It’s been said, “Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.” Sometimes todays guest calls himself The Sales Whisperer, and sometimes he calls himself The James Bond of Selling, but I call him the most determined entrepreneur I’ve ever met, and The James Bond of Resiliency. Chief executive, entrepreneur, and author of the book, Equanimity – The Diary of a CEO in Crisis, Simon Leslie sits down with Rob and shares key principles and tips about resiliency. If you’ve had a business that’s been up and down… and who hasn’t… this episode is for you!
Originally Published: August 29, 2022
Episode Notes
In this Pocket Sized Pep Talk, you’ll learn:
- How Simon rebounded from a company that went from earning 150 million dollars… to zero.
- How to deal with a business that are failing.
- His process for being, “a student of happiness.”
- Two of the most powerful lessons Simon has learned about selling.
- A fascinating look at luck, and its role in success.
Rob Jolles (00:00):
I’ve heard it said life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving. We get stronger and we get more resilient. Today’s guest calls himself the sales whisper, and sometimes he calls himself the James Bond of selling, but I call him the most resilient entrepreneur I’ve ever met. Let’s have ourselves a pockets size pep talk because I want you to meet him too.
Intro (00:23):
A pocket size pep talk, the podcast that can help energize your business and your life with a quick inspiring message. Now, here’s your host, Rob Jolles.
Rob Jolles (00:36):
Simon Leslie is a founder and chief executive of Inc. A global travel media company. For over 30 years, Simon has dedicated his career to creating travel publications that have been held by anyone who’s flown on a plane in the last few decades. And then there was this thing called a pandemic. Well, we’ll get there in a minute. He’s a versatile man having authored three books on sales and life and motivational poems, equanimity, the Diary of A C E O in Crisis. That’s his newest book. I got the inside scoop that it’s was running at number three on Amazon today, so he’s in a good mood. He’s given talks on every continent, including in Lapland, which I had to look up, which is in Finland. We’re glad to have you with us, Simon, and welcome to the show.
Simon Leslie (01:24):
Oh, I’m glad to be here. You are the first person who’s written more books on sales than I have.
Rob Jolles (01:29):
Yeah, well, that’s going to be a clash of the Titans if we can. We’re going to talk sales on the bottom end of this, but now there’s the guys who write it and the guys who can do it, and we’ll take a look under each other’s hood and see how we’re doing. But I got to start with your journey. I made adjustments as a result of the pandemic most professional speakers have, but my friend, you went from, if my notes are right, 150 million in revenue to the real number of about zero during this pandemic and then back again. Walk me through that and I’m sitting down, so go ahead. Let me hear about that.
Simon Leslie (02:13):
The funny thing is we got to the end of 2019, I think we were a business on fire. Our teams were doing well. They were traveling around the world. They were having all these adventures. Culturally, we were strong and I thought 2020 is going to be a, it’s going to be a bumpy year. It’s a presidential election year. We had Olympic all these things coming, and along came this pesky pandemic and literally in a heartbeat it just took the legs out of everything. We had 36 magazines going into 2020, and now today we have three. I’ve managed to reshuffle the deck chairs on the Titanic and make it look a little bit tinier, and I’m actually really excited about the future as well.
Rob Jolles (03:00):
Yeah, I like that. The analogy of reshuffling, the deck chairs and the Titanic. I think we’ve all done a little bit of reshuffling and there’s some businesses doing great, but I’m a professional speaker, so I’m a guy who is tied to travel and hotels and travel budgets and training budgets, and so we’ve had to retool. I remembered it’s funny, 2020, I had the same hope in my eyes as you did Simon. Even that number had a ring to it. It was like, and we’re going to 2020. This has got to be the year. And believe it or not, I was actually on one of my clients is a cruise line. I was actually on a cruise that was running March 1, 2, 3, and four just to get a taste of the product I had trained, the American version of this company was going to be heading to Norway for the other half while I had a beer in my hand.
(03:54)
They came up, whispered in my ear, yeah, we’re not going to be doing the training in Norway. I was glad we got off the ship, but just at the very beginning, if you remember, that first week in March was different than the second week in March was different than the third, but had to retool. And that’s why I’m always fascinated with guys like you because yeah, that’s what entrepreneurs do, but that’s handling crisis on steroids. So you write about and talk about businesses that are failing, and I guess we both had a taste of it. You may be bigger than me, but how about some advice for people who are listening with businesses that are struggling a little bit right now? What can you tell ’em?
Simon Leslie (04:38):
I think the best way to describe it is when there’s a problem, and this is what I learned during this process, when a problem arises at the other side of that problem is opportunity. So if you reframe that, every opportunity is gift wrapped in a problem. And the way to paint a picture in your mind is think about as a kid with pass the parcel and you’re unwrapping that thing and at some point somebody’s going to get a prize. To me, that’s what problem solving is, that the opportunity is gift wrapped in a problem and we’ve just got to keep going through it, keep looking for the light at the end of the tunnel. And that’s what I did. I just kept believing that I didn’t get upset by the problem. I got excited by the opportunity that was on the other side of it.
(05:27)
And I think when you do that, your whole mindset changes. You don’t have this nervousness that I’m in a problem, I dunno what to do. I dunno where to go. Don’t what most people do. They try and use the same brain to fix the problem that’s causing the problem. Right. Listen, there was no precedent in Covid. There was no previous, there was no playbook. I had none of those things. So I had to create my own playbook. I had to make my own decisions. And it was March the ninth, my wedding anniversary that I got the first couple of phone calls from airlines going, sorry, son, you got to take these magazines off the plane. They might pass germs on. And oh wow, there was nothing I could do to prove otherwise. Even though with hindsight, nothing wouldn’t have made any difference. The only airline that actually kept it was American. American kept their magazine all the way through, and then just as the lights came back on, they took it off. So there was no logic in anybody’s decision making. It really was none of us know what we’re going to do. There is a problem with throw the baby out with the bathwater and we’ll deal with it at the end of it
Rob Jolles (06:31):
And from one sales guy to another. One of the most dangerous times for us is uncertainty. In other words, if we’re heading in a downward direction, we’ll problem solve that We heading up, we’ll problem solve that. What makes markets jittery? What makes people, clients, prospects jittery is the unknown, that fear of the unknown. And I do, I remember also in March not touching a gate handle. We didn’t know how is this thing spread? What’s it called again? And so that unknown really panicked a bunch of people. You ever seen the movie Apollo 13?
Simon Leslie (07:10):
Yeah.
Rob Jolles (07:11):
There’s a great scene in there. I’ve always wanted to isolate it when that ship is just spinning and turning and the NASA engineers are just talking this isn’t working, that isn’t working. They’re just hammering Ed Harris. And he just finally says, all right, stop. Tell me something that is working on this capsule. And to your point, sometimes when things are tough it’s not easy to get there, but I still remember that scene of, okay, what is working? Let’s begin the problem solving from there because it’s so easy to just get caught up in that spin cycle and just get knocked down.
Simon Leslie (07:53):
I mean, the question I asked myself is, what can I do? That was the question. And I remembered back to 2008, and that was all about people. And when everybody else was laying off people, I was picking them off. I was literally phoning people because you’d see in the media press, you’d go, oh, this one’s being let go of this one. And I phoned and I said, right, I’ve got an opportunity for you. Because all the way through that time, travel suffer. People kept flying, people kept going away. So I thought, how the hell am I going to look after my team? Look, the airports are shut. The airlines have parked the planes. What can I do? What can I do? What can I do? And that was my first idea was, well, let me start finding around some of my friends and see if I can get them to come in and just inspire my team.
(08:37)
At this point, the team are now getting into Tiger King. They’re in their pajamas, they’re working from home, right? They’re dealing with shit from all our clients. They’re saying, oh, what’s going on? We dunno, what’s going on? Where? Where’s our money? Where are we doing with this? What are you going to do with that? And I thought, I’ve got to try and bring some positivity to their day. So I thought I’ll start getting some speakers in. And one by one, the speakers started to arrive, and I’m talking about some serious heavyweight speakers from around the world talking about soft skills like kindness, gratitude, reciprocity, and then harder skills like negotiation and brain science. I even had Wim H in there doing breathing exercises to calm us all down. And I think the health and wellbeing really helped because at that point, no one really knew what to do and what tablets are taken, how to look after themselves. So we were ahead of the game in some respects by giving our staff really, really good insight and advice.
Rob Jolles (09:33):
Yeah, that sounds, go ahead.
Simon Leslie (09:36):
No, and as these guys started coming in, I started to just jot down my feelings at the time, but what I realized was these guys weren’t just inspiring my team. They were giving me unconscious advice. The ideas that were going in, they were going in. I’m thinking, okay, I might use that again. And over the case, over the course not the case, over the course of say 12 weeks yeah, three months, we had so many speakers I was feeling really powerful. But the flip side of that was some of my team, and when they realized that this wasn’t coming back anytime soon, they started to leave because this wasn’t just a little blip about turnover. This was also, we lost all our clients. We lost half our sales team, half our company, we had 300 people. We lost, well, we were down to a hundred at one point. We’re now creeping back up. Our advertising clients disappeared. They were used to buying adverts and magazines, and now we didn’t have anything to give them. So it really was a tsunami of events coming together.
Rob Jolles (10:43):
Yeah. Well, the book is called Equanimity, the Diary of a C E O in Crisis. Make sure we get a look at that one on Amazon. You’re a classic example, Simon, of something I verse I call instinct versus logic. Instinctively we move in one direction, logically we should move in. Another training is actually a classic example. Right now, while sales forces are struggling, this should be the number one time when they get sales trained. And yet for most sales trainers we’re out there battling and battling.
Simon Leslie (11:17):
Now budgets be cut.
Rob Jolles (11:18):
Oh yeah. Because that’s the instinct. There’s no logic. You would think that one budget you probably don’t want to cut is your sales team’s budget. Right now once sales start flying and people are taking numbers in the lobby, now they want to be trained. By the way, I don’t turn down that business just so you know, but it’s instinct versus logic. I mean, we learned it in seventh grade. Somebody told me, so you buy this thing called a stock when it’s low and you sell it when it’s high. Well, for a seventh grader, that made sense to me. Too bad nobody does it. But in a sense, you were doing that. The fact that you brought in speakers, the fact that you were fighting that fight, and I was with you Simon, I thought, what is this going to be like three weeks a month? I don’t know. How will I stand a month of this, but I’ll figure it out Somehow we had no idea what we were creeping into, but I am impressed with the fact as a leader that you were avoiding the instinct and coming at it from a more logical standpoint. That’s not easy to do at all. I think it’s the fact because you’re, you’re so half full, it appears.
Simon Leslie (12:23):
Well, I’ve got a poster on my wall which says, don’t let the logic kill the magic. And my mantra has been everything is nonsense. And it’s not nonsense. It’s nonsense. Nothing has to make sense. If it makes sense, it’s probably wrong. Just because everybody else is running that way doesn’t mean you have to follow them. There might be a door on that side that’s pretty empty. So I just think that do the right thing. It doesn’t matter if it’s commercially the right thing, logically the right thing, do the right thing. How you would like to be treated, how you would expect to be treated in this instance. Yeah, I
Simon Leslie (13:03):
Think the book came, I don’t know where someone asked me that. Yes. And I thought, I don’t actually know when I decided I’m going to start putting this down into on paper, I was keeping a diary all the way along. But then the way I structured the book was I kept my diary and every one of the speakers, I sort of scripted what they talked about, what I learned from it, how it affected me, at what point it affected me. So you get 50 chapters of really interesting people. I’m talking Tim Grover, who is Michael Jordan’s coach. Chris Voss, who was the FBI negotiator, Jordan Belfort said, whim Hoff my mind sudden. Anyway, back there, Tim’s story, all these different people who had had different relationships with either being powerful speakers or being inspirator to other people. And I reached out to I think 54 people, only two people said, wow, we can’t do it.
Rob Jolles (14:02):
Wow. You also caught speakers at a pretty good time. I must have been out of town when you placed that call to me. But in any case, I’ll get on my administrative assistant about that one.
Simon Leslie (14:11):
You need To check our emails, Rob
Rob Jolles (14:12):
<laugh>. In any case something else you said that really impresses me. We share something. I don’t call it a diary, I just didn’t feel it was manly enough. I call mine a journal, but it sure looks like a diary and walks and talks like a diary. But I’ve maintained a journal for over 20 years because in a sense, that’s how I acquire wisdom. I did it quite by accident. I started just because I thought, boy, this is a wacky career and you and I are on the road a whole lot. There’s a lot of stories to be told. What I didn’t realize was for every 10 stories that we were telling, one of ’em was very deep and one of ’em had a much longer and lasting message to it, which we probably didn’t catch weight at that moment. But by keeping a diary, we become what I call methodically observant, but it’s not lost on me that you’ve kept a diary and that somehow this led you on this path to this book. I wish more people listening would understand the value of, call it what you wish, stopping and just taking some written snapshots of where you are. Don’t even worry about the message, the message. Now don’t find the message another time. Take that snapshot and then like you did, you didn’t doing that thinking and I’ll have a book out of this someday you did that for a different reason and then, oh, look what happens. I just don’t think it’s a coincidence.
Simon Leslie (15:40):
No, a hundred percent the where Chester Elton on and he was talking about gratitude and making sure that at the end of every day you just think about who you helped. Today, I think he had something where he was talking about at his dinner table, who can we thank at the dinner table? Who can we thank? Who’s not at the dinner table? Who can we thank that’s really made a difference to our lives today? And if you’re getting to that point where you haven’t got anyone to talk about, that means you haven’t had a full day. And I think that’s why it’s really important if you commit yourself to saying, right, this is what I’m going to do. And I’ll give you a really good example of this in January this year when the book finishes in on December 31st last year, and I set a set out and said, you’re not going to see the same me next year.
(16:24)
So every month on LinkedIn, I’ve been writing of what I’ve done this month and I set myself incredible tasks to do. And people are now going, wow, wow, you’re doing more in a month than I’m, I’m going to probably do in my lifetime. And that if you’re going to put things down, if you’re going to say, this is what I’m going to do, you’ve got to stick to it with a commitment. And that’s been part of now of the new me, because I didn’t just transform the business. I’ve transformed the way I see the world, how I want to operate within this organization and how I want to be to my family, to everything else and how I want to be towards me because I was the guy that would set himself on fire to keep everyone else warm. And now I’ve got to make sure that I’m warm first before I start worrying about keeping everybody else warm.
Rob Jolles (17:12):
Don’t really know what to say. But I, I’m wrestling with that because I also have people that count on me and I know that I have to be strong to get them to be strong. But I’ve never articulated that way of the fire analogy you just used. And yet it makes complete sense. I think my inst again, here comes that instinct. My instinct is to not worry about that. But you’re right, if we fail at the top, we’re go, we’re going to have some issues. So interesting. I let’s talk about luck. I’m going to do shift you. Although I think it all listening to you, I now see where I thought this guy has got a lot of different, his hands and a lot of different things. You connect all the dots, it appears so luck plays a part in this and you write about luck. So I’ve got somebody listening right now that’s driving down the road saying, okay, I won it just as bad as the next guy, but maybe I’m not lucky enough. Now I, I’d like you to speak to it and then I’ll jump in because I like the conversation about luck. How many of us think not quite the successful people aren’t quite as lucky as you may think they are. But talk to that for me, Simon.
Simon Leslie (18:31):
I think luck is where preparation meets opportunity. And I wear lucky brand pants. I only have lucky brand pants because ever since I was a kid, I always should say, have you got your lucky pants on today? No, I’ve got 30 pairs of lucky pants. So everybody, is that
Rob Jolles (18:45):
True? Are you serious? You only wear lucky.
Simon Leslie (18:47):
I only wear lucky pants. I actually changed, I was planning on changing my middle name to Lucky just because I just thought that would be fun by Depot. But I did put it in a lot of my things, but I haven’t done it properly. And my website’s called Lucky Leslie. There was an interview question, which I introduced a couple of years ago, which was, are you lucky? And if somebody could not say yes to that question, we didn’t take them any further. I didn’t want to hire unlucky people. I didn’t want to hire people who beli, who believed they were lucky, because that’s just part of the opportunity of life is that you get to feel positive and encouraging and that you can do anything. And I think it’s such a beautiful emotion. Luck. Luck comes in when you do the right things, when you’re disciplined, when you’re organized, when you’ve got your ducks in a row, the luck just seems to happen.
(19:43)
I’ve been lucky in many aspects of this business. Even staying in business has been lucky in some respects. We got a payment when we were about to go bust 20 years ago, and the day we sold the business was the day they asked for that money back. So that just doesn’t happen. And we must have had a charm life. We’ve gone through nine 11, we’ve gone through 2008, we’ve gone through 2012. We’ve even set ourselves on fire in 2014 by over investing in digital and every one of those mini heart attacks. When you then think about covid, which is like 10 times worse than all of them, I must be lucky because there’s no way that I should have survived all these attacks on me or the business because doesn’t, it doesn’t make any sense.
Rob Jolles (20:31):
Yeah, I like it. You, you’ve kind of got it in your head there. And I think a lot of it is in her head. I did just write down, I think it’s a fabulous question about are you lucky? I’ve never heard anybody ask that in interview, and I’m with you. I, I mean, I care about the answer, but if I get the word the answer, no, I’m not that lucky. It opens up a completely different door. It’s nothing to do with the whe whether you slipped on a banana peel yesterday, you see yourself as unlucky to me, you see yourself as half empty. To me, it snowballs in my mind of what you just told me there. I, we’ve all had moments of even this pandemic. I mean, I’ve learned how to zoom nobody’s business. <laugh> learned how to create a virtual presentation that I think is different and more unique than anybody’s.
(21:25)
I got pushed in the areas. So was that a lucky moment? I mean, it’s sort of how we define it. I’ve got something on my desk here. I’m looking at it right now. It’s one of my favorite quotes. It says, worry is the misuse of your imagination. And I think sometimes we misuse our imagination, not just in terms of worry, but how we’re even speaking to ourselves about what somebody might have said was unlucky. And I say, well, now wait a minute. What opportunities came from it? I won’t tell you that was the luckiest day you ever had, but it, it’s too easy to throw everything into a barrel and go more. Not lucky. I don’t see it. I think that’s dangerous. Never asked it in a question though. I will now. I like it.
Simon Leslie (22:13):
There’s another point, which is that if you ask somebody, if you make a good decision, does it always get a good outcome? And the answer of the question is no. Sometimes we make good decisions and you get a bad outcome. Was that then a bad decision? Because that’s what most people think. And I say no, sometimes you make bad decisions and you get great outcomes, and sometimes you make good decisions and get terrible outcomes. Don’t label everything. If you make enough good decisions over the course of a year, over the course of a lifetime, you’re going to do a lot better than somebody who makes poor decisions. And I just think that that’s the same with luck. You’re going to be maybe unlucky one week. You might be lucky the next week, you might be super lucky next week, but you’re putting yourself in the right place by doing the right things at the right time, with the right people, with the right attitude. And I think that attitude is a thing that you are sort of encapsulating on. If they feel they’re unlucky, their attitude sucks. They haven’t got that belief in themselves. No, not good things don’t happen to me. Okay, well you bring that joy to somebody else,
Rob Jolles (23:19):
Right? Yeah. Another unlucky thing happened to you today because the interview’s over. But yes, I spoken about this before, but I went to my a doctor about 10 years ago for a physical, and he said I was worried about something. I was asking him, he was like, eh, relax. He said, life comes down to three things he said, or four things. He said, you know, got to eat. You got to walk what you’re eating, you got to exercise. You got to take care of your body. You got to take care of your mind. Read. If you’re feeling a lot of stress, work your way through that. How do I get around it? But if you do those three things, mind, body nourishment, I guess he said, then it really is just a matter of avoiding bad luck. And I remember sort of thinking ease back.
(24:10)
I don’t know why we devote so much time to the avoidance of bad luck when there’s nothing we can do about it if it’s sitting around the corner frequently. You know what I mean? Last thing. But because I mentor a lot of people who are in job transition and they really feel unlucky and they’re kind of half empty as you can imagine. And I tell ’em, listen, if I thought worrying about it, if I thought obsessing on this would somehow increase my chances of success of putting out the kind of what I want to put out there, I would be the most competitive worrier what that you ever saw. But we know for a fact that it’s not contributing to anything except putting out this dark cloud around you that’s diminishing your chances of success. So once again, is that luck or is that just sort of intelligently training the mind? I say door number two,
Simon Leslie (25:04):
That’s triggered two points in my head. Worry is creating a future that’s negative and faith is creating a future that’s positive. And I was listening to this guy talk last week and he said, look, I’ve sat and I’ve listened to a thousand people on their deathbeds, and every single one of them feels that emotion of if you know are you’re a traveler, so jet lag. When you’re a jet lag, you don’t care if the window’s open, if it’s boiling hot, you just want to lie down and you just want to go to sleep. He goes, the thing is this. He goes, not one of those people on the deathbed was worried, anxious, or nervous. So he said, if you are worried, anxious or nervous, the good news is you ain’t going to die today. And I just thought that was just a wonderful way of framing it. It’s like, okay, I’m worried you should nervous, which means I’m going to live another day. I better make sure I enjoy it.
Rob Jolles (25:57):
That deserves a quote somewhere online. We’re going to get that one up there for you. That’s fabulous. All right, listen, I can’t let you go without a quick conversation about sales because I’ve never spoken to the James Bond, the selling the sales whisper. So and it’s a big topic, you and I could do two days on it. Actually, we probably both do two days on it in workshops. No, I do but okay, if you were going to, let’s check. Give me your two most powerful lessons in selling and I’ll bat ’em right back. I’ll give you two also good chance, we’re going to probably nibble at the same ones, but I’ll go a third or a fourth, but if I have to, but give me two things. If I’m sitting there selling, I go, I’ve got the James Bond of selling. Give me two thoughts I can run with.
Simon Leslie (26:47):
I’ll give you the first one that comes to my mind, which is most people when you’re talking to them, they tell you what they want to do. Oh, this is what I want to do, this, this, and this, and I want to do it in the next 12 weeks. It’s the first question I always ask is, are you going out of business? And they go, why? I said, well, you only want to do a 12 week campaign. I was hoping you were going to be around for a little bit longer. And then I say to them, what does your customer think? And he goes, what? I don’t care what you think. I want to know what your customer’s going to think about whatever we do together. It takes ’em to a completely different mind space because most people are so focused on what they want and they’re not thinking about the next level down, which is their customer, who is the person that I want to bring to them?
(27:34)
And it really does open up a different conversation. We stop talking about budgets and timings and all these things, and we start talking about how are we going to get this business? How are we going to work together? Because that’s what I’m here to do, is to help you grow your business, bring new customers I created during covid, this marketplace of a community of travelers anywhere in the world. About 5 million people will go through an airport today. I’ve got an opportunity for you to connect your brand with any of them in any continent, anywhere, at any time of that journey while they’re thinking about it, while they’re planning it, while they’re booking it, while they’re in destination. And I think it’s really exciting. It’s an exciting product instead of transformation for me. But it’s also when I’m having a sales conversation, I don’t want to talk about, oh, you giving me a couple of thousand bucks to do something to target somebody who’s living in within 10 minutes of your hotel.
(28:31)
So I really try to get much deeper to address what the problem is, what their real problem is, not what they think their problem is. And that’s the thing. That’s my most important thing with sales is most people don’t realize what the real problem is. The second one is probably my fun and favorite fact about selling is if you are getting lots and lots of objections, you’re probably not thinking deeply enough about the way you sell. Because every one of those objections should be forming part of your sales pitch. You should be telling the customers what they’re worried about. Because if you know the customer well enough and your product well enough, none of these things should be keep coming up. So if you’ve got salespeople coming to you with the same objections over and over again, I haven’t got budget, haven’t, it’s not great timing, I don’t want to reach that audience. You can really haven’t done a very good job in that whole process. I always feel like in my first book, there was not even a chapter on closing. I said, anyone, we shouldn’t even be thinking about closing. We should be just saying, let’s naturally walk you in and get you to do what we want you to do. Because what if we’ve done our job properly? You should want to do what we want you to do.
Rob Jolles (29:51):
Okay? I like it. And you hog took the best one in my opinion, which is, and I think you’ll agree with the ones I cherry pick it out of your answer is it’s all about going deeper into that problem. The bigger the problem, the bigger the need, the bigger the need, then we don’t have to worry about this budget issue. A lot of times we’re all trying to come up with the magic pillar, how to fix a budget. What’s the best answer I can give? And the best answer I can get you can give is go back, dig deeper into the problem, look at the ram ramifications impact repercussions. Neil Rackham opened the door for us on that one by the way. And of spin selling and travel through that pain cycle a little bit and remind people that we don’t have to actually fall off a motorcycle to have a conversation about it.
(30:40)
But we want to just, client says, give us this a vague idea of an issue they’ve had for three years and we’re all ready to solve it for with you. I actually think that’s probably number one. We got to go one B of trust because I can’t get to the more challenging questions without there being some trust on the table. So we’re going to have to keep our questions open and lay off the problem early. All right? But I’ll call that one a tie. I’m just jumping on top of yours. I’ll pick up on closing then because you sort of ended on that one. And I’m laughing cause it’s almost like I asked you what your favorite movie is. Ask me tomorrow. I’ll tell you a different answer. Right? I can give you the top 10, but it depends on my mood of where they all sort of land.
(31:23)
I think that’s what happens if somebody asks me because sales, I dunno. What is today? Thursday? All right, here’s my Thursday answer for you. But I don’t think I’ll deviate on the problem solving. I’m going deeper in, but I’m with you. I think that we need to, so the problem is everybody wants to load up on the close. Hey Simon, do us the workshop. I have already can be your client. I know you hear this. We got to learn how to close. We got to learn how to objection Apple two. I’m sure you do. Alright, we know we’re not in there, but I think one of the issues is we don’t teach people how to trial close enough. Meaning, and I’m just pulling this one. I’m actually never even articulated this one, but you pushed me here. Meaning not when I was an insurance agent, which is if I got the knot on anything, I was filling out a medical physical on ya.
(32:10)
Not that knucklehead. Trial closing. I mean, do you want to fix this or not? And I, and asking enough questions to get to that question is this what it’s going to take to make, to fix it? Asking enough questions and working together to come up with a list of criteria that the client can commit to and then perhaps the old school on you, but the pre-commit, if we can do that better than anyone else and prove that to you, reason why we wouldn’t have a shot at working with you. Three trial closes around three critical decision points. Now, why Simon and Robert are saying, I don’t think you really, I mean we’re still going to ask for somebody’s business, but you don’t need to obsess there. My dad said I’ll give you something to cry about. It’s over here. It’s not over there. So I think it would be, maybe mine would be just reexamining those trials along the way. What do you think? Absolutely.
Simon Leslie (33:07):
You just reminded me by my insurance days as a 17 year old kid, straight out of school I was taught this one. I used to walk around with a little coffin and the husband and wife would be there and I’d say to the husband, okay, let’s, we’re just going to play a game now. You are dead. And shut the coffin. Okay? And I’d say to the wife, what are you doing now? And the husband and the buddy. And I’d said, no, you’re dead. And I’d ask the wife again and he’d go, he’d interrupt again. And I’d go, which bit of you’re dead? Do you not understand <laugh>, you are dead. She’s now on her own. What is she going to do? You’re not prepared her for this situation, have you? Right. Where do we go? Let’s get this done. How much insurance do you need to get? And it was because it was so brutal and so direct.
Rob Jolles (33:55):
You pulled that off as a 17 year old.
Simon Leslie (33:57):
I did.
Rob Jolles (33:58):
Wow. I sold it 21 and I felt like the baby in the room there asking some of those tougher questions. I was more of a lived, I quit story guy. It’s interesting folks, we’re not talking about property and casually right now. Not that I looked down my nose at it, but that’s sold a different way. When you’re selling life insurance as you just with Simon’s example, you’re going to have to be creative. That does not sell itself. We don’t have to have life insurance. But I like that <laugh> never heard that before. And you didn’t get punched in the nose. You were okay.
Simon Leslie (34:35):
I got off to leave a few times, but I just said, well, as I was walking out the door, listen, the problem’s not going away because guess what, none of us are getting out of your life.
Rob Jolles (34:46):
Funny. Alright, we’re about ready to say goodbye to you. Let’s go back. We got equanimity, the diary of a C E O in crisis. Give me one reason why I’m running a business somewhere. We’re holding our own here. Why would I need to read that book?
Simon Leslie (35:01):
I think it’s good for anybody. I know that’s a journalist response, but if you are running a business and it’s going really well, there are so many nuggets in there will help you grow, expand, develop, think about acquisitions, think about the way you are, you currently do what you do. If you are in struggle, it’s like manor from heaven. And if you are going, you’re on that growth spur or you’re a young entrepreneur, it’ll give you insight and bring power from people who’ve been where want to go or going the way you want to go.
Rob Jolles (35:35):
Perfect. Look, I’m one of my favorite quotes is the time to fix the roof is when the sun is shining. So never ever, you won’t find it in successful people. Line ’em up against well successful people. Don’t wait to hit a crisis to prepare for a crisis to at least begin to think it out. So obviously if you’re in, you’re struggling a little bit, but a little bit. We got a book for you. If things are going pretty well I’ve just never met a business including my own, and I’m in my 30th year that’s ever been, just each year is exactly the same as the previous one. I think we all learned that in the last couple years. So sounds like a great book. I’m really thrilled to hear it’s doing so well on Amazon. I always ask my audience step one is to buy this book, but step two is to put a review on that book. It means a great deal to Simon and every author to get those reviews. It means a little bit to that Amazon algorithm as well. So I’m asking for Simon, get that book, read it, and then throw two, three sentences together. You’ve done a good thing that day. Simon. How do people get ahold of you?
Simon Leslie (36:42):
Well, follow me on LinkedIn cause I’m going to stick to my commitment to live the best life and I want to bring as many people with me reach out, say hello. If you’ve got a problem, I will help you. I really understand the law of reciprocity. These guys came in and helped me when I needed them, and I’ve made a commitment to everybody now on every conversation I have. If somebody needs a help, if I haven’t got the answer, I’ll definitely know somebody who does and I’ll point you in the right direction.
Rob Jolles (37:09):
Perfect. And that’s, I’ve always heard that called a trusted business advisor. Somebody that’s not just a vendor, not just a friend, but a combination of both those terms and you just heard it defined by Simon Leslie. Simon, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on. I’ll have contact information on our homepage as well. Thank you enough and I expected great things out of this conversation and you exceeded my expectations. Thanks so much for being on.
Simon Leslie (37:34):
Thank you for that. Appreciate it.
Rob Jolles (37:36):
Well folks, we’ll do it again as well as we can next time. Until then, stay safe.
Simon Leslie (37:44):
Thanks
Outro (37:45):
So much for listening. If you enjoyed today’s show, please rate and recommend it on iTunes, outcast, wherever you get your podcast. You can also get more information on this show and rob@jolles.com.