turning right back around and asking another question. Whoever is asking the questions is steering the conversation, and Keith treats that as true for the entire first half of every call he runs. Never Fully Answer a Question Without Asking One Back Keith borrows from Socratic questioning: when a prospect asks a direct question, like how fast he can close on a house, answering too quickly and too specifically can blow up the deal in either direction. Instead, he gives a partial, honest answer, then asks a question that uncovers the real reason behind their question, like whether they need to move fast or need more time. That extra step means his eventual answer is actually calibrated to what the person needs, instead of a generic response that might scare them off or fail to meet an urgent situation. Become a Lifelong Student of Your Craft Keith has taken more than ten thousand sales calls over eleven years and still says the more he learns about sales psychology, the more he realizes he doesn't know. His advice for anyone serious about improving: invest in a coach or mentor who can review real calls and point out specific gaps, rather than trying to learn everything for free through trial and error. His framing: you'll pay for the lesson either way, either in money to a mentor, or in wasted time and missed opportunity learning the hard way. "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." — Keith Gillispie Resources Connect with Keith Gillispie on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithgrei/Visit REI Automated to learn more about Keith's education, software, and coaching community for real estate investors. https://www.reiautomated.io/Join our LinkedIn cohort and learn to prospect the right way. https://thesalesevangelist.com/linkedin-prospecting-course/Visit Blue Mango Studios for help creating podcast production content. https://bluemangostudios.com/ Sponsorship Offers This episode is brought to you in part by Hubspot. With HubSpot sales hubs, your data tools and teams join a single platform to close deals and turn prospects into pipelines. Try it for yourself at hubspot.com/sales https://www.hubspot.com/products/sales. This episode is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Foundation. Improve your connection on LinkedIn and land three or five appointments with our LinkedIn prospecting course. Go to the salesevangelist.com/linkedin https://tsesales.typeform.com/to/UCMfjZbX. Credits As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey http://thesalesevangelist.com/survey. https://tsesales.typeform.com/to/lc5yAa8P We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sales-evangelist/id788738885, Google Podcast https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3RoZXNhbGVzZXZhbmdlbGlzdC5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj5kaXI3Pj2AhVKcjABHW5PDVwQ9sEGegQIARAC, Stitcher https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-sales-evangelist-sales-trainingspeakingbusiness-marketingdonald, or Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/1NjzsFjQwVrgboUfDvbzd5?si=LdQOJDc1T-WBPMxr1h3RsA. Audio provided by Free SFX, https://freesfx.co.uk/ Soundstripe https://soundstripe.com/, and Bensound http://www.bensound.com/. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and produced by Brightseed and Hill.

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• 1:53Speaker 00

  As a seller, our job is to help the prospect solve their next big problem. Oftentimes, though, we just want to go pitch and get some money. On today's episode, we're going to break down how you go about doing this and what you should do instead. Check it out.

• 2:15Speaker 00

  Hey, hey, hey, everyone. Welcome to another great episode of the Sales Evangelist Podcast. I'm your host, Donald C. Kelly, the Sales Evangelist. And I'm so excited for another great episode. I'm so excited to be here with you today. On this episode, we have the one and only Mr. Keith Gillespie. Keith and I got a chance to connect a while back and Keith runs an organization where he does investing, real estate investing and helps people with that. But he also has several softwares as well. But one of the things that Keith has done over the years is that since 2016, it's been in sales. He was a Marine and so dude's hardcore. And dude has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to the real estate side. Now, you might say, well, what is he going to do on this episode? Well, the principles that he's teaching are very helpful.

• 2:57Speaker 00

  Some of the sales strategies that he's doing to help us not be those typical salespeople who are just pitching without identifying and solving the next big problem the prospect has. Whether you're selling a hundred million dollar solution or you're selling a thousand dollar solution, your prospect has a problem and your job is to help them to solve that next big problem. Not all of them, but the next big one, which you have the competency to do. And Keith is going to break it down. When he dives into it, the first part, I really like the way he does it. He talks about something that is really common, but some of us may think it's trivial. But when you get below the surface, you realize why. Now, I won't tell you what that is. You have to listen as we go into that in a second. But if this is your first time listening to the show, that means a lot to me, man. Thank you so much. Please go ahead and subscribe and we'll notify you every time we drop a new piece of content.

• 3:41Speaker 00

  If you've been listening for a minute, go ahead and holler at your boy on LinkedIn. Tell me you found the show and how much you're loving it. Let's go ahead and dive into the first point. Now, as we go into it, again, you may think, some of you may say to Donald, this is basic. But I promise you, by the time he's done, you're going to see how this all ties together. Check it out.

• 4:03Speaker 00

  Keith, welcome to the show, man.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Thank you very much for having me, brother.

• 4:06Speaker 00

  It's an honor. Really looking, I'm looking for this conversation. And one of the things I love about these convo is that not only do we get, provide stuff for our audience, but it's also a great way for me to be able to get great insights from folks like you who are doing amazing stuff. I bragged about you a little bit in the teaser there, introduction, introducing you. But why don't you take a second and get on a pedestal and not hold back and tell us a little bit more about what you do and who you serve, man?

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Cool. All right. Well, I'm a former active duty Marine. I started my real estate investing journey and really my sales journey in 2016 when we started. And I was constantly gone, man. As you know, when you're in the Marines, it's not like a normal nine to five that you can just punch the clock in and out. I really was, I was busy, man. In eight years that I was active duty, I was overseas 13 different times. And so my kids were being raised without me. The short of the long, I'll give you the short version. My kids are being raised without me. I needed to come home and be a father to my children, be a husband to my wife. And so real estate was my exit. That was my vehicle for financial freedom, time freedom, choice, freedom, whatever you want to call it.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  And so 2016 to 2020, I was building my real estate investing business. 2020, I got out of the Marines and I've been doing real estate full time. 2020 was also when we created our second business, REI Automated, which is an education, software and coaching community where I actually teach real estate investors different things in our courses when it comes to marketing, when it comes to sales, negotiation, neuro-linguistic programming, deal analysis, raising private money, hiring and training and leading team members, so on and so forth. And we also have six different software verticals for real estate investors, six different softwares that are going to help them execute what I just taught them.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  And then of course, you can have all the right knowledge and be super, you know, book smart. You can even have the software, the tool and the resource to go out and execute it. But at the end of the day, people are still going to need some help, you know? And so that's where, what the coaching element is for, as well as the community. So we've grown this quite a bit. In my real estate investing business, we grew up to 18 people. I've done deals in 34 states, raised a little bit more than $10 million in private money. And then in REI Automated, now we service a couple of hundred real estate investors across six different softwares and have helped more than 1,200 people, actually. And out of those 1,200, I think we're just around 570 or 580 people who have completed their very first deal, meaning they had never done a deal ever before in their life.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  And so they're on their way to becoming financially free through real estate investing. And sales is a huge part of that.

• 6:48Speaker 00

  That is dope. I think people resonate with this. And in this episode, you'll hear some sales stuff. But what I really like for you guys to do is if you haven't, if you're a seller, you're probably sitting on some cash, you got some money or you're a leader and you're like, you know, I've been looking to do something. We want to make sure you're well-rounded as a sales professional and utilize your resources appropriately. So feel free to go ahead and connect with Keith if you're interested in some real estate investment. But not only does he know his stuff on that side, he knows the sales stuff. So I want to pick your brain on this here, Keith, for a little bit. You've shared something that we talked about beginning, but stop selling and help people solve their next big problem. It stuck with me from our prep call. Why are you so passionate about this? What's the problem that you're seeing right now?

• 7:31Speaker 01

  That people just sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, tell, tell, tell, tell, tell. And it's like, I call it, I don't know how politically correct you stay on this podcast. So I'll try to keep it a little bit tame. But I say, when I'm teaching real estate investors how to talk to sellers, I tell them, stop being pushy. You're being house horny. Oh, I gotta get the house. I gotta get this deal, you know? And we don't want to be house horny. Don't force the square peg into a round hole. Instead, you are literally there to just ask great questions to solve the seller's problem. And those questions end up guiding that seller to you. So man, it really bothers me when I'm listening. You know, I do call reviews every single week for our client.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  And I will just hear newer investors who haven't been in my program for very long. You know, they're just coming from, I don't know, it sounds like the used car sales world. They're not really, they're not actually, but it sounds like, you know, when I'm, when I'm listening to them. And I don't hold back, man. I kind of beat them up and be like, dude, you gotta stop doing that. You're being a little adolescent, you know? You're being a juvenile delinquent. Instead, you need to be the generous expert that is here in more of a consultative manner.

• 8:40Speaker 00

  Love it. And I think for sometimes people get that mixed up, you know, where you, you need to take on the role of being the adult, being a consultant. And I think sometimes that used car salesperson mentality, where it's just like, I need to get something quick right now and get a little win. It usually short changes off and you usually mess up in the process.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:02Speaker 00

  So the first point you made to me was make sure you sell to your ideal customer. And I know this one sounds so basic and I know some sellers will be like, Donald, I know that. But go deeper into it. Tell me why, let's go, we can, we know the surface level, some of the stuff, but go, why is this so critical? You talk about right industry, right problem, right money.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Right. So many people message me on Facebook. These days I'm sitting north of 100 messages per day. We usually get between 110 and 130 messages per day. People on Facebook reaching out to me. It's quite a lot. And so at this point, I have three staff members that help me just manage my Facebook DMs because I physically cannot respond to all these people when I'm on podcasts, when I'm doing my own podcasts, when I'm helping clients, so on and so forth. And so they have to be able to respond as me, for me. And I take that very seriously because people don't realize that they're talking to somebody else. They think that they're talking to me because that person is logged into my Facebook sending DMs.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  And so that's my reputation, you know, behind me. And a lot of times newer salesmen just jump the guns so much. They don't even pre-qualify to make sure that this person is in the right industry. I'll give you a case in point. I just hired two new guys. They're on their third week right now, but on week one, so two weeks ago, they sent me somebody who they said was super qualified. And I got talking with this lady and within five minutes, I diagnosed that she wants to learn commercial real estate. You know, she wants to hire a coach to teach her a commercial real estate. Well, I don't know. I don't do commercial real estate. I kind of dabble in that, but by no stretch of the imagination, do I teach that? None of our software is geared towards that. Our courses are not geared towards that.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Our coaching and community is not geared towards that at all. So this was completely, I mean, technically it was the right industry, if you will, if you were to just lump everything all real estate together, but that would be completely inappropriate. So you have to make sure that this person is even in your right industry. And then even if they are in your industry, meaning they're in, for me, residential, single-family real estate, they have to have the right problem. And how I say this is not, they don't have to have a problem. Everybody has freaking problems. At the end of the day, what I sell, what I'm good at, what I would consider a strength, needs to be your weakness. Otherwise, this isn't a win-win situation for either of us, frankly.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  And so how I coined this term is your core constraint needs to be my core competency. Something that I'm really good at needs to be something that you're really bad at. At that point, I can fill the void. Right? I'm now correcting your deficiency, if you will, and teaching you how to come up. And then the second thing is they can be in the right industry and their core competence, I mean, my core competency can match their core constraint. However, they could be broke as a joke, you know, that they desire with their whole, I was just, I just had two of these, gosh, it was, I think Friday last week, where I had two people that I talked to really wanted to join REI Automated, but neither one of them could spend even $300.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  And I'm like, y'all, I don't know if you know this, but I'm worth more than $300 per hour much less for a whole month of coaching, you know, and you need leads, right? Leads are the lifeblood of our business. Without leads, we have no oxygen. The business can't sustain itself. And so I kind of went back to the team and I was like, y'all are sending me people who are financially unqualified. They are the right industry. Their core constraint is our core competency, but they're broke as a joke and they can't even spend a couple hundred dollars with me on the call today. Even though I can radically change their life and pretty quickly, if I can say so myself, within 90 days, their, their life could be very different. And so I kind of reprimanded my team. And again, these two gentlemen are very new

• 12:56Speaker 01

  on the sales team, but making sure it's the right industry, right problem, right money. And these folks are actually financially qualified. Otherwise, every one of our sales calls just turns into charity work. And really, that's what it should. I can't just leave that person, oh, you know, you can't pay me, so go on. No, I'm going to give you something for free. I'm going to give you a course. I'm going to give you some value. I'm going to put you in the right direction. I'm going to give you a trial to one of my softwares. I do believe in leading with value because I believe that it does come back to you.

• 13:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. But if you do that, you're totally right. If you do that for every single call though, it's unfortunate you can't do a business unless you have a nonprofit that you got some grants.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  But you gotta have that right industry, right problem, right money.

• 13:41Speaker 00

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• 14:23Speaker 00

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• 14:44Speaker 00

  I want to go back, double tap on the core constraints. How do you identify that though? Let's say that a company has been around for a while. We think we know what we're doing. Cause and the reason why I bring this up is like, sometimes we think we know what we're doing. Like I might do, let's say my software is a CRM and I feel that my core constraint is that I'm helping people without software, without a CRM. But perhaps there's something deeper and I may have missed that. Double tap on that for a minute.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  So I always start every call, every single call kind of has the same three stages. The first thing is I want to make sure that this person has a freaking intention when they hop on a call with me. And so I always ask, what's the biggest thing that you're looking to walk away with this, you know, like, Keith, I'm not getting off this call until fill in that blank. What's the biggest thing that you're looking to take away from this call? I want to hear what that is because that's how I'm going to frame the entire call is around that, solving that problem. And so I just right out the gate, I'm asking them about that. It's my favorite way to start a call. Then as I dive a little bit deeper into the discovery process around that topic, I'll be like, hey, Donald, so can you tell me

• 15:47Speaker 01

  in lines of whatever this topic is, what is not working as well as it could or should be working right now in your business? And then they'll be talking, you know, like, ah, my CRM is all messed up and, and I don't have enough automation or whatever. That's a common thing for me. I get indicative of our name, REI Automated. We have a lot of automation. And so I have people who come to me thinking that they need automation. But to be honest, man, I would probably say the majority of people, certainly over 50%, come to me with a misdiagnosis. They think they know what they want, but they do not. And this is the same as my 10-year-old daughter coming up to me saying, I need this thing.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  And me having a little bit more wisdom in life saying, hey, sweetie, I don't think that you actually need this thing. I think that it's this that you're searching for. So just as a, think about a doctor, you know, somebody comes in and they're like, hey, doc, I think I have this. Well, that's a self-diagnosis with no disrespect. You probably got it wrong most of the time because you're not as educated as I am. So let me ask you a couple of questions. And then I dive really deep into that thing. And I say, hey, you came to me for, this actually again happened to me last week. I only take about two to three sales calls per day, but I've been doing that for the last 11 years. So I, I feel like this is a reoccurring theme where I get into it and they're like, I need automation. And I'm like, dude, you don't even know how to structure deals.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  You know, like, I need more automation. Well, you don't even have leads coming in. So why the heck are we going to create automation? You're just scaling chaos at that point. Let's create some orders, some systems in your business first, starting with lead generation needs to be happening automatically.

• 17:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  And before you even generate leads, you need to know theoretically how to structure deals so that you can look at something and kind of identify what's the route that I'm going to take with this before we even engage a seller and engage a, a conversation with the sale. You can be really good at sales, but if you don't have the fundamental principles down of conversing, we're dead in the water before we've even started. And so I think that misdiagnosis is a huge problem with people. They think they know, and you should still, you know, there's a, this is a famous saying in sales, give the people what they want, but sell them what they need. Or sell the people what they want. Yeah, that's what it is. It's sell the people what they want, but give them what they need.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  That's how you get the sale.

• 18:02Speaker 00

  I love it, man. And that ties very closely to the second point. Well, help the prospect understand you will get personal as a consultant and get to the real issue. And I feel when we talked in our prep call, you went deep on how you have to get uncomfortable at times. New sellers and sometimes veteran salespeople are not willing to do that. Double tap on this one for me.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. In order to financially qualify people, you have to get into their finances. And people frankly suck at this. I really enjoy showing up to sales calls just to see like, how are you doing? Is there something that you do that I really enjoy? I want to feel the user experience, if you will, of your sales process. You know, my wife recently wanted to get a no solicitation sign on our front door and I said, no. Absolutely not. You don't even answer the freaking door anyway. I'm the one who always answers the door. I want to talk to these people. It helps me learn. Anyway, so let's get into the, because money is always the objection.

• 19:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  And so really what we need to do is let's get really deep on that super fast. Because as soon as you get deep on that super fast and everything else comes easy. And so here's how I do that. I say, okay, so you're looking to get into, and you could take this exact example and just kind of morph it into whatever, you know,

• 19:21Speaker 00

  Industry.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Industry or specific thing is that you're selling. But I say, so you're looking to get into real estate investing. Do you have a job right now? Yeah, I have a W2. What do you do? I'm a truck driver. How long you been doing it? 15 years. Are you wanting to do this like to supplement your truck driving income? Or in order to replace it? Well, probably to supplement it right now. I don't plan on quitting until I have something solid in the business. But honestly, I'd love to come home, you know, and not be driving truck. All right, sweet. So you're wanting to replace it eventually? Yes. How long do you want to give yourself? Two years. Okay, how much do you make? 118. No, you don't. No truck driver makes 118. Is that gross or is that net? Oh, no, that's gross. All right, well, freaking gross is gross. Give me what's net. What's your take home pay? It's $94,000. Okay, sweet. So we're trying to replace $94,000.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  How much debt do you have? I have whatever, whatever, whatever. It's like as soon as they've told me how much they make, I'm already pre qualifying, right? If somebody tells me they make $30,000 per year and it's the sole income, their wife doesn't work. I can tell you this is probably not going to work for you because my programs are 5, 10 and $15,000. They're quite expensive for somebody who's only making $30,000 per year.

• 20:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  However, as soon as you tell me something that's, you know, close to six figures, there's a little bit of hope here that this may work out to be a financially qualified prospect. And man, as soon as you open up that how much do you make? Then you can go into how much do you owe? It's kind of like, and I forget the book. It may be Getting to Yes is the book where it talks about yes moments. It's a sales psychology book. I'm not sure if it's getting to yes, but the point is like getting yes momentum. And how you do that is through small incremental asks with the prospect. And so you're just getting, if I could say it a different way, it's getting a little bit of compliance and then getting a little bit more compliance and then getting a little bit more compliance.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  And the commitment gets deeper and deeper and deeper each time. And so I start off with, you know, like, what do you do? How long you've been doing it? Do you want to supplement or replace? It's almost always replace. So how much do you make? How much now you have to tell me? If you're like, I ain't telling you. All right, jackass.

• 21:26Speaker 00

  It can't work.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Well, how in the world am I supposed to lead you if I don't know what the destination is?

• 21:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  You know, like Google Maps, there's two things that we need, a point of origination and a point of destination. So I need to know where you are and where we're going. And if I don't know how much you're making right now and what we need to replace, then I cannot create a path like Google Map does in order to get there. You've sent me up to success to facilitate this call. And there's very few people, by the way, that I have to say that with. But as soon as I said that so far, I mean, I've never, I'm batting perfect. Basically, people were like, oh yeah, that kind of makes sense. Sorry.

• 21:59Speaker 00

  Especially if you're doing some kind of investment, like this is an investing thing. Like, you know, you gotta at least know if I'm going to coach you. Yeah, so go for it. My bad.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  No, no, no, this is good. So I start off with that small, how much do you make? And then I get into debt. And I say, I don't really care about your, your house if you have a mortgage, but I do care about your car. And I especially care if you have loans, like student loans, medical loans, things like this. And I absolutely positively care if you are holding a balance on your credit cards. I need to know all of this. So I'm kind of telling him like, I'm getting in your business right now. And as soon as somebody, I probably get one in, I'd say 25, maybe one in 30. I mean, it is a very small percentage. I'm a pretty likable person, you know? So it's hard to be disagreeable with me.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  But sometimes there is the alpha dude that's like, this isn't any of your, you know, effing business. Well, if you don't like me interrogating you about this, just wait till you get into my program. This is not going to be a good fit. You're in for a long haul because these are basic surface level questions to me. I'm going to get in your crap. You know, like, how in the world am I supposed to fix something if I don't know what's broken?

• 23:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. They all want to invest, but not willing to, you're not wanting to speak to the things that's necessary to get to that investment. I mean, if you're talking about this, I mean, when you start making conversation with investors who are gonna probably ask even way more than this.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:30Speaker 00

  I need to give you how much money and what are you going to be doing with it? I need to understand more.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Exactly. And just as I need to be able to facilitate that person's acknowledgement of, okay, that's not an unreasonable ask. Keith actually does have a viable reason for requesting this information. I also need to be teaching them like, hey, these are exactly what you said. These are the exact conversations that you're going to have with a seller when you're asking, how much do you owe on the mortgage? These are the exact conversations that you're going to have with a private money lender when he's saying, why again do you need 150 when you're only buying it for $50,000? I don't understand where there's a $100,000 delta. Oh, okay. Well, that's the repairs. That's the holding cost. That's the closing cost. That's all my fees. Oh, okay, got it. So you need to be able to respond and articulate simply and nearly instantly.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  You can't, oh, um, you know, let me check my notes. No, no, no, no, no, no. Answer this cold, you know? You have to be confident with your delivery of this.

• 24:32Speaker 00

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• 25:17Speaker 00

  The most dynamic buyer network working just for you. Accelerate your sales with LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Try LinkedIn Sales Navigator now with a free 60 day trial at LinkedIn.com/sell. That's LinkedIn.com/sell. Terms and conditions apply. Since 2013, we launched this podcast. The goal of the podcast was to share wealth of information and I feel that we've successfully done so. As a natural byproduct, listeners like you would reach out and ask, could I coach them? Could I train their team? Could I come and speak in an S K O? Could I consult for them? And that is how we gain the majority of our business and still to this day.

• 25:59Speaker 00

  So in 2019, one of our clients saw what we did and asked, could we do that for them? We experimented with it and we started a podcast production agency. Now we create podcasts for some of the biggest brands in the world and it's amazing. I would love to show you and your team how we can create podcasts for you and use it as an entertaining source, but also educational and a lead generation. If you're interested, go to bluemangostudios.com. Again, bluemangostudios.com and our team can show you exactly what we did. It's amazing.

• 26:35Speaker 00

  The last point that you had talked to me about was focus on questions rather than statements. You shared something about the practically overcome the objection in that, with this, in that, that frame. Can you guide us through that part?

• 26:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so what I would challenge every person who is regularly taking some sort of sales calls is think about the duration of your sales calls. So mine are 45 minutes. Sometimes they go to an hour. I would challenge you to not make a statement for the first 60% of the call, unless it's a softening statement. And what I mean by that is, Donald, if you were to ask me a question, I am allowed to say a softening statement like, you know, I'm really glad you asked that. Or that was a really great question. Those are softening statements. And then we're going to get into another question. You know, so dude, I'm really glad that you asked that. You know, a lot of people who are super successful in my program ask me the same question.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  Let's pause. Those are two softening statements. Putting that together, making sure that this person knows, hey, there's people in this program that are just like me.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  People like people who are like them, right? This is if you were to read the book The Like Switch, or if you were to listen to Dale Carnegie and How to Win Friends and Influence People. People like people who are like them. And so, so you're telling them already, you're kind of casting their future of if you were coming into the program, there's people who are just like you, who are super successful. So those softening statements are good. However, you should never answer the question. You should always, Socrates was really famous for asking questions in response to his students asking him a question. And so now we call those Socratic questioning. I love this methodology because you're asking me, you know, like, whatever. I don't really care. Throw a question out.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Keith, how long is the program? If it's something like that, you can be like, well, here's the thing. I actually have multiple programs. Some of them are super short, some of them are super long. Just curious, so let's pause again. I've answered your question, but not really? You know? How long is the friggin program? You still can't answer it. You're gonna have to say, well, he has multiple programs. Some of them are short, some of them are long. Here's the thing, though. I don't know why you're asking. And until I know why you're asking, it would be foolish for me to answer. A good attorney is not going to answer a question or ask a question that he doesn't know the answer to. Similarly, us in a consultative sales frame, we shouldn't be answering a question like this. Because potentially, think about this from a seller.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Keith, how quickly can you buy my house? Well, if I say, oh, yes, ma'am. Well, I'm glad you asked that question. We can close in seven days or less. And she's like, seven days or less? I can't even pack one room in seven days. I need three months. You know, you've totally just blown the sale. Whereas other people, oh, you know, I was really hoping that you could close next week. Because, I don't know, like, I've dealt with some really terrible things where there's like domestic violence and a woman is getting hurt. Let's get you out of the house. You know, like, we don't have to wait until you close. Can I put you in a hotel room between now and closing? We can close next week. But the point is, is I would be foolish to answer that question. Donald, I'm so glad that you asked that question.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  You gotta get information.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. What's your reason? Are you hoping to close really soon? Or are you, are you wanting to, um, to kind of bump this out? So answer the question in a way that it's not fully answering the question, that it's leaving it open-ended, and then ask them the open-ended question to solidify it. And now you know how to answer it the proper way. If you do that for the first 60% of your sales call, if your sales calls are only 15 minutes, then you should be doing this for the first nine. Only ask questions. Ask, ask, ask, ask, ask. Do not pitch, do not sell, do not tell. They don't friggin care. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And it will land so much harder. Your words carry weight if you know more about them. Because you could tell them the same exact thing, but because you took the time to hear

• 30:38Speaker 01

  their story, to hear their problem, to hear where they want to go, now they believe, hey, he's taken the time to internalize this. He cares about me enough to customize this plan specifically for me and in this situation. So then they're actually...

• 30:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, I trust you now to solve that problem for me as well. You know what I mean? So, oh my, this is good. I mean, we could probably go on for a minute more with this, but this is a, this has been great. I want to recap, guys, so you can get an understanding what Keith has dropped here for you. One, it's important that as sellers, we focus on the next big problem our prospect have. You gotta make sure you focus on the right people, people who, the right need, the right industry, right problem, right money. Two, make sure you understand that you have to be a consultant, especially in B2B sales or whatever you're doing. You gotta make sure you're the consultant and ask tough questions. Your questions may differ, but it needs to be to get to the right information. And then the third part is that you gotta focus on questions rather than statement. The person who asks the most questions in charge, they're the lead, they're the guide.

• 31:40Speaker 00

  And you don't want to be, uh, you know, a yes ma'am or a yes man and sitting there just, uh, you know, showing up and throwing up to the prospect. This definitely makes a big difference and change. Keith, if there's one major piece of advice you would like folks to leave this episode with, what's that one major insight?

• 31:55Speaker 01

  You know, I would encourage you to be a student of your craft. At this point, I have taken well over 10,000 sales calls, and I've been doing this for 11 years. I still feel like the more I learn about sales psychology, the more I don't know. I think this is just a fact, you know, in life, the more you learn about a topic, you're like, dude, that just opened 19 more cans of worms that I had need, now I need to go down this rabbit hole. I need to learn this, I need to learn this, I need to learn this. So what I would encourage you is be a student of your craft, be a lifelong learner, always be, you know, I read this morning, and I'm gonna go for a walk in a little bit. I'm gonna listen to an audiobook. And I feel like I eat and I breathe and I live sales constantly.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  I'm good at it. I'm really, I mean, we, we've made tens of millions of dollars in our businesses. And I would venture to say I'm fairly young to be able to do that. Yet, I'm never gonna say I have this figured out, you know?

• 32:52Speaker 00

  No.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  So I would encourage every single one of you, there's people to learn from that are so good, and you're gonna have to pay them money. And at the end of the day, you're gonna, you are going to spend the same dollar amount, whether you learn from a coach or a mentor. If you don't pay the coach or the mentor, you're gonna pay the friggin stupid tax because your dumb ass made a mistake that you could have paid somebody else and learned from their mistake. But instead, you chose to get your degree through the school of hard knocks and pay your tuition for time, as well as missed opportunity when you could have just taken the shortcut. The time shortcut still paid the same dollar amount, but instead, you get to accelerate that learning process. And so don't think that you're gonna learn sales for free.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  You can, there's lots of books, there's lots of YouTube videos, there's lots of podcasts and things like that. But ultimately, getting some personalized help where somebody is listening to your phone call saying, Keith, this is the gap. Here's how to fix it. Here's what it should have sounded like. Let's script this out. You need to memorize this, you need to drill this. Now go back and get after it again. That's the person that you need in your life.

• 33:54Speaker 00

  You can succeed alone. Get some help on that. All right, Keith, what's the best way to get in touch with you, man?

• 33:59Speaker 01

  Cool. So I'll give you three things. The first is if you just want to learn...

• 34:03Speaker 00

  Three.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  I'll give you three ways. The first is if you just wanted to learn a little bit more about what I've talked about, I actually have something, just a free gift for Donald's community. If you're listening to this podcast, then you're absolutely in the right place. And so what I've done is I've created a, a link on our website. Donald, I think, is gonna put it in the show notes below, but you can click on that and you can get any one of my courses absolutely for free. You don't have to pay me any money. There's no bait and switch, there's no credit card, there's absolutely nothing. Go there, there's a link down below, and that's for y'all's community. So if you wanted to learn, if you want to learn anything about REI Automated, what we do, it's www.reiautomated.io.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  And if you ever wanted to reach out to me on Facebook, then that's the best way to actually get in touch with me personally. As I said, we have a little over 100 people who are messaging me every single day. So it may take me a minute to get back to you, but I do deeply care and want to help people. And we can move that to a Zoom call if you'd like as well. But those are the best three. Go check out a course, look at our website, come talk to me on Facebook. I'd love to help you out.

• 35:10Speaker 00

  Done. We'll put this in the show notes. Listen, thank you for taking the time to come on our show today, Keith, man. Really appreciate it.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

• 35:24Speaker 00

  Listen, if you haven't done so already, go connect with Keith. Check out the free gift, the courses that he has in the show notes. As he said, no strings attached, there's no bait and switch here with it, but you can find details for those courses in the show notes, and we have a link to that. You can also check out some of the things that he's doing with his organization and some of the software, and you can connect with him on Facebook as he shared. I always like to help you to be able to improve. The goal of bringing all these guests is for them to be able to bring some insights that can help you, educate you, but also is a great opportunity for us to get some opportunity to build our network. So even if you can't work with Keith or anything right now, you can get some great insights from him. Listen, I want you to thrive. I really want you to be successful. I want you to, I want you to do the best that you can. But most importantly, I want you to go out, raise your level of thinking, and do big things. See you on the next one.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  The Sales Evangelist Podcast is created by the Sales Evangelist Sales Training Organization. It is produced by TSC Studios. Our podcast production manager is Nancy Paul. Our audio engineer is Jershun Obayal. Our video engineer is Desan Kunado. Guest management is done by Jill Vito and Kristy Virtus. Our content writer is Carlisa Galberith. Our graphic designer is Yurvish Savalia. And I'm your host and executive producer, Donald C. Kelly.