Buyer First, Sales Success w/ Carole Mahoney

Get ready for an exhilarating episode of our podcast as we dive into the world of sales success and empowering customers! In today's episode, titled "Buyer First, Sales Success: Your Blueprint for Empowering Customers!", we are joined by the incredible Carole Mahoney, author of the groundbreaking book "Buyer First" and founder of Unbound Growth. Carole's revolutionary approach to collaborative selling has transformed the lives of countless entrepreneurs, founders, and salespeople, propelling them towards remarkable growth. So buckle up and prepare to gain valuable insights, as Carole shares her expertise, strategies, and the secrets to taking your business to new heights!

Key Points Discussed:

1. Falling in love with the process and not the destination:

- Carole emphasizes the importance of enjoying the journey rather than solely focusing on the end result.

- By embracing the process, work becomes more enjoyable and fulfilling.

2. Making work fun:

- Carole highlights the significance of infusing fun into the workplace.

- By incorporating enjoyable activities and creating a positive work culture, productivity and success can be enhanced.

3. Finding patience:

- Patience is crucial in the sales process, as building relationships and closing deals takes time.

- Carole shares strategies for developing patience and understanding the long-term benefits it brings.

4. It's not all about me:

- Carole stresses the importance of shifting the focus from oneself to the customer.

- By understanding the customer's needs and providing value, sales success can be achieved.

5. Opportunity in change:

- Carole discusses how change presents opportunities for growth and improvement.

- Embracing change and adapting to new circumstances can lead to positive outcomes in sales.

6. Selling is something we do with people, not to them:

- Carole highlights the collaborative nature of selling.

- Building genuine connections and establishing trust with customers is essential for successful sales.

7. Designing your life:

- Carole shares insights on designing a life that aligns with personal and professional goals.

- By prioritizing what truly matters and making intentional choices, individuals can create a fulfilling and balanced life.

8. How to be present for others:

- Carole provides strategies

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Transcript

Robin: 0:06

What was that spark? You think early on that allowed you to fall in love with the process of making it about others and not focusing on that destination?

Carole: 0:14

I think I would have to go if I were to go way back, I would probably go back to my grandfather. Like, why are we doing this? And he's like, Make work fun. If it's not fun, you're doing it wrong. I think one thing that I learned is no matter what is happening today, good or bad, it's going to change. And I think the other thing that I learned was. There's opportunity around every corner. You just have to be open to looking for it or seeing it.

Robin: 0:41

Welcome to the Forged by Trust podcast. I'm your host, Robin Dreeke professional speaker, former us Marine spy recruiter, best-selling author, and your trust and communication expert. Coming up next on the Forged by Trust podcast.

Carole: 0:52

I realized this, you know, later on when I started my own business that selling isn't something we do to people. It's something we do with them. It's, it's in, it should be for them before it is for us. It took me a long time to get to that point. suddenly light bulbs were going off that I've been making this all about me and that's why it's so hard. That's why it's not working. And how do I shift that? How do I change this very human aspect of thinking of? My own safety, my own things that I need. How do I shift that? That something's been instilled to me for the last 30 or 40 years. How do I change that?

Robin: 1:26

Welcome to the Forged by Trust podcast. My name is Robin Driek and I'm honored to be your host. The Forged by Trust podcast is a show where we explore the essential skill of forging trust for building an innovative culture and exceptional leadership. Join us as we delve into the behavior skills and communication techniques required for success and learn from the best in the industry. Our guests include spies, spy recruiters, master interrogators, best selling authors, thought leaders, and innovators who will share their insights on building teams. Partnerships and exceptional leadership by forging trust Stop settling for less and learn how to master communication skills. You need to move beyond transactional relationships and into mutually beneficial collaboration and partnerships, whether you're a student. Entrepreneur, C suite executive, or parent, forging trust is the key to unlocking your potential. Today's episode buyer. First sales success. Your blueprint for empowering customers is with my good friend and author Carol Mahoney. Carol Mahoney is an accomplished author, speaker and sales expert from Unbound growth. Her recent book buyer first grow your business with collaborative selling. She provides a revolutionary sales success method that has helped countless entrepreneurs, founders, and salespeople achieve remarkable growth. Get ready to gain valuable insights and discover the power of collaborative selling as Carol shares her expertise and strategies. Let's dive in and take your business to new Heights. During today's episode, we talk about falling in love with the process and not the destination making work fun. Finding patients and it's not all about me.

2:59

Hey,

Robin: 2:59

Carol. Welcome to forge by trust. We've Talked and chatted so much over the last bunch of years. It's so nice to have you on the other side of the mic because you are a true inspiration in so many aspects of life. But anyway,

Carole: 3:14

just welcome. Thank you so much for having me. It's nice being on this side. Isn't it

Robin: 3:18

great? You just get to be you, no thought, no prep, just deep dive in on everything you've done in life. And big, massive congrats on Buyer First, an amazing book of your life's journey, really, because I know you've put in a lot of reps. You've been working on it for years. I think you said about five years

Carole: 3:36

total. Yeah. Well, I mean, I, the writing took about two or three years, but like the research and the testing that took about 10 to 12 years. So it's a long time coming.

Robin: 3:46

You are a recipe for resiliency. Which I want to get to. And so. Reading the book, it was really compelling to me because it's not just a book about, you know, sales, which is definitely your life's passion, and I'm going to get into that, but it's also like many selling books that Are written. Well, it's a, it's a life skills book. It's a book about how to focus on others as we're wearing our shirts. It's not about me which is also self serving. Since my first book, it's called, it's not all about

Carole: 4:19

me, which inspired the shirt, by the way.

Robin: 4:23

I know. So everything we do today is self serving. I'm reading your book. I'm like, Oh, I recognize this. This is fun. I love this. She's right on the same sheet of music because it's all about everyone else. And so that's why we want to get to. So it was really fascinating to me. Is your life arc and your journey and a lot of people don't have what you have. And that is you seem to have really fallen in love with the process. Yeah. You do this thing of favorite author of mine, Joshua Metcalf. He's written a couple of books. One is called chop wood, carry water. The other one that is really fantastic. It's called pound of stone, which is about how to put in reps and Ryan holiday speaks about this as a very stoic way about falling in love with the process. Robert Green and his book on mastery is the same things about falling in love with the process and not the destination. What happened in your life? What was that spark? You think early on that allowed you to fall in love with the process of making it about others and not focusing on that destination?

Carole: 5:22

I think I would have to go if I were to go way back, I would probably go back to my grandfather. I called him Jaja because that's Polish for grandfather. And so when I was little, that's what I called him. And he would always say. Like, I would go into the garden with him. Actually, this, ironically, I was in the garden this morning picking, like, a huge thing of green beans because I was gone for a week. But I remember going in the garden with him and complaining about the work. Like, do we have to do this? Like, why can't we just go to the grocery store and pick the beans, like, right off of the shelf? Like, why are we doing this? And he's like, Make work fun. If it's not fun, you're doing it wrong. And for some reason that stuck in my head. And from there on out, whenever I felt like I had to do something that I didn't really enjoy, whether it was doing the dishes or the laundry, that voice in my head came back of how can I make this fun? And I think that's what got me to focus more on the process of doing something and the journey of it rather than focusing on the destination. Cause there were certainly times in my life. And I talk about it in the book where I looked at. The thing I wanted to be or the destination that I wanted to get to and I would get frustrated or I would give up or, you know, I would beat myself up for not getting there yet. And, you know, that was my grandfather's voice in my head. And then there's this Aerosmith song that talks about, you don't promise the destination, you only promise the journey. And I think that's the other thing that stuck in my head as well, is that all of this that we're going through in life, we're not promised anything. We're only promised that we can take the next step towards it. And sometimes when you just are comfortable with where you're at and comfortable with who you are and taking the steps, it's like... Just being able to like, stop and smell the roses, enjoy the steps that you're going through, and the journey that you're going. And I think that just became a part of who I was over a period of time that I didn't even realize it actually until you just asked me that.

Robin: 7:12

Yay! And you, you already went down another path that I wasn't thinking of because you mentioned your grandfather and him basically inspiring you at those formative years of life to fall in love with the process. But you also mentioned your grandmother in the book and I thought her, her inspiration to you was also interesting about her salesmanship or saleswomanship, whatever you want to call it. Tell me about her a little bit, which, do you think she was a spark that gave you that inspiration to be into sales?

Carole: 7:43

I think so, because... In, in part of my mind, like she, she always asks these really sensitive questions. She was a real estate agent in the seventies. She was one of the first women to start a real estate brokerage when they're like there wasn't women business owners. And then, so in that way, she definitely inspired me. Like, you know, I was, I had my, my Nana who she was, you know, a stay at home mom. She cooked, she cleaned, she was everything that you would think of a grandmother with cookies and everything. And then I had my other grandmother who was. You know, going to dinners she was, you know, talking to clients, you know, business cards, all of these things that I kind of had these two juxtapositions to look at. And Grandma Mahoney was one of those people that it didn't matter what she had to do. She would do whatever it took to forward her career, to get the next sale, to do what she needed to do by the client. She was blunt. She was direct. But she was also one of those people who was so passionate about what she did that she just couldn't turn it off. And I definitely think that she was my inspiration because like I looked at her and I saw someone who was taking control of the path that they were taking and wasn't going to accept anything less. And I think, you know, part of it was, she probably had to be that way being the only woman who started a business in the seventies. She had to be a really tough cookie. She was definitely a tough cookie, but at the same time, She wouldn't give

Robin: 9:02

up ever. Tell me about this unique family dynamic. This is really fascinating that you were surrounded by such inspirational people. So, your grandma Mahoney, what was, what do you, what was her spark, you think? What did she do before she did that?

Carole: 9:20

She had a from what I know and understand from what my aunts have told me, because she has since passed away, that when she got married, her husband wasn't very nice, was actually somewhat abusive, and was very controlling. And so her opening her own business and going out on her own was a way for her to take back her power. It was The only way that I'm going to get out of this situation is if I have my own money and my own way to control it. And, and that's exactly what she did. And I think for her, it was, this was her way of getting freedom and she was going to not stop at anything to get there.

Robin: 9:56

It's interesting as you're speaking, the The thing that popped in my mind is that you were surrounded by people that did not sound like anyone was a wound collector. They were problem solvers.

Carole: 10:06

Yeah, yeah, my Nana, my other grandmother would be, you know, very commonly whenever she would like get upset about things like when my grandfather passed, you know, we had a lot of tragedies in that side of the family. She was so funny because she would, you know, she would get emotional and she'd get, she would say, don't mind me. I'm just getting a little weepy right now. And so, but for her, that was like that moment. She, she had it, she moved on and it was my family was never one for the pity parties. Like if there's something you can do about it, then do something about it. And if there isn't something you can do about it, then you need to just let it go.

Robin: 10:36

What a great healthy outlook. All right. So here we are. We're surrounded by some great inspirational people early on in life. What did you think you wanted to do? What path did you want to walk? Do you think at that point?

Carole: 10:47

I always wanted to start my own business. Like when I was a teenager, I started my own babysitting business. When I was a youngster, I thought the best way for me to make money was to find out, like, find all of the things that were crawling, you know, dust in my basement or my grandmother's basement and say, Hey, Nana, if I sell this for you in a yard sale, you know, I'll give you a percentage if I get a percentage, like I was already working deals, you know, doing yard sales at like nine years old, because that was the only way I was going to get enough money to go down to the penny store, well, the nickel store to get like, you know, Tootsie Rolls and so forth. And so, you know, When, you know, like when I went to college, I actually wrote my business plan in college, like the courses that I took were all geared towards how can I start my own business in five years? And it was because I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs where my grandma Mahoney, my mother owned a business, my grandfather owned a business, my father owned a business. And so the idea of a nine to five job was kind of a foreign concept in my family. And so I always had wanted to do that. So I had so many small little businesses up until I actually started Unbond Growth that it was really just only a matter of time, I think. And when I got laid off from my corporate job, I thought, okay, my five year plan just became a six month plan because that's how long I had an unemployment to figure it all out. And so I had, I had always had this passion for starting my own business because I didn't, I didn't believe in the nine

Robin: 12:09

What were some of the Things that you think you learned from being surrounded by these great entrepreneurs early on that you was able to carry forward that you thought were most effective.

Carole: 12:19

I think one thing that I learned is no matter what is happening today, good or bad, it's going to change. Like you can't rest on your laurels that just because you have this customer today, that you're going to have that customer tomorrow. Like you always kind of have to be working for it. And I think the other thing that I learned was. There's opportunity around every corner. You just have to be open to looking for it or seeing it. And you know, one of the things that my grandfather, I would say like, you know, he would come in for, he had owned a sporting goods store as well as a welding business. And I remember coming in, He would sit down at dinner and he would talk about his day and the things that went on. And it wasn't that he was complaining about it. He was kind of like brainstorming with the whole family about like, what is it that we're going to do next? And, you know, what's the next idea? And so dinnertime was always, you know, like a conference meeting for the business. And so it was interesting that when, you know, when he would, you know, get into a pickle or he would, you know, come up against a brick wall in some way. And same thing with my grandma Mahoney, it wasn't the, Oh, woe is me. Why is everything so hard for me? It's like, okay, where's the opportunity in this challenge? What is it that we can actually, how can we flip this around so that it actually benefits us in the family and so forth? So it was always trying to look at. Obstacles is opportunities, I think.

Robin: 13:37

Yeah. One of your favorite, one of my favorite quotes that you have in your book that I wrote down was selling change. I love that. So not just embracing change, but embrace it and then sell it because that's what you do when you're engaging life. Because everything, like you said, when it's, you can't stop time and time is changed. So yeah, that's awesome. The next thing that I was really curious about. And that's the experience you had that you shared in the book with your stepfather and him as a car salesman. Yeah. I found it pretty profound because despite that, and if you could walk us through that and what that experience was, but despite that, you decided to keep going with what you were doing because that was a Seemed like a pretty sour taste.

Carole: 14:23

Yeah. Yeah. He was the, he was the epitome of the used car, the worst used cars, mail sales,

Robin: 14:31

and I apologize, but how old were you at this time? So we can

Carole: 14:34

see if I was five years old when he came into our household. I was nine years old when my mother finally kicked him out and it was, you know, and I think I might've actually been even earlier than that, but I remember it starting when I was five years old and. He was, you know, he was the worst. He was a con artist, a manipulator. He didn't really care about anyone else. He only cared about himself and what he wanted and he would do whatever it took to get what he wanted, no matter who he had to hurt or con or whatever the case may be and. You know, and, and, you know, he, he sold cars that weren't safe. He did all kinds of the used car salesman tactics. And as a child, you know, I didn't really necessarily know any better. Thank God I had other role models. No one in my family liked him. Like my grandfather wouldn't even be in the same room with them. So it was one of those things where I, it was this, this. Kind of major contrast between what I was seeing in my entrepreneurial family. And then what I was seeing with this used car salesman, Jim, that You know, made me, yes, I wanted to start my own business, but it really gave me a disdain for sales because if this is what sales is all about, I don't want anything to do with it because I just kept coming up with the image of Jim when, and anyone would say sales, I'm like, no, I'm not, I'm not going to be Jim. I'll, I'll do everything else, but that, and you know, like anything else, it only takes one or two to give something a bad name and stick in our, our minds that way. And unfortunately. Despite all of the good influences that I had in my family, that one very traumatizing and negative experience with Jim was the thing that really set my mind against sales. And. I realized this, you know, later on when I started my own business that selling isn't something we do to people. It's something we do with them. It's, it's in, it should be for them before it is for us. It took me a long time to get to that point. And then when I did, I was like, I've wasted so much time thinking about it this way. And that's kind of when I became inspired to share the story because if someone like me who, you know, had the, You know, the predator, Jim salesperson in their life at a young age. If I can turn my mindset around around sales, then I, I've got to believe that anybody can. What do

Robin: 16:51

you think was the first inspirational aha, humbling moment when you discovered, well, you knew at an early age, I'm guessing that Jim wasn't doing it the way that you wanted to do it and turn you off to sales. What turned it around for you? What was that humbling moment?

Carole: 17:08

I think the humbling moment was. And I write this in the introduction in the book when I was at the rock bottom in the beginning of my business. Like I couldn't even buy groceries for my kids. I couldn't get Christmas presents for my kids. And I was like, I'm a failure. I've let my family down, both my ancestors and my current family. And I thought, you know, I thought of that four letter word that every business owner hates, which is job. Like I'm going to have to go get a job now after being laid off from corporate. I was, I was, you know, didn't want to do that. And my sister had introduced me to her boss who was looking for someone to do content marketing, which is what I did at the time. And I remember sitting in the interview and thinking, I really need this job. I really need this job. I've got to get the bills paid, whatever I've got to do, whatever I've got to say to this person to get this job I'm going to do. And then as we were having the conversation in the interview, He said to me, you know what? I'm having a really hard time making a decision. It's between you and this other person who I knew. And he's like, if you were me, what would you do? And the first thought I thought was, well, hire me because I need the job. But then my next thought was, Oh my God, this is my sister's boss. And what if it doesn't work out and it makes her look bad and then, you know, and then it's going to make me look bad and then I'm going to, you know, not be happy in this role and I'm going to be miserable. And so is Jack. And then my sister is going to, you know, get egg on her face. And I thought, I can't do that. I can't go into this job knowing that I'm not the best fit. And so I asked a question and said. What is the most important aspect of this job for you? And when he told me what it was, and it wasn't something that I had the most experience in, I said, look, you know, I'd love to take the job. I must be crazy saying no to it, but I really think that you should hire. Let's call him Frank, because I know that he's done that thing, going to all these sporting events. Then he really enjoys it. He loves it. I think you should hire Frank. And it was that moment, the whole entire conversation shifted. And he looked at me and he said, I didn't expect that answer. And I appreciate your honesty. Thank you so much for making this decision easier for me. And then he said, you know what, I'm going to find other people that need your services so that you can get some more clients in. And I was like, no one has ever offered or said that before. And as I was reflecting on it later on, and I went home to my husband and told him what happened. I'm like, sorry, honey, we're not buying beer tonight. Cause I still haven't got a job yet, but this is what happened. And he looked at me and he said. Well, maybe you just need to stop trying to sell people to get more clients. And I was like, huh, it was a little bit of a gut punch. But at the same time, it was at that moment that I realized I've been making selling all about me and what I wanted, just like Jim did without realizing it. And that's when I realized that I needed to change the way that I thought about sales. I hired a sales coach. I dug deep into what my own mindset was. I actually went to a therapist to deal with some of the traumas that had happened because of Jim. And. And realized and then I found your book not about me and suddenly light bulbs were going off that I've been making this all about me and that's why it's so hard. That's why it's not working. And how do I shift that? How do I change this very human aspect of thinking of? My own safety, my own things that I need. How do I shift that? That something's been instilled to me for the last 30 or 40 years. How do I change that? And that's what kind of started this journey of understanding how we change our beliefs, how we change our mindsets and the impact that it has on our behaviors. But it was that one question, that one interview that started it all.

Robin: 20:40

So how do you do shift that mindset because that's a big shift and you, and you mentioned many great authors in your book and one of my favorite also is James Clear with atomic habits. So what small atomic habit did you think you first put into place? And most importantly, we're trying not to have compound questions. I apologize. Where did you get the patience? Because Type A's like us, we have a hard time with patience. Yeah. You demonstrated it phenomenally at this moment.

Carole: 21:12

I think that it was. This is going to sound silly, but the thing I think that started the change for me was really digging into what's personally meaningful for me. Like my coach actually challenged me. He's like, I want you to write down what your personally meaningful goals are. I want you to talk with your husband. What do you want life to be like in a year and two years and three years and four years and five years and focus on one thing at a time. And I'm like, I'm not a materialistic person. I'm not someone who's gonna like, I need a fancy car or a big house. So how do I, how do I write personally meaningful goals when it's not things that I want? It's experiences. It's a lifestyle. And he said, that's, that's exactly it. So mine was. I had to do a lot of dig deeping, right? I had to do some reflection and had conversations with my husband and said, okay, so neither one of us are into the big cars and the fancy houses and the big vacation. So what do we want our life to be like with us and the kids over the next couple of years? And we wanted to renovate our home. We wanted to get be self sufficient, get off of the grid. You know, I was raised. You know, my family, on top of being entrepreneurs, were big outdoor enthusiasts. So I was taught at a young age, you never leave the, you leave nature the way you found it or better than you found it. You don't leave your stuff lying around. You don't litter. You don't do these things. You leave places better than you found them. And that was something that was really part of my core values is to leave things in a better place than I found them. And so starting with my environment, how do I create a home and a house where, where, you know, economically and ecologically. Sensitive to things. How do we create, you know, get off of the grid. We want to travel, but we know that we don't want to contribute to, you know, having to get on a plane all of the time. And so things like having new windows that save on energy efficiency, getting new siding, you know, putting a wraparound deck on our house. While these were things, it was the things that actually created a lifestyle for us that we valued. And so it was really digging into you. How do I want to design my life rather than settling for what comes my way? And when I got clear on what I wanted to design my life to look like, then it was just a matter of, all right, now, what are the small steps that I need to go into take to get there? Now, obviously if you're a business owner or a salesperson or an entrepreneur money, like we need clients because we need money to do the things that we want to do or to get the things that we want to get. And so when I started thinking about, you know, getting more work and more clients, isn't just about paying the bills. It's about working with the kinds of people that are going to help me to create the kind of lifestyle that I want and that they also are in alignment with that. So that very first thing that started it all was. Actually sitting down, having the conversation with my husband and then writing down what we wanted our goals to be, what we wanted our life to be, and then breaking it down into smaller steps. Okay. In order for us to get new windows, we've got to, you know, take these steps to do that. It's going to cost this money, which means I need to get these amount of clients in. And then once I do that, we can have the windows. And so it wasn't just about. All right, I've got to pay the bills. It was, I've, I've got a dream that I want to achieve and that by doing these behaviors, these actions, it's going to get me there. So when I didn't want to pick up the phone and call people, I reminded myself of my goal, that this is the means for me to get to the places that I want to get to. So it wasn't just me forcing myself to do something. It was getting myself to do something in light of the goals that I was trying to reach and. Ironically, that's when I started having fun with it. Like my grandfather had said years ago, make work fun. Work was miserable for me for a while. And I realized that by setting the goals, I was finding a way to make it fun for me.

Robin: 24:49

The first step is always the most challenging one because many people fear the start. Yeah. So what was your most. What was the greatest challenge to the start for you that you think other people will also face or do face as human

Carole: 25:03

beings, we are always looking for validation, right? Like when we were babies, we look to our parents to see if we were doing the right things. And whenever we're trying to do something new or something risky, we seek the validation for that, that comfort, that security, that we're doing the right things when we're going outside of our comfort zones. And for me, that actually was something that was getting in my way because I was seeking validation from places that I shouldn't have been right from my prospects, from my buyers, you know, from, you know, competitors or colleagues or those types of things, because I was so seeking that validation, that approval that I was doing the right things. It was actually causing me to chicken out in certain tough situations. Like, for example, if I was talking with the CEO of a company and I knew that there is like, you know, there's this big. pothole that they're about to go through and if I don't warn them of that or I don't ask this tough question, they're not going to see it. I would chicken out because I didn't want to upset them. I didn't want them to dislike me. I didn't want them to think of me in a certain way. And so by not asking some of those tougher questions, I wasn't able to actually build trust with them. I wasn't actually able to dig deeper into something to understand what's going on underneath it. That was the hardest part for me was asking tough questions of people who I saw are an authority or people who I saw as I need their approval in order to move forward. And to take that Need for validation away from those outside sources and actually start to look internally of where do I need to have this actual validation come from. That was the hardest part for me and it's still something that every once in a while I have to check myself with, especially when you're writing a book and you're putting all of those things out there, it tends to to bring those needs for approval and validation up. That was the hardest part for me because. And I think for a lot of people, that's the hardest part because it's so ingrained in our DNA to seek validation from others, both as children and, you know, you know, back in the prehistoric days when we were, you know, running in tribes to try to like, you know, survive that's kind of encoded and hardwired in our DNA. And so to seek validation from, you know, my children, my family, the places where it actually matters was a really hard thing for me to overcome.

Robin: 27:12

Yeah, no doubt. Things that I love that you talk about really well in the book, and that is partnering with your clients and your buyers, you know, to make an experience in order to do that, you have to have an. I, I love this pre, this term so much, and that's presence. Yeah. Tell me about presence and what are stra, what strategies can people employ to have presence so they can partner with their buyers and move forward to success together?

Carole: 27:41

This is one of the most common things that I see happen in people who have to sell, is that we go into it, you know, you think about it, you have a, a. A conversation with a friend of yours. It's very easy going back and forth, you know, but then suddenly when you get into a sales type of conversation, you know, all kinds of walls go up. We trying to protect ourselves from things. We're scrambling in our minds to think of what do we need to say next in order to get this to move forward. And when we're doing that. We're not actually there. We've become like time travelers. We're either thinking forward to the future of what do I need to say next? And we're not actually actively listening to someone to hear what they're saying or note their body language or their tone of voice or the types of words that they're using. We're completely checked out in our own minds. So we're time travelers either fast forward to the future. What do I need to say? Or we're so stuck in the past of, Oh, this has happened before, you know, this is how this is going to go. If I, and, and because of that, We are not listening to people and we know when we're not being listened to and that's one of the things that so often gets in the way. And in order to change that. It's another thing that's very hard to do because it's just, you know, it's part of our chemistry. It's part of our brains. What I've learned is that, to James Clear's point of building small habits, I started building small habits to help me stay in the present moment. So, for example I make sure I get good sleep at night. I don't look at my email before I go to bed. I don't wake up in the morning and look at my email. At least I try not to. I'm not always successful. I instead will sit, have coffee, look at the sunset outside, you know, talk to my dog, do some meditation, do yoga, workout, exercise, and then focus on like creative work in the morning. I start my day by making sure I'm fully present in the day in that time, because that then carries out through the rest of my day so that when I can focus on the person that I'm talking to, or the tasks that I'm doing, and it was building that small habit of one. Stop checking your email when you get up first thing in the morning. Like that was the first small habit, which was very hard for me to break. And then it was building on that. Now that I've managed to keep myself from doing that instead. It's one of those things where sometimes when we're trying to build a habit, we rely on our willpower. We're going to stop doing this. I am going to stop eating tortilla chips after dinner at night. But what happens is that we're relying on our limited source of willpower to make that happen. And so instead by building small habits to replace the bad habits, we're, we're not relying on our willpower as much because we're building supportive habits to replace the non supportive habits. So stopped checking email, started doing meditation. Stopped, you know, frantically running from one call to the next in the morning, started doing yoga and and focus work. And those small habits over time is what has allowed me to get into the present moment relatively quickly with people and stay there. There's other things too, such as like If I'm in a conversation with someone and I feel myself starting to check out, I'll press my four fingers together just as a physical reminder to come back to the present moment. My youngest son had asked has Asperger's I should say. And so, a lot of the work that I had to do with him and helping him to remain in the present moment like having an elastic that he would snap on his wrist whenever he found himself spiraling or, you know, having coins in his pocket whenever he was starting to feel himself nervous. It was all just a physical reminder to come back to that present moment. So it was a combination of small daily habits in my routines in the morning, as well as having some strategies on hand for those moments that were especially moments that I might, you know, become out of the present moment. And the interesting thing about this is in the clients that I've worked with I have one client of mine, Michael Douglas, who I spoke with last week and I worked with him like almost 10 years ago at this point. And he said, you know, one of the things that I didn't expect, I expected that this work would return business results. I didn't expect the impact it would have on my personal life, how being and learning to be in the present moment with my buyers has also taught me how to be in the present moment with my wife and my children and my family. And it's improved those relationships as well. And so that's one of the things that I found as well, my relationship with my husband improved. I realized the day that it was starting to impact my personal life. When my kids looked at me and said, You know what, mom, you yell a lot less than you used to, which was a bit of a gut punch, but also at the same time told me that this is going to impact our personal lives, not just our professional ones.

Robin: 32:07

The journey's working. Yeah. So we could talk about the content forever, and we've only brushed a service. Carol, presence, hugely beneficial for personal and professional lives. As you said, you gave great tips and techniques for that. What's maybe one or two other things that you could cascade on top of that to help people move forward, especially entrepreneurs, that feel stuck and how to put a buyer first?

Carole: 32:35

So if you're feeling stuck in that you're not really, you know, getting anywhere else with your buyers, one of the most common, you know, so the two most common behaviors that I see with people that I work with, the changes that they have and the ones that I also went through as well, one is that presence being in the present moment with people and being calm and cool and collected in those moments. And then the other one, I guess I would say it is a sense of curiosity and always wanting to ask another question to learn a little bit more to dig a little bit deeper. And so the two behaviors that I typically see change most often is active listening and asking really good questions. And. Even in our question asking, sometimes, you know, one of the exercises that I have people go through the book is I want you to write down the top five sales questions that you typically ask, and then I want you to apply the we we factor to it. And the we we factor is how much are you talking about me we and I and what I want, and how much are you actually talking about your buyer hence the we we factor. And that's one of the things that I, you know, actually practice with my husband so when I first started doing this process. I didn't ask enough questions of my buyers. Like I would answer, ask enough questions to learn like a pain point that they had. And then I would jump on it. Oh, this is how we're going to solve that. And this is how we're going to do that, but never really dug in any deeper to truly understand why it was a problem for them and what they had tried and the impact of it and what they thought a solution would sound like. I just went, went in with my pitch. And so when I started this work on my own mindset and being in the fully present moment and not seeking others approval so that I could ask tougher questions and not feel ashamed of it, I guess you could say, or embarrassed. I started learning to ask questions of my husband. So like he would come home from work, he would come down here into my home office. And if I wasn't on the phone, he'd say, okay, it's break time. And he would start to tell me about his day and. Actually, this was one of the things that I took from your book. The code of trust is I was telling him things, right? So he would go in and say, you know, this is happening at work. And I'm like, well, you should do this and you should do that. And he would look at me like, you don't, you don't have any idea what this is like at work and that'll never work there. And we would get into this argument because, you know, I'm a management coach and consultant. Of course, I know what I'm talking about and why aren't you listening to me? You don't value my advice. And what it really was is that he, he didn't feel that I understood what was going on to be enough to be able to offer such advice. So what started as him coming downstairs and us getting into a fight about his day, when I stopped telling him what I thought, making it about me, and started asking him, why do you think that they think that? Or, you know, if you were to say something like this, how do you think that they would react? And by asking those questions, he's like, you know, I never thought of that before. I think I'm going to try that. And I was like, well, why didn't you try it when I told you to do it last week, but it was simply because I asked him the question to collaborate with him to get his feedback on how he thinks it would work. All of a sudden it became a great idea. And, you know, at first I was like, Oh, well, I'm a woman and that's why you're not listening to me. No, it's because I kept telling him rather than asking questions to collaborate on a solution. And that's when I realized I was telling him what I wanted to tell him. I was getting all of these dopamine releases in my brain because I was talking about all of the things that I thought and wasn't giving him the opportunity to actually have some input in the conversation. And when I realized that I was like, Oh, That's what I'm doing to my buyers. And so what I would say to everyone out there is if you're feeling uncomfortable, asking a lot of questions, start practicing on the people around you, like the grocery store clerk, your Uber driver, you know, your, your family, when they come home from work, your coworkers, ask them more questions about themselves, have them be open ended questions where they have to give more information and not just a yes or no answer. And. My husband learned this, right? Like he finally figured out that this is what I was doing with him. And then he started doing it to all of his coworkers. And he's like, I am amazed how easy it is to get people to talk about themselves. But that's one of the things that we do in sales is, is we want to get people to open up to us so that we can understand what's really going on with them.

Robin: 36:34

Yeah, you did a phenomenal job of explaining it's not about being curious about what it is. You want to know it's being curious about things that they want in their lives to solve their problems. And it's because it makes it all about them and it's not all about me.

Carole: 36:49

Right. And the, you know, the thing with this t shirt was I was having coaching clients at the end of every month. You know, when you're in sales, you have a quota, you have an end of month that you need to meet. And if you haven't met that the week before, suddenly you're in panic mode, right? And so they're pitching really hard and, you know, telling people why they should buy because they were desperate to get the deal in. And what that happens is we, we tend to talk all about ourselves in those moments because emotionally we're so invested in it. And so I created this t shirt for them so that at the end of the month, they could be reminded that it's not about me and my product and my service. It still needs to be all about the buyer. And i'm not going to be able to force them into a situation or convince them or manipulate them or persuade them It has to be something that we've collaborated on together And ironically that was the thing that actually accelerated the sales process versus them trying to push their agenda

Robin: 37:39

Absolutely love it. Carol, what's one or two things I should have asked you that I didn't ask you that I, you want to make sure that you shared before we get going? I

Carole: 37:48

would say there's a lot of sales books out there. And. One of the things that I reasons that I wrote this book the way that I wrote it is because a lot of the sales books out there, they will tell you what you should do based on their limited experience. And not that that's necessarily bad or wrong, but we need to base our function in sales and even in human communication based on research and science, not just on this is how we did it before. Because things change so quickly if we don't understand the root causes of why things are the way they are. One, we're not going to be able to anticipate how they might change, but two, we're always going to be struggling to figure out what to do next. And if we understand the root causes of things of why people do the things that they do and why people don't do the things that they should do, then we can have a clearer understanding. I think of how to engage with people in more meaningful ways, rather than just, you know, let's throw the spaghetti at the wall and see what's going to stick kind of thing. We're actually by doing that training people to ignore us because we're becoming irrelevant. And so I think it's very important when you start looking for sales advice or communication advice is to look to those who have really dug into, like you have with yours, what's the research say behind why this is happening and understanding those root causes of it, because that's when you start to see true change happen.

Robin: 39:05

I love that you put in the time, you've done the research, you put in the reps in life, and you simplified it down to really some pretty simple core concepts about how to make it about everyone else. It's not some trickster, huckster, as I call it, carnival tricks about how to do this. It's really pretty simple. Just put the focus there and collaborate together. Yeah, 100%. Kara, where can people go to find out more about you and pick up your amazing book?

Carole: 39:29

They can go to my website, which is carolmahoney. com. And of course I am on LinkedIn. That's probably the number one social channel that I'm on. So if you're there, find me connect let me know that you heard me here on Robin's podcast. And I know you're a human and I'm happy to answer any questions people have.

Robin: 39:46

She is awesome to interact with. I follow, I've been following Carol for years. Absolutely love her content, Carol. Thank you so much for doing what you do and putting an amazing content out for the rest of the world to benefit from. Thank you

Carole: 39:58

so much for having me and the inspirations that you've given me as well.

Robin: 40:02

Ah, you're too kind as always. Thank you for tuning into another episode of Forged by Trust. Remember if you want to Forged trust, it's not how you make people feel about you. That matters. It's how you make them feel about themselves. If you're interested in more information about how it can help you forge your own trust, building communication, interpersonal strategies. As a coach, you're a trusted advisor for your organization or yourself. Please visit my website at www dot people. formula.com. See you next time on Forged by Trust.