Sales is and will always be the number one non-negotiable in any business. Top-ranked sales trainer, Joe Pici of the number one sales training program, Pici & Pici cannot stress this enough, because as basic as it may sound, many companies still fall into the trap of spending money on many different things before they invest in sales. How do you make sure that your sales team is delivering its best performance and driving revenue to your business? How can you use virtual selling to recover lost revenue? What piece of business advice can we get from the world’s number one sales trainer? Listen in as Michael Silvers gets Joe to talk about these and more in this episode. Don’t miss out on the free resources he shares with us at the end!
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The Non-Negotiables Of Sales With Joe Pici
I wanted to welcome all of you for being here on the show. We have great guests coming on. We have an amazing gentleman who won a big award. I’m going to let him tell you about that award. A lot of people are staying at home more than they normally would and if we talked about this several years from now, it’s not going to matter. It has been the year where things are a little bit different and people have flipped into the virtual side.
It’s interesting to see this brand and where it is several years from now. We virtualize ourselves out and we want to go back to the office and to go with people. Remember in the early days of Google, they sent everybody home. Even though it’s not about productivity, we lost some of that creativity so they started bringing everybody back. Amazon bought a $1 billion building from WeWork in New York and Facebook lease the property for 7,000 people in Manhattan. Manhattan is becoming techie central for these companies but their expectation is everybody is not going to work in the office through 2020 and 2021 but everybody is going back at 2022 and 2023.
It’s Facebook’s long-term planning that you’re going back to the office. That’s what they’re buying for with these buildings and they’re getting real estate. You always look at it as you build your own business. Remember, don’t be egocentric. It’s not about yourself. The reason we have mentors is because I always want you to hear more of what’s going on. We’ve done entertainment. We do business. This episode is about sales but it’s a bigger picture than that. We’re going to have Jim Britt on. He was Jim Rohn’s partner. If you don’t know any of that and don’t mean anything to you, Jim trained Tony Robbins.
He got him started and got him moving along. He was working with them. They trained him to be bigger and better. He then went on to do his stuff. We’ll also have on back to the entertainment side. We’ll be having on Todd Fisher, Carrie’s brother. He’s still producing, directing, and he’s very much into creating films. We’ll be talking from a mentor perspective on what it’s been for him and the family that he grew up in. We have many more to come. With that being said, we’re going to have an amazing show.
Get ready, sit down, get into your saddle, whatever you are. People do this from horseback, drive your car, which not as many of you are doing but if you look at LA, 90% is back on the road. Take the information in. The word I know doesn’t mean anything at the moment. You’re learning, listening, write down, be kinesthetic, however it is for you and give a huge thunderous side of us. This next gentleman won a huge award from the gurus and he’s brilliant. I’m going to let him do and earn the right because that’s how we do it on the show. Let’s give it up for Joe Pici. Joe, how are you?
Thank you. I don’t know about the word brilliant.
Tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, where you came from even, and the award.
The first line of brand development is sales. Click To TweetI will go back real far, except there was a pivot point in my life where I was a football coach. I got fired and decided I better be doing something else with my life. I got into sales part-time, paid off massive amounts of medical debt. As we became successful in selling, people started to want to hear what we did. We started developing a methodology. About 2002, we left a big direct sales company that we had traveled all over the world speaking for and opened up Pici and Pici as a speaking coaching training company. We’ve been doing that ever since. We’re extremely focused on tactical skill-based selling.
Tell a little bit about the award you won. I was part of the virtual show.
It’s amazing because Global Gurus named me the number one Sales Trainer-Speaker in the World. Our Rapport Mastery Sales Training program got ranked the number one workshop in the world. It’s humbling and exciting especially when we were on that show to see the people that were on that show. I don’t travel in those circles because most of it was leadership and coaching. Sometimes, we get in our world.
It was amazing to have you on there. In the personal development side that I’m in, it’s not a world as much as I know but I met Marshall Thompson. He started leadership coaching. That’s working with CEOs. They work with the $100 million businesses plus. One of the coaches I’ve worked with forever and co-directed the program had peak potentials with me is like, “You’re on what show?” He’s got his MBA and leadership coaching degrees like, “You’re with Marshall. That’s the Godfather.”
I got that feeling. Listening to everybody that was attached to him. I felt like, “Joe, you don’t even know this man. That shows you how big the world is but yet how small it is.”
It’s we’re finding because what people realize is by doing being virtual and creating this difference, you’re everywhere. It’s not about your little work and network anymore, it’s truly what else is out there, and the communication. Those of us who built businesses around the world when we didn’t have this, we use paperwork. There were fax machines.
I have some clients that want me to use a dedicated fax line. That’s the truth. They’ll ask me, “Do you have a dedicated fax?” I’ll say, “It’s right over there.” They’ll say, “We’ll send you this contract.” A lot of the way people do business is the way they want to do business.
It’s that comfort level and sometimes, there are parts of the world that still have certain technologies we take for granted because they don’t have it yet. We were doing a lot of traveling in 2005, I went down to Australia and I’m like, “What do you mean the internet? What do you mean per minute? What do you mean I have to go to the cafe?” It was those things, “How am I supposed to do business here and what did happen?” In a way, with what’s going on, a lot of us being home-based and you’ve been that way for a long time. What gets you up every morning, either a great book you read or a podcast you’re listening to? What keeps you going?
I don’t want to sound like wispy. I love what I do because I get to do what I do. I own it. If I’m going to mess it up, it’s me. When we opened up this business, we said, “The only thing we will speak in coaching train on is what we execute and what delivers measurable results.” That’s what gets me up. That’s my behavior style that I’m very results-driven. I get up at 3:30 in the morning, I get on a stationary bike, and then I do twenty hours. When you do what you love doing, it’s not a job.
You have our commute, sir. It’s the ten feet through the office or whatever it is. It is different and at the same time, being the entrepreneur, working from home, that’s hard for a lot of people. That doesn’t work. They need the routine. How do you set your day? Are there any particular routines that keep you going?
If I’m not speaking, coaching, training, or working with a client, whether it’s virtual or live, my part of our business is I’m generating leads, I’m picking up the phone, I’m booking appointments, and I’m selling the training. I’ve been virtual selling for many years. This has not been a big deal for us as far as the selling part. I’m regimented because I don’t believe in selling from charisma in talent because those two genes were left out for me. I believe more process communications and skills. I stick to my process. A day is generating leads before the sun comes up, getting on the phone, booking appointments, and doing what I call core stories or sales meetings. It’s the sales thing. All the part of lead generation is podcasting and everything that goes into it.
It does make a difference. I did a call on that. I had the business funnel and what starts at the top of the business funnel. What you’re explaining is exactly what we were talking about, which is if you don’t have something coming into the business funnel, you don’t have a business. You need whatever that is, whether for Netflix subscribers for B2B. It could be another business. That’s a critical piece and be willing to do it. If you’re not, get the right person who could either train you to do it or have them. The thing is when we were going to hire somebody to do sales for us. If you’re not a salesperson you’re hiring somebody that means nothing to you. That’s why I’d rather hire somebody like you to find the right person for my team.
Salespeople are hard to hire.
Talk about it.
What moves the needle fast in sales training is not role play but real play. Click To TweetWhat happens is the person hiring the salesperson doesn’t know what to look for because they’ve never been in the hunt. For me, sales is a simple process. If you’re great at sales, you have a lot of clients. If you do leadership training, any type of mindset mastery, communication skills, customer service, those are hard to quantify. When it comes to sales, they either came to play. I will say I do have a challenge with companies. They think they’re hiring somebody with a big database or talent and they allow them to message whatever they want. The first line of brand development is sales. Your salespeople are going to ruin you if they say the wrong thing.
I have a quick story. I was selling training to a big insurance company. One of their agents came over. He’s an old guy like me. He went, “Joe, I’ve been doing this for 35 years.” We’re in Florida so you say, “Yes, sir.” He said, “Joe, the last ten people I hired, I missed on.” I said, “What type of insurance are you selling?” He said property and casualty. I said, “The next person you interview, halfway through the interview, slide a script over and a phone. If they won’t pick up the phone, read the script, and make those calls, don’t hire him because property and casualty insurance, you got to make a lot of cold calls.”
We used to talk about it because we all knew and worked with Zig Ziglar. The property of how to sell is about the other person, not about yourself but there also is the reality. This is a critical piece as a sales trainer and one of the best on the planet. Not everybody wants to sell. That’s where it’s critical to get your team around you. The people who love to do that, want to make a difference and want to make a change. You can train anybody to do it but from a business perspective, it’s also finding who are the ones who want to be and that’s the role they want to take. Stop trying to find them yourself, hire somebody who worked with the chosen company because I see it too many times.
One of the first things I do when I train a company is, I teach the eight non-negotiables of business growth. Number 2 and 3 is ambition and self-discipline. If you lack either of those, you need to stay out of sales. I’m not saying it’s better or worse. We came off the keynote stage and we knew what was lacking in the marketplace was good skill-based training. There were a lot of great sales mindset people and strategists. I said, “Dawn, what don’t sales trainers want to train? What’s on salespeople want to do?” They don’t want to pick up the phone.
I said, “That’s where we’re going to start.” We will not take a contract that we don’t do live outbound telephone call training, not role play, real play. That moves the needle, fast. You’ve been everywhere. You have trained with the best. You’ve been at the top of the mountain, still there, and you know what’s good. When I walk into a company or somebody comes to my bootcamp, the training pays itself that day because they book real appointments. When we’re going head-to-head with our competitors, they’re prettier than me. They probably have more staff than me. They have a lot of bells, whistles, or a bigger brand. Our competitive edge is that we’re going to teach application.
I’ll be honest. I can sell from the stage. I can sell in small rooms. I got to pick up a phone if I don’t know you, that I’m not so thrilled by. I would rather hire teams that do that.
In 2008, Dawn and I were at a big speaker conference and the creme de la creme were there. The year 2008 was not a good time for anything. I’m looking at famous speakers and they were not happy. I looked at my wife and I said, “We need to go home because we’re tripling our income this year.” I’m not them. I’m not Tony or Zig. I need to find out what I’m doing. What we figured out was we had developed a passion and the ability to get clients. It was as important to us as when we were in the front of the room.
In sales, in business development, most business people know their product, service, or their hierarchy. They know it all. They have their leadership. They think clients are going to come in the box. What they do is they spend all their money on advertising. There’s nothing wrong with that but when somebody like me shows up, they go, “Joe, I spent all my money.” I’m no Phi Beta Kappa but I’m thinking sales should have come first.
We can’t get into this. I can’t name any names but it is true. There’s always this big uptick and then people walk in. You’re not selling them anything and you have no revenue. Sales are revenues. Sales drive the machine. Sales pay the people. Sales make you excited. It takes the pressure off. It solves many problems. If you do it the right way like you’re talking about, you now have raving fans. You have people that will go out and sell you because they’re enlisted in your mission. Could you tell our audience, if they decided to read this blog and for some reason, they went away and didn’t want to read any more blogs, three things they could do now that could help either with their business, their life, or anything in general?
Let me talk about the growth of their business because I’m not a life coach. That’s another gene that went right by me. I don’t have it. The first thing we should do when we’re opening a business, we should find out what the non-negotiables are of making it work. What are your “goddess?” It’s been my experience. Most people negotiate with non-negotiables. Find out what it is that makes this business grow. That’s the first thing. The second thing is to determine if you’re willing to do those things. Third, if you don’t know how, I always call it the fresh fruit check. If I’m going to hire somebody to teach me, make sure they know more than I know and they’re better at it than me. Make sure they’re doing it and they have fresh fruit on a tree. When it comes to sales, I will never stop selling because the minute I get out of the game and become a teacher, I don’t know what the clients are thinking and saying. Did that help with those three things?
That was perfect. That’s the critical piece even what you said right at the end about getting out of the game. Even mentors, when they slip into too much of the mentor hat, they’ve lost touch with the field. The mentorship doesn’t make as much sense. What you also said about doing that, you realize too that the world changes. If you look at Millennials, they want community. If you bring the community into this picture, they will buy, purchase, and stay. Those are three critical because you got to stay on the pulse of what’s going on. The world does change, but there are some principles that never change.
Practices change, principles stay the same. I need to say something here that you said in the beginning. I’m in a lot of companies and quite frankly, we’re in Florida. In June 2020 had Live Bootcamps and I’ve done live training for Blue Cross Blue Shield. I have clients that are back and I have clients that aren’t. Here’s something and you said this, a lot of companies have lost their culture because their team is not together and they are struggling to pull it together. If you’re a culture expert out there, you need to go get some clients.
I agree. It’s a great time. There is that dissemination where they’ve moved apart and they’re a big enough company in a way. It doesn’t matter as much to them because the revenues are big but that is less than 0.1% of all companies. A lot of hurting out there, especially the smaller companies are trying to figure out. It’s like, “How do I even teach my group if we talk about masterminds? Why don’t you mastermind? Why don’t you look at the culture, structure, and all of that?” It makes a big difference. The other thing too is there are some people that are going to be trying to grasp of what is your business. I get that its sales. We’ll get people reading who are not in the entrepreneur world or in the sales world yet, how can you lay it out for the common man? What exactly could you do for me or my business?
Here’s our specialty area. We specialize with either companies or individuals on, how many different ways can I proactively generate qualified leads in my target market succinctly? Number two, how can I get in front of the person with the checkbook? What is the messaging and scripting? For you people who don’t like scripting, the best actors in the world, Brando, Stallone, they’re scripted. You just don’t know it. The right messaging, what do I say when that gatekeeper answers the phone and not play any mind games? How do I get a return phone call? We drilled down. The third thing is we help people craft and deliver consultative skills of selling, not transactional. We are consultative. It took me ten years to get Coldwell Banker. In a nutshell, whether it’s a coach, a speaker, a trainer, an insurance agent, no matter what industry, we specialize on quality leads, booking appointments, and doing consultative presentations to close more business.
If you’re opening a business, you should find out what the non-negotiables are of making it work. Click To TweetFirst of all, thank you for being on the show. The way you hit that succinctly, anybody can understand what you do but that’s a critical piece. What you talked about, that scripting part and people have this thing, even when we send new coaches on the stage, you’re going to follow the script. We’re doing that to make your life easier, keep you on track. When you’ve done it for ten years and you’ve got your own company, do what you like. You’ll still have a script to a point. You have bullet points but we call them the outline or script notes. It’s the thing where it does make it easier. It does also make it, so it follows a system. When you’re following the system and if your sales are not great, you have something to come back to. You can go back in the company and you can quickly figure out what’s going on. If they don’t follow that, how do they ever train their people again? That’s that big piece. How can the audience get in touch with you?
I have a gift for your people first.
They love gifts.
It’s free. You’re going to take out your iPhone. You’re going to text the word salesedge. If it splits because some phones split it, put quotes around it. Salesedge to 55678, text it. It’ll take you to a link. Pici and Pici will take you to a splash page. There is a five video free series called Recapture Lost Revenue Through Virtual Selling. Put your first name, email. It’ll come to your email. You can watch on your phone. Scroll down further and there are links to our free podcast Sales Edge. The best way you can get in touch with me is to call me at (407) 947-2590 for a free cup of Joe.
It’s been great to have you on. For international, add a plus one and you’re still calling the same number. I’m trying to think you might be one of the first from a sales perspective I’ve had on the show. I’m going through my whole brain. When you got that award, I didn’t know who you are. I checked out LinkedIn and I loved what I saw. We paired up and here we are. Everybody out there, learn to find the ones that you know, like, and trust. Learn the ones that have a passion for what they do because that will drive the passion through your own business. Even if you’re not doing business with them, if you’re networking them and hooking them up with people who need their services, they’ll never forget. That’s that big thing. Joe, thank you for being on.
I was honored.
Everybody out there hit TheMentorStudio.com. We have all the past shows in there. We’re moving everybody into a membership site. I’ve been so busy. Read the shows, they’re all complimentary for you. We already have a large community that’s playing on Facebook. We will eventually move it into there and then I’ll let you all know how to do that. We also have close to 71 events scheduled virtually as we move through all it, everybody also knows how to get on for those. I wanted to thank again, Joe Pici for being on.
Thank you.
You’re welcome. Joe, what’s that text off again?
The word salesedge to 55678, hit the link Pici and Pici and it’ll take you to a splash page. Recapture Lost Revenue Through Virtual Selling is free with five videos. Send me a LinkedIn invite, Joe Pici and you’ll see me. I’m dressed in black and I’m pointing at you.
It stood out. Audience, I want to thank you for being on. If you are driving your car, don’t close your eyes. We don’t do exercises like that anyways. If we had one person on there, I said, don’t do that right now. If you’re in your house, if you’re at home, if you’re educating your kids, whatever it is, get the education, get the knowledge, ask those questions that you ever need. Whether it’s morning, afternoon, or evening for you while your reading this, have a great day. We’ll beyond next time. Talk to you all then. Joe, thank you again. Have a great time and enjoy the sunshine.
Thanks a lot. I appreciate it.
You’re welcome.
Important Links
- Jim Britt
- Todd Fisher
- Joe Pici
- Pici and Pici
- Global Gurus
- Blue Cross Blue Shield
- Coldwell Banker
- Sales Edge
- Facebook – Michael Silvers
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