Outwork, Outcry Outreachgrow Mediocrity featuring Ryan Brancheau

Ryan Brancheau (0:00)

People buy two things, right? They buy solutions to problems, and they buy good feelings.

And I think we have done such a great job this past decade of Focus on the Features and Benefits and how we solve the problem. And we walked away from, they're there to buy that good feeling, right? And y'all talked about it before on podcast, right? Like immediate satisfaction, that people drive through McDonald's, right? It's not always about a solution to problem currently, but how do we make people feel? How do we make people's lives better? I mean, a customer is as important as an employee, right? So when you leave, you either want them to buy from you, and they're better because they bought from you, right? You help their business. They're happy.

They're happy with the solution. They're happy to write that check. So I think it's important to remember it's not about the sale. It's about wanting to drive that continued relationship with us throughout the course of business.

SPEAKER_2 (0:53)

Welcome to the Selling from the Heart Podcast on the From the Heart Business Network. You've joined a global movement of sales professionals who are dedicated to being authentic and building trust.

We call it Selling from the Heart. Together, we're on a mission to bring sincerity and substance to the sales profession we all love. Get ready to be inspired and equipped as we join our hosts Larry Levine and Darrell Amy.

Darrell Amy (1:29)

Welcome to the Selling from the Heart Podcast. I'm your co-host Darrell Amy here today with Larry Levine, and we are joined by Ryan Brancheau, author of Memoirs of a Mediocre Salesman, Stories, Mistakes, and Hard Truths from a Career That Actually Worked. Ryan, welcome to Selling from the Heart. It's awesome to have you here.

Ryan Brancheau (1:48)

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Nice to see you both.

Larry Levine (1:51)

Same here. We're in for a treat, Mr. Darrell Amy.

Darrell Amy (1:53)

We are. Ryan, you know the question we ask every guest on this show, and that is, what does Selling from the Heart mean to you?

Ryan Brancheau (2:00)

Such a simple question, but a hard answer. Selling from the Heart to me just means leaving people better than they were before.

It's creating that trust, that confidence, and creating those good feelings through every interaction.

Larry Levine (2:17)

This is good.

Walk us through this, Ryan. What's that look like? Just curious. What's that leaving people in a better place than when you met them? What's that look like through Ryan's lens?

Ryan Brancheau (2:28)

I think you go, especially with y'all, it goes two different ways.

There's the sales and then there's the sales leadership aspect of it.

Let's go to the sales leadership aspect first. I think a lot of times we forget that last part of my answer as far as creating those good feelings. I think a lot of times as sales leaders, it's easy to focus on the negative, to coach and point out what might have went wrong in a conversation with the customer, or what's not going right in a pipeline or a forecast. But I think we need to slow down a lot of times and create that trust through candid conversations of why we're having the conversation in the first place. That's not for the sale, it's to make them successful. Salespeople just want to be successful. We don't want the confidence going out. So I think it's creating that good feeling as a leader, to let them know what a good outcome looks like, what it feels like, remind them what it feels like, and it makes them better. Because if you do that, I think we can have our teams accomplish things they never thought possible. I think we've all been there. We're at points of our careers we never thought was possible before, but we've had those people bend down and lift us up, but they lifted us up the right way.

Darrell Amy (3:41)

Yeah. You know, I think that's such a great question to ask. What do we want people to feel? Because obviously, we go into a sales situation for our sales friends, right?

I know walking in, I know what I want them to do. Sales manager, same thing. I know what I want someone to do. But to also ask that second question, what do I want them to feel? That's powerful.

Ryan Brancheau (4:07)

I think it's huge.

It's something that stuck with me early in my career. I remember reading it. I can't remember the book. It was, I want to say like winning customers for life. But it was people buy two things, right? They buy solutions to problems and they buy good feelings.