The Art of a Salesman with Jasen Wyrembelski

Jasen: You know, what I’ve learned is that believing in somebody and valuing somebody really comes down to an act of listening. There’s two types of listening. A lot of people listen to respond. They’re waiting for you to hurry up and finish so they can respond to you and really tell you what they want to say rather than actually hearing what you’re saying.

And then the other form, which is the most important form, is the act of listening, which is listening to learn. Listening to ask more questions. When somebody tells you something, follow up with a question versus trying to push what you want to say over top of them and really just cut them off altogether.

Charles: Right.

Jasen: So active listening is just continuing to ask questions, drawing more out of people. When you do that, they’re like wow this person really does care about what I’m saying. I’ve got a concern. They’re listening. They’re asking more about it. They’re asking questions that draw more out of me, some self-realization questions.

Charles: Right. Because we all need that, right?

Jasen: It’s easy to tell. It’s very easy to tell somebody you know, hey, you know you should be doing this. You should be doing this versus what if you were to do this? What if you were to do that? What would happen if you didn’t do this? What would happen if you didn’t do this? Can you tell me more about that?

Those are very important questions and you’ve got to do it genuinely. You can’t just do it because it’s a part of your check list. It has to be authentic. You have to truly see people for who they are and their potential because a lot of times, people don’t see their own potential. But one person believing in them ignites a little bit of a passion. It only takes one person to really care.

We’ve all had that person in our life we can reflect back on and say because of that person, I’m better off or I went into this direction instead versus this direction. So that’s really important to me. My passion is to see other people reach their passion and really to see other people dive inside and go I really do have a talent. I really do have a gift and I can give it back.

So that’s important to me for all people.

Charles: Well, something that I’ve noticed about you is that because you’re able to connect with people, like with what you’re saying, it’s increased your ability to perform your job in sales. You’re a very good salesman and not in a sleazy car salesman type of way.

Jasen: Yeah, that is the description from the general public.

Charles: Yeah, isn’t it?

Jasen: Another sales guy knocking on the door.

Charles: Right. Another guy trying to convince me of something that I don’t really want to be a part of or something I don’t want to buy. But you have a candor about you that feels genuine.

Jasen: I appreciate that.

Charles: It goes beyond just business.

Jasen: But what I’ve learned throughout the years and I didn’t know this all the time was people are there to hire you to do something but a lot of times I don’t go in that way. I’m not so concerned with the job. I always figure the bonding and rapport is the most important, really getting to know people, really understanding hey why’d you move here? What’s your plans over the next three years? Are you going to stay?

I’m not immediately going to hey you need to do this. You need to do this. You need to do this and really pushing a product towards somebody. I’m really trying to draw things out of them, understand their wants and needs, but I really just want to know them.

And a lot of times, if it’s not a great fit, because they have to feel trust in you, and they have different reasons for buying, but over time I think you really need to understand the reason they’re doing what they’re doing. And just to come over and to sit at somebody’s table, I rarely start a conversation about what I sell. Rarely. And then, even if they want to go directly to it, I actually stop the conversation and say hey it’s a little too soon before we go there. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions? Because I think what that does is it really lets people know hey this guy’s not here just to sell me something. Now people say hey it’s a strategy but honestly that’s just the way I am.

Charles: Just being a person.

Jasen: That’s just me being a person trying to understand that person. How can I make their day better? Even if they never buy from me, if by the time I leave there, they’re smiling and something changed inside of them, I’m okay with that. That’s a win for me. A lot of times it leads to sales, a lot of times it doesn’t, and I’m okay with either one. I know that I’ve been authentic. I know that I showed these people look, if we don’t work together, that’s okay but at least you know I’ve listened to you and maybe dove a little bit deeper in questioning. Maybe they’ve just had a light bulb go off today. That’s important to me. Maybe there’s something different about that and maybe they felt better.

That’s kind of my strategy. It’s just having a natural conversation.

Charles: Right. Now, do you think that salespeople need to get every sale?

Jasen: I think they believe they do. I think they run from a mind of scarcity.

Charles: That’s true. A lot of us as human beings, we deal with that regularly with other aspects of our lives.

Jasen: Absolutely. If the mindset of a salesperson is to make a sale, he’s going to have an uphill battle, and I was there. Where it’s all about making the sale so you can get paid. That’s a scarcity mindset because there’s plenty of people that need what you sell if you’re product’s very good and you have a very good service to back it up. You don’t have to try so hard. I think if you go into understanding your customer, identifying them, and letting them direct you, you’re in control of the conversation but you let them direct you how it should go.

A lot of times salespeople want to push their way, the only way, and bulldoze. That’s a turn off right away. They can claim to be the best. They could claim their product’s the best but guess what matters the most.

Charles: Close that deal.

Jasen: That’s all they want to do and what the customer on the other sides thinking is this guy doesn’t understand me at all. He didn’t ask me one question.

Charles: Wasn’t listening to me.

Jasen: I hear that all the time. I hear that all the time. You know why I hired you? You actually listen. We had three guys come by, they did everything they wanted to do, didn’t hear one thing. It’s not a toot of my own horn, it’s just that’s what I believe in active listening is really asking the questions and letting them feel in control when actually, you’re in control by controlling the conversation.

So I think a lot of salespeople run from the mindset of scarcity. That if they don’t close this sale, they’re in trouble or, what I’ve found out, too, Charlie, is a lot of sales guys are under pressure to meet a quota. If they don’t make this quota, they don’t look so good. Or they need that sale so they can actually bring something back to their boss. Yeah, I closed another one! It’s kind of a form of motivation. They get a pat on the back for closing a sale. So they feel valued at that point where it’s all about their needs, not the customer.

Charles: Right.

Jasen: The more you can give in the form of caring, you know, because there’s an old saying that says people don’t really care about you know if they know you don’t care.

Charles: Yeah, I’ve never heard that before.

Jasen: Yeah, so you can have all the knowledge you want, all the experience you want, and then you can have a guy that has a fraction of your experience that truly cares. People buy from a feeling, that it’s an emotional buy. If they like you and trust you, they’ll do business with you. To get that likability and trust, you have to really understand that person. Do something a little bit different than everybody else is doing.

Sure, you’re not going to get every sale and that’s okay but you know when you leave there, there’s nothing you did that wasn’t real, that wasn’t you. It wasn’t a script that you had to go off of and just be this robot to try to close deals.

Charles: Did you ever feel like, when you’re trying to close a deal with a customer and you weren’t listening or you didn’t care really about their needs, like you cared more about your own, and like you said, it was kind of an uphill battle, but you’re able to get the sale somehow because you still crushed it, but then later on, the customer calls and says I’m deciding I’m going to go with somebody else.

Jasen: Yeah, that’s a great question. Yeah. I think that’s happened to anybody in the sales world for sure where they basically said yes because they were uncomfortable.

Charles: Because they were forced to.

Jasen: You hear that a lot in the home improvement industry. Some people had told me they had to call the police just to get people out of their homes. They just signed the contract to get them out of the- you know. And the window guys and I had a lot of customers that had said that to me. So I’ve never been that way; I’ve never done that. So I don’t know from experience that type of thing but I do know that some people, for whatever reason, they just felt bad telling you no.

Charles: Yeah, that’s human nature, isn’t it?

Jasen: It’s human nature so they had to either send you an email or leave you a voice message to, in a sense, break up with you, for lack of a better word there. And that happens. And some sales guys try to call it back and swindle it back in but once you learn that, that’s okay. You just accept it. You accept that maybe something went wrong and start to analyze what you did at that appointment that made that buyer’s remorse happen.

Charles: Right. And plus, it gave you a sense of where to apply your energy. Even though somebody might apply a lot of their energy to climb the hill, to go uphill, in the sale, well, after you get the sale, are you going to have enough energy once they tell you no afterwards.

Jasen: That’s right. A lot of people think once you do close a sale, that’s it. Really, the close of a sale is just the beginning. Now the work begins. Now you have to deliver because really, a true sales professional is not so concerned with signing the contract. It’s all right now I have to deliver because we want repeat business. We want referral. Working hard for every single sale. That’s a loser’s game. You burn out. If you can focus, a lot of times a sale starts at the beginning of a conversation: the close. It really starts at the beginning, a lot of times take it to the end. Run into many objections, and then try to counter all these objections, and then fight their way to close a sale where the closing really starts at the beginning.

Because when you come into any sales meeting, especially for commission people, there’s general sales, you walk into a general retail store, you buy a shirt, you check out, you’re done, you’re good. I’m not talking about that sale. I’m talking about an actual commission sale whether you sale furniture, cars, home improvements, whatever that might be, any type of commission sale where you’re actually having to nurture the person all the way through. But it’s to get that wall to come down because immediately it’s you versus them. You’re on two different sides. That’s way the customer’s mindset is because they’ve been sold before, they’ve been taken advantage of before. And to you, at first, there’s no difference versus the last time they were taken advantage of. Or you’re hiding something. That’s the mindset of how people view salespeople.

So once you can come in and really let them know, hey, it’s not about me closing a deal. It’s about me understanding you, you understanding what I offer. If it’s a great fit, awesome. We’ll keep moving. If it’s not, we’ll shake hands and we’ll part as friends. There’s no hard feelings but a lot of guys don’t have that mindset. It’s more of a scarcity mindset.

Charles: What’s a customer’s response when you tell them something like that? When you tell them, you know what? If it doesn’t work out, we can go ahead and part ways. I mean, have you had some crazy reactions from people when you tell them that?

Jasen: You know, most of the reaction is a sigh of relief. There’s no pressure. And it lets them know, hey, if I say no, it’s okay. I’m not going to hurt the guy’s feelings. And then on the other sense is that hey, the guy’s not desperate for my business. I kind of want to give it to him, now. It changes their mindset so the walls come down of you versus me. Now we’re on the same team.

Charles: Is that abundance mindset?

Jasen: It’s an abundance mindset and it’s amazing every since I started to apply that principal of hey, there’s no shortage of anything. There really isn’t.

Charles: If I don’t get it here, I’m going to be able to get it somewhere down the line.

Jasen: There’s always a good fit. There’s always a good fit. We can’t force a square peg in a round hole. It doesn’t work. It never will work. But a lot of times, you see people doing that and it’s just a hard way to do sale and it’ll wear you down and then the attitude starts to change, then the work ethic starts to change and you’re motives begin to change and then a lot of salespeople quit. There’s an 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of salespeople never get past a certain income level or certain percentage of the high level because, one, they don’t want to learn. They don’t want to learn. They think that’s just how it is. That’s the scarcity mindset. They say, this is how it always is. I’ve got to work hard. Sales is a numbers game.

Well, that’s true in a sense if you want to work really hard and spend a lot of time with a lot of people just to get a small percentage, where an abundance mindset is I only need a few people, a few of the right people, and they’ll know it and I’ll know it. It’ll be a great interaction all the way through from start to finish. It’ll be, not only just the close of the sale, but the experience for you and them during the process will be pretty much not a whole lot of interruption with oh, you didn’t tell me this, you didn’t tell me that. So there’s a lot of good things that happen when you do those steps.

Charles: When you’re both in alignment.

Jasen: In alignment, yeah. There’s a clear communication about everything. It’s not hurry up and close this sale, we’ll figure it out later. It’s a nice slow progression.