Sorting Not Selling with Josh Braun

Welcome to episode 246 of the Business Development Podcast.

And today I'm joined by the legendary Josh Braun, a master sales strategist known for teaching people how to sell without ever feeling pushy or fake.

We're breaking down how to ask the right questions, build trust fast, and close deals in a way that feels authentic and human.

If you've ever struggled with cold calls, outreach, or getting the real answers from prospects, sales, stick with us.

You don't want to miss this episode.

The great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years.

Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

And we couldn't agree more.

This is the Business Development Podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world.

You'll get expert business development advice, tips and experiences.

And you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs and business development reps.

You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business brought to you by Capital Business Development capitalbd ca.

Let's do it.

Welcome to the Business Development Podcast.

And now, your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Hello.

Welcome to episode 246 of the Business Business Development Podcast.

And today it is my absolute pleasure.

To bring you Josh Braun.

Josh is a renowned sales strategist, educator, and founder of Braun Training.

Known for his innovative approach to selling.

Without the sleazy tactics.

With a rich background that spans from teaching elementary school to spearheading sales teams at top tech companies, Josh has mastered the art of combining education and sales to create meaningful connections.

He built his career on a simple yet powerful promise.

Selling should never feel like selling.

Instead, it should feel like guiding people to discover solutions for themselves.

Through his books, courses, workshops, and the popular inside Selling podcast, Josh teaches thousands of sales professionals how to detach from outcomes, listen deeply, and foster trust, leading to genuine win win sales relationships.

Driven by a passion to revolutionize the sales world, Josh Braun is on a mission to help people sell with integrity, purpose and empathy.

His methods aren't about convincing or pushing.

They are about empowering customers to make decisions that align with their needs and values.

And he's not just teaching this, he's living it.

Showing the world that you don't have to sell your soul to succeed in sales.

Josh, it's an honor and a privilege to have you on the show today.

My gosh, man, like, you've been doing this a long time.

I should just take a step aside and learn from you.

I'm all ready.

I'm ready to impart.

I'm ready.

I'm ready.

You are a teacher.

You are a teacher by trade.

So, man, I'm pumped.

I love chatting sales.

I love chatting business development.

It's my world.

I've.

You've got me.

You've got me by leaps and bounds.

But I've been in this now for about 18 years by the time you do sales and business development together.

But it's funny, it's every once in a while I find myself standing in the shoes of giants and one right in front of me.

What is it about sales that you like talking about?

You know what I love talking about?

Prospecting.

I love talking about lead generation.

The things that everybody's really afraid of.

Right.

It's like we're.

We are afraid to pick up the phone in 2024, 2025 and beyond.

And my goal is to change that.

I want people to pick up the phone again.

And I think we'll probably get into that today.

But before we do, how did you end up on this path?

Who is Josh Braun?

How did you end up from teacher to sales strategist?

So I was two years into getting my doctorate.

I was going to be a principal of an elementary school.

And I'm at Boca Point, which is a gym here in Boca, doing a tricep pull down machine.

There's a guy next to me, and.

I'm overhearing him talk to a friend.

Of his about something called an online homeschool.

I had no idea what the word online meant.

I don't know what, you know, technology was at the time, but the online homeschool made my ears perk up.

And I struck up a conversation with.

Him and he said, why don't you come over to our business and we can show you what we're working on.

And he was selling online homeschool to.

Kids that were homeschooled.

So these are lessons on math, science, social studies.

And he goes, you should stop being a principal and you should come here and you should sell this stuff to schools because you'd be great on it.

Because you're a teacher.

You put the principal stuff on pause.

I'll triple your salary.

I'll give you all these options and you can work with me and I'll teach you how to sell.

And that's what I did.

That's what got me out of the classroom and set me on the path of selling.

And Scott Udine was a real charismatic guy, and he sold me on leaving my teaching career on that day in the gym.

Wow.

Wow.

And your parents were teachers too?

Right.

My mom was a teacher.

Yeah.

She was an elementary school teacher.

My dad was an attorney.

Okay.

Okay.

My gosh, that must have been like, walk me through that choice.

Like, you'd already gone to school for this.

You were already doing it.

Like, my God, what was it like to leave essentially your career for something unknown?

Yeah.

Here's what I discovered.

The universe always has your back.

There's really no wrong choices.

Like, even if it doesn't work out, you can learn something, and you could always go back.

But lamenting over, should I choose A or B, I've just never done that because I realized pretty early on in my life and in my career that it doesn't really matter.

It's all good in the end.

So I went with my gut, which was, this guy seems pretty interesting, and I could learn a lot from him.

And I could always go back.

Yeah.

And I would regret if I didn't try this.

Like, I always wonder, like, what would happen if I would have done so.

And again, if it didn't work out, I could have easily.

I picked up my doctoral program again.

I think that's the way it is for every choice.

If you're deciding between two jobs and.

You'Re like, should I do this one or that one?

It doesn't really matter.

Yeah.

Honestly, the universe just has your back.

So that's how I live my life.

And so it wasn't really a big deal when I chose.

Yeah, Yeah.

I.

I'm a strong believer of business development chose me.

I didn't choose it.

I.

I was running so fast, so fast, so far from sales.

Josh.

When I ended back up in business development, I can't even tell you, dude.

I.

I worked on a car lot as a kid.

I basically parked cars from 16 to 18.

And I remember asking at the time, the.

The manager of the dealership if I could go into sales when I turned 18.

And he looked at me, he's, kelly, I'm not putting you in sales.

I was like, dude, I know these cars inside and out.

Like, I know them better probably than the sales people do.

I've been parking them for three years.

And he looked at me.

He goes, go work at Visions for a little bit.

Which is a Canadian electronic story.

He said, go work at Visions for a little bit or something like that.

Get some, like, sales experience and come back and we'll talk.

And so that's did.

And so at 18, I was working sales, electronic sales.

I did that for about six, eight months.

Went back, got the job on the car lot.

Obviously, this would have been 2008.

And we all know what happened in 2008.

Probably the worst stuff ever to get into.

Into car sales.

I did that for about six months.

I couldn't sell worth crap and had a good time at it, but it was a horrible time to get financing.

And that was it.

I went into part sales after that, did part sales for a few years across Canada and then ended up.

My sister came to me, is like, kelly, what are you doing?

What are you doing with your life?

Go to college, go do something.

So I didn't know what I wanted to do.

So I went into business school and I did a fast track diploma.

Got business with the idea of thinking, I'm just going to go work in operations or something.

I'm going to get a real easy 9 to 5 job where I just got to make some decisions and go home.

And within about two months of starting business admin job as an operations guy, I.

I got found out and they kind of looked at me and said, you're really great at business development and that's what we need.

So can you do business development for us?

And I remember Josh sitting down at my computer, this would have been in 2013, say February 2013, googling, what the heck is business development?

And the rest is history.

Turned out I was really great at it.

I love building relationships.

For me, it was just all about establishing relationships with people.

And I did that job for 10 years before I went out on my own and started my own business development firm.

But it's funny because almost everybody that I've talked to that's ended up in business development specifically, I always ask them, I said, did you choose this?

And they're like, no, man.

Like, it shows me.

And so, like, I've just come to the conclusion, like you said, like, business development really chooses.

It chooses you.

It's typically not the other way around.

Not to get too deep here, but I don't think there is actually free will.

You think about it?

I'm at the gym that day.

Yeah.

And if not for that guy being there, talking about child, you.

Yeah, I'm still a teacher.

Now.

Did I choose to go and have a conversation with Scott Eudean?

Not really.

I was at that gym because my parents were members of that gym and I happened to be working out at the same time that Scott was working out.

And so all these things, like, we think we have the.

It feels like we have control.

It feels like we're deciding like we're in these events and circumstances and we just don't really have the free will.

We fall into things.

Yes.

And it's all good.

And so when you went out on your own, what was different about that as opposed to being working for a company?

You know what?

I think I was just.

I was really afraid it was Covid.

Right.

So basically, Covid had come along.

My boss pulled me aside.

I've been there 10 years.

And he just looked at me and said, you've been here a long time.

We don't know what the next couple years look like.

Do you have a plan?

And thank God he at least gave me the choice.

And I was like, you know what?

I don't.

But I'm going to figure one out real quick.

And for a while, I'd thought about going out on my own, doing business development.

But like any person who's been in a job a long time, you're like, you're comfortable, right?

You don't shake it up.

I.

I went for it.

What was really cool was that boss, he.

He actually paid me a really nice severance, so I was able to establish capital, business development.

And from there, he also actually offered me my first contract as well to help me get going.

So I had.

Honestly, I had a lot of help.

The universe was providing.

Definitely agree to that one.

In that moment, I'm not sure I would have been able to do it without the help that I had at the time.

But, dude, going out on my own was liberating.

It really was.

It changed everything.

And I didn't realize it.

And I always talk to people who are looking to start their own companies, and I say, you know what?

You don't realize how much power you have as an individual until you go out and do your own thing, because you have way more than you thought you had.

And for me, it was incredibly liberating.

And now I couldn't imagine doing anything else.

But back then, I remember it being really scary.

And when you say liberating, liberating in what way?

Being able to choose your own.

Yeah, I think it's being able to succeed for yourself, being able to succeed for yourself, being able to choose.

What is your outcome?

Are you going to make those extra sales calls today?

Are you going to close more business?

Do you want more business?

You want less business?

Having that ability to just do what you want that entrepreneurship offers you is unbelievable.

Yeah, I agree.

For me, the best thing about it is not having to ask anyone to take time off.

Talk about liberating.

Like, you can not have to ask anyone for time off.

Like, how Many of you can say that, listening to me this.

Not many of you.

That's really freedom, like, just not having to ask someone for time off.

And it turns out, I think it's actually more secure.

Yeah.

I thought it would be less secure than a job.

But if you think about it, if you're on your own, and again, it's not for everyone, but I don't know, you have.

I have hundreds of customers and clients.

And people that have purchased my stuff.

If I lose one of them, it's okay.

There's 98, 97 more.

Yeah.

But if, for whatever reason, your company.

Decides to downsize through no fault of your own, you don't have a lot of redundancy.

Just have one income stream there.

So it's actually, I think, more secure.

Yes.

To be out on your own.

Yeah.

I had a conversation with Liz Ryan about the SIM about a very similar thing, and we were just talking about that and how, like, you really, as an employee, you feel safe, but you can be let go at any.

For any reason, at any time.

Like, how is that any safer than entrepreneurship?

Yes, I agree.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Take us into it.

Like, you start.

So after that, you started Mega Heads?

Was that right after this happened for you?

So that was when I was teaching.

So that was before I noticed that at the time, the schools were getting a tremendous amount of technology.

City ROMs and computers were hitting all.

The schools and specifically in the media centers and libraries, but the teachers had no training on what to do with this stuff.

So it was sitting there collecting dust.

And so I approached the school board and offered to rent the space out after school hours to start a summer camp where I would expose kids to technology.

We would do things like digital photography, digital editing.

Wow.

We would do things like word processing and audio mixing and photography.

Photoshop.

There was a product called Kid Pics.

Which was like, Photoshop for kids.

And I grew that pretty substantially.

I got a pretty good reputation for it.

I think I had about four or.

Five hundred kids go through it at one point.

Wow.

Yeah.

So that was when I was teaching.

I was doing that, like, on the side summers and after school.

Wow.

Wow.

And like, digital photography in the night in the 90s, really?

My gosh.

Yeah.

There was a program out there called Kid Pics.

For any of you that are old.

Like I am, you probably remember it, or you can Google it, and you'd be able to bring pictures in.

These digital cameras were storing pictures on floppy desks at the time.

The first digital cameras had, like, literally a floppy drive with a little disk.

That went in there.

And I teach kids, you know, how to use them, and they were quite capable.

And then we had a movie editor.

Called Avid, which was one of the.

First movie editors before Adobe Premiere.

And we would write scripts and shoot movies, and we would have Premiere nights where we'd invite the parents, and the parents would watch their kids acting in these movies that they edited, and it was very fulfilling.

And, I don't know, 10 years afterwards.

I ran into a couple of the.

Kids when I was at restaurants here in Boca, and they remembered that day, and it really stuck with them.

So it was a good experience.

Wow.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's unreal.

I, like, I think back to 1997-99, I would have been, like, 11 years.

Old.

So I would have been one of those kids.

Josh, you would have been in the class.

You would have been in.

You would have been in the camp.

That's right.

Yeah.

I remember getting a.

One of the first little digital cameras that we had for our computer at that time.

I think it was like.

I think it was like one megapixel, maybe two megapixels.

It looked like the blurriest, crappiest pictures, but I remember thinking it was so cool.

Amazing.

It's.

I think back to that time to now.

As a millennial, we've really grown up through this, like, really weird technological time where we've seen everything before and we see everything now.

And, like, for me, I almost.

I lived it, and I still find it almost unbelievable where we are at today versus where we were at in, like, 1997.

Like, it is almost hard to believe how much technology has advanced in that time.

Agree.

Josh, I want to take us in.

Obviously, after that, you.

Sorry, you met a gentleman and you became head of growth at Child U.

Yeah, after I met Scott, I was selling and doing product development for Child U, which eventually got acquired by a company called Compass Learning, which was very big in the sort of K12 space.

And I continued selling, evangelizing, and doing product development for that company as well.

Okay, okay.

And what was Jelly Vision?

So when I worked at Compass Learning.

One of the jobs that I had was to develop software for kids to teach them how to read.

But I wanted to develop software that.

Would actually be fun to use in entertainment, entertaining.

And I remembered when I was young, playing a game called you don't know Jack, which was a really cool trivia game, and I'm like, what is if we could use something like that to teach reading?

And so I did a Google search.

And I found out that it was made by a company called jellyvision, specifically this guy, Harry Gottlieb.

And I just picked up the phone and called and Harry picked up the.

Phone and I was freaking out because he was Nate Shapiro, the voice of.

You don't know Jack.

Yeah.

And we got to talking and Amanda Leonard, who was the president or at the time, I think, actually.

What?

She wasn't the president.

She was working there at the time.

Yeah, she was the president.

She became the CEO later, we got to talking and I hired them to develop educational software.

And that's where I met jellyvision and ended up working for them to help them sell their tool set and also.

Help them sell their agency services.

Wow.

So that's where I went after, you know, Compass Learning.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah, I used to play it.

You don't know.

Chat.

Dude, that's a great game.

Great game.

Great game.

Yeah.

Still a great game, actually.

I think.

Still good.

Holds up.

Got a long shelf life.

Yeah, we used to use it for like corporate training days just.

Just to unite people because it's such a fun game to play.

It's great.

I would recommend that to any businesses right now who are looking to unify the company.

Have some, you don't know, Jack days.

Company still alive and well, like jackbox games.

And they've continuing to pump out games still to this day.

It is incredible.

It is incredible.

Take us in from there.

You started inside selling podcast in 2017.

Run me through that.

Obviously, as a podcaster myself.

You're seven years into inside selling podcasts.

I'm only like two by the.

Even though by this point I think I'm only about two and a half years in.

So what has it been like to run a podcast for the last seven years?

That's amazing.

It's.

It's really not that amazing.

My podcast is a little bit different than yours.

What?

I don't really.

Very rarely will I ever interview people.

It's primarily me just talking about something.

For two or three minutes.

Each episode is literally between a minute and three minutes long.

Yeah.

And I'm primarily riffing on something that.

I wrote or something that I saw.

And it's very sporadic.

It's not really professionally done at all.

Sometimes I'll just record it on my phone and just upload it immediately without editing it.

So it's.

It might look like a lot goes into it, but it's very sporadic at the time and I just do it whenever I do it.

And so it's not as thoughtful as your podcast?

Oh, no, not at all.

Not at all, dude.

The reality is, like, I'm very young in the podcast side of things, right?

Like, I started this show.

My original idea was just to do business development, just like you, just to provide advice on business development, right?

What do I know?

What do I want to do?

Do I want to put myself out there?

I remember being really afraid.

I almost didn't.

I almost stopped at episode three.

Episode three was almost the end of the bdp.

I was feeling pretty self conscious in that moment.

And who am I to do this?

Who am I to stand up?

But there was just not much in the space specifically on.

On new business development, which is really what I focus on.

And I was trying to encourage entrepreneurs, business development people, really, to pick up the phone.

Really to pick up the phone, use your CRMs, pick up the phone and actually make real connections, book real meetings, have lunch with people, see people.

Right?

Like, the whole goal with the show is to connect people because that's really what, in my mind, business development is.

And yeah, it started off just the same as you providing, like weekly information.

And quickly I realized, you know what?

I think I want to talk to people too.

As much as I like talking to myself, I really like conversating with people.

And so, yeah, it quickly did turn into a twice a week show where we do a Wednesday show, which is business development topics.

Still do that.

And where we do a Sunday show, which is expert guest interviews with people like Josh Bronze.

How are you liking it so far?

You enjoying it?

I love it, man.

If I could do this full time, all the time, this is all I do.

It doesn't pay all the bills yet, but one day maybe you got to.

Start charging people like me to be.

Like, hey, Josh, it's five grand.

No, I will never charge people.

My rule from Point Go is no matter how big this gets, I will.

Because here's the deal.

You should be charging me for your time, right?

Right.

You know what?

I'm sending you stripe right now.

You're making a lot of sense.

Yeah, you're sending me an invoice.

A lot of sense.

What am I doing on this podcast for free?

What is wrong with me?

Yeah, exactly.

It's like I interview people like Liz Ryan.

I'm sure I probably should have paid 100 grand for that interview somehow, didn't Liz?

Let's get together, Liz.

You and I united front.

Yeah, no, you should.

Podcasters out there don't charge your guests, period.

Ever.

Horrible plan.

I agree with you.

I agree.

I Agree.

No, it's.

First off, I am standing on.

On the shoulders of giants.

The reality is podcasting wouldn't be where it's at without people like you.

Whether you do three minutes, the way I see it, whether you do three minutes, 30 minutes, or an hour and a half, if you're providing value, who cares?

I know I struggled with that for a while.

In the beginning, I was like, should my episodes be, like, longer?

Should they be 30 minutes long?

But it's like, who cares if you deliver value and be done?

But I know in the beginning, I know I struggled with that for a bit, but I definitely got over it.

Yeah.

And I.

My.

My take on it's a little bit different.

I think you create what you want to create because you want to create it, and you don't really think about if it's valuable to someone else because you don't really control what people find, quote, unquote, valuable or interesting.

But if it resonates with you and.

You want to talk about it, you talk about it and then you're on to the next thing.

These things are.

They have such a short shelf life.

Yeah.

Anyway, people have a tendency to overthink.

It and want to pull the audience and.

What you think I should talk about, nobody knows.

You just talk about what brings you joy, what is interesting to you, what your perspective is, and share it and enjoy the process of creating it, and then keep doing that versus trying to think about, you know, am I creating.

Value for other people?

I have no idea.

I don't.

I have no idea.

I don't control it.

I don't focus on it.

Bring us into brand training.

Talk to me about.

Talk to me about that.

So when I was learning how to.

Sell, I read all the traditional sales.

Books on the market, like I'm sure a lot of people have, that.

Have.

That are listening to this podcast, and they all felt very pushy to me.

They all relied on approaches and tactics that I would not want done to me.

And because they didn't feel good on my soul, I wasn't having a lot of success when I was trying to do them to other people.

At the same time, I was going through a situation because I had just lost my dad and I was having a real hard time with it.

So I was in therapy with a.

Psychologist, and a light bulb moment went off for me when I was in therapy, which was that the therapist wasn't.

Really trying to sell me on change.

And she wasn't trying to convince me to do anything.

It was actually the Opposite of that.

She was listening and understanding and asking.

Very deliberate questions to get me to discover my own motivations for potential change.

And I was dissecting the question she was asking me as I was being treated, thinking to myself, this has applicability for selling this idea that you shift from making statements to asking questions that get people to think differently about their current situation.

I'll just give you, like, a quick example.

So imagine that you are selling a new product to wash cars with.

The normal, traditional approach is, I got to come up with my value proposition.

We help people wash their cars in.

A way that gets their car cleaner.

So much faster and shinier than any.

Other approach you've ever used.

And that's an approach based on explaining.

And pitching and trying to convince.

And the problem is, no matter what you sell, people are washing their car today, and nobody wants to be convinced.

So what the psychologist would do is something very different.

She would say something like this, hey, Josh, I know you wash your car with a bucket and a sponge.

What we're often seeing when that happens.

Is dirt and grit can get trapped in the sponge because it settles to the bottom of the bucket, which can scratch your car.

How are you making sure that doesn't.

Happen when you wash your car?

And in that moment you're scratching your head, thinking, I'm not sure.

What do you mean?

And then you could say, oh, you've probably heard of the grit guard, which.

Is a device that goes in the.

Bucket like a cheese grater, and you rub your sponge on it so the.

Dirt settles to the bottom of the.

Bucket, off the sponge, and off your car.

And I might say, no, what is that?

Or I might say, yeah, I looked into it.

To which you might say, oh, sounds.

Like it wasn't a fit for you.

Sounds like the value wasn't there for you.

It's an approach based on pulling information out versus pushing information in.

And so that formed the basis of my approach for brawn training, which is.

To be able to sell in ways.

Without convincing, pushing and begging by asking questions and leaning back and detaching from the outcome so that people are more likely to open up and discover for themselves why they might want to switch.

Because what I learned in psychology from my psychologist pretty early on is people.

Are more motivated to change for reasons they discover, and they say versus what.

Sellers say that are biased.

Wow.

Wow.

Walk me through the first time that you tried this strategy.

Like, how did you implement it?

Walk me through it.

Yeah, the first time I tried it was when I was a Seller at Jellyvision.

So that was an agency, and that agency turned into a SaaS company selling an HR solution.

So if you can imagine, when employees go to work during open enrollment, they have to select what benefit plan they want to be on.

And if you've ever been through that experience, the companies will send you all this information.

And it has a lot of jargon in it that you might not understand and you might not know what benefits select.

So you got to go hit up the HR department.

And if you have thousands of employees.

That'S a big burden on the team.

Or you have people that are not even in the office.

They're remote workers, like if you're Comcast.

And it's hard to get that information out.

So we had a way to be able to explain benefits to people in a way that they could understand so that they would choose the right healthcare plan.

Now, different people in that organization care about different things.

Like a CFO doesn't care about that, but a benefits director might.

So if I call the cfo, a CFO knows that benefits are expensive, and we had a way to offset those costs because we had more people moving into FSA plans, which reduces the tax liability.

So I would call a cfo, and rather than pitching, I would say something like this to him.

Hey, John, we know that benefit costs are going up every year, typically by 9 to 12%.

How are you going about offsetting those costs today?

And he would just.

Or she would scratch your head and.

Go, I don't know.

What do you mean?

Have you heard of virtual benefits counselors?

What are those?

They help move more people into FSA.

So you can reduce your tax liability.

How does it work?

You see what we're doing here?

Not telling.

We're asking questions to elicit a response.

And so that's an example of early on what I would do.

I'd call benefits directors, and I would say, hey, John, typically benefits directors, when they communicate benefits, they're using, like newsletters or intranets or company meetings.

How are you guys going about communicating benefits today?

So what I would do is I would proactively address all of the current ways.

So that would eliminate any kind of objection around we doing it this way.

And then from there, I would ask a question.

How are you going about moving more.

People into FSAs today?

Do you have a way to increase that participation?

What do you mean?

Oh, you've probably heard of a virtual benefits counselor.

What's that?

And that work in a conversation, and they're leaning forward.

Yeah.

So it's this idea of asking questions.

To make people scratch their head and think differently.

C2FOs.

One of my clients, one of the.

Questions they came up with at the.

Workshop, which is opening up so many doors, is, John, how are you currently getting access to working capital when you.

Don'T want to take on more debt or pledge assets?

These guys sell advance payment of invoices, but that's going to make like, how do I get capital?

Right now I have either have to.

Pledged assets or go into debt.

What do you mean?

Like, of course I need those two things.

What do you have?

What are you suggesting?

Oh, you've probably heard of prepayment invoices.

Yeah, I've heard of it.

Oh, sounds like the value wasn't there for you.

It wasn't that.

It's X, Y and Z.

So it's coming up with these questions.

That are neutral questions that are not leading questions.

Yeah.

That make people think a little differently.

About their current solution.

And that's the art of cold calling.

These, what I call illumination questions are poking the bear.

Yeah, Yeah, I love that.

I love that.

I also love your line.

Sounds like the value wasn't there for you.

I want to single in on that.

I want to single in on that.

What's the importance of that line?

So what we're trying to do is take an educated guess as to why.

The person didn't buy.

So chances are, if you're selling to someone who's been in RevOps for 20 years and they're calculating commissions using spreadsheets, they know that the commission process and calculating commissions can be automated.

So I'm not going to vomit Captivate.

IQ at them and educate them on automating spreadsheets.

It's going to bruise their ego.

So I would say to them, hey, Kelly, when you calculate commissions, are you.

Guys using spreadsheets like Excel or Google Sheets or is it automated?

Oh, we're using spreadsheets.

Oh, you've probably looked into automating it.

Yeah, of course we have.

And now I'm going to take a guess as to why they didn't switch.

And if I guess wrong, they're going to correct me.

I might say, oh, your rules for commissions were probably too complex to be automated.

It's not that.

It's actually X, Y and Z.

Oh.

Sounds like the value.

The price was too high.

It's not that.

Yeah, the price was too high.

And now you can see if you can create some kind of an information gap.

Maybe there's a reason why they didn't automate it.

And maybe that's not a fit for you, which is a perfectly good outcome if determined early.

It's terrible if determined late.

So these are not meant to close people or move anything forward.

It's just meant to get to more truth.

Yeah.

And when you have more truth, you have more trust.

And when you have more trust, you.

Can determine which deals are worth focusing on, which ones aren't.

You're sorting, not selling.

Yeah.

And actually when you're saying that, when you're essentially making like a presumption, if you're wrong, they almost feel compelled to correct you.

People love correcting.

I recently interviewed Jack Schaefer again on his book the Truth Detector.

I don't know if you ever read the Switch, but he's an ex FBI agent.

He wrote a book on essentially psychology and he talks about a lot in like Switch, but in the Truth Detector, he really gets into the power of elicitation techniques.

And one of them is the, it's the presuming.

It's essentially like making a presumptive statement saying this, but it, but doing it wrong intentionally.

And it's almost the exact same thing.

You're not quite doing that, but it's very similar.

Yeah, I'm not doing it.

Yeah, I'm not doing it intentionally.

I'm going to list out, when I do these workshops, what we do is we list out all of the reasons why people resist and we bring them up proactively because if they're not there, you can't bring them up.

People will say, that's not it.

It's actually this.

Another simple example.

If you're selling an iPod in 2007.

Nobody'S sitting around not listening to music if they're runners.

If your ICP is people that run with music, you're going to call and you're going to say, hey, Josh, when you go running today, are you carrying around a CD player or are you using something like a Domat Nomad or Diamond Rio MP3 player?

Oh, I'm using a Diamond MP3 player.

Those players are so popular, they pretty much created the, the category.

How do you like it?

That's fine.

It's okay.

Now here's the question, right?

The illumination question.

So as when that came out, had 32 megabytes of RAM, which means it holds 30 minutes of music.

If you don't mind me asking, Josh.

When you go on your long two.

Hour runs, how are you dealing with that?

Are you like swapping your music out or are you like listening to the same songs on Repeat.

I guess I just listen to the.

Same songs over and over again.

Oh, you've probably looked into an ipod.

Yeah, I've looked into it.

Oh, it was too expensive.

It wasn't that it was too expensive.

I'm on a Windows machine.

So this person has an information gap.

They think that it only works on.

A Windows machine, only works on a Mac, not a Windows machine.

Or there's a perfectly good reason why.

They didn't get it, which is, hey.

Josh, I only have 10 minutes of music and I never go for more than 15 minute runs.

In which case it's not a problem.

And your solution has no value without a problem.

Again, it gets back to detaching from the outcome and letting go of assumptions.

And discovering if there's a potential problem.

And the word potential matters because it's only a problem if the prospect says it's a problem, not because you think it's a problem.

Okay, no, this, it sounds like what you're really trying to do is you're using a lot of questions to essentially try to get to the objections like you said ahead so that you can get them out of the way.

Walk me through this, though.

Let's say that we have a company right now and they sell, let's call it, let's call it maintenance services to oil and gas companies.

Alberta, Alberta, Canada.

Problem.

Right now they're selling maintenance services.

It might be manpower.

It might be a product of some type.

And right now they'll show up and they will provide a rate sheet to this company and they'll say, hey, John, US maintenance company XYZ.

We're competing against probably 10 or 15 other maintenance companies in the city, all providing relatively the same services.

How can they use this technique to stand out?

They're already having meetings.

But no, they are definitely not doing it in this way.

They're definitely not using this tactical approach to it.

How would you sell, let's call it.

Let's just make it easy.

Manpower Services.

How would you sell Manpower Services to a company that could buy manpower services from 15 other companies?

So let me tell you a quick.

Story that were related to Manpower Services.

So several years ago, I was in the mall with my wife, Town Center Mall in Boca.

I didn't need anything.

She was returning some items.

We were going to grab dinner at.

True Food, which is in the mall.

And to just kill some time, I walked into a fit to run store, not needing anything.

If the store associates said, what brings you in today?

What do you think?

I would have said?

I'm Just here to kill some time.

Just killing some time.

If she said, do you have any problems?

What do you think?

I would have said?

No.

If she said, we got these new Brooks sneakers.

They can help you run further faster, what do you think?

I would have said, let's see them.

Not really, because I have sneakers and I'm not really interested in running further faster.

Okay.

But she didn't do any of those things.

Yeah.

Instead, she looked down at my sneakers.

She goes, are you a runner?

And they go, I am.

She goes, you training for any races?

And I go, I'm actually training for.

My first half marathon.

And she said, oh, you've probably had.

A running gait test.

And I said, what's that?

And moments later, I'm on a treadmill in the store.

I have video of this if you want to see it for the show notes.

Yeah.

And she freezes the frame of the video.

She zooms in on my ankles, and.

She goes, you notice how your ankles are over pronating when you run?

And I said, yes.

So she goes, the problem is if.

You run in sneakers that are not.

Made for pronated feet, you can get injuries like plantar fasciitis and runner snake.

I could take a look at your sneakers to see if they're made for pronated feet.

And about six minutes later, I'm spending 178 hours on new sneakers and insoles.

Wow.

So the lesson to hear is, no matter what you sell, whether it's maintenance or sneakers or podcast editing software or anything, nobody's sitting around without sneakers.

Everybody has a solution in place today, just like you.

You're using Riverside fm.

Yeah.

You're comfortable with your current solution.

So in order for you to stand.

Out, you need to ask a question.

That shines a light on the terrible, no good, very bad thing that happens.

If someone does nothing.

So you have to figure out, what is it about what you're selling that what that they're not selling that can hurt them?

And the hurt is very important because people are more likely to change based on something that they're losing versus gaining.

It's something called loss aversion.

Prospecting theory.

Kettleman, if you guys want to Daniel Kettleman, if you guys want to geek out on this, but you can't ask it in a leading way.

So without knowing the product, it would be hard to say.

But it's the same thing with the shoes and the same thing with the car wash bucket.

So how are you dealing with those situations where you're washing your car with one bucket?

Without scratching it, you have to know what is the problem with the current way.

Now, if there's no problem with the current way, there's no reason for someone to switch.

You're not switching from Riverside to Descript unless I can illuminate a potential problem.

Yes, sure.

So I might say to you, Kelly, typically when I talk to podcasters, they record episodes on Riverside, and then they have to go in and figure out the clips they're going to select to edit and promote.

How are you going about doing that today on Riverside?

Like, how do you do that today, Kelly?

Well, right now, Riverside actually has an automatic clip creator.

Okay, great.

No problem.

Yeah.

So how are you going about.

How do you transcribe the videos?

I actually use the script to transcribe the videos.

Use the script to transcribe the videos?

Yes.

And you.

It sounds like you're probably.

You probably know that the script also has a podcast recorder called Squadcast.

Yes, I do.

You're comfortable with Riverside.

That's why you haven't switched.

That's right.

What is it about Riverside?

You know what I think it's just that I've had it since the beginning and I haven't explored what squadcast could do for me.

So typically, when people use Riverside, they're.

Paying anywhere from 50 to $60 every single month.

How long have you been using Riverside for?

Two years.

Two years.

So you're paying $60 a month?

Is that what you're paying for?

Do you know how much you're paying for it?

It's a really good question.

I don't have the exact number, but, yeah, you're probably pretty close.

You're probably.

It's probably about 50 bucks, 60 bucks a month.

Sure.

Would you be open to keeping Riverside and recording a demo podcast with Squadcast just to see if there's an opportunity for you to do the same exact job, but without losing $60 every single month.

Is that something you'd be open to experimenting with?

That is very compelling.

So it's.

It's not ask me to quit it or go away.

I'm giving you the choice.

But that's.

The idea is like you're losing $60.

Potentially ever since now.

You might not care about the $60 because it's.

I just don't want to deal with it.

It's so comfortable.

But you might care about it, and I'm looking for people that might care about it.

Yeah, yeah.

No, it's a very different, very passive way.

Yeah, but you're right.

But it's also very compelling.

It's not like it's less compelling.

I would say that it's equally compelling, if not more compelling than the direct approach.

I actually agree with you.

Walk me through how you generate the questions because I think that ends up being a bit of a challenge for a lot of people.

Walk me through.

How do you come up with the right questions for your product and service?

You don't.

You find them.

You have to interview customers that switched.

Using something called Jobs to be done.

So people that have purchased within the last 30 to 45 days, there's a interview approach called Jobs to be done.

And it's the only approach that I know that gets to the causal reasons of why people switched.

And people will tell you what the events and circumstances were that it caused enough dominoes to tip over.

And you'll use those words in your cold call tracks for your illumination questions and in your cold emails.

So good cold email copy isn't written.

It's not how you speak.

It's actually found.

It's actually lifted from the voice of customers.

Not marketing stuff that actually customers actually say in quotes is how you start.

To formulate those questions.

Oh my goodness, let's spend some time there because I get questions about that all the time.

Kelly, how do you do your cold email reach outs?

And I want to hear from you because I know it sounds like you've really got it nailed down.

So walk me through it.

How do you do your cold email reach out?

I don't do them.

I find quotes.

So I'll give you an example.

A few months ago, a friend of mine asked me to go fly fishing.

I had never been fly fishing before.

I started Googling a bunch of stuff.

And one of the things you realize.

Pretty quickly about fly fishing as I was preparing for it, is you have.

To tie these knots to attach the fly to the tippet or the line.

And this stuff is very thin and it's sunny out and the flies are super small and I don't have as as good a vision as I did when I was younger.

And I don't have the motor skills so I can tie these knots, but it takes me like 15, 20 minutes to tie them.

And so I got this outreach and it said something like this, Josh, you shouldn't have to spend 10 to 15 minutes tying Orvis and triple surgeon knots from the back of your truck.

Now that's very specific.

That's something a customer said that switched.

Over to something called the knot needle, which is a needle that allows you.

To tie your knots.

So that you can spend less time tying knots and more time fishing.

It's a testimonial on the Knot Needle website from a customer that switched and you just take that and you lift.

Those words and you paste them into your cold emails.

Wow.

If you are trying to write the words yourself using templates or using a cold email course and someone's giving you.

Words and frameworks, you're doing it wrong.

Because that's not how your customers speak.

You can't write those emails.

Your customers are better at writing them than you are.

You gotta find the quotes from customer testimonials, case studies, customer interviews, listening in on calls, on discovery calls.

And you create something called a lingo.

Library and you put these quotes in there and then you lift them and you, and you literally paste them in.

Wow.

Wow.

Yeah.

Because I'll tell you what, I'm getting a lot of crap outreach on my LinkedIn.

Like a lot of AI crap outreach at this point.

Like you can tell they're not even written thoughtfully, they're just somebody asked for a line on, on, on chat GPT and I'm getting the direct line.

What's your approach to AI these days?

What do you mean my approach to.

Do you utilize it at all for any of your, any of your.

Your copy?

So I use it when I Write posts on LinkedIn.

So I will usually write a draft and I will ask ChatGPT for some different variations of different language.

I'll also use it when I'm researching a target account.

I'll go in there and I'll try to understand how people are currently getting the job done and I'll get real detailed and what's the problem with the current way that is not as good as hearing from a customer that actually paid money to switch.

It's a very different thing.

Customers just talk differently.

I'll give you another example.

When I was training for a triathlon as Ironman race, which is a long distance triathlon, I write about this stuff.

So I got a call from someone who's a triathlon coach in Boca and I'll never forget what he said.

He says, hey Josh, I know you're training for your first Ironman, not sure about you, but that typically means you're eating every Snickers bar in the house.

You're having dinner by 4:00 clock at.

Night, there's no more date night, you're.

Going to sleep at 6pm I call that divorce by triathlon.

How does that compare to your experience?

And I'm like, dude, where did you Divorce by triathlon.

That's what I'm thinking.

Like in my head, he goes, oh, a customer said that.

Chachi PT is not spitting that out.

No, that's coming from a customer's voice.

That's very visceral.

It's gonna make someone feel a certain way.

Yeah.

So you got to do the work.

Of talking to customers.

That's the one thing that's never going.

To change in sales.

You're going to have chat GPT4 and.

Claude and all these things and holograms and videos.

But what's never going to change is the customer.

Yeah.

The events and circumstances that what they say caused them to switch away from something and hire something else.

Yeah.

Like when you say divorce by triathlon, I immediately get an emotional response.

Visceral.

It's visceral.

Yeah.

And you're right, you don't get that from a chat GPT.

Not really.

No.

Not really.

No.

My gosh.

You know what's funny, dude?

I've been doing this a long time.

I've never.

When I've heard.

I ask a lot of questions when I'm dealing with prospects.

I'm asking a lot of questions, trying to get to the understanding.

But I've never thought about it in this way.

It's very unique.

Let's say that I do have that customer referral or I have that, that testimonial.

How do you then take the customer's testimonial?

And it sounds like you're doing a bit of wordsmithing to get it to fit when you're reaching out to another customer.

But talk to me a little bit about that wordsmithing process.

Yeah.

So I use something called 4T email.

So the first T stands for the.

Trigger or the observation.

Hey, Josh, looks like you're going to Casper, Wyoming on a fly fish trip.

And the reason that you want to start with an observation is something called social loafing, which is people are more inclined to pay attention to something that.

They feel that they're uniquely qualified to pay attention to.

Why are you emailing me versus anybody else?

So there's all sorts of ways.

This is not notice you like to post.

This is something that has to relate to the problem.

So, Josh, looks like you're going to Casper, Wyoming to fly fish with Marty.

How are you ensuring that you're not.

Spending 10 plus minutes sitting in the.

Back of your trunk tying knots instead of fishing?

That's the illumination question.

And then we're going to go into what it is.

Over 3,000 beginner fly fishers are using.

The knot needle allows you to tie a knot using a needle.

So you spend less time tying knots, more time fishing.

Think this might come in handy?

Like that's the gist of the email, the trigger event, the question that makes people think.

Third party credibility and does it make sense to talk?

And it's four or five sentences, same kind of structure, but you gotta have.

A good sense of what's meaningfully different.

Compared to how they're doing it today.

And you gotta be specific.

And with the knot needle, you tie knots with a tool that looks like a needle so you can actually see what you're doing.

Maybe you include even a picture of it in this case.

Right.

So you're gonna explain how it works, which is gonna make it more believable.

Incredible.

I get so many emails about, we have this AI generated thing that's going to help you write posts like, how does it work?

So it doesn't sound believable or credible.

Yeah.

So the phrase that I like to use is in emails, it involves a tool.

It looks like a needle, just like.

You would sew it so.

So that you can actually see what you're doing with the line.

It involves.

You're painting the picture.

You're actually, you're actually showing them how it actually works.

How it works?

Yeah, how it works.

When you're more crispy or specific, you're more believable.

Yeah.

It's so simple.

But it's so simple.

Why do we miss this?

Why are we not all.

Why do we not like automatically CL Clue into this?

Josh.

Why is this not automatic for all of us?

You can't get better at something that you haven't been taught and practiced.

I sometimes will get asked by companies to come in and critique cold emails and I don't like doing it.

It's critiquing me on the piano if.

I've never played the piano before.

In order for you, if you went to the gym and you've not worked out before and the trainer said, I'm going to critique your push up and you've never done a push up before, how would you know how to do one?

So you got to model what good is.

Here's how you do a push up and here's why it's a good push up.

Now you do one and I'm going to score you based on what you're.

What good is.

So in order to get good at something or anything.

Piano, cold emails, explaining something like, most people don't know how to explain what they do.

That's not their fault.

They have not been taught how to explain something in a way that's clear and compelling.

You can teach someone how to explain something?

Yeah.

Hey, Josh.

Here's how to explain what phone ready leads is.

Josh, you know how your Salespeople will make 50 calls and even if they have direct numbers, if they're lucky, they'll only have one or two conversations.

With phone ready leads, your reps make the same 50 dials, but instead of only having one or two conversations, they.

Have 10 to 12, generally speaking.

Does that sound interesting or not really?

That's a way to explain something before.

And after can teach that to you and then we can learn and apply how you solve that.

A problem like that.

But I have to teach that to you first.

So to answer your question, the reason.

People don't do it is because they take writing emails for granted.

They do it so many times that they think they know how to do it.

But unless you realize it's a skill.

Yeah.

That can be learned and mastered, you.

Can'T get better at it.

And whether to use this framework that.

We'Re talking about or somebody else's, you have to have what good is.

Same thing with a cold call and the discovery call.

What's good?

Yeah, but whenever I get conversations with.

Sales managers and they said our reps.

Are terrible at discovery calls, I said, do they know what good is?

Like, have you taught what good is?

And the answer usually is everyone's doing their own thing.

How can you expect them to be better good at it?

They don't know what good is.

Yeah.

Josh, we're talking to a lot of entrepreneurs right now, a lot of salespeople, a lot of business development people who maybe are fresh to it, maybe they've been at it a long time and they're really like, this approach sounds awesome.

How do I get started in it?

What, what advice would you give them to start going down this path?

So my first advice would be to get closer to the customer.

Like get off LinkedIn.

Don't buy any courses, don't buy any books.

Just get closer to the customer.

What I mean by that is start a document called a lingo library and find out what jobs specifically that your prospects want to get done.

Your former customers.

Find out how your customers were getting the job done before they switched detailed.

And then what happened that caused the current way not to work anymore.

Nobody wakes up one day and decides to switch.

There's a story, a rich story of a lot of events and circumstances that happen.

And you'll interview four or five customers and you'll start to get a sense of the journey.

From there, things get a lot easier.

There's frameworks that I use or lots of other people, but unless you have this part of it, the frameworks are not going to be able to help you.

Then you just plug what you learned into these either cold email or cold call talk tracks and you make some.

Calls, you have some conversations, and if.

The message is resonating.

So it involves you having to go back to your past, your current or past clients, and saying, hey, do you mind telling me in writing or over voice?

I guess we recorded why you switched to us.

Yeah, you can't ask that question.

Okay.

People won't be able to tell you.

So without getting too detailed, there's a.

There's an approach called jobs to be done.

I'll give you an example just so you can see how.

So I was at the base camp with Bob Mahesta and he asked the audience, what's something that you recently bought?

And someone said, I just bought a nightlight for my book.

And if you asked him why he bought it, he would say, I just wanted to read at night.

But when you do a jobs to be done interview with him, this is what you learn.

He was actually in bed and every time he would turn the lamp on, his wife would get upset because she couldn't go to bed, leave and she would sleep in another room.

And this was causing a little friction in the marriage because they weren't sleeping together.

Yes.

So he found this nightlight and when he turned the nightlight on, she was able to sleep and he was able.

To read in bed and they still.

Were able to sleep in the same bed.

That is a very different marketing message.

That's why you can't tell ask why.

So jobs to be done is like making a document.

Hey, take me back.

When did you buy the nightlight?

What was going on that caused you to start to look at the nightlight?

I was in bed with my wife and I couldn't.

So what did you do?

I went to the other bedroom.

Yeah.

And then what happened?

Then what happened?

Then what happened?

Like, oh, versus why did you buy people really won't be.

And you also can't ask people this if the story is not fresh.

You got to interview people.

I bought within the last 30 to 45 days.

People that were involved in the decision making process, not the end users of the product.

So there's a little bit of you could read up on jobs to be done.

It's probably beyond the scope of this podcast, but it is a tech.

An interview technique that is very challenging to learn.

No kidding.

But it's the only way that I know to get this, to get the real story.

Yes.

Yes.

And do you teach this interview technique?

No.

No.

I thought that would be worth asking.

I don't teach it.

I don't teach it.

I do have something called the Jobs to be Done guide in my badass B2B growth guidebook.

I don't teach it as immersive.

No.

Okay.

No, that's fair.

That's fair.

Josh, when should.

When should we be asking our customers about this?

Like you said, like, 30 to 45 days after the point of sale.

Should we line up like an interview with them?

How does that work exactly?

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

If you can't.

If you can't do that, you don't have access to that.

Next best thing is mining customer testimonials.

For things in quotes again.

Another thing you could do is listen in on CM conversations.

Discovery calls.

Inbounds are okay, but the person hasn't bought yet.

So you're going to get some of the struggle moments.

But you might not get the final domino tipping over because they haven't bought.

But you might get some stuff if the rep is, like, asking the right questions.

Hey, John, what motivated you to want to talk to us today?

What are you currently using?

When did you first realize it wasn't working for you?

What did you try?

I want to understand, like, what was going on.

And it's usually some event that changed in their life.

We were using whiteboards to manage projects, and then we have five remote workers now and they can't see the whiteboard.

So we needed some kind of solution that allowed them to see the projects and the status.

So we started looking for things online.

There's always, like an event like that that changes and that helps you target who to reach out to.

The second thing is to make sure that you're actually targeting lookalike audiences.

So people that are getting the most.

Value out of your product, like highest lifetime value, use a product like ocean or LinkedIn can help a little bit with this to find accounts and people that are just like them because chances are they've had similar struggles.

Yeah.

My gosh, Josh, this has been absolutely amazing.

First off, thank you so much for coming on and chatting this with me.

And before we close off the show today, I just want to chat a little bit about Brawn training, the services you offer.

And I'd love to chat about your book.

Yeah, so I have a free book.

It's how to sell without Pushing, Convincing or Begging.

It's called For Sale.

It's free.

You can Access it@joshbron.com Shop and check it out.

I also have a podcast called Inside.

Selling and I write pretty frequently on LinkedIn as well.

And of course I have a newsletter.

You can sign up on my website as well.

Amazing.

And what's the best way for people to get ahold of you?

I would say follow me on LinkedIn and subscribe to my newsletter.

My phone number's on my website too.

My email address if you want to get in touch with me that way as well.

We've been chatting with Josh Braun and if you have a chance, go check out Inside Selling because it's probably a podcast you're going to like.

Until next time you've been listening to the Business Development Podcast.

We'll catch you on the flip side.

This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your business development specialists.

For more we we invite you to the website at www.capitalbd.ca.

see you next time on the Business Development Podcast.