How to Sell Without Selling: A Psychology-Driven Sales Approach | St John Craner

What if the secret to better sales isn’t selling harder—but helping buyers feel safe enough to buy?

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, I sit down with St John Craner, founder of Agrarian Rural Marketing, to explore a fresh, psychology-driven approach to sales that flips traditional methods upside down.

Drawing on his unique background—farm life in rural England combined with decades of psychology and sales expertise—St John explains why most sales training fails: it activates the wrong part of the buyer’s brain. He breaks down the three parts of the buyer’s brain (fear, feel, and think) and shows how to keep prospects in the “feel” brain, where trust and connection are built.

Instead of pushing products, St John teaches how to become a “buyer’s assistant”—a trusted guide who asks better questions, creates urgency naturally, and helps prospects close themselves when they’re ready.

We also dig into his proven lead generation strategies, including:

• Building multiple “legs” for your lead generation stool so your business never wobbles
• How a weekly sales email generated hundreds of thousands in revenue over time
• Why closing problems are really opening problems—and how to fix them
• How consistency beats intensity in sales success
• Why “out-teaching” your competitors is the ultimate sales advantage

Whether you’re a small business owner, rural entrepreneur, or sales professional, this conversation will help you rethink everything you know about selling—and replace pressure tactics with trust, psychology, and proven systems that actually work.

St John Craner: Founder & CEO of Agrarian Rural Marketing

Website: https://www.agrarian.co.nz/

Website: https://www.ruralsalessuccess.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stjohncraner/

Podcast (Apple): Click Here

Podcast (Spotify): Click Here

#StJohnCraner #AgrarianRuralMarketing #RuralSalesSuccess #SmallBusinessPivots #SmallBusiness #Entrepreneurship #BusinessGrowth #SalesStrategy #SalesPsychology #BuyerPsychology #LeadGeneration #SalesCoaching #MarketingTips #BusinessMindset #OklahomaCity #BOSS #MichaelDMorrison 

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Sinjin from Agrarian
• 4:51 Psychology of Self: Master Your Own Mind
• 9:11 Triangulation of Truth for Business Success
• 14:09 Building Predictable Lead Generation Systems
• 19:15 Creating Content That Nurtures and Serves
• 25:37 Understanding the Buyer's Brain: Three Parts
• 32:44 From Sales Rep to Trusted Advisor
• 39:07 Closing Problems Are Opening Problems

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

All right, welcome to another Small Business Pivots. Today we have another special guest from around the world and he literally is around the world from us today. Sometimes they're down the street, sometimes they're stayed across, but he is literally across the pond, as they say. But I know that only business owners can say their name and their company. Like the business owners, I'm going to let you introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about you business owners.

Speaker 2: 0:24

I'm going to let you introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about you. Oh, thanks, michael. Thanks for having me. I'm Michael Sengen. I run a business called Agrarian which specializes in training sales teams that sell to the agricultural sector, and what I do specifically is I teach them how to get comfortable with the concept of selling without the yucky icky feelings and using the sales superpower that is human psychology. So we can get into that.

Speaker 1: 0:48

Oh, this will be good. I love neuroscience. Our listeners know I love neuroscience, growth mindsets, all that cool stuff. So let's introduce the show real quick and we'll be right back. Welcome to Small Business Pivots, a podcast produced for small business owners. I'm your host, michael Morrison, founder and CEO of BOSS, where we make business ownership simplified for success. Our business is helping yours grow. Boss offers business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at businessownershipsimplifiedcom. All right, welcome back to Small Business Pivots, my friend Sinjin. So you are in what country?

Speaker 2: 1:40

I'm based in New Zealand and I spend a little bit of time. Maybe you North American listeners think it's Australia. I spend a lot of time there as well, so I jump between the two countries and I serve clients in North America, canada, uk, australia and New Zealand, but I get to live in a very nice part of the world. Don't probably spend as much time here as I would wish, but I'm on a mission to help as many people as I can.

Speaker 1: 2:05

Fantastic. So in your life journey, what are some trials, tribulations, maybe what helped you become an adult like you are? I think we all have a journey of how we got where we are, Anything that stands out so our listeners can kind of catch up with who you are, the background that you have kind of catch up with who you are, the background that you have.

Speaker 2: 2:25

Yeah, I come off a farm in UK, in England, and so lived on a farm, grew up on a farm and then got very interested in human behavior and decision making. North American listeners will know their football, american football but we're into rugby and I remember going to Twickenham, which is a very large stadium in London where English rugby play, and I was wondering why people advertise. And I then had an insatiable curiosity around influence and persuasion. And then I read a book by Robert Cordini called Influence, which a lot of you and your listeners will know, and that was a seminal book for me. And I read that book I I reckon about at least because I'm old now um, about 30 years ago, and that really got me on my way to just becoming a lifelong learner around humans, how they tick, uh, how they make their decisions, how they process and all that sort of thing.

Speaker 2: 3:19

And so I've had a marketing career. I've looked for a lot of corporates. I've worked for McCann Ericsson, I've worked for lots of big fancy pants ad agencies. I've done corporate, I've done marketing. And then someone said to me hey, cingin, you're really good at sales and I always had a business development sort of responsibility in my career and then for the last 10 years I just went full circle back to my rural roots, my farming roots, uh, and specialized in this particular sector. And so what I've combined is I try to combine three rare and valuable things sales, psychology and rural, and putting those three things together are quite unusual. Some of the best advice I got is if you've got rare and unique skills, that's really going to help differentiate you.

Speaker 2: 4:06

And, as we said before we hit the record button um, you know I'm a small business. Um, we are growing and we're growing rapidly and we're very thankful for that. But generalities repel and specificity sells. Now I'm not being cute just to rhyme like dr zeus, but for your listeners, so they remember it generalities repel, specificity cells the. The biggest mistake I made before I started this business was trying to be everyone to everything, every, everything to everyone. And then when I specialized, it was almost like a magnetic quality because it pre-qualified prospects come to me, because they understood what I stood for, what I was about, my point of view, my philosophy, and we can get into all of that. But that's a very short crunch version of how I got to where I am and we can unpack that, or we can talk about sales and psychology wherever you want to go.

Speaker 1: 5:00

Well, let's jump into sales and psychology, because I know a lot of our small business owners struggle with sales and for those not watching the video version of this podcast, you have a lot of books behind you and sometimes that's the problem with business owners is we read so many books, so many videos and we get confused. And I know as a business coach myself. I work with small business owners and they're just inundated with so much information they don't even know which is real and which is not. But I'm on your side with the psychology side, the neuroscience. We are certified in DISC, which is predictable behavior traits, and so it really goes a long way. So I'd love for you just to jump in with the essentials of what you feel people should understand and know and how they can sell better, make more sales.

Speaker 2: 5:57

Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Now, first thing, listeners and Michael, the most important psychology you need to master is the psychology of yourself. I'm just doing a big pause there so that lands so people understand that is, if you want to be a success in sales or in business, you have to master your own psychology. And you have to do that by obviously you know in terms of daniel goldman and emotional intelligence. First of all, you have to develop a self-awareness. Now, the only way you develop self-awareness is through self-reflection. Or sometimes you've got a coach or a mentor or an advisor that is willing to hold up that mirror to you and say hey, sinjin, the way you're approaching life or the way that you're interacting or the way that you're communicating or the way that you're positioning isn't working. And I had to learn the hard way, which is that I had to learn the hard way, which is that I had to change and we'll get into that of my approach and that it wasn't about me, it was always about the prospect, was always about the person in front of me, and I think that was a maturity thing, michael, that I started to work it out and it's, you know, we talked about before we hit the record button, the pogo and it's not pogo stick, but pogo said this, and I always think of pogo stick when I say this. But you know we've met the enemy and it is us.

Speaker 2: 7:07

Now, most business owners you know this because you're much better than me, than this most business owners, small business owners, particularly unconsciously, self-sabotage their own businesses. They do, they don't do, the boring work, the repetitive, consistent work. Their intensity doesn't beat consistency and we all know that. And they do a lot of things. And to your point, all these books behind me there's a couple more box shelves over here. No flick, I love reading. I'm a lifelong learner. What I do is I don't just read, I use, I apply. I don't just attain knowledge, I apply knowledge and then I teach it, because the quickest and fastest way to retain knowledge is to actually teach it, which is called the explanation effect.

Speaker 2: 7:48

So a long answer to your question around. There's so much noise out there, there's so many books, there's so many podcasts, real shorts don't know where to go. What you need to do is you need to spot the patterns. Now I have this thing. I make up most of the things. Hopefully your listeners won't be disgusted by that comment. But I have this thing. I make up most of things. Hopefully your listeners won't be disgusted by that comment, but I have this thing called a triangulation of truth.

Speaker 2: 8:10

Now, if I had a serious God forbid if I had a serious health issue, I would not go to the first doctor and get all the advice from that one source, I'd go to a second and I'd go to a third and it's like a GPS or a triangulation point when you're hiking or tramping.

Speaker 2: 8:24

And it's like a GPS or a triangulation point when you're hiking or tramping and the true truth is in the middle of those three sources.

Speaker 2: 8:38

So when you're reading things, whether you're into sales or lead generation or marketing, you want to be a pattern recognition machine and you want to look and assemble and see thematics or themes or insights or patterns and you go. Well, they're saying it and they're saying it and they're saying it. Therefore, it must be true. So some of the systems we have set up in our business now have literally talked to us three times by three separate coaches and they are very similar systems and we know they're the truth because three different independent sources told us that. So we call it a triangulation of truth and I think it's a really good piece of advice for business owners who might be struggling or confused or don't know what to do and where to go. Get three. It's like you know when you go and get your roof repaired you're going to get three quotes. So go and get three sources independent and if they all match up, then you know it's the truth.

Speaker 1: 9:25

Yeah, no, that's great. I want to jump into systems real quick, because I think a lot of business owners will use the word procrastinate, but I don't know if that's really the word. I think they procrastinate because they don't have a system, so it's difficult to do what really needs to be done. So can you share some of the systems that you've come across?

Speaker 2: 9:46

Yeah, sure, absolutely. The best thing we learned was creating a repeatable, reliable and predictable lead generation system. So we have a very specific system we won't go into the details but that literally puts emails and phone numbers and pieces of data that we need to triage or prioritize those leads into my inbox and my team's inbox each and every day while I'm sleeping, from all over the world. Now we have spent literally hundreds of thousands of my own money developing that system again from three separate sources and optimizing that system. And there's that training quote. I can't remember who said it, but they said we do not fall to the level of expectations, we fall to the level of our systems. Now, business is a system and businesses needs continuity, it needs predictability, it needs reliability. A lot of business owners think they own their businesses, their businesses own them, and so you know, and I think your business needs to be system centric because people will come and go.

Speaker 2: 10:50

But, yeah, our system for lead generation is brilliant. You know, we, we we're very specific about our offer, our niche. We obviously only help people that sell to the rural sector, to farmers, where they're selling machinery or fertilizer or feed or animal health or genetics or veterinary or agri-tech or whatever it happens to be, and literally we have a system now that people will literally reach for the material that we put out there and whether it's books or cheat sheets or lead magnets, they come into our world and we qualify them and then, if they're right, we'll have a conversation with them and we'll get into that conversation. How we do that I'm happy to share that and then we work out if there's a fit and if we can help them. And if we can help them, we'll help them, and if we don't, we'll give them free resources and maybe talk to them next time.

Speaker 1: 11:36

I think one of the biggest challenges for small businesses in America is the start and the end of the sales process. So in other words, getting those leads in and then everybody has a conversation. You know, everybody can go have coffee, everybody can have a connection, meeting one-to-one, whatever people want to call it, but it's the getting them to you and then closing the end. So they're at the first and the end. It seems to be the biggest challenge that I hear from business owners. So can you do you have any advice on how to get those people into your pipeline?

Speaker 2: 12:11

Great question. What I do is I'm constantly putting out educational based content. I have a mantra in my world is that I serve to sell. I do not sell, I serve to sell. So what I do is I out-teach to out-sell, and I think those that educate the market own the market, and I'll live and die by that till my last dying breath. So what it is is I give and I give and I give and I give and I give before I get, and I'm generous. I think generosity is one of your best business strategies when it comes to promoting and positioning your business.

Speaker 2: 12:45

I write books. I bleed through the eyes. Not one word of any book I write is written by AI. It's expressed by my own philosophy, my own point of view. We'll get into that. It's a really, really important point of your own point of view. But basically what I do is I make sure I turn up and serve my audience every single day. Where it's the emails that I send out, it never finishes, it always starts.

Speaker 2: 13:11

So what I mean by that is you are constantly putting out quality, high quality content that people there might be a surprising truth about what you're putting out there. That's a really interesting concept I'm trying to give you lessons, as much as I can. A surprising truth, something that your particular ideal customer or niche or specific segment doesn't know, that you can help them with. And then what you do is you nurture that lead, because everyone wants to convert the lead, everyone's too fast. Uh, I see this for my north american clients, I see it australia, I see it uk, even here in new zealand they sell too fast and what they have to do, they've got to slow down. Now what I say to my students, because a lot of what I teach is counterintuitive to the traditional happy-clappy kind of sales training, rah-rah kind of debris that we have to pick up and you know, de-learn before we can learn again. And I won't go down that rabbit hole. But we see a lot of damage out.

Speaker 2: 14:07

There is we say you have to sell slow to sell fast, so you have to sell slow to sell fast, so you have to sell slow to sell fast. And what that means is you get them into your world. And you know the google experiment I think it came out last year some research from google, the 7-4-11. Now dan priestly in uk was talking about this. He's a good guy to follow. He says it's a 7-4-11 rule and it's not your 7-11 night store or your dairy or whatever you guys call it. It's seven hours of content across four channels and 11 interactions. Now 80 sales across any sector and I'll just give you the generic stuff 80 80 of sales are made in the 8th to 12th interaction. Those interactions don't all need to be one-on-one coffees, dms, it could be talking to clients, it'd be consuming your content, the interactions.

Speaker 2: 15:00

You. You've got to have that authority, you've got to have that content out there for people to know that you are worth following and worth listening to or potentially talking. And the magic, michael, when you do that is people come into your world pre-qualified, almost pre-sold, because they consume so much of your content and they understand. You know you have this beautiful podcast. I have one too in the rural world called rural sales show and I get wonderful guests on and people go.

Speaker 2: 15:28

You know I'm talking to like um, an agronomist in saskatchewan, in canada. He goes I've been listening to you. I won't do a Canadian accent because I'm rubbish at it and my accent's Mongol these days because I'm English and lived in New Zealand, so that's all over the place. But I've been listening to your podcast and I'm like that is, it just blows my mind and that opportunity is there for every one of your listeners. So show the world how you think and how good you are and put out content that nurtures and teaches and serves your market. So sorry, long answer to a question but hopefully good advice.

Speaker 1: 16:02

That's great. I love long answers and I think most of our listeners do too. One question this may be getting out of your lane, but I hear a lot of business owners say I am putting out what I think is good content but nobody's finding it. Do you have any suggestions or is that kind of out of your expertise?

Speaker 2: 16:21

No, no, great question I'll give you. I'll attempt at my best answer. If you're not getting engagement on your content, it's because you're off message. So the best way to create content is to have more conversations. So some people go oh, I don't know what to post, or I don't know what to write about. That's because you're not having enough conversations. And also, again, all these books around me the more you read, the better you write. So you can take your inspiration from the reading and you can take it from the inspiration of having conversations with your customers. You must want to have a, not to sell to them, but to understand.

Speaker 2: 16:55

Now, this is probably a really good piece of advice for some of your listeners. Go and ask someone for their advice. Ask them for their advice. This is something I tell my students to do, because people good people are very willing to give people good advice and a lot of people aren't valued for their opinions. And we're not like being disingenuine here or a false sense of authenticity. If you're generally curiously interested in getting advice, the answer is in your market's voice. It's the insight informs the strategy. So what happens is this is this, is when you know you've cracked it, you're sending out maybe.

Speaker 2: 17:34

I send out a weekly email. It's a text email. It doesn't have any flashy HTML. It doesn't look like a sales email. It looks like a normal email. It's a sentence, case three to five word headline and then it's just a text email. This is the single best thing I've ever done. I've been doing this religiously for nine years. Every Tuesday morning my list gets an email from me and it's been worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars of business to me over the years.

Speaker 1: 18:08

And what I do is is helping yours grow. Boss offers business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at businessownershipsimplifiedcom. If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and share it as well. Now let's get back to our special guest.

Speaker 2: 18:32

This is the single best thing I've ever done. I've been doing this religiously for nine years. Every Tuesday morning my list gets an email from me and it's been worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, of business to me over the years. And what I do is I talk about a prospect or an influencer or affiliate or a client or a partner or family member, or something I read or something I watch or something I consume, and I write about it, and you don't get writer's block when you're reading and you're talking. So if you've got writer's block or you've got a block in content, it's because you need to be consuming content to create content. Now there's a whole discussion around don't be a consumer, be a creator, but you have to consume the content to create the content.

Speaker 2: 19:23

My best advice is go and speak to more of your market, ask them for their advice, and that will really inform your content, because it's really noisy out there. Inform your content because it's really noisy out there. There's, you know, ai is just it's. It's frightening how noisy it's going to get out there. But if you can, then start, say, writing an email to your list every week and then you hear the magic words hey, michael, were you? Were you in our staff room? Were you in our? Were you in our, you know, management meeting? Last week we were, we were saying that very thing. We were having exactly that same conversation. Bingo, that's when you know you're getting it right, because you're talking exactly into the mind of your market. And the best way to get in the mind of your market is to talk to them and have conversations and ask for their advice.

Speaker 1: 20:09

Fantastic. Well, just for our listeners. As a business coach, I try to share some tips I found along the way. Of course, I didn't create all of these, but I create or plan my day ahead. So the night before I have a little daily planner, but one of the sections is deep thinking thoughts for the day. That comes to mind that I've read or something. I just write it down and then, when I'm needing to write something, I'm like there's my catalog of things that people would be interested in. So again, I didn't create that, but that might be helpful to some of our listeners.

Speaker 2: 20:46

Yeah, I was just going to say on that. So on my iPhone I literally have a notes section with my weekly email and whenever I see an idea or think of an idea, I write it down straight away. So I don't lose that thought and, just like you, I then just go. I know what I'm going to write about next week. So I've literally got hundreds, if not thousands, of ideas about what I'm going to write about, and if you're running out of ideas, it's because you're not curious enough about the world around you. Again, it's because you're not curious enough about the world around you. You know.

Speaker 2: 21:15

Again, I think curiosity is a superpower as well. I think that's probably been one of the biggest game changers for me in terms of opening more doors. For me is getting socially curious about the particular market I serve and serving the best I can, and I show up for my market by doing the work, being a lifelong learner, reading the books, your brilliant man, warren Buffett, big, big hero of mine, as was charlie munger, late charlie munger, and you know I think it was oh, 13 years ago I read warren buffett and he and he said something seminal which really, really struck a call for me and I've lived with by ever since. He says the more you learn, the more you earn, and I've literally lived that mantra from the day I read those words and they were poignant, they were powerful, and I've made a lot of money by just following that advice.

Speaker 1: 22:04

Learn to earn. Learn to earn. Well, let's jump to the we're going to keep going through the steps on the sales. So we've got our people in the door. They're interested. We've educated them and we're talking about psychology and understanding yourself and all that stuff. So kind of what's that next area of sales that you have found that you could share with our audience?

Speaker 2: 22:28

Sure.

Speaker 2: 22:29

So, really, sales should be about pulling people towards you, not pushing them away. And, again, I think you do that for your content, for your positioning. I'll draw it on the iPad. I might be able to draw it if I can. If I can, I can't, but what I'll do is I'll describe something for people that perhaps can't see. This is you have a kitchen stool in your kitchen and you have, you know, hopefully, on that kitchen stool in your kitchen and you have, um, you know, hopefully, on that, on that kitchen stool, I'm going to see if I can do art school, which is, uh, not very pretty, but I'll see if I can do this. So there we go. So what we've got is we've got a kitchen stool and, as you can see, I haven't gone to art school, michael. So so, anyone that's watching this video, there is a kitchen stool and I don't sit on any kitchen stool in anyone's houses with one leg.

Speaker 2: 23:20

Now, most people crow on and boast about that. They don't need to advertise because they've got word of mouth or their business becomes referred. I go, hmm, interesting. And when I say interesting, I get curious rather than critical, which is a little trick of mine, a little hack, and I go hmm, what happens if you also did a weekly email I abbreviate a lot and I'm drawing the legs here and maybe you did some Facebook ads or maybe you appear on these wonderful podcasts like Michael's and over time you build more legs to your lead generating stool and this increases your list. Now what happens is I actually come from a family of doctors. I kid you not, so my writing is appalling and I abbreviate. But what you're doing here, the seat of the stool is held up and it has stability and certainty because the more legs, the more lead generation legs you have to this stool, the more stable and the more secure your business becomes. So I use this as a metaphor in terms of systems and teaching is your list, is your lifeline.

Speaker 2: 24:27

During covid, if you had to sell for an intermediate tree and you didn't have a list, you know how important your list is, michael. I know how important my list is. I'm constantly building my list. You know we had hundreds of people. I'd love it to be thousands, but we had hundreds because we're very niche. I had hundreds of quality people to my list each and every month who consume. Maybe they listen to my podcast or they listen to a podcast like this, or they click on one of my Facebook ads, or they see me at a conference, or they get a referral, or they read my weekly email, or they see me at a field days event, or I'm writing a book or something, so, or I write a media article, so it starts to become a freaking octopus. What it does is more legs, give you more leads, which gives you a bigger list, and that is how you create stability and certainty for any business. That's the. That's the model that I use. If that, if that makes sense absolutely, absolutely so.

Speaker 1: 25:23

Where does the psychology come in?

Speaker 2: 25:26

cool. So this is stuff we want to get into. Um, sales. The problem with sales is selling. I'll just say it again so the listeners are really, really clear the problem with sales is selling. Please, please, for the love of god, stop selling. Okay, stop talking so much. Don't tell, don't be a feature creature, get insatiably curious about the person in front of you and ask beautiful, well worded, intelligent, curious questions, and I'll share a few of them before we, before we finish today um, it's very important to understand the buyer's brain, because the brain will turn off when, uh, people are being sold to and you'll keep them what we call in the back of their brain.

Speaker 2: 26:15

Now, you don't need to be a neuroscientist to work out the anatomy of the brain, that there's basically three main parts. You need to, and I'm just going up on the screen for you here in a minute is uh, I want to bring it up so I can talk to it. If you just see on the screen here, um is, there's three main parts to our brain. So let's keep it really simple for listeners. There's the back part, which is your fear brain. There's a middle part, the limbic, which is your feel brain. F-e-e-l if anyone can't understand my accent because I'm croaky and then the front of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, is your think brain. So we have a thinking brain, a feeling brain and a fear brain.

Speaker 2: 26:58

Now, michael, when you have someone hard selling to you, do you feel or fear when you're with that salesperson? Oh, I fear, yeah, you fear. So what they're doing is they're creating a back of brain response. So let me draw something for your listeners as well, because obviously everyone loves singen's drawing, which is which is absolutely terrible, that I know. So if I do this and I draw sales rep, if you're selling, you're going to keep them literally in the back of their brain. Here. Now, the Pantone colors aren't the same, but the colors are the same. See, the back of the brain is red. Red is a danger zone because it's a fear zone.

Speaker 2: 27:33

So then I created something which I thought my little mind was kind of clever, but your listeners will we call it being a buyer's assistant, okay, and then over a period of time, you get to Mecca, which is what we call a trusted advisor. So there are kind of like three levels here level three, level two and level one. Now, level one will make you not much money. Level two will make you a lot more money. And level three, trusted advisor, which happens over a period of time, compound of time and experience, will make you a lot of money because you don't seek them. They seek you out and they find you and they don't shop you, they don't price you, they just choose you and pay you lots of money. But that happens over time. Everyone wants to skip the steps. Michael, if you can see the screen here, everyone wants to skip the steps and go straight to level three. Everyone skips the steps. Now, your listeners are really clever, which I know they would be. Have you noticed there's a connection between these two things.

Speaker 2: 28:43

If I could put these side by side, which I can't because I'm at the limit of my technical abilities even doing this, you can see that the three levels relate to the three levels in the brain. So the back of the brain is a sales rep. That's where you will suffer if you sell. But if you play the role of bar assistant, you keep them in the middle part of the brain, which is where they feel safe. I talk about buyer safety or psychological safety. In terms of psychology in in sales terms, it's never assuming the sale, because as soon as you assume the sale, you will elicit a fear or threat response and put your buyer in the back of their brain and over time, what you do is when you keep being a buyer's assistant, they feel safe with you and then they will tell you more and they're going to the thinking part of the brain, the top of the brain. So we talk about the back of the brain being fear, middle brain being feel and top of the brain being fear, middle brain being feel and top of the brain being think.

Speaker 2: 29:39

And it's really important to remember these three levels that I've written appallingly here abbreviated Stop selling, please stop selling your job.

Speaker 2: 29:50

Your only job, whatever you sell product, service you sell is to help your buyer make the best and most accurate informed decision. Now, if you do that, they will feel super safe with you. Better still, they'll buy more from you at a higher price because you're serving their needs, not your own, and they'll feel safer with you and they'll tell you more. And because they tell you more, you'll learn more. And because they tell you more, you'll learn more and then you'll earn more. And if you keep being a buyer's assistant and turning up with that frame and that identity and that hat over time they'll go. Do you know, michael, I'm not talking to anyone else. You are my go-to guy, I'm I'm talking to you and I'll buy everything that you have and that happens over a period of time, that that is not overnight. They say overnight success. I think it's about 10 years and we're getting there. But that's hopefully useful for your listeners in terms of those things.

Speaker 1: 30:47

Yeah, that's invaluable. I think Amazon has kind of damaged our thinking of wanting it now, and so sometimes in the sales process we're like how do we close this now? But I had someone just recently tell me that if you think about the buying process, people don't go to Amazon to shop. They're going there to buy. But when they're coming to you they're shopping like a business, not Amazon On Amazon. They're going there for a specific thing to buy, but for a business they're shopping, they have lower intent with us as business owners.

Speaker 2: 31:22

So this is why you need to play this role of buyer's assistant. It's so, so important to do that. Whatever you sell, or whatever product or service that you promote, you must be a buyer's assistant because you keep your buyers safe and when you treat your buyers differently, they will treat you differently. They no longer see you as a yucky, sleazy kind of car salesman. They go this Michael Morrison dude man. He asks really good questions. I feel super safe with him. Therefore, I'm going to tell him more about my specific problem or pain, or the problem I'm trying to solve, or why I'm potentially looking at this now and they're going to open up. So you've got to literally open up and the problem is, most sales is taught to sell. It's not. It's to help people buy and creates the conditions where people actually ask you if they can buy your thing. Now that's what sales is. Sales has got nothing to do with selling. It's all about helping your buyers make good, accurate and informed decisions. If you remember that, you're going to make a lot more money.

Speaker 1: 32:25

So stop selling Everybody, stop selling. That's great advice, Great advice. Well, towards the end of the process, I know there's some of those hesitant, reluctant buyers. What advice do you have for that part? Because you know there's just some people that can't make a decision Do you just keep asking better questions? How do you kind of end the sales process?

Speaker 2: 32:51

So, basically, most closing problems which I think is where your question is coming from are actually opening problems. So most closing problems are opening problems. What I mean by that is you haven't asked really good qualifying questions to either qualify or disqualify the prospect really quickly at the start. Now, michael, if you're reaching out to me and you're looking for rural sales training, go to the bid and you're saying, hey, I'm a owner in uh oklahoma and we're not selling enough tractors, enough steel, I've got grain augers or silos, and you reach out to me, the first question I'm going to ask you to qualify you is so, michael, could you tell me, like, why are you potentially even looking at something like this now? Now, there's a lot of psychology in that question. It's the ultimate qualifying question. I I have many of them, I have hundreds of questions like this, and what it is is then you have to tell me why you think you need what I've got. So you're selling to me, I'm not selling to you. So what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to reverse it. It's like and it's not a flex, it's not being stupid or arrogant or aggressive, it's like so, michael, tell me what's the specific problem you're trying to solve. And so then you, it elicits your buying motive, your intent, so I can better understand and qualify or disqualify if I can help you or not, which immediately puts you into the right part of your brain, which then means we're more likely to get a sale because I don't have to close you, because you close yourself. So this whole closing it's like, it's like my comment around stop selling, always be closing honestly. You know, excuse the metaphor, we just need to shoot people that say that. And I say that obviously in a metaphorical, hypothetical sense for anyone that's. You know, don't want to offend anyone, but like, stop trying to close people, open people up. And the way you open people up is by making sure they have all the information they need to make the good and most accurate informed decision.

Speaker 2: 34:44

Now what I can help your listeners is by asking questions like that. We don't have time to go into all of them. You're establishing two very important things people only buy for. Basically, I keep things really simple for your listeners. I could go into more complicated things, but we don't have time.

Speaker 2: 35:02

There are two things you need to establish when you're asking questions. You are obviously qualifying or disqualifying for priority and urgency, so you need to understand if this is a priority for them and there's an urgency for them, and if there's a priority and urgency, they are going to buy. If you have not established priority and urgency, they are not going to buy now, they will buy later. And this is why your lead, nurturing your content, is so important, because only about three percent of the people that you reach will buy from you now. You don't need to be check homes and buying pyramids to work this out. 37% of people will buy from you sometime later. But if you don't nurture those leads, they're going to forget about you.

Speaker 2: 35:45

So I have clients that let you pop up. They've been reading my emails or my socials for like years. I've never heard of them, they've never commented, they've never applied to an email. And then suddenly they pop up and say can you train my team? I'm like who are you? Where have you been? We've been reading your emails for like three years Now. Your business owners can be patient if they have enough prospects. So you've got to be prospecting and canvassing, and that's by giving and by being generous, and then people will see that you're genuine and you're not self-serving and you very much want to help them because you've got to give to get. It's a law of reciprocation, it's the law of human nature the more you give, the more you're going to get, and that's been really really very, very true for me. So you've got to give and give, and give, and give, almost give, and if anyone says, oh, but I can't give away my stuff, then you don't have enough stuff to give away.

Speaker 1: 36:37

Yeah, yeah, we hear that often that's an objection from business owners. They're like I don't want to give out too much information.

Speaker 2: 36:44

Well, you haven't got enough, then yeah, so this is why you have to be a lifelong learner. So closing problems are opening problems. Don't close people. Open them up. Qualify or disqualify for priority and urgency by asking well-worded questions and the customer is more likely to close themselves.

Speaker 1: 37:01

One area that I'm sure some listener is thinking is for those that have to do outreach. So what we're talking about is when people come to you or us, but what about when you reach out to them? How can you twist that so it works the same?

Speaker 2: 37:17

Yeah, I hate. You can see there's a certain theme to my advice here. I hate all the traditional sales training like sell, sell, sell, always be closing and cold calling. I detest cold calling. Now, if you have a really good lead generation system set up, you don't need cold call. They will come to you. So that's the first challenge I put to your listeners is actually set up a really good lead generation system and they will pre-qualify on their warm audience, not a cold audience.

Speaker 2: 37:45

However, if you do need to reach out to people, for the love of God, please do your homework and your diligence and make sure it is a warm call, not a cold call. So if I'm talking to you, michael, as a potential prospect, I'm going to make sure I've done my homework on you. I've researched you, I've found out as much as I can about you and when I reach out to you, I have something very specific that could be something that you potentially want to look at. I will also have a mountain of proof behind me that what I say I do actually works. So we have testimonial templates and case studies. I have hundreds of case studies in terms of our results.

Speaker 2: 38:24

So what I do is I'll normally find a point of familiarity, to reduce the natural cynicism, saying hey, michael, I've worked with businesses like you, just like yours, and we've achieved results just like yours. And we've achieved excuse me, croaky results just like this. But rather, listen to me, please have a look at it. And here's your guy. It's actually one of your competitors who we've worked with previously and you go hmm, interesting, I'm more likely to respond.

Speaker 2: 38:52

You know, again I'm croaky in a bit second. I didn't want to let you down by not turning up, but what I'm saying here is that if you can have specificity and relevancy to your reach out and you have demonstrated you've done your homework. I cannot tell you how many emails and LinkedIn messages I get that are completely generic. No one has done their homework on me and my business and said we've looked at your website and we've looked at this. They're just, excuse me, like a, like an email blast and no, no work, no care, no attention, and you've, you've lost me because I see it as complete spam and junk. You know, do your homework, do your homework.

Speaker 1: 39:32

Yep, yep, sound advice. Well, I think you've just wet the ears of many of our listeners wanting to learn more from you. What's the best way, where's the best place to find you? What's the best social media channel that you're on?

Speaker 2: 39:48

But if you're obviously in the rural, provincial setting, I have a podcast called the Rural Sales Show. So if you want to stand around sales and psychology, get into that. The best place they can go really to get any of my stuff it's all free. We do this, like you, for love and for serving people is wwwrural. That's R-U-R-A-L. Salessuccesscom. I'm sure your wonderful team will put that in the show notes and everything is in there that you could want. There's books, there's podcasts, there's emails all the socials so you have nothing to be scared of when it comes to sales. When you know that you're coming from the right place. You've got to have the right. Please, please, please, be a buyer's assistant, don't be a salesperson.

Speaker 1: 40:38

So would you say, sales is an ongoing educational journey.

Speaker 2: 40:43

Yeah, I mean. I basically say that generosity is your best strategy in sales by helping your customers make better decisions. Yep.

Speaker 1: 40:54

Well, you've been a wealth of information and a blessing to many. I wish you continued success. But I always ask one last question. If you're in front of an audience of business owners all industries, different seasons of business what is one thing that's applicable, that would be applicable for all of them? It could be a quote, a book or anything. Such a good question.

Speaker 2: 41:19

Consistency.

Speaker 1: 41:23

Yeah, that's where we lack.

Speaker 2: 41:26

That's hard to do too, chase, well you know, our whole world is buzzing and beeping and vibrating and yeah, so much noise You've got to focus. And vibrating and so much noise You've got to focus. I think the world's getting so noisy. It's really important to block time to think and then do. But honestly, my best advice if I only had that time, I'd say be consistent, just have consistency. Don't have intensity. Have consistency and you'll make so much more money. Golden, golden, well't have intensity, have consistency and you'll make so much more money.

Speaker 1: 41:58

Golden, golden. Well, thank you again for your time. Wish you continued success.

Speaker 2: 42:03

Thank you, Michael. Thanks for having me and putting up with me.

Speaker 1: 42:06

My pleasure. Thank you for listening to Small Business Pivots. This podcast is created and produced by my company, boss. Our business is growing yours. Boss, offers flexible business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at businessownershipsimplifiedcom. If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and share it as well. If you need help growing your business, email me at michael at michaeldmorrisoncom. We'll see you next time on Small Business Pivots.