Conversation with Ian Altman for the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast

Conversation with Ian Altman for The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast By John Jantsch

John Jantsch: This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Marketing Profs. Do you have the write stuff? Unleash your inner writer by downloading the latest Marketing Profs marketing writing kit for free. You'll find it in the show notes, but you can go to Mprofs.com/ducttape.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Ian Altman. He has a little business called Grow My Revenue. You can find the website at GrowMyRevenue.com. He's also the author of Upside Down Selling and a book we're gonna talk a little bit about today. He's the co-author of a book called, Same Side Selling with Jack Quarles. So, Ian, thanks for joining me.

Ian Altman: John, it's a pleasure to be here. We have so many friends in common. I'm just glad we're gonna have an opportunity to chat a little bit.

John Jantsch: Yeah, amen. So what do you mean by same side?

Ian Altman: Well, I think, traditionally, people always think of buying and selling in kind of an adversarial mindset. And so one of the things that we often see is most every book that's ever been written about sales talks about know your enemy. They either use a game metaphor or a battle metaphor.

John Jantsch: Yeah, like the sales playbook is very common, yeah.

Ian Altman: Exactly. So you think about it in a game metaphor. In every game, there's a winner and a loser, and the only thing different in a war metaphor is that the loser dies. So it's kind of dramatic. And then we wonder why there's this adversarial tension between buyers and sellers.

And so Jack and I − Jack's background − my co-author, Jack Quarles, spent two decades in the purchasing and procurement side of the world. And what we talk about is the adversarial traps that pit buyer and seller against each other. And, instead, if you think of the buyer and seller metaphorically as putting a puzzle together, then they have to be working from the same side of the table, or it just won't work. 2

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I really like that puzzle metaphor, too, because it does kind of suggest there's a solution where everybody wins. And you may not find it, but there's a potential solution where everybody wins.

And, in fact, when you sent me the book, you've got these handy little − what would we call these? − flash cards, I guess, so somebody can think about these elements, and you call them Entice, Disarm, and Discover, as part of the puzzle-solving, I guess. So you wanna break each of those down?

Ian Altman: Yeah. So the idea behind Entice, Disarm, and Discover, there's a couple things to think about. Most people, when someone asks, what do they do, well, they respond politely, and they tell people what they do. The problem is the person on the receiving end probably doesn't know why they might need what that person does yet.

John Jantsch: Or they know for darn sure they don't need that.

Ian Altman: Yeah, which, by the way, that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

John Jantsch: No, I mean, because of their perception, I mean.

Ian Altman: Exactly, exactly.

John Jantsch: It's like, "Oh, you're a lawyer? Well, I don't need that."

Ian Altman: Exactly. "Oh, you're someone trying to shove something down my throat? I'm gonna pass. Best offer I've had all day. I'm gonna go with Option B."

John Jantsch: Right.

Ian Altman: And so the idea behind Entice, Disarm, and Discover is this notion that, first, we have to entice someone's interest by describing problems that we solve with extraordinary results. Then we wanna disarm the notion that we're just there to sell something by acknowledging that most of the people we meet with aren't a good fit for what we do. And then we need to trigger a discovery phase to learn more about their situation to see whether or not we can help.

And so those three steps make it so that we're now positioning ourselves as someone who's there to help solve important challenges, not someone who's just trying to peddle stuff. 3

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I think my favorite, quite frankly, is the disarm element, too, because I do think that there's this constant sort of wall up. "Okay. I better hold onto my wallet because you're here, and something bad's gonna happen." And I think that any way in which you can get somebody to say, "Hey, relax, this is only gonna work if it works for you," I think is a great way to then have them actually listen to what you're talking about.

Ian Altman: Absolutely. So, if you think about it, even in your business, if someone asks, "What do you do?" you can describe that, or you could describe, "Here are the problems that people typically come to me to solve." Now, someone goes, "Wow, you know what? I'm having those same problems."

And then you say, "But you know what? Even though I've got a track record of delivering amazing results, I find that less than half the people I speak with end up being a good fit where they can get those same sorts of results. The rest of them aren't a good fit, and I refer them to somebody else. But I'm happy to learn more about your situation to see whether or not I might be able to deliver those results for you."

Well, what it does is the person who identified with that problem, an interesting thing happens in their brain. They're now saying, "Man, I wonder why he couldn't help me. Of course he could help me."

John Jantsch: "What's wrong with me?"

Ian Altman: I don't need to convince John why he could help me, and it changes the dynamic because you've basically said, "Look, I'm walking away. I may be able to help you, but only if it's important to you." And it's not some Jedi mind trick. I believe effective sales is about getting to the truth as quickly as possible.

John Jantsch: So a couple things I wanna go back to there: The one thing I really liked, you talked about that entice because so many people do say − I'll keep it in my business − "Oh, well, we help people with their social media." Well, most people are sitting out there saying, "I sure as hell don't need any social media."

But, if you start by saying, "We help people get more of this and more of that and be more profitable and solve this issue," like you said, now, all of a sudden, it's like, "Oh, and social media happens to do that? Oh, okay, now, I'll listen." 4

Ian Altman: You know you're absolutely right. And, in fact, I even take it a step further than that. People will say, "Well, I want better reach. I want better this. I want better that." And a lot of businesses won't spend money in those circumstances.

But if you said to them; "Look, people come to me because their competitors really have inferior offerings, but they get more attention than they do. They tell us that they're not growing as fast as other people who aren't as good as them are growing, and they have trouble just capturing attention of this changing marketplace, and they don't know how to reach them.

"And for about half the organizations I speak with, we deliver amazing results where, in a matter of months, they see a dramatic change in the size of their business. But, sadly, we can't help everybody. But if that's something that's important to you, I'm happy to learn more to see whether or not we can help."

When you talk about the problems that someone's trying to solve, that becomes really attractive. It's interesting. On my own website this month − or last month, in our web statistics, beyond our homepage, the single most trafficked page on our site is a page titled, "Problems We Solve."

John Jantsch: That's great. I think everybody should have that. That should be like your "About Us" page.

Ian Altman: Yeah.

John Jantsch: Yeah, yeah. One of the things you talk about − and I'm a huge fan of this, but this scares sales folks to death, and certainly, it probably scares our sales managers more than the salespeople − but this idea of narrowing your focus. You can't help everybody. You need to really go after the people that you're ideally suited − I mean, I've been preaching that for at least a decade. But a lot of sales organizations are still sort of resistant, right? It's like, "Oh, my target market is anyone who has money."

Ian Altman: Yeah. Here's the thing. Once you get honed in on the problems you're good at solving − and it's not the problems you would like to solve, but the ones that you're good at solving where you can actually demonstrate your ability to deliver results − then what happens is you now become a trusted subject matter expert rather than a salesperson. 5

I recently had − one of my articles in Forbes talked about this idea of there are three sales personas. So you can either be the order taker, the salesperson, or the subject matter expert. And the order taker, someone says, "Here's what I want," and you say, "Here's how much it is," great, delivered. The salesperson thinks their job is to convince the client they need what they're selling, whether they need it or not. And the subject matter expert is the person the client relies on to help them determine what they need to solve the challenge they're facing.

And it doesn't matter what persona you think you are. All that matters is, if you're the customer, which one do you want? And the answer is always the subject matter expert.

So, if you're spread too thin, you're a subject matter expert to nobody. And, as the world evolves, if you're an order taker, guess what? If you're not already being taken over by Amazon, you will be, you just wait.

John Jantsch: Yeah, the order taker is only taking orders if they're the lowest price.

Ian Altman: Yeah.

John Jantsch: You hinted at this already, this idea of getting to the truth. And I've said this and written about this many times. Even in a consulting type of engagement, the only time they really go bad is when I didn't dig far enough to know what value meant to them, or what a result was gonna look like, or how we were gonna measure a result, or what they really, really expected of me. And I talk about it as asking these tough questions.

And I think, a lot of the times, we wanna get the sale so bad that we haven't really even understood maybe what their expectations are, and I think that that's the essence of your idea of get to the truth, isn't it?

Ian Altman: You know what? It is, and there's this idle notion that, look, you never wanna get a no in sales, and no isn't a bad answer because it means you're not gonna waste more time on it. And in my first book, in Upside Down Selling, I profile a company that doubled their growth rate in one year, and they did so by pursuing 40 percent fewer opportunities. So it's all about getting to the urgency and the truth in what the client' trying to solve. 6

The second thing that you touched on that I think is key for people to really understand, John, is that when we focus on results − I know you talk about this; I talk about this − when you're talking to your client about results, and you're making sure you've got a meeting of the minds about what success looks like and what results are looking to achieve, guess what? The client you can't deliver results for is gonna be a train wreck anyhow. So you don't wanna sell that deal.

Even if you think your job is to sell stuff, your job is to sell good business, and if you get a client whose expectation is, "Oh, yeah, you're gonna triple my business in 30 days," guess what? Unless right now, they're doing $10.00 and they expect to go to $30.00, it's probably not gonna happen. If it's anything meaningful, it's not gonna happen that quickly.

John Jantsch: Yeah, no question. And, over the years of doing this, that's the only time I've gotten myself in trouble is when I haven't spelled those things out and asked those tough questions, even just, "How are we gonna measure the success of this?" That's a really − that's a big trap for consultants.

Ian Altman: Oh, yeah. Well, there's one more side of it, which is: So let's say you say to your customer − you're talking to a client, and they say, "Well, we're looking to double our web traffic in the next 90 days." And you think, based on what you see, that you can help them draw 20 percent more of the right audience, but you can't double it.

Then it's your job to say, "You know what? I don't know if that's a realistic goal. And I'd love to be able to tell you that, but my expectation is we're probably gonna increase it by 10 percent, maybe 20 percent over that timeframe. And if you're not comfortable with that, we probably shouldn't move forward."

John Jantsch: Of course, there is the classic upsell that you could do right here now, too, though. There's always a way. There's always a way, you know. It's just not in the budget we're currently talking about though.

Ian Altman: Exactly. Well, and the thing there is, could you do it? Yeah. "Oh, you wanna increase your web traffic with potential clients? Oh, then that's different."

John Jantsch: That's right. 7

Ian Altman: "I thought you just wanted more clicks, because I could hire a bunch of people to just visit your site all week."

John Jantsch: Yeah. So one of the things I've been talking a lot about to groups of salespeople is this idea that they have to be educators. If they wanna be the subject matter expert, maybe that's actually gonna require them to write some things and to contribute to a Forbes, like you mentioned. So why are sales organizations so reluctant to push their sales folks to do that?

Ian Altman: Well, I don't even know if it's a reluctance to push their sales folks. I think it's an evolution of what the salesperson means. And our friend, Marcus Sheridan, talks about this, as well. The reality is that, historically, the salesperson was the Type A, aggressive, in your face, won't take no for an answer, type of person. Well, we don't have to put up with that garbage anymore.

John Jantsch: That's right.

Ian Altman: So, if that person doesn't really resonate with us, we're like, "Okay, great, talk to my voicemail. You're in my spam folder. I'm gonna ignore you. Now, we have a great relationship."

But we're always happy to meet with a subject matter expert. And if you're a salesperson that wants to reach your customers, they better see a reason to meet with you, or you just not getting the meeting.

And so you can either walk in to somebody and say, "Look, here are the trends we're seeing in your industry. I'm happy to share what our research is and what my experience is and see how that fits with you," and you're probably gonna get an audience; or you can say, "Hey, I wanna come in. I wanna show you our slide deck of a whole bunch of stuff that, hopefully, by Slide 27, what we find is a subset of our clients will slip into a coma. We can put a contract in front of them, and if we can get them to move their arm a little bit, we can get a signature." I mean, that's almost the strategy that some of these old-school companies take.

John Jantsch: Yeah. So the subject matter expert, one of the things that I know you talked about in the book, and certainly I'm a fan of, one of the things I think the subject matter expert also has to be able to do is to say, "Oh, well, we don't do that, but here's a valuable solution. Here's a trusted partner. Here's maybe even a competitor that could actually get you the result that you want." Again, is that going a step too far in this idea of a trusted − 8

Ian Altman: It's not at all. And, in fact, in my prior business − as you know, I grew some companies to values in excess of a billion dollars, and now, I just help other people in growing their businesses − one of the things that we used to do is, if we weren't the right person for a solution, if we didn't feel we could deliver results, we'd just tell the client flat out, "Look, we're probably not the best people. We think these other people can help you though."

So the old-school salesperson says, "Oh, now, I just lost a deal." But what would happen is, for the next ten years, anything that client was going to purchase, they called us first. And the discussion was never about price. We had software and business process consulting.

And we'd get − someone calls up and says, "Oh, we need a new piece of hardware for our IT infrastructure." You're talking about a half-million-dollar purchase. "Who should we buy it from? We know you guys don't do it, but whoever you tell us to buy it from, that's where we're gonna buy it from." Okay, great.

And we'd find people we felt could do the best work, and we would never take a dime from those people. But guess what? Those people, in turn, when someone said, "Hey, who solves this problem?" they're, like, "Oh, you've gotta to Ian's guys," because they felt a sense of obligation, but also realized, hey, we're always looking out for the client's best interest. We always deliver results. We're a safe person to refer business to, and we get a lot of business because of that.

And that notion of restraint, as we talked about in Same Side Selling, is the hardest thing for most salespeople to get because they wanna sell more stuff. But here's the problem. If your client's evaluating your capabilities on a scale from 0 to 10, 10 being total mastery, 1 being total lunatic, whatever drags you down lowers your average overall.

So they could say, "Wow, here are three things we want them to do. These two, these guys do at a 9. They do this one thing at a 5." And what happens is it all gets skewed towards the negative, so, on average, they think of you as a 6. If you'd just stayed away from the thing that you're a 5 at, you'd be a 9, and you'd win that business. And then the other people you bring in can deliver that other piece of the 9. 9

John Jantsch: And that kind of loops back to narrowing your focus. A lot of times, there are companies that have stayed in business that they don't really even wanna serve anymore, but they need to lop it off instead of bleeding it to death.

Ian Altman: By the way, I get that this is a tough thing to do because, if your business is, let's say, just barely profitable, and you're struggling making payroll, for me to walk in there and say, "Look, you've gotta get rid of these two clients," the guy's, like, "Dude, I can't even pay my bills."

I'm not saying you just fire people haphazardly, but if strategically, you say, "Look, these guys are not strategic for us. This is not the right type of client for us. We need to focus on this area, so we can replace those clients with the right type of clients," once you get a mix of the right type of clients, those people will refer you to business that'll help you grow because you're delivering amazing results, as opposed to just delivering effort.

John Jantsch: So we're gonna end on this kind of age-old − I wouldn't call it argument; I think everybody's pretty clear on it, but it's certainly something that gets talked about a lot − and that is the idea of selling value over price. And it's a real challenge, I think, for a lot of people because, if the buyer doesn't know any different, the only thing they can compare is price. So how do you help them start appreciating this idea of value − because it goes beyond saying, "No, our stuff's really valuable."

Ian Altman: You mean that doesn't work?

John Jantsch: Well, it works for a while, I suppose, but at some point, if you're gonna get somebody to sign a six or seven-figure deal, I believe that they have to fully appreciate that the return is gonna be $3 million or $30 million.

Ian Altman: Exactly. Well, and most of it comes not from you talking about what your solution's going to do, but actually, earlier in the process, talking about what their issue is, how their issue is impacting them, and how important that is to them, compared to other things on their plate. So we call that issue impact and importance that says, usually, what most people do is they see issue, and they focus on that, which is kind of the tip of the iceberg.

So, if you think of it in the Simon Sinek world of what versus why, the issue is the what, and impact and importance is the why. So, if 10

you start asking your client, "Well, so let's say you didn't solve this thing, what would happen?" And their answer is, "Well, it'd be no big deal. I mean, we'd just look at it again next year," they're not gonna spend money to solve the problem because it's not impactful enough for them.

But, once someone understands and can articulate, "Man, here's the consequence to our business. Here's how it impacts me personally. And if I don't solve this thing, I'm gonna lose my job," it makes it pretty easy now because we should never present price outside of the context of impact.

And so there's a concept we use in the book called FIT or finding impact together that's all about that. And there's even a model that now I share with people with the Same Side improv game we've built, which is these four quadrants of information you collect during a meeting that really is the difference between did you have a meaningful meeting, or was it a good meeting that might qualify for a good meeting if you were dating, but not necessarily in business?

John Jantsch: Well, and I think that that idea of, you know, I kind of hearken it back to the way that I think a lot of medical problems are treated. Do you want me to fix the symptom by giving you an aspirin or something, or do we wanna actually look at curing the disease?

And I think that that's the − once you start understanding the impact and the value of that, even if it's − you know, we have folks that I think I have sold over the years that the value to them was they were gonna start getting to go home earlier at night because, now, their business wasn't gonna be such chaos. Well, they put a really high price tag on that. And I think, if you just go in, and you don't appreciate and understand that value to them, I think sometimes, you'll be selling the wrong thing.

Ian Altman: You're 100 percent right, and it's something that it's tough for a lot of people to get their arms around because it's like, "Yeah, but I go out and show them a demo, and I make all − then they're gonna fall in love with it." And you know what? It usually doesn't happen that way.

And, by the way, one of the things I always tell people is, if you're more passionate about solving the problem than your customer is, then bring your wallet because you're gonna have to pay for it. 11

John Jantsch: There's no question, and I've certainly experienced that over the years. Caring more than my customers did about the result is a tough way to go bald or something.

Ian Altman: It's a tough lesson.

John Jantsch: So let's end on one thing that I think, in about a minute, we can probably solve. How do you get sales and marketing on the same page?

Ian Altman: Great question. So, as you know, I spend a lot of time with our friend, our mutual friend, Marcus Sheridan. We actually speak at a lot of events. We're doing actually a workshop at Content Marketing World this year about this very thing.

And what I think, in the past, what people would see is, okay, sales had one mindset, and marketing had a different mindset, and they kind of failed to recognize that they're both trying to accomplish the same thing.

And, instead, what we need to do is realize that the salespeople are on the frontline, speaking to customers, getting valuable information that should be part of marketing. And marketing has to realize that their job is not to attract clicks or views; it's to attract the people who you can help the most.

And, oftentimes, for my clients, it's a matter of, look, one meeting a month, sales and marketing, hold them together. And they actually work side by side, trying to solve these issues together. And guess what? Your salespeople need to contribute content to marketing, and your marketing people occasionally should attend a meeting with sales.

John Jantsch: Yeah, go out on what used to be called ride-alongs.

Ian Altman: Yeah, and you know what? You'll get amazing insight from doing that, and it's not magic.

John Jantsch: Yeah, but I think the real key is it actually is a cultural shift because I've certainly gone into organizations, said, "Yeah, salespeople need to start contributing content," and depending upon the current culture of the environment, you either get scorn or laughter at the notion of that.

But I think you're right. It really points to a change in who's a marketing person, who's a salesperson, who's a serviceperson. I 12

think that all of them, if we're gonna create this kind of end-to-end customer journey, I think they all need to be on the same page, or the only person that really suffers is the customer, which ultimately means they'll take their money elsewhere.

Ian Altman: Yeah, and eventually, you get to the point where I think the evolution is that you're gonna see a very blurred line between sales, marketing, and customer service because it really all comes back to that same level of the subject matter expert, and that's what clients are looking for.

John Jantsch: I mean, even throw engineers in there or programmers in there because I think that, depending upon the business model, I think they're some tremendous customer service, sales, and marketing people.

Ian Altman: Yeah. By the way, the case study in Upside Down Selling I was mentioning, these guys doubled their growth rate in that short period of time, and they have a salesforce of zero. They literally engaged − what we did is we engaged all their non-salespeople to know what types of questions to ask, how to conduct a meeting that generates results, rather than − I mean, I always laugh.

You say, "Well, gee, they had a good meeting." "Really? What made it a good meeting?" "Oh, we had a good conversation. They really liked me." And I always say, "Oh, was this a business meeting or a date?" because that's a good way to qualify a good date, but I don't think this is dating.

So what were they trying to solve? Why? What were the results? Who else was impacted? If you don't know those things, then maybe you were at the wrong meeting.

John Jantsch: Talking to Ian Altman, author of Same Side Selling. You can find him at GrowMyRevenue.com. And, Ian, thanks for joining me. I'm pretty sure I'll see you probably at Content Marketing World will be the next time.

Ian Altman: I'm sure we'll see you soon. Thanks again, John.

[End of Audio]

Duration: 26 minutes