Transcript

Michael Palumbos (00:00.626)
Welcome to the Family Biz Show, where we dive deep into the fascinating world of family-owned businesses. I'm your host, Michael Palumbos, and in each episode, we'll bring you inspiring stories, practical insights, and expert advice from successful family business owners and industry thought leaders. Hidden in this grandparent-grandchild philanthropy and in the process is actually young children learning to ask for something in a very safe environment.

This is step by step, paint by numbers, get your strategy mapped out system.

Join us on this journey as we uncover the unique challenges and opportunities of running a family business.

super unique about our story. We lost the business and we got it back.

Don't miss an episode. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Let's dive right into the next episode of the Family Biz Show. Welcome everybody to the Family Biz Show. I'm your host, Michael Palumbis, Family Wealth and Legacy in Rochester, New York. And today we have a great show for you with Nikki Rausch. She's the sales maven at yoursalesmaven.com. Nikki, welcome to the

Nikki Rauch (01:18.062)
Thanks for having me.

You're welcome. We have a simple tradition that we like to follow on the show. Most people, where they are today is not where they started in their career. So how did you end up today as the salesmaid?

Well, I actually got my first professional sales job from a college project. And that was working in the technology space. And I had a lot of success in that space. was moved my way up in the company that I had initially hired me, became their national sales manager, then went to the manufacturer side, became a regional sales manager, working a large territory. I was the traveling road warrior, as they say.

I was the person who used to get Christmas gifts every year from my airline. That's how much I traveled. And then I got to a place where I'd been doing that for 17 years. It felt like, okay, what else is out there for me? I had gotten some feedback from one of the companies I had worked for that the idea of promoting me above kind of that manager level.

wasn't going to happen because I was working for a company that was very predominantly male and they weren't looking to promote females. So that was a great bit of feedback that allowed for me to start exploring what else was possible for me. while I was studying, or excuse me, while I was selling and traveling all the time, I started studying neuro-linguistic programming. I don't know if you're familiar with that term. Yeah.

Michael Palumbos (03:03.406)
I don't think.

So I became master certified practitioner of NLP and I have over 200 classroom hours in it. Got really curious about how when you become a better communicator, how everything kind of shifts. And so I ended up leaving my corporate job and started helping my NLP teacher build her business and really kind of fell into my business because I started hanging out at networking events.

meeting people to see if they were interested in this NLP world and how it would help them in business. And as I was connecting with lot of entrepreneurs, I found that a lot of them were struggling to make money. And the thing that they struggled the most with is they didn't understand the selling process. But that was something I understood. So I just wanted to see if I could be of service. I wasn't thinking about having a business, but just started helping some of them on the side that were interested in.

kind of upping their sales game. And finally somebody kind of knocked me overhead and said, like, why aren't you doing this as a business? Why are you not teaching these skills there? You you love it, you're good at it. And Sales Maven was really born out of that. So that was almost 11 years ago now. And I've had the time of my life teaching entrepreneurs how to sell in a really genuine, authentic way that allows for their own personality to come through.

and that they can be more strategic. So you get to that place where you exchange dollars for services.

Michael Palumbos (04:32.054)
I love it, thank you. Oftentimes, the people that are guests on the show, very rarely nowadays, we try to limit the consultants and the people that have services that might be there. Christina, I'm getting a trying to reconnect thing and I'm gonna let you edit that out, but did that sound bad to you there?

Michael Palumbos (05:00.662)
Okay. All right. If that happens again, let me know and we will stop and we'll figure that out. can hardwire my connection. It might be me. Okay. Thanks. So Nikki, what I was, you know, a lot of times when we're interviewing, you know, people, it's families telling their stories, the family businesses, the owner of the business telling their stories. And in the beginning when we started, it was lots of

lots of consultants and people that could help family businesses. We've kind of limited that because we get so much value out of the family story. But one of the areas that as I've talked to family business owners through the years, one of the areas where they do get stuck is on that sales side of things. They got really good at providing a service. They got really good at making a widget, whatever.

that piece is making building, knocking things down, whatever they do, but on that sales side, that's an area where they get stuck sometimes. And so that's why when you were sent over the, hey, how about this? I'm like, yeah, you know what, let's get Nikki on here and let's talk about that stuff. So I've got some questions for you and then.

Yeah.

Michael Palumbos (06:25.75)
You know your field better than I do. let's see, we'll bet things back and forth here and just try to add value to people in regards to the sales process. I think a lot of times what happens for most of the family businesses, like I said, is that they make something or they do something really, really well. And then, you know, they have to bring in salespeople to grow the business. And they have never been a sales manager.

or a salesperson themselves, they just were passionate and good about with what they do. So why don't we start with, you know, that arena and say, how, how does somebody know, you how do I find the right salesperson when, know, you were a sales manager, how did you hire? What were some of those things that you did to stand out in that arena?

Well, I will say that when I'm looking for or have in the past looked for a salesperson, there's a few traits that I am looking for. I want somebody who's either motivated by money or somebody who's motivated by recognition. And sometimes good sales rate people might be motivated by both, but there's usually one predominant. And there needs to be some type of a commission bonus structure attached.

So not everybody likes a job where a good portion of their money is at risk if they don't perform, right? So it does take a certain type of personality who's somebody who will come in and in a lot of ways act as if this is their business because it is their book of business to sell.

And if they don't sell, they understand that it's going to be slim pickings as far as paying their bills and living the lifestyle that they want to have. And so you do need a personality who sees the upside and is willing to take the risk to do that and believes in themselves, treats it as if it's their business and works and is willing to put in the work to make the sale. And I think sometimes what can happen is

Nikki Rauch (08:38.315)
we want to promote people who have good customer service skills, right? Like, this person is really great with our customers, which could be a potential like that's, that's obviously you want somebody who has really good customer service skills in sales. again, if they don't have that piece of that drive to want to achieve and control their own income, chances are they're gonna, they're gonna really struggle with the selling process. And, and with

it being their responsibility. So you do need to be looking for somebody who's willing to take that risk on and you have to compensate them for that for it. know, good, salespeople, you know, most of them expect to make six figures. And if they're not driven to make six figures, you might not have a sales rep that's really that driven. Yeah.

It's funny, as soon as you said that, I remember an article I saw from Mark Cuban, Shark Tank in the Dallas Mavericks. he said, somebody asked him, if you lost everything, what would you do? I'd go get a sales job. For exactly the reasons that you said is that there is some control, you know, and there is some upside. It's, think the sales position is that only position that

You have that entrepreneurial piece to it without having the risk of being the business owner and having payroll and everything else on your plate. only have to be worried about yourself and how you perform.

That's true. That's true. Yeah. You know, having your own business, I know this now because I never actually expected to have my own business. putting myself in a position where now I have a leadership role, right? Like there are times I have to step into the CEO position, which is very different from being just the salesperson that I yes, everything lives or dies based on my efforts. But now I have a team of people who I am also supposed to lead. So it's a very different role.

Michael Palumbos (10:39.17)
The other thing that makes you unique is that you went from salesperson to sales manager. And a lot of times great salespeople don't always make good sales manager.

That's very true. That's very true. And some of that has to do with, and I don't mean this in a negative way, but sometimes, you know, you're really, really good salespeople are very self-focused and they often don't really know how they do what they do because it lives in that unconscious competence. So I don't know if you know the four levels of competency, but

Let's walk through that for people that may not have heard that. Go ahead.

So kind of the base level is what's known as being unconscious incompetence. And we all fall in all of these categories in different areas of our life. So unconscious competence, you don't even know what you don't know, right? Like I can't tell you what mine are because I'm not even aware of them. Then you move up and you become consciously incompetent. Now there's plenty of things I know about myself that I am definitely incompetent. Like I could not build a rocket. Oftentimes I can't even bake a pie.

Right? Like I'm consciously incompetent in that particular area. And then you move up to what's known as conscious competence. And these are the things that you know how to do them. You can do them, but you might still need to like think about it. You might need a recipe, for instance, if you were going to bake a pie, or you might need to use your GPS. If you're going to drive somewhere, you've been a bunch of times just to make sure you don't miss that turn. Right? That's that conscious competence. And then the

Nikki Rauch (12:19.448)
highest level is the unconscious competence. These are the things that, you know, you have so many areas of your life where you're unconsciously competent, for instance, breathing. Most of us don't think about breathing until it becomes hard for us, right? Like we were just doing it, our heart is beating, you know, blood is flowing, all of this resides in that, that unconscious competence. And there are things about you that oftentimes people look at you and they go,

How do you know to do that? And you think to yourself, doesn't everybody? It's so easy, right? Those are your unconscious competencies. And so sometimes when you're really, really good at sales, it resides in your unconscious competence. So when somebody asks you like, how do you know to say this in this situation or how do you know to offer this here? And the really good salesperson looks at you like, it's so obvious.

So they're not good teachers and they're not good managers because they don't know how to pull their unconscious competence, make it conscious competence and be able to teach it to others. So I will say one of my strengths is being able to pull things out of unconscious competence, examine them, break them into structure and then teach them to others. So that's always been one of the things that I would say is a strength for me.

I love it. Nope, that's fantastic. And I think that example of walking through unconscious incompetence to, you know, unconscious competence is, you know, amazing. I've heard one of my mentors once said, you need to go from mechanical to masterful.

to magical. I broke it down into three and I was just like, as soon as I heard that, I'm like, so for some, it's like, when you have your skillset, it's just mechanical and you're just barely doing it that, you're, you know what you don't know. But then that, when it's magical, it's like, like you said, doesn't everybody know how to do this? And I, those people, when, when they're, when they get to that level, that magical level, the,

Nikki Rauch (14:05.228)
Yeah

Nikki Rauch (14:24.652)
easy.

Michael Palumbos (14:33.804)
the unconscious competence level. I love to interview those people and ask them questions, because then you start to unravel, because they don't even realize how powerful that is.

Yeah, because to them, and this sometimes makes it hard for them to own their own business, sell their own service, because it sometimes feels odd to charge for something that seems so basic and easy. But yet everybody else around you is like in awe of the fact that you can do this or that you know how to fix something or that you know how to make something. And so I work with a lot of business owners and helping them realize that

what you're dealing with is your unconscious competence and people will pay you money for it. And so you have to charge accordingly because not only, not only because you need to make money in your business, otherwise you have a hobby, but also you need to realize that when people are purchasing something from you, they're not always thinking about like, I'm giving my money to Nikki because she's so good at sales.

What I really want them thinking about and what most people are is like, I'm investing in myself to learn something that's gonna make a difference in my life. Or when they're buying somebody's widget, like you said, they're looking at that going like, I worked hard for this money and I can buy this for myself. So it's less about you and much more about the buyer.

Yeah, let's talk about for a second. If I'm a business owner and I have sales people that are, you know, that are on my team to help me build my business, because without sales, you know, if we don't move things, we're not growing. How do I, you know, how do I start thinking about what is a sales funnel? mean, you and I might know what a sales funnel is, but

Nikki Rauch (16:22.914)
That's right.

Michael Palumbos (16:33.238)
If we were to walk somebody through a business owner that maybe just doesn't understand what that looks like, how would you define that process, the sales process?

Well, I think a lot of times you can start to look at what's happened. Look at your previous buyers. What was the process to get them to where they are with you now? Oftentimes I say like, track back. How did you first get exposed to that person or how did they get exposed to you? And then what was the next step they took? And then what was the next step? And you can't just do this for one client. You have to do it for multiple. Because what we're looking for is a pattern or structure.

And a lot of times that will help reveal to you, oh, this is something that has worked even with me not really paying that much attention to it. So now if I put some attention to it and create a funnel out of it, create a process, and how can I make it more efficient and how can I move people through the process faster and close the business sooner? So looking and understanding that, oh,

this person met me because I am a part of this networking group or this person found us because we were running ads here. And then the first thing they did was want something free from us or maybe they bought some little thing from us. And then we offered them a way to buy that next thing with us. And then they did it. So you're looking for what has been the process and you should build your funnels oftentimes around that.

because people have already shown you how they want to purchase and how they want to come in the door.

Michael Palumbos (18:14.19)
I think that's an interesting point. How often do you see business owners mix up marketing and sales?

Probably about 75 % of the time.

Yeah, so let's talk about that for a little bit. What's the difference between marketing and sales?

So marketing's job is to bring leads in the door. Sales job is to close those leads, to convert them to dollars. So your marketing efforts, which could be ads, which could be networking, which could be whatever you wanna do, podcast guesting, for instance, is a great marketing effort. And then...

Once that lead comes in the door and the person joins your email list or they've shown up for an event with you or they've bought something from you. Now your job is to go what else is possible here for this for this prospective client. I'm always thinking about increasing lifetime value. So I'm always like what else would they benefit from. Do I have that offer for them. Does it make sense in my business. If yes then I'm going to create it and put it in front of them. So

Nikki Rauch (19:28.33)
marketing and sales are very different. But yet they work, they do work together. just be, always say they're like cousins. You know, they're related, but they're not the same. They're not the same. And if you're tasking your salesperson with doing marketing as well, you may and, and, and, vice versa. If you're targeting, you know, targeting or expecting your marketing people to sell for you.

you may actually be missing the boat a little bit because they're really two different jobs.

And there are people that can do both. There are people that can do both, but, you know, Jim Collins in his book, Good to Great, talks about, you know, getting the right people on the bus and then getting those people into the right seats and then doing the right things. And I think this is that conversation or that point that he's making is that, you know, you might have somebody that's a great salesperson and they're really great at that.

but they're never gonna go out and beat the bushes. They're never gonna go and get the awareness done that needs to happen. But if you feed that person qualified bleeds, you know, then you're off to the races with that person.

That's right. That's right. And ultimately, that's what you want to do. So you have to figure out, like you said, have the right people in the right seats, all on the bus moving in the right direction.

Michael Palumbos (20:57.164)
We do something when I coach businesses, we talk about what we call the key function flow map. what, you know, on the marketing side of things, it's the monthly qualified leads that they're outputting. the input is how many conversations did they have or how many, you know, how many ads were put out there? How many clicks did we get on the ads as we're doing it? But at the end of the day, their job, they're taxed with, tasked with, there we go.

how many monthly qualified leads are they giving over to the sales team? The sales team then takes those monthly qualified leads, right? And then has to convert them into paying customers. you don't get anything down to the operations until that's done. once you start to see these little, I call them widgets, or KPIs going through the business,

you can all of a sudden, you can start to map out how money flows through your business. And it just makes life a whole lot easier. You know, the salespeople can say, I've only got three monthly qualified leads this month. If I sell one out of three, that's going to get you one. So we got to get marketing. And now it starts as it's a method of holding people accountable that they can utilize on a pretty regular basis. So I really appreciate you helping to separate marketing and sales.

I also want you to, you know, I want to reiterate what you said. I love that each business, the sales funnel, the sales cycle might be different. And so it is important to go through and identify what's happened in the past because there's, you know, though the past performance may not equal future performance kind of things, but there's probably some rhythm. There's probably some, you know, reason behind

how that happened and looking to recreate those circumstances, probably being the business owners and the salesperson's best interest.

Nikki Rauch (23:00.396)
Yeah, I do think it's important to understand what have people's buying habits been, what has been the process for them. And then it doesn't mean that you can't have a new product or you can't have a new funnel by any stretch of the imagination, but it does give you some indicators of kind of where to focus your time and attention. The other thing that, you know, from a sales, from a very salesperson's perspective,

You know, one of the things I think oftentimes businesses don't look at what are your top producing revenue generators in your business. And instead of always focusing on like, oh, well, we've got 10 products and we need to, you know, spread our marketing dollars across these 10 products, for instance. Well, if three of your products are generating 70 % of your business and your objective is to grow your business.

you really should be pouring the majority of your money into those three products because when you grow those, that's when you can scale the business. And I think a lot of times, even with salespeople, they look or the business owner will task a salesperson like go and bring in all these new accounts. Well, wait a minute. Let's focus on who are our top accounts right now. How can we sell more to those top accounts? Because when we move there,

numbers, their numbers make a huge difference to our bottom line versus going out and finding one new client who's maybe going to bring in $1,000. And if you have a client that's bringing in $100,000 and you grow their business by 10%, that's $10,000 more to your bottom line. make sure you're focusing on who are your top customers and what else can you offer them? What have they not bought from you yet? And make sure you're putting offers in.

Love all of that. And that was a lot. You just said a lot in a very short period of time there. I want to make sure we unpack that. There was two pieces that I heard. One is just looking at your product line and what's most profitable and making sure that you're selling the right things. A lot of times the business owner might have a favorite product or a line that they have.

Michael Palumbos (25:18.766)
But when you start looking at the margins and the profit margins in those lines, it may not be the one that you should be focusing on. So it's very important that you're moving your most profitable lines. the other half of that was going deep, making sure that you're offering more to the client than what you currently are. It's easier to sell more to a new client.

than it is to go out and find and develop and get the other ones to grow to that level. Doesn't mean you can't do both. Right. But you should do both. you just, when you're looking at the old Pareto principle, 80 % of your revenue typically comes from 20 % of your clients.

That's right. And, you know, repeat business is the least expensive and easiest business to earn. If you're doing a good job, of course people want to continue to give their business to you if you're delivering for them at high level. So yeah, don't ever ignore your existing client base just to go find new clients.

When, you know, as a sales manager working with sales reps for a long time, there's, an owner, it's like, how do I come up with these compensation programs that work? know, when, is there a magic formula in general or any generalities that you say, you know, here's base salary X versus, you know, when we look at the overall compensation package, is that anything that...

know that I know a magic formula for it. I will say I do have quite a bit of background in designing some pay structures, and also in promotion and contest to drive behavior. I'm a big fan of driving the behavior that you want. So that is where you focus the compensation or the reward for somebody. So again,

Nikki Rauch (27:24.162)
That's a really important thing to be looking at. Typically, when I was managing sales team, we would re-evaluate our compensation package yearly. We didn't change it every single year, but we did change it probably every other year. Because the thing about really good salespeople is they figure out how to work the system. That's part of the nature of a really good sales rep, right?

And so when you're looking at your compensation, if it's not driving the behavior of the sales rep that you need it to drive and impacting the business in the way that you need it to impact it, you need to change your compensation. So you might have more heavily weigh them bringing in new clients, for instance, they might get a larger commission on that, then they're getting on repeat business and or vice versa, depending on what you're trying to drive.

and or certain products. We used to in the tech space, give ourselves reps, they call them spiffs, right? So certain products for a certain period of time when we had inventory we needed to move or whatever, we would spiff that product. And so maybe it would be like every time you sell this product, you get anywhere from 10 to, you $100, depending on what the margin of the product is, that's extra over and above their compensation.

And that kind of can help drive the behavior that you most want. And when you have inventory you need to get rid of, that's another thing you should be paying attention to because if you're holding inventory, that's impacting your cash flow. And if you need cash coming in, let's drive the salespeople to do the things that we need them to do and reward them for it.

interesting, you're going right back to my KFFM, the key function flow map again, because what I'm hearing there is, you know, what if the business is having a strategy change? The industry has changed. We did a SWOT analysis, we're going through and now, you know, selling, you know, refurbished equipment versus new equipment is going to change.

Michael Palumbos (29:39.244)
because of the way the industry is. There's a new model out, there's something that's happening out there. And if you don't adjust the sales compensation program, the bonus structure, the comp program to align with what your strategy is, you're gonna have a problem with that as well. Perfect. What else? What haven't we talked about yet that we should be talking about?

That's right.

Nikki Rauch (30:03.212)
Well, so here's one possible thing is as the business owner, even if you don't think of yourself as being responsible for sales, you do have the ability to drive sales in your business. And oftentimes your team needs you to be out driving sales because as the owner, you know, or as the CEO, whichever, however you've stepped into the role in your business, you have

such, you have more knowledge than everybody, you know what's coming, you know what's happened, you know, you've got the, and you have the ability oftentimes to make decisions that your team may not have the authority to make. So please don't ever underestimate the power that you have of bringing in business. Now, whether you're, you know, not that you have to turn that over to a sales rep and compensate somebody for the work that you did, but it does impact the bottom line and gives you some breathing room.

as the business is growing and as things are happening or changing. So I always think it's important for a business owner to recognize that a lot of times you have the ability to bring business in the door. Don't, don't shirk that responsibility and just try to turn it over to someone else because you're not comfortable with selling. And then if I can add one more thing is that, you know, a lot of times we start businesses because we're really passionate about

some area, some products, some whatever it is. And selling isn't something that you kind of think about sometimes when you're starting a business, you're not thinking about, oh, yeah, I'm gonna have to sell to you're just so excited and feel passionate about getting, you know, your product or your service out into the world. And a lot of times, I think people shy away from sales. And the reason they shy away from it is because they were never trained how to do it. And it's unrealistic.

for you to expect yourself to know how to do something that you've never had training on. So be willing to invest in yourself and your team and show them and teach them the skills. And if you don't have them, seek somebody out who can help you do that because it makes a big difference. I have a client right now who just posted about, you know, she's now able to hire pretty high level person in her organization. And she, you know,

Nikki Rauch (32:30.026)
really in a really gracious way, gave me a lot of credit of the fact that because she brought me in early and I trained her whole team, not just anybody who's client facing, got some selling skills. And what they found is that their sales growth significantly, even people who didn't have a sales title, they were still impacting repeat business and, and closing business as a result. And now her business has grown to this

level where she's able to bring in this very high level person in her organization. But she invested in herself and her team to learn the skills. She didn't know it. That's not her background. That's not her expertise. So don't hold yourself to some crazy standard that you're just supposed to know how to sell. It's a learned skill and everybody can learn it.

I'd also add to that, that all the way through every function, you know, in the product life cycle or the service life cycle, you know, whether you're in operations or deployment or customer satisfaction, customer service and finance, any one of those, if those areas get, you know, not doing so well, it's going to come right back to the salesperson and the marketing team as well. So keeping all of your systems,

in balance and in harmony, really makes a big difference. If you're asking the salesperson to grow by 30%, well, you really need to be thinking before you do that, is the operations and customer success gonna be able to keep up with that? What does that system look like? Because otherwise they may be doing their job and now you're causing a problem.

Yeah, there's nothing worse than a salesperson going to close a deal only to find out that we can't afford to buy the inventory to fulfill on that. yeah, I mean, these are really important issues. And if the salesperson is out doing their job, the systems have to be in place.

Michael Palumbos (34:30.158)
And then to your point, think everyone in the organization is a salesperson. Now, it may not be their function, may not be, they're not accountable for it and they're not responsible for it. But at the end of the day, that everybody's responsible for making the company look good and looking for opportunities to be able to help somebody as best they possibly can. Well, you know, if they have a service that is complimentary that maybe just didn't get talked about yet.

It's, you those things can happen if you're on the customer success side or even in the finance side. As you're talking to people, stranger things have happened, you know, out of those relationships and those just asking a question.

Yeah. that, you know, sales is a lot of questions. I teach a lot of round, like, if you don't know what to say, ask a question in any conversation. If you're not sure what to say, just ask a question. And if you can teach your whole team how to ask some strategic questions, then it opens the door for new possibilities. Because sometimes by asking the question, you plant the seed in the mind of the person who's hearing the question for the first time and going, I actually never thought about whether or not I could, you know, benefit from this.

extra thing that you guys have or I didn't even know to think to ask about it but because you're asking me about it it's planting the seed now I'm going maybe I do need that.

The other thing I think that's important is oftentimes people have a negative connotation when it comes to sales and that has not gone anywhere through the years. I've been in one way, or form in sales since I was a kid. so getting that negative connotation out the door, the pushy salesperson, it's not any one industry and I don't wanna

Michael Palumbos (36:25.432)
put it out there, but it's that pushy salesperson of you, should do this, you should do that versus teaching where question asking comes into place. It's much more consultative and it's much more, you know, you're just helping people to buy. I think that's a different way to look at it. If I help people to buy, that's so different than selling something. It's, you know, they have a problem and we have a solution, but

somewhere between that buying and that problem is a path that has to be led through the sales process so that they understand the consultative process to get from point A to point B to overcome human nature. Just because they have a problem, if you say, I've got a solution for that, then the immediate reaction is for people to pull back.

Yeah. My philosophy around sales is that selling isn't something you do to another person. It's something you do with another person. And so instead of, you know, telling somebody, you should do this or, I have a solution and you should buy it. It's going to change your life. Instead ask it as a question because you're showing respect to the other person. I respect you as your own person and you can make your own decisions. So instead of saying like, I have this thing and you should buy it.

ask, you know, I maybe have a solution for you, would you be interested in hearing about it? Now the person can be open to saying yes, and now more receptive to actually hearing about whatever it is. So yeah, if you're if you're talking at people, they'll stop listening. But if you talk with people, they'll engage. And so we want people to engage with us. And that means you have to ask good questions. And you have to be willing to listen.

Yeah, and even before we sometimes, depending on the process and how many steps are in there, there might be as many as five or six questions that need to be answered or asked before you can even say, might have a solution for you, right? Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about, some it's like, people need to have an emotional tie to the problem. So if they understand,

Michael Palumbos (38:48.418)
What is this costing me to not have this problem fixed? What are the other implications of this problem and where else does it impact you? How does it make you feel? Those kinds of the dig deeper questions I think they call them. you know, that's always fun to look at those things to say, does this come out at the end? Because then you're really helping them. mean, could you imagine saying no to somebody? No, don't fix my problem. It's only a...

$250,000 a year problem, don't worry about it. I don't want your solution, with the right series of questions from somebody like you teaching that sales process, it really makes a difference, doesn't it?

It really does. You know, I actually have a signature process for a sales conversation. It's called the selling staircase. I actually wrote my book around it. And in the in step three of the selling staircase, I teach it as that's the discovery. That's when you're asking questions. One of the mistakes that that off just to build off of what you said that sometimes people can make is they'll ask one question, they'll get that answer, and they'll start selling a solution.

And then they'll ask another question or something else comes up and now they realize, I think I recommended the wrong solution. then they'll sell something else. So I always say in the discovery, your job is to ask questions. It's not to sell. So you got to keep that really clean because until you have the information you need to make a proper recommendation, you'll end up overwhelming somebody because you'll have recommended five different options for them. And now they're like,

I don't know what to do and an overwhelmed mind doesn't buy. So when you're asking questions, you need to keep it clean and you need to make sure you've got your set list of questions that you truly do need the answers to and that plant seeds around the expertise or whatever the solution is that you're going to be offering to them. Because ultimately the person that has most, the most influence as far as the decision to hire you in that conversation is the customer. So we want to help influence

Nikki Rauch (40:57.366)
their decision by allowing them to start to go, what Michael just said made me think about something or, obviously Michael's asking me about this because he can probably help me with this. And now when you get to the place where you're ready to offer a solution and you've, you've gotten permission to put it in front of them, they're so much more easy and like receptive and want to hear what the solution is. They're ready.

You mentioned the selling staircase. Do you mind if I put you on the spot and walk us through what that looks like?

Sure. So there are five steps in the selling staircase. So just comment on the reason I teach it as a staircase is because I think most of us understand that the way you ascend the stairs is you go one step at a time. And oftentimes with sales is we try to skip steps. We try to go right from step one to step five. But if you lined a bunch of people up in front of a staircase and you said, now just from your standing position, hop up to that top step, they'll look at you like,

I'm not going to do that. You're crazy. I might bang my shins, right? So most people, they don't want to skip steps. So the 5 steps are for you to make sure you understand, Where am I in the conversation? And what do I do or say next to guide the client to the next step or prospect in this case? So step 1 is Introduction. This is the idea of making a powerful first impression. And that can come on your website, that can come when they meet you in person, or they, you know, come into your

place of business or whatever happens. But the idea here is, are you thinking about their first impression? Because first impressions matter and people are making judgments about you, your business, your success, your ability to deliver something. So we got to make a powerful first impression. Then step two in the selling staircase is to create curiosity. This is the most missed step in the selling process. Most people, if you ask them, do you know how to create curiosity or are you creating curiosity in the marketplace?

Nikki Rauch (42:56.384)
about your business or your service or your product, they look at me like, what now? What do you mean create curiosity? Sure. know, prospects, they don't know what you know, they don't know what's possible for them from working with you. And if you don't ever peak that curiosity, it's very hard to move somebody to that next step in the process. So we have to learn how to create curiosity about our products or services.

Once we do that, then we can move to step three, and that's the discovery. This is where you're asking smart questions. You're starting to plant seeds through your questions about what's possible for this client. You're finding out what they need. Then once you've got permission and you have an idea, I have a solution for them, you move them to step four, which is the proposal. This is where selling happens. This is where you're standing in your place of expertise and you're making a recommendation as far as what is the right solution for them.

And then step five goes very closely with step four, and that's the close. Step five is the second most missed step in the selling staircase. A lot of people make it to step four with a prospective client, and they don't actually ever close. They think they might be closing. They think the person will make a decision on their own, but your job is to actually get those words out of your mouth and put a decision in front of somebody in the form of a yes or no question and allow them to decide, yes, I'm in, no, I'm not.

I have a question and an objection, whatever that is. So that's the five steps and your job is to guide every step of the way.

Love it. That's really helpful for a lot of people that aren't in the sales world to understand that ascension really makes sense. You talked about curiosity.

Michael Palumbos (44:41.399)
Sure.

Michael Palumbos (44:57.902)
Okay.

Michael Palumbos (45:05.87)
Really?

Michael Palumbos (45:22.819)
Let me ask you this, Christina, I just moved my microphone closer to me. Is that better?

Nikki Rauch (45:33.42)
Yeah. Okay. So we're talking about the five steps of the selling staircase.

Michael Palumbos (45:56.27)
Okay.

Michael Palumbos (46:02.286)
I've never used headsets before.

Michael Palumbos (46:08.47)
Okay, let's see what happens here.

Michael Palumbos (46:28.514)
Now let's just see if.

Michael Palumbos (46:38.491)
my goodness, can you hear me okay?

Yeah, you sound good. let me see if you're getting, Christine, are you getting any feedback with me talking now?

All right, well, let's play with this one real quick. And I'm just gonna pick it up right from what you, I know right where to pick it up. We're good. All right. So Nikki, I'm just gonna ask you to do something. You talked about the selling staircase and I think it's super important that people understand that whole process. What is the selling staircase to you and how does that, how do you describe that to people?

So the selling staircase is my signature framework for a sales conversation. I teach it as a staircase because most people understand that when you ascend a stairs, you know, set a stairs, you go one step at a time. You don't start at the bottom and hop all the way to the top. Right. And if you do this with your clients, you know, you line up a bunch of clients or prospects at the bottom of staircase and you say, now hop up to the top step. They're going to look at you like you're insane. They're like, I'm not going to do that. I might bang my shins.

And yet a lot of times in sales, we try to rush through this process. So I teach the five steps of the selling staircase so that clients understand your job is to guide and you need to know what step you're on and how to move the client from one step to the next. So the five steps broken down, first step is step one. That's the introduction. The idea here is for you to make a powerful first impression that can happen.

Nikki Rauch (48:13.016)
from your website that can happen when somebody meets you or that can, you know, at a networking event or that can also happen when they come into your place of business, depending on how you do business. But the objective here is if you don't make a powerful first impression and a positive one, you have a very hard chance of earning that person's business because first impressions, matter. So make a powerful first impression. And then step two in the selling staircase, which is the most missed step is to create curiosity.

Now, a lot of times when I ask business owners, do you know how to create curiosity about your business or your service? They look at me like, what now? What do you mean create curiosity? But when a prospect is being exposed to you, they don't know what's possible for them yet. They don't know what you know. And if you're not able to peak that curiosity and get them leaning in and wanting to ask questions and want more from you, it's really hard to get them to the final step where we exchange dollars for services.

So we've got to create curiosity. And once we do that, the next logical step is the discovery. And I know we talked a little bit about this. The objective there is to ask questions, ask smart questions that plant seeds that lead the person down the path to wanting to hire you. And once you've done a well-done discovery and you have a sense of they've got a problem or a need, I've got a solution here and I'm going to ask permission to put the solution in front of them. And that's how I'm going to move them to step four, which is

proposal. That's where the selling actually happens. This is when you're standing in your place of expertise and authority and you're making a recommendation about the right solution to meet their needs, solve their problem. And then step five goes really closely with step four, and that's the close. Now, this is the second most messed up in the selling staircase, because most people think they're closing, but they're actually never getting the words out of their mouth. And if you don't get the words out of your mouth in

in the form of a yes or no question, oftentimes people won't decide to hire you. So one of the things I often say when business owners show up and they're like, you know, people are ghosting us or they they've expressed a lot of interest, but we're just not closing business nine times out of 10. It's because they're actually not closing. And so once they can figure that out, all of a sudden, like, people are actually saying yes, or maybe they're going to say no, or maybe they're going to ask a question or have an objection or

Nikki Rauch (50:37.506)
whatever comes next, but if you don't close, you'll never get to the objection and you can never overcome an objection that you don't.

Love it. That's a very, very nice way for a non-salesperson to understand that there's this ladder of ascension or this as you call it, the staircase. I love that. That's wonderfully done. You mentioned curiosity and I think that that's, you know, like you said, it's an often misstep. Let's talk about that just a little bit more if you don't mind.

Yeah, sure. I love to talk about it. Now you'll think maybe hang with me for just a second because you might think I've got a crazy person. What did I ask her? But when I teach creating curiosity, I often say it's the difference between how you call a dog and how you call a cat, which I know sounds a little crazy. So I don't know, Michael, are you a dog or a cat lover by chance?

love this, go ahead.

Michael Palumbos (51:29.998)
Dog. Dog lover.

So you know, if you want to get your dog's attention, oftentimes you change your demeanor, you change your voice, you do these things where you're like, come here, boy, come here. Right. And dogs love that energy. They're like, something fun is going to happen. I'm, you know, I'm so in, they don't know if it's a treat or a walk or a ride or they don't know, but they're so in. And unfortunately, sometimes when we have somebody that we think, this person would be a great client for us or this person would benefit from our work, we show up with what I call dog calling energy.

but people don't like that energy coming at them. It's especially if they don't know you yet. So they'll push away. They'll go like, too much. Like coming on too strong. Cause it's like, my gosh, you're the perfect client for us. We can help you. We can do that. You know, and they're like, too much. So the flip side of this, when you think about when you call a cat, you, you behave differently because cats don't come like dogs well, right? So when you want to call a cat, you do this thing where you go here, kitty, kitty.

here kitty kitty. Now, if you know cats, sometimes they'll just look at you like what? Like they're not even coming yet. They're not even sure it's interesting. So we have to peak people's curiosity. We want them to go what? Lean in, ask a question. So there's a lot of ways to do this. I have a whole course just on grading curiosity, but oftentimes I say, if you want to talk about your business more, if you want to

peak somebody's curiosity to know, I, am I in a conversation with somebody who could potentially benefit from something I'm working on? Think about, first and foremost, how do you answer just basic questions? So a basic question that most of us get a couple times a week, if not more, is a How Are You question, right? Now most of us, you know, if we're not thinking about it, we'll say like, Oh, fine, how are you? Or I'm good, how are you?

Nikki Rauch (53:25.388)
That doesn't actually pique any curiosity, but yet it's a prime opportunity, too. So what I want people to learn how to do is create what I call here, kitty, kitty responses to basic everyday questions. So if somebody asked me right now, like, Hey, Nikki, how are you? I might say, I'm good. The podcast just moved up on the charts. And we're now, you know, the top in the top 1 % of globally downloaded podcasts worldwide. Now people might go like,

you have a podcast. Now I only bring up something that I want to talk about. If I have a new product, I might say, I'm good. We're just about to launch something brand new. And people go like, Well, what is it? Right? They'll open the door, they'll ask questions. And then by asking questions, it gives you a little bit of permission to answer the question. So you're creating curiosity, here kitty kitty responses really should only be a sentence or two.

anything more than a three-sentence response and you're in dog calling mode, right? You've moved out of here, kitty, kitty, and you're now in dog calling mode. So we have to start to create some curiosity. And it's like building a muscle. So I often recommend if people are interested in building their curiosity muscle, then anytime you get asked a basic question, how are you? How's business? What's new? Have an answer that's business related about something that you might

want to talk to this person about. And it just needs to be a little bit of enough to pique their curiosity for them to ask you a question. Because sales happen through conversation. And we need to have a conversation.

Yeah, it's sales as a person to person conversation sport, I guess. It's a contact sport versus a non-contact sport like e-commerce. And even there, on the website, the website must be doing all of those same things if you're going to sell something new on there.

Nikki Rauch (55:24.558)
Yeah, even on your website, you know, sometimes you'll have a pop up of like, here's a new thing, or, or have you heard about blah, blah, blah, right? Like, all of these things start to pique people's curiosity of like, No, I didn't hear about that. What's that? Or, here's this new thing, I better check it out. So we want to be thinking about creating curiosity in all areas of our business, because that's what will draw people in to get their attention enough for us to then take it potentially to the next level.

One of the things that you mentioned just a little bit that I think I want to wrap up with is the fact that all of this is muscle. All of this can be learned. And for some people, they need to learn it for the very first time. And that's okay. And that's what, you know, sales coaches like yourself are out there for is to help them learn that. Then there's, you know, there's other times when we've been so successful. We launched a product, we did something we haven't needed to market for a while.

And then all of sudden we go back into the market to start building and growing the business because we're off that plateau, we're ready to build again, and those sales muscles need to be redeveloped, they need a tune up. And I'm a big fan of telling people or suggesting that when you are getting ready to relaunch, when you're getting ready to go into a growth phase,

make sure you're spending the time to go back through and look at, you know, awareness, the marketing side of things and building leads and make sure that you've, you re-look at your sales process and you practice it and you stretch those muscles before you go and do it. Two of my kids are doing a triathlon, not a triathlon, marathon. you know, you don't do a 26.2,

mile, you know, marathon, kilometers, whatever it is there, you can tell I'm not a marathon runner. But you don't do that without doing 10 miles first and without doing, you know, five miles and 15 miles and working your way up. And I know there's a process for doing that. I think it's super important that for salespeople, you know, even when it's ingrained, if we're going into a big push mode, I think it's a great process.

Michael Palumbos (57:50.318)
to go through and let's look at our sales funnel, let's stretch those muscles, and let's practice with our peers before we go out and practice on potential clients.

Yeah, sales should feel conversational. And sometimes in order for things to feel conversational, it shouldn't feel like it's the first time it should feel like, I, you know, this rolls off my tongue. I'm not stumbling over my words. I'm not struggling to, you know, invite you to the next step. I'm not struggling with the invitation to close all of these things. So yeah, it is, it is kind of reinvigorating those muscles and

I often work with people for a while and we get their business like things are really cooking and then they go off and then they come back a year later or two years later, sometimes five years later when they're like, okay, Nikki, I'm ready for this next piece and I feel like I need to kind of build those muscles again. So yeah, that's pretty common.

Perfect. Anything else that you want to add in that we haven't talked about before we covered a lot and you were awesome. I really appreciate the, you know, the tune up you've given my audience about that sales function inside of every business. Thank you. Anything else that you'd like to talk about?

I'll leave your audience maybe with one last thing is that most people won't decide to hire you until you invite them. So if there's people out there that you're thinking right now, like, man, they'd be a great client, or we could really help them in some way. Don't be afraid to ask the question. And sometimes the question could be something as simple as, have you ever thought about us possibly working together? That's it. And just see what happens. Worst cases, they might say, no, it's not for me.

Nikki Rauch (59:41.166)
Okay, best case is they might go, you know, I've always wanted to work with you. I just didn't think you want to work with me. But now that you're asking, let's do it.

I love that. Nicky Rausch, Sales Maven, your website, yoursalesmaven.com. I bet you people can find you on LinkedIn, your website, and through those avenues if you want to connect with Nicky. She'd love to hear from you. If you have a sales team that needs some tune up and some training, or you're an owner of business and are looking to say, wait a minute,

know how to do this widget stuff, but now I have to start selling these things as well. Nikki would be wonderful to have those conversations with you. Nikki, thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me. Can I leave your audience with maybe a free gift? that okay? Sure. Okay. I have an ebook. It's called Closing the Sale. So it kind of talks through those last three steps with some language suggestions. And I'd love to gift it to your audience. If you go to yoursalesmaven.com, which is my website, go forward slash family biz, then you can download that for free.

thank you so much. I really appreciate that, My name is Michael Palumbos. I'm with Family Wealth and Legacy in Rochester, New York, and you have been listening to another episode of the Family Biz Show. Thank you everybody for listening and cannot wait to be talking with you on future episodes. Have a great day, everybody. Thank you for listening to the Family Biz Show.

Nikki Rauch (01:00:57.336)
Thanks for having me.

Michael Palumbos (01:01:18.626)
We hope you've gained valuable insights and practical tips for running a successful family business. Remember, managing a family business can be both rewarding and challenging, but with dedication, communication, and a clear vision, you can create a thriving enterprise that supports your family and community for generations to come. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and share it. We'd love to hear your feedback and suggestions for future episodes. Don't forget to follow Family Wealth and Legacy on LinkedIn and Facebook.

for more resources and updates on upcoming episodes. And most importantly, keep the conversation going within your own family business. Remember, you're not alone in this journey and we are here to support you every step of the way. Thank you again for tuning in to the Family Biz Show and we'll see you next time.