We are often told that business is a game of numbers, logic and hard data. But... really? What if customers actually make decisions subconsciously, emotionally and based on first impressions? And that includes that last shopper you met who you still can't put a name to? And what if this is what most business owners and marketers don't use at all?
Today's guest Peter Strcula is no theoretician. He has sold everything from financial products to complex solutions for corporations. He has trained salespeople in more than 17 countries and helped dozens of companies skyrocket their sales.
This is not the only reason he has strong views on what a modern shop should look like. If you want to succeed today, it's no longer enough to have the perfect product or service. You need to master much more. Emotional decision-making. Storytelling. Negotiation techniques. To mention just a few.
We went much deeper in the conversation. For example:
🔸 Why are most salespeople lousy at negotiating?
🔸 How does the psychology of decision-making work and how to use it to your advantage?
🔸 What to do when a customer says, "Email me"?
🔸 Why does the self-confidence of marketers determine success more than the product?
🔸 How to present so that the customer doesn't switch off after the first 30 seconds?
And if you think this episode is only about traders, don't be mistaken. Today, everyone who interacts with customers - from the salesperson to the technician to the receptionist - has to sell. The modern B2B business is simply a complex affair - outward and inward. That's why we also addressed how each team member can learn the tools to communicate and negotiate effectively.
Do you want to know why even the most rational customer ends up making decisions based on emotion - and how to respond? Watch this episode and get ready for some aha moments. And one surprise at the end.
WHY MOST MARKETERS FAIL - AND HOW TO AVOID IT (INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT)
Martin Hurych
Hello. I'm Martin Hurych and this is another Ignition. If you don't subscribe to my newsletter yet, consider signing up with blood. More than 1,100 owners and directors of engineering, technology and manufacturing companies already subscribe to my notebook. Plus, if you sign up, you won't miss out on anything I have in store for you. Times are going to get tougher for a lot of us, jobs look like they may become scarcer and scarcer. That's why I've invited a guest today to show us his way to improve your business, your negotiating, your presentation skills and how to build a complete business system on top of that that won't let you down when you need it. Today, I've got Peter Strcula. Hey, Petya.
Peter Strcula
Hi, Martin. Thank you for the invitation.
Who is Peter Strcula
Martin Hurych
Peter is the founder of BlueVard, a trainer with an international career, and if I read his preparation correctly, he is also a man who has had his own business experience. Am I forgetting something?
Peter Strcula
I've been in sales since I 16, I've been in sales for 23 years, I've been training for 13 years in 17 countries and mainly sales, negotiation, rhetoric and just systems and communication.
Martin Hurych
I don't think that's possible at your age.
Peter Strcula
You . I've burned out twice in my life, and I don't plan on a third time, so I had to set up a system myself and it can be done.
What does he do against his own burnout?
Martin Hurych
You taped that for a private question, which is the standard one we start here. If you've been burned twice, what are you gonna do to prevent it from happening a third time?
Peter Strcula
Energy, imagine that every day on your way to work you fill up with 1 litre of petrol, but you drive through 2 litres of petrol, so even if you start with a full tank, one day you will run out of petrol. My view of burnout is that you give out more energy than you can take in, so the more energy I expend, the more I have to actively take in. That means golf, sauna, sports, things that brutally recharge my batteries, plus sleep, and that's what works for me in the long run.
Martin Hurych
You must be a very good golfer, because golf takes a lot out of me.
Peter Strcula
It's said that golf and sex are the only two activities you can totally enjoy no matter how good you are at them, so I don't have to be good at golf either.
Peter's path to the education agency
Martin Hurych
So, tell us how you went from selling to the largest Slovak educational institution or educational company that specializes in these fields.
Peter Strcula
I started selling when I was 16, so I had more clients than friends because I insured everybody. I was selling finance, that's where I got my foundation, financial, sales training and by the time I was I was already a sales director in a staff company, Volkswagen, Peugeot, Samsung, big clients. Then I was a sales at the company. As you have Slevomat in the Czech Republic, we had a market leader ZlavaDna.sk and there the company didn't have money to invest in salesmen, it paid education only to me. I then had to educate, train, coach 35 salespeople and I found out that I am good at it and clients started to approach me, saying that they also want good salesmen like ZÚavaDňa. I started training them on weekends and suddenly I had an education business. Then they started calling me , I was going all over the place and suddenly I was doing business, not because I wanted to, but because the market and the customers were asking for it.
What are the 7 types of shops?
Martin Hurych
We were talking about how you went through 7 types of stores before the shoot. Come tell us what you meant by that.
Peter Strcula
We have 7 types of sales in the shop or on sale. You can think of it as 7 different sports and you can't take a top goalie from soccer and tell him, come catch for us and do goalie for water polo. That's a completely different sport and so is sales. Different techniques work in each type of sales and just paradoxically some that work here don't work somewhere else. A lot of times what happens is that a company takes a great salesperson and they don't bring them results, where is the problem, different type of sales, different techniques, different approach. I've been through all of these 7 types of sales, I've sold and I actually train them, so regardless of the segment, I know in each segment what approach to take.
Martin Hurych
That's , because you've hit on a mistake I often see. There are few traders, so we take what has two arms, two legs, we don't look too much at what the person did, and then they really get burned. So what are the 7 types you see in the market?
Peter Strcula
Before I say specifically, one other thing that comes to mind is that oftentimes what still happens is that as a company grows or creates new products or new segments, it moves into other types of sales. Salespeople who were great at this type of selling, for example, a company used to sell to B2C or small businesses and now they're going into corporations, they're not doing well at all. In Slovakia and the Czech Republic, often salespeople are recruited based on experience, he did Coca-Cola, he's going to be great, he did Orangi, he's doing T-Com, let's take him, it's just a completely different type of sales. I'll tell you, in America today they already hire salespeople based on one single parameter, enthusiasm. When an enthusiastic salesperson comes to you, you subconsciously think that he is excited about the product and the solution. When a salesperson is having a bad day and is so wet, you feel that he must be selling really properly stupid product that makes him so sad. It's not about the experience, it's about the enthusiasm, how the salesperson can influence the subconscious and which tools they know in that particular type of selling.
I'll say at least the basic ones, so the simplest type of selling is salesman versus feeder, salesperson, feeder. That's just in retail someone who gets passive inquiries or customers coming in. That's where the most important thing is to close with that customer, not to close him because he's already come to buy, but to create as much revenue as possible on that customer. Then of course we go into some kind of multi-level sales like that, decision makers are one to two. That's financial services, real estate agents, different MLM systems where you're selling to a person and their life partner or associate, there's two decision makers. The higher level is where there are usually two to five decision makers and there you need to find out the private motivation of each member.
You're not selling it to the company and you're selling it to those decision makers and everybody has different interests, the HR manager looks at it differently, the CFO looks at it differently, the CEO looks at it differently. Then of course we have some key account when you have a big company and there is a contract signed but you need them to push you more, put more on the shelf, you need more negotiation there. Then there are strategic deals, for example, the salesperson spends 80-90% of the time on preparation and only 10-20% of the time on meetings. That's where you do, for example, a SWOT analysis, where you need to understand and do a SWOT analysis of your client and help them strategically in a long sales cycle. These are billion dollar deals, huge ones, so completely different selling style within that scale of those 7 and different techniques work in each one. This that a salesperson from one type of sales in another is a total beginner.
Why is an expert a bad trader?
Martin Hurych
We range anywhere from those 3-5 to a long sales cycle, that's typically my bubble. From what you train or what you consult, what do you think are the most common mistakes in sales in those three stages?
Peter Strcula
Expertise, the more expert one is, the worse one can sell. The more you know about the product, the more you talk about the product, and that's why, for example, I have a sales agency in addition to an education company, where we sell and negotiate for our clients for a success fee only, for example. The less we know about the product, the more we sell because we don't talk about the product, we talk about the customer and ask questions. That's the paradox, we've always been taught that you need to know the product, that's not true at all, you need to know more about the customer and practically reassure them about the product. I know it's so controversial, but that's just the way it is, the more one is in expertise, the deeper one goes into detail and that customer doesn't need to know all the details.
When is an expert needed?
Martin Hurych
That's true, however, so when we talk about multiple decision makers, there are definitely decision makers who hate salespeople who don't tell them in detail about the product. So we're probably talking about this type of salesperson, as you put it, is better at some type of decision maker. Right?
Peter Strcula
It's about the stage. When that salesperson reaches out to the new company or calls them or comes in for the first meeting, they don't rush through the details there because that company doesn't know if they want them yet, maybe they don't even want them. That's where that need needs to be identified or created or scouted or opportunities identified and not go too quickly into a solution. That's where marketers often make the mistake of going too quickly into the solution, at a point where that customer doesn't know if they even want it yet.
Martin Hurych
But that's the stage where you pull out a presentation and say we've been on the market for 50 years, we're the best and our product is great.
Peter Strcula
Yes, 20 years ago. Imagine you go to the doctor in the emergency room, you walk in, and the doctor says, welcome to our office, I'm Peter Strcula, I have two certifications, I have 15 offices across the Czech Republic, I'm a Forbes 30 under 30 owner, I studied at here. Who cares at this stage? No one. I'll put it this way, Slovaks and the Czechs can't see themselves selling out. We are one of the nations where we are very good at manufacturing, engineering, automobiles, technical things, we are experts, we are technicians, but in our nation we have never been pushed into selling. Yet even Poles in the market often know how to sell better than professional salesmen in Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
That expertise is a huge hurdle. In terms of customer typology, often decision makers, CEOs, general managers or department managers are not that in terms of typology. He doesn't have the time, needs to be concise, he needs to be quick, to make a quick decision and when he meets an expert wants him to understand it in depth, he doesn't have the nerve. In the first phase of that sale, you really need to sell and not go into detail, only then in a later phase can you go into the detail of the product or you can bring in a colleague who is an expert. He can already deal with just the design of that detailed solution.
Martin Hurych
So you're advocating for some sort of presales or role separation, a more business oriented trader and a more technically oriented trader.
Peter Strcula
It may be the same person. Just like you can speak multiple languages, the expert may sell more at the beginning and then be more of a technician later on. You can also put a good football player in both offense and defense. He just needs to play that sales game at the beginning, ask more questions, understand that customer, find out those needs and then at that solution stage, not talk about the product but how that product will help the customer. Those are two different roles.
Martin Hurych
I understand that, but hand on heart, how many such people are there in the Czech Republic and Slovakia who can differentiate...
Peter Strcula
I'm now training, for example, PwC, PricewaterhouseCoopers, one of the four largest audit firms in the world, and this is exactly what they have a problem with. They've got brutal experts, perfect auditors, just how do they do better business and better sales. I'll tell you this today, the trend of 2025 is that everybody who is in any kind of contact with a customer today has to sell.
Everybody influences that customer's decision whether they want to continue, how they about it, what other business they open there. This is such a trend that I'm noticing that companies are training these Udi's today. I'll tell you for example, after 13 years, 2024 was the first year that I trained more non-salespeople than salespeople in sales and negotiation and it was about 82%, that's a massacre.
Martin Hurych
It is, but actually great news, because I also say that business is a cruelly complex thing, not just towards the customers, but also within the company and it's actually true. Even the receptionist in the company sells when you happen to go in there as a customer.
How do people make decisions?
Peter Strcula
This is something that the Uyunians are not aware of. How many times in your life have you said you will never go there again? It wasn't because of the product, it was because of the person, and that's where an awful lot of the sales go. I'll tell you why, People make decisions subconsciously and emotionally. Question in a million, why do most marketers sell through logical arguments?
Martin Hurych
I've heard the theory that when you're talking about a product that you know, that you've been indoctrinated in, where you know every nook and cranny, it's like sex and good food. It gets the same hormones going, the same feelings going, and you're affirming how great you are, and it's not about the customer at all, it's about you doing it to good. Every one of those presentations that marketing has put together for you, you're reinforcing what a good guy you are.
Peter Strcula
I agree, and I would add that when a person talks, it is like a drug, which is why it used to be said, he is talkative, he could be a great businessman, but today that is not the case. He is a great , he could be a great businessman. The situation has changed, and I will add that, to simplify it, we make a decision subconsciously, emotionally, and only afterwards we create a backwards rationalisation of why we made that decision. We expect that when we tell that argument to someone else that they will make that rationalization into a subconscious emotional decision, it doesn't work that way at all.
Modern sales is more about the subconscious, more about emotion and working better with the customer, it's not about the product. I'll tell you one more controversial idea, Úudia thinks that they will have happy customers when they do overdelivery, that they will exceed their expectations, that's not . The role of today's product is not to disappoint the customer's expectation, that's all. If you go to a big shopping mall and buy any air conditioner, you will be happy, you don't need to have the best in the world. That's how McDonald's does it, McDonald's under me doesn't need to have the best burger on the market, or even just an average one, it needs to set expectations and consistently meet them, that's all.
All you need is a product that doesn't fail the customer's expectations, and I'll tell you what the big trap is. The big trap that I see in Slovakia and the Czech Republic right now is that there are companies that have the best product on the market, the best service on the market, and have a really fair and ethical value approach. But they are being rolled by competitors who have a worse product and a worse service, but they know how to sell it better.
Martin Hurych
That's the way it's been, right?
Peter Strcula
In the , it used to be that a good product sold itself, but there weren't as many of them then as there are today. This competitive environment is more aggressive year after year, customers are no longer loyal, they are being hunted by competitors, and therefore what was enough in the is no longer enough. Nothing is older than yesterday's success, and just because it worked for us before doesn't mean it will work from now on. There is much more emphasis now on sales skills and on the ability to negotiate, because with this customer today it is not enough that you are good, it is not enough that you are great, it is about who is better. You need to sell not great, you need to sell better than your competitors and negotiate better than your business partner. First place takes everything, second place takes nothing. It's not that I have good salespeople, I have good negotiators, the question is who are you up against.
Why is it important not to disappoint customer expectations?
Martin Hurych
Paradoxically, it gives you a great motivation to succeed because you realize that you don't have to be the best, you just have to be a little bit better and every day be a little bit better than the people you are up against. If we pour pure wine, the competition in the Czech Republic is not that great.
Peter Strcula
When I'm training in Dubai or Poland or some countries where they are really good at sales, or Salesforce where they have a great sales system and I go there, they know how much higher I'm going to take them in sales. If in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, Uudia not that good at sales and they change a few things, they can shoot up significantly compared to those competitors. That is good news, so this is very good for those companies.
How do you get a junior buyer?
Martin Hurych
We'll come back to the system. I wouldn't want to forget one thing and I would like to know your opinion, which is something that we often discuss here in the podcast. You say we make decisions subconsciously, we make decisions emotionally. My clients will come to you and they'll say they're up against a junior buyer who's got it all under his thumb and he's just interested in making sure that the green table in Excel lights up, that means some price, some discount, that kind of thing. How to impress him to make an emotional and subconscious decision?
Peter Strcula
Of course, we are talking about some Gaussian curve or some majority. Once the buyer is on the other side, again, the company is made up of People, even the buyer is only human and even that human has a brain and our brains are imperfect and subject to various biases and distortions. Every company loses some customers every year, that's a fact. Of those customers who leave to a competitor, what percentage of them do you think will leave because of a lower price?
Martin Hurych
According to the analysis I see, virtually no one. It's always about people.
Peter Strcula
It's , only 7% of customers leave because of a lower price elsewhere. The most common reason has 42% representation and that's the feeling, the feeling that I'm not important enough to that company. That is, salespeople are terrible about price, they're afraid of price because they can't influence it significantly, but they don't address how that customer feels at all. The buyer is just a human being too, and even he has a feeling, and even he can decide to some extent who he wants to do business with and who he doesn't want to do business with, who he wants to have there, who he doesn't want to have there. Within certain budget, who he can still afford and is willing to pay extra if he has a much better feeling about that person, if he trusts him more, if he wants him more.
Martin Hurych
That is, you actually want the lowest price, but you want the lowest price for the adequate service you expect, just like with the hamburger. If you set an expectation and you can meet it, you can make me feel like I'm important to you, then the price isn't actually important to me. Even that hamburger at that McDonald's has gone up 20, 30% in the last couple of years and we still go there.
Peter Strcula
Every year that iPhone gets more expensive and people snort, bitch, and moan about it, but they still buy it. This is where we get to the bargaining. The buyer usually negotiates because the buyer wants the best supplier, the best product, the best service, and at the same time needs to negotiate the least possible terms out of it. Note that 66% of all business deals would have been closed without a contract and over 80% would have been closed with a minimum contract. It is natural that the buyer tries, his goal is to lower the price and that is perfectly fine.
I'll tell you one more thing about bargaining, for example, at Harvard we were taught that about 50% of the Oudis are gamblers. That means that when they negotiate with you, half of them really want to negotiate a particular target, but half of them want to gamble. That means they're gamblers, they've been to training, they want to try something, they want to prove something, they want to show off something. You don't know at all, or it's hard to figure out who they are. The natural role of buyers is to negotiate terms, to push the price and that's perfectly okay, but it doesn't mean if you don't back down on the price, you lose. The worst thing you can do is selling with negotiating.
Martin Hurych
We'll definitely come back to that. It occurs to me now that the negotiating coaches in the Czech Republic are now getting hives. When you say that 2/3 of the deals could have been done without the discount and now we've successfully pushed it into a trade bubble, the buyers are in for a tough life, which is good.
What is the difference between trading and negotiating?
Peter Strcula
What I will say is that there is a huge difference between a deal and a negotiation. If I were to simplify it, there are three steps, the first step is to be an expert, and I think almost all traders are experts. The second level is to be a salesperson, to know, to identify the needs, the opportunities of that customer, to create those needs, to conscientize those needs, and to really create that relationship, to understand that customer's typology, and to be able to come up with a solution that's good for that customer. When I go fishing, I don't fish for schnitzel, because I like schnitzel, but on worms, because fish like worms. That's where the experts go wrong,that on this assignment he would choose this, but he doesn't look at what the client would choose.
Martin Hurych
Chisel this out and set it in stone, as I often say here, because this is about the vast majority of you ajtists making offers to your clients.
Peter Strcula
The third level is the negotiator, because watch out, experts are lousy traders and traders are lousy negotiators. You need a completely different skillset in every step of the way and you need to do it completely differently.
How to emotionally sell e.g. an investment unit?
Martin Hurych
We're talking to a bubble of engineers, analysts, programmers, or owners who grew out of those professions, so I guarantee you that something like emotional selling and subconscious decision making is that they very often don't acknowledge. But when they do admit it, we often have empathy at -100 and don't know how to sell, say, an investment vehicle in that style. How then?
Peter Strcula
When we take emotional intelligence, scientists have studied psychopaths and psychopaths don't feel emotions. They put them in an MRI and they found an interesting thing, these psychopaths, not that they don't have emotions, they're just not aware of them, but they're still driven by them. It's the same as when it's night, the sun is there, we just don't see it, when it's cloudy, the sun is still there, we just don't see it. That is, even the Udians who think they are super rational are still influenced by emotions, but they don't see them and they only react to that backward rationalization. I'm simplifying it greatly, we're not going into a technical topic. That way even the UUs, who are the experts, the technically oriented, the analysts, the really experts, think how rational they are. Yes, they are more rational, but they are still fundamentally influenced by emotion. Imagine you're interviewing for a new colleague, you interview someone with your colleague, they come in, you embarrass them for an hour, after an hour they walk away and I tell you exactly what to ask your colleague. What do you say to how he handled my seventh objection in the 43rd minute? No, you ask him how he feels about it. That's pure emotion, subconscious.
Martin Hurych
On that personal level, I think everyone can relate because even if you're a very rational person, especially with hobbies, you can see that you buy something that makes you feel good. You play golf, so you probably don't have the cheapest clubs and then you justify why you bought those clubs. But how do I turn that into a positive when I realize that the other side has that as well, and I know they're analytical, I know they're pretending to be? How do I build up these emotions and subconscious decision in them to modify the terms of the tender or to buy without a tender to even allow me in? How do I play this string that they don't see in themselves?
Peter Strcula
I will say that logic and emotion are not mutually exclusive. That is to say, those of you who have been selling purely on logic, I am not saying that you should now be mad and deal only with emotion. I'm saying that you need to add that emotion and that subconscious to that logic, because those Audiences are fundamentally affected by that. I really like one technique, that was the only technique I learned in one $700 course, that you use the windshield technique, the wiper. Breathe through your nose on your finger, which pinhole does more air come out of?
Martin Hurych
I don't know, probably both.
Peter Strcula
It's usually the case that during the day we have more air coming out of one than the other, and every hour and a half it changes because our hemispheres react differently. That said, I have a client here now and if it's coming out of one orifice he's more logical and if it's coming out of the other he's more emotional. So I need to use both logical and emotional, both conscious and subconscious tools to influence him in some way positively. We're not talking manipulation here, I need to engage those techniques as well, and that's where we get into the rhetoric, that there are rhetorical techniques that are used to do that.
Why does a marketer need to sell through stories?
Martin Hurych
So do I understand correctly that the logic in that technical sales is more about the product, the returns, the savings, and what I should always include there, the emotional side, is what it brings to you personally?
Peter Strcula
I will say it specifically. One of the rhetorical techniques that is one of the most powerful is the story. That's why it's no longer called storytelling, it's called storyselling, selling through stories, stories are emotional. If you take where the Audience will shop most rationally and just , it will be online. One person bought 100 different items on eBay for roughly 2 euros and then sold them again on that eBay one at a time with one difference, adding a short story to each one. He bought them for 200 euro and sold them for 7 000 euro. That is the impact of just the stories and now I will tell you how to use it.
We have different types of stories. What I use with salespeople are success stories, so he'll tell me about some of his concerns, and I'll mupov that every company is worried that they're going to choose a new supplier and they're not going to be happy. An interesting thing happened to us at IBM, we came in there, that's exactly what they were worried about, we tweaked it and all of a sudden we tripled the results. Now they are happy and they have been with us for 17 years, so I am convinced that if we set it up like this, you will be very happy too.
Story is the most powerful tool for changing beliefs. I can use case studies, I can use success stories, I can use experiences from other companies and other cases and it's not just a story, it's a very rational relevant form.
The most important thing is that you must always tell the truth. I'll say three principles for stories to make practical. First, never start with the sentence, I'll tell you a story. This will totally piss off the other party because they don't want to listen to the story, but when you start, they want to know how it's going to end. Second principle, the story should be between 1 and 1.5 minutes long, otherwise it loses attention. The third thing, it has to have a flow. It shouldn't be a logical listing of circumstances, but such a flow that you can imagine it as if you were playing a 1.5 minute video. With just that one element alone, you can emotionally and subconsciously influence the other side, because you don't need to move the price, you need to move feeling price.
Martin Hurych
It plays a little bit into me that analyst and storytelling is an extremely complex combination, I thought there was probably a more important thing to my bubble. What about when I'm new to the market and have no story?
Peter Strcula
When you're , everything plays against you because you have no name, no experience, no clients, price is not the most important thing. I'll tell you an example, I have a friend, a friend of mine, who works in one of the biggest banks in Slovakia and is an advisor to entrepreneurs. He came to me and told me that he had been on an accounting course and was going to set up an accounting firm. I said, great, total bloody sea, how are you going to sell accounting services, everybody has it because they need it, who is going to move it to you when they've had it for 10 years somewhere and you've got maybe worse for the same price? He couldn't get clients for a few months, not one, then he came to me and I gave him advice.
You need a good story, and I'll tell you a story we made up, and a true one. He comes to his client and tells him very briefly. Michael, you know me, I've been at this bank for 13 years and I often have one problem, a businessman like you comes to me and says he needs a loan because he has a great opportunity. We put it at risk and they reject it because they don't have the books ready for the loan and so they have to wait until the next tax return, so six months, three quarters of a year or a year to get the books ready to get the loan. Simply in that year he may lose that opportunity or other competitors may overtake him. That's why I set up an accounting firm where we can prepare the books on an ongoing basis for entrepreneurs like you so that the moment you need a loan and you call me, you have the money in your account within a week. What do you say? These aren't logical arguments, but it's the story of why I came into existence, why I don't leave it to competitors, what you'll gain, but most importantly I need to get you emotionally hooked and attached.
Where do we stand with the self-esteem of traders?
Martin Hurych
We discussed types of decision making, we said primarily subconscious and emotional, we said what we're bad at as techies, we sell through arguments, we don't sell stories, we're bad at rhetoric. What other problems do you see out there in selling technical and technology products and services?
Peter Strcula
Confidence. Slovaks and Czechs have below-average self-esteem and Úudia in Slovakia and the Czech Republic criticize their employees more than they praise them. Confident salespeople sell more and Slovaks and Czechs have below average self-esteem. A common thing we get from companies is we need to increase the self-confidence of our salespeople, but beware, self-confidence comes with preparedness. Those salespeople are not prepared, how can they be confident? If you put a knife in a soldier's hand and you send towards a soldier who is in a tank, what kind of self-confidence will he have? None. When you put him in a tank and send him against a soldier with a knife, he will have rocketing self-confidence. Self-confidence comes with preparedness, and I see that the Slovaks and the Czechs, the businessmen, don't have enough self-confidence. They can still see the details of what the competition has better, but they don't see it from above.
Martin Hurych
I have a relatively very narrowly focused bubble and you're training across those 7 levels of the business. Is it really case everywhere that across these types of deals we don't have the confidence to know how to do it?
Peter Strcula
What I'm saying is that oftentimes those marketers don't trust themselves to give it because oftentimes they have limiting beliefs. We've been there, they don't want it, it's a BIG company, they've definitely got somebody, they've been satisfied. He doesn't even believe at all that he can do that business there, he goes there because he had it in the CRM or someone sent him there, he doesn't even believe that and automatically has lower self-esteem. A lot of times he doesn't even believe in that company because a lot of times what a salesman hears from his clients is that the competition has it better, the competition has it cheaper, the competitors have this, you don't have it right. He oftentimes takes that client's opinion because who has more influence on the salesperson, his boss who is with him once a week or once a month or the customer who he is with every day and he hears this from them? He starts to doubt the company, the solution, the price, because he's hearing you're expensive, I have a cheaper offer and so on.
Martin Hurych
I can understand this with us technicians, because for a lot of owners until recently, business was even a bit of a dirty word. As things were going well, even paradoxically at the highest levels that you listed, it was more like the tradesmen were more of a feeder or a bidder because the market was growing, there was room for everybody and you didn't really need to do anything. Now it's changing rapidly and there I understand that as you say, you're not experienced, you're not prepared, you don't know how to do it, so there you're logically unconfident. I'm a little surprised that you say it's across those 7 levels, because I would consider, for example, multi-level or realtors to be far more confident individuals than, say, guys who sell customized developments.
Peter Strcula
Predation and ambition is one thing. Multi-levels are People who are often very ambitious, recruitment marketing is, have an expensive car, luxury lifestyle, etc. But just because they are actively recruiting and being predatory and going after it doesn't mean they have enough self-confidence. When a client starts confronting them, they also have a lot of trouble with that.
The confidence is also in the fact that if the person is not convinced that he has the best solution on the market, he has doubts and you can feel it. But you don't need to have the best solution on the market or the best product, you just need to have a product that doesn't disappoint or meet customer expectations. You don't have to be the best, the people of Úudia don't know the difference between the best and the third best wine in the world, they will be happy with both, that's quite enough. The vast majority of merchants in the Czech Republic have enough, maybe even better product than they need to become market leaders. Those doubts in their head that my competitor is cheaper, my competitor is having a sale now, my competitor has some novelty, they are dragged down terribly. Plus, the one who's on fire can set others on fire, and when you have doubt, through mirror neurons that client feels that doubt and it's not good.
Still on the sales thing, I might say such an interesting trend. I had a video call with director at a big bank this morning and he was telling me that they were like warehouse clerks. Someone came in for some merchandise, we went to the warehouse, we filed, we didn't even have to think. Today, fewer and fewer passive enquiries are coming into companies and so those companies have to be more and more proactive, hunting for customers, reaching out, acquiring customers and you just can't do it without those sales skills. Selling it through parameters is not . Maybe one last tip, most marketers talk themselves, the company and the product instead of talking about the customer.
Martin Hurych
I always say it'like when you come to a bar to chase a girl and talk about how great you are.
Peter Strcula
Exactly. We are a Czech company, and what do I have to do with it? We've been on the market for 20 years. Great, so I'm not going to Tesco, I'm going Billy, because they've been on the for years, that's bullshit. It's all about the focus, what am I going to get out of it, so I'm not supposed to talk about myself, the company, the product, I'm supposed to talk about how his life is going to improve when he starts doing business with us. I don't use the "I" wording, or the "we" wording, but I use the "you" or "you" wording. I don't say we have an app, but I say you can have a cool app where you see this and this. We don't have a perfect system, but you can see this and this in the system right now. When I was training Salesforce, the best-selling CRM in the world, a lot of times the salesperson would tell me that the client didn't buy it because they couldn't it. However, that's what it's all about. If you can't it, then you can't desire it and you don't want to buy it.
How to properly present a solution to a client?
Martin Hurych
Before we move on to the negotiation and when the negotiation starts and the deal ends, I was thinking, what we're permanently describing here is the presentation. When you stand in front of a client and you say something to them, re actually presenting to them.
Peter Strcula
That's just the next step in the sales process. That , if I present him with what is really objectively best for him, but he doesn't realize the need, it's just pointless. First I need to make that deep understanding to that client and then I present that solution to him.
Martin Hurych
So let's move into how to properly present the solution so that I'm still playing the bigger decision part and have a chance to really impress. I specifically want to focus on if by some miracle I can get all these decision makers in one room and I have that one presentation.
Peter Strcula
When you are talking, the other person can only hold your full attention for 20-40 seconds. To put it simply, you hear, but you don't listen. When a person gets drunk and has a window the next day and doesn't remember anything, the audience thinks they forgot. He didn't forget it, he just didn't store it. If you're in a long-term relationship, you know the other partner is telling you something, you put on autopilot and go about your business. It's the same with a client, he's nodding his head to you, but after 20 seconds he's already starting to make up his own mind. He can only hold your attention for 20-40 seconds unless you use rhetorical techniques.
Martin Hurych
I'm with them. How do you extend 20 seconds to anything that's longer?
Peter Strcula
I'll go back to what we've already talked about, the story. You tell a story and just that person is going to be curious to see how it ends. Suddenly you have 1.5 minutes instead of 20-40 seconds and even our subconscious doesn't recognize the difference between story and reality. When you tell him a good story that he can relate to, he feels that he has experienced it himself and takes the lessons from it as his own experience. I am simplifying it very much. That alone is the first rhetorical technique, that I tell a story or an example or a success story or something and the person suddenly listens and wants to know how it ends.
The second rhetorical technique I use, for example, is to provoke an objection. Marketers are brutally afraid of objections. I don't have time to meet, the competition is cheaper, we're already happy, we're not going to change, we don't have the money now, get back to us next year, that's objections. I'm going to make a statement at the meeting and provoke an objection and the person is going to give me an objection. It's interesting that when he objects, he's damn curious what I'm going to say. Then he really listens, and then I, when I tell him some information as a coping mechanism for his objection, he has a lot more attention than if I just tell him as an argument. Salespeople are brutally afraid of objections because they think an objection is a rejection or that an objection reduces their success rate in the end, that's not at all. The worst objection is the unvoiced one. The worst thing is when a client listens to you and says, thank you for the information, we'll go through it and back to you. Or the worst is when they say, and when we need it, we'll get back to you.
How to respond to "We'll get back to you"?
Martin Hurych
How would you react at this stage? How to pull the emergency brake and still come back to the discussion?
Peter Strcula
We need to go back to the analysis. I made a somewhere, I gave them a solution that doesn't fit. That means I didn't do something right in that analysis, or I didn't hit on the solution, and I need to know where the problem is. I need to go back and go back and ask some questions to understand it better.
Martin Hurych
Usually by this stage, however, the people in question are so beaten down that they won't even let you ask another question.
Peter Strcula
Exactly, and that's a signal that I just didn't do it right. It can be salvaged somehow in a few percent of cases, but there it's just a consequence of the fact that I made a mistake in the sales process.
Martin Hurych
When you hear that reaction, it's basically saying that you can pretty much already close this deal as a loser in the pipeline. I understand that it's the tone of what's going on there and that it's not. But when you say to yourself, I made a mistake in the whole deal process, I analyzed it wrong, now I've shown them the price and it doesn't match their requirements at all, and I hear this, then every further dodge just makes the situation worse.
Peter Strcula
I would say that the worst thing a trader can do in this situation is to bite the bullet and wait for a response that either doesn't come or comes back negative. The Slovaks and Czechs are unassertive, they can't say, your socks stink or you're unpleasant, they just say, thank you, we'll get back to you, thank you, mail it to me. That's Slovak and Czech rejections, so the worst thing is to bite the bullet and wait for a negative response or no response. In this case, I would not push it further in that meeting because the willingness to go further on their side is not there anymore. I would get back to them shortly thereafter and I would go and re-examine where I made the problem, where I made the mistake. Make a call, ask something, set up another meeting, come up with some other solution, but just don't wait, that passivity is the worst. They usually talk afterwards.
Martin Hurych
Then again, at point, a lot of marketers have it so that they don't transcend their own egos. You don't want to drop in front of them that you made a mistake and you'd rather let it fester and you'd rather send 10 emails and just make the situation worse.
Peter Strcula
It just doesn't feel right, but you don't want to admit it. Coming back to the presentation, I will say the worst thing about presenting is when you come and present without knowing the Oudis. When there are several of them, you need to know about each one, what their priorities are. For example, I do
that I will find out who all will be making the decisions and, if I have the opportunity, I will call or meet with everyone to understand what their priority is. Then when I go to present, I need to have something for everybody in that presentation.
Martin Hurych
You'll know how we're going to proceed in a week, because Peta and I have decided to do a experiment and for the first time in the history of Zážeh to do a double episode. If we've got you excited about anything so far, we've we gave you some information, some motivation, so we did our job well and we will look forward to seeing you next week. In the meantime, check out my newsletter, try to sign up for it, or give us your likes and subscriptions so you don't miss the episode that comes out in exactly one week. In the meantime, thank you, fingers crossed, and best wishes for success.
(automaticky přepsáno Beey.io, upraveno a kráceno)