AA 48 | Overcoming The Sales Stigma

 

It’s undeniable that there is a stigma a lot of people have against salespeople. It’s not necessarily that they dislike salespeople; it’s that most of their sales experience didn’t go well. In this episode, Mike Fisher, the Chief Sales Officer at Sales Bullpen, joins Michelle Weinstein to talk about sales and address some of the problems that exist in sales training programs. Overcome this stigma and start filling your client’s needs. Tune in and learn how you can make that mental shift and increase your firm’s revenue and profitability.

Listen to the podcast here:

The Problems With Accountant Training Programs: Overcoming The Sales Stigma With Mike Fisher

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Our special guest has a 30-plus year career in sales since being a college student. He was selling educational books door-to-door in the summers to pay for his school. He has consistently been a top salesperson amongst several thousands of students. Since that time, he has spent his entire career in direct sales, sales management, and doing sales training and consulting. I was super excited to meet him. He is the master facilitator. He’s energetic and engaging. He has lots of fun personalities and worked with tons of companies. He’s mostly in the medical device space and financial space. He’s worked with Abbott Labs, Enterprise Holdings, Delta Faucet, First Bank of NC, Comcast Spotlight, Quest Diagnostics and many others. He lives in Spring Hill, Tennessee. He’s got a cool accent. He’s got a wife and two kids. He went to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He enjoys in his free time golfing, motocross, racing with his son and running.

Before we welcome our special guest, Mike, to the show, if you aren’t where you want to be with your accounting practice, I get it. Many of the accounting clients that I work with come to me feeling frustrated or stuck. What I’ve found is that they’re not charging enough for their services and they don’t have a solid system in place to enroll high paying clients. That’s why I created my Selling Without Ever Selling system. You can have this information in your hands to give you the confidence to position yourself as the expert, get consistently high-quality types of clients, and have people tell you they want to work with you and you can get paid exactly what you wanted to charge.

I’m excited about this and I’m offering a free coaching session for those of you that have your own accounting practices or firms and you’ve been in business at least two years. If you want to build your firm, get that confidence, sell high-level services with ease, spend more time with your family and have that abundant life, freedom, and flexibility you’ve always wanted, head on over to the AbundantCall.com and book the first slot you see. We do have a class coming up so I’d love to share that with you if it’s a good fit. Remember you must have an accounting firm and been in business for two years. Let’s welcome Mike to the show.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Thank you so much for taking out the time to be with us here on the show. I’m happy to have you here because I love talking about sales and for most of you reading, I know it’s not the most favorite part and you’re probably like, “What is Michelle going to talk about? Who is this Mike guy? What am I going to have to do to convince somebody? I don’t want to be pushy, sleazy, or annoying to people.” I’m sure you experience those as you’re doing your training around the country. Before we dive in, can you share with everyone reading your background and what it is that you do on a daily basis?

I work with a friend of mine who started a company called Sales Bullpen. What we do is we help companies with sales training, leadership training, development and customer service training. I spent about seventeen years with a company called Integrity Solutions. I was thinking about this prior to that. I started my sales career many years ago, working for a company called Southwestern. We’re college students. We go out and sell books door-to-door, 80 hours a week, straight commission. It’s been a lot of sales for a long time.

AA 48 | Overcoming The Sales Stigma

Overcoming The Sales Stigma: Listen 80% of the time and talk 20% of the time.

 

I’m happy to have you here. We are going to have a conversation about sales. For those of you that are looking to maybe get some training in this area, we’re going to address some of the problems that exist in sales training programs out there. Mike has been training in other industries. We got connected by one of my best friends and I said, “We’re in alignment.” I think you can bring a different perspective to the accountants out there who are working with clients all over the country and world on the international side. What are your views of selling that you see could open and shine some light onto a CPA who started their own accounting firm and never realized you were at Southwestern selling college books that they had to sell every day?

When I talk about “we” here, I put on my accountant hat. I worked at Moss Adams for three years. I saw a ton of client meetings. I always pushed my way with the partners to go to the client meetings. That’s where it all began. A lot of people want to quit corporate maybe or we want to go feed-in on our own business. The number one thing on a P&L is revenue or sales. It’s the lifeline of any business. What is your view on selling?

From a sales perspective, a lot of the things that you said are spot on from a standpoint of there’s a bit of a stigma against salespeople. I don’t think necessarily that people dislike salespeople. Maybe they look at a sales experience that they’ve had that didn’t go well when you think about salespeople as negative. One of the first things we’ve got to think about is what is my view of selling? Do I see selling as uncovering needs, filling needs, adding value to these people and solving their problems? Do I see it as an interruption in their day and bothering people or I’m bugging them? One of the first things we have to think about is how do we define sales? Do I see it as that helping or is it bothering? If it’s bothering, the mental side of selling is, “I’m going to do anything I can do to not have to go out and do that.” I call it creative avoidance. Anything that I can creatively do rather than sell, then those are the things that I want to do.

The biggest thing for me is when I start working with non-selling professionals that are in a sales role, I want to first define that role, “If you think of service, you’re uncovering needs, filling needs and adding value in a service industry.” That’s what we do. If you think about what selling is, it’s uncovering needs, filling needs, and adding value. That’s what sales is. Once you make that shift and it’s not such a dirty word, then you can make your way. I want you to picture a table. You’re not across the table anymore. I’m coming to your side of the table to help you solve your problems. When you start looking at it from that perspective, now it’s not such an evil thing.

Part of when I coach and teach the accountants that I’ve worked with, I talk about that. It’s like you’re at that picnic table when you’re a kid at the park with your friends. In a business negotiation or client onboarding or whatever, we think that we’re sitting across from the table from one another, but it’s about sitting on the same side of the table. I say the same thing. Another visual for those of you that are visual like me is to imagine yourself in their shoes. You’ve had that experience that went bad and now that’s what you think about any experience where you’re about to pay somebody for a service. That’s your negative state. Unfortunately, every single human being has been there. We’ve all had that experience and how can you create a different experience?

I love how you shared the three things that you define as selling. It’s uncovering the needs, filling the needs, and then adding value to them. I love that because you work with other professionals that are not salespeople. It’s the best part because just like an accountant or physical therapist, we’re here to help people. We’re here to provide value and to change someone’s life for the better. You don’t have to sell.

For those that need a little bit more help than being in someone’s shoes or sitting next to each other at a picnic table, what are some other tools to make that mental shift so it doesn’t seem scary or even a stigma for them? Are there any things that you teach in your sales training around the country that someone like my friend who introduced us as someone who hates selling and thinks that it’s horrific. She’s come a long way. She did a 180 as a physical therapist and for all of the accountants reading, if you are in corporate and you’re responsible for bringing in revenue, or you are ready to start your own firm because you want that freedom of time and flexibility, and do things on your own term instead of working twelve-hour days for someone else, this is the crucial piece of it. What do you teach that has worked?

I’m going to give you a couple of things. First off, preparation and pre-call planning is key. As an accountant, you’d never go into a meeting unprepared and not having everything ready for a client that’s coming in to talk through all the numbers and walk through those. When you go into a sales call, it’s thinking about preparation from a standpoint of, “What are some challenges that you’re currently having? What are some things you’d like to see happening that aren’t happening now?”

Mistakes aren't there to put you back; mistakes are there to teach you something if you're willing to learn it. Click To Tweet

Here’s a good question, “When you took the meeting today for us to get together, what were you hoping to learn more about so I can make sure I cover that information?” They’ll tell you, “Here are some challenges that I’m having with my current accountant or my current firm. I wonder what’s going on.” They’ll start to share those things. Based on those, I want to start follow-up questions. “Tell me more about that. How long have you had that issue? I’m assuming you’ve tried other things. What did that look like?”

It’s thinking in terms of preparation of what are some questions I’m going to ask. While you’re preparing also, stop and think for a second, “What’s one thing that this customer could ask me that I may not feel comfortable answering? I’m not feeling good about that. I’m going to make sure I go because today is the day that they might ask me. I’m going to make sure I prepare in a way so that if that question comes up, I’m prepared to answer it.”

First, I’ve done some preparation. The second thing is we’ve got to think about from a line of questions that I want to ask. I need to be listening 80% of the time and talking 20% of the time. I need to be thinking about things that are going to get them sharing with me. A simple process to go through is what I call the gap model, but it’s current situation questions. Where are you now? What are you currently doing for this? What are you currently using for this type of whatever your business or whatnot? In that desired situation, what would I like to see happening that is not happening now? In other words, what does that look like?

If you can help them to go from here’s where they are now, to here’s what they’d like to see happening, now they’re sharing with me where they’d like to be. There are two pieces of that. Those are logical questions. Accountants are good about the logical questions. Where the trap comes is if you’re in any type of a technical sale. I would say accounting is in that area, but any type of technical sale, that’s when we love to jump in and share with you, “Let me show you how smart I am. Let me show and tell you all these things about us and what makes us different.” It’s not time to do that yet.

Once we get to that point where we’re getting this logic and we uncover the needs, we’ve got to move to some emotion. When I say emotion, I don’t mean emotion like tearing up emotions. What I mean by that is, why would they want to do business with me over who they’re currently using? If you can think in terms of, “Here’s where they are. Here’s where they like to be.” If you could get where you’d like to be, how does that impact your business? “That financially helps us. It saves us time,” whatever it is. That’s their emotional push. “I get more time to spend with my kids if I’m not doing this all the time.”

That’s their draw. Understanding that that’s an emotional reason. If I can help save that time and show them those things, they’ll want to do business with me or maybe it’s a concern. “What are you currently doing?” “That’s a real headache for us. That’s been a real problem.” “That sounds like those concerns you. Tell me more about that.” Now we’re getting into emotions of pain, issues and challenges. If you could solve those problems then, what does that look like?

Now we’ve gotten to what the real deal is and the transition is not into, “If I could solve this problem, would you do business with me?” It’s going into, “Let me share with you some solution ideas that a lot of my clients that I currently work with who had your same problems are now able to alleviate and being able to save them time, save them money, allow them to spend more time with their family, etc.” I can start to share what differentiates me from other accountants or other businesses.

You like to start with two logical type questions with some follow-up in the preparation phase and also two emotional type questions to find out what’s important to them. You say everything I say, this is good. Everyone reading is going to be like, “Michelle is right in everything she’s taught us so far.”

AA 48 | Overcoming The Sales Stigma

Overcoming The Sales Stigma: Closing has nothing to do with closing sales and a whole lot to do with the quality of the questions you ask on the front end.

 

Let me give you a real-life example.

Let’s hear the story and everyone reading, grab your yellow notepad and take some notes because these conversations are what will have people work with you over anybody else they’re talking to.

I promise this will hit home when I finish the story. When we built this house that I’m in now, I went down to the local Lowe’s to buy grass seed. I walked in and the guy says, “Can I help you?” I said, “I need some grass seed.” He started asking me those questions. He said, “Tell me about your lawn.” I said, “I don’t have one.” He said, “Is it a new construction?” I said, “It’s a new construction.” He said, “Is it full sunlight or shaded?” I said, “It’s going to be full sunlight near trees.” He said, “I’m assuming you have a sprinkler system.” I said, “No, I don’t but I promise I’ll water it.”

He said, “Let me ask you this. Are you meticulous about your lawn?” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “No weeds, and when you finish mowing it, you like to look over it and you’re all proud of what you did.” I said, “That’s me.” He said, “Based on what you told me, I’d go with this one right here.” I said, “That sounds like a good plant, but hang on. That bag is $106 and the one over here with the same size bag is $67. Why am I going with a more expensive bag?”

He said, “The more expensive one is made for the Southeast. It has a deeper root. If you miss watering it, which you will because you don’t have a sprinkler system, it’s not going to die off. The cheaper one is a construction-grade seed. It will probably die off if you miss watering. It has a lot of inert ingredients like weed seed and clover stuff in it. The other one has about 0.14% weed seed. You won’t have any of those issues.” The question is had he walked me back and said, “Grass seed is right here. Let me know if you need anything,” what would I have done?

You probably would have gone cheap. Have you read the book Influence? What he did is he showed you the more expensive option first which is important. If you’re offering different services, you always want to start with the highest one.

I would have gone cheaper, but why? I wouldn’t have seen the value in the more expensive seed. Because he explained the values that differentiated the higher price versus lower price, I was willing to spend more money. The sale was not in him pushing me or closing me. The sale was based on how he asked questions. One of the big stigmas that maybe we have from a sales perspective is that we think about hard closing. I see these people at the grocery store and work with, “Why I close sale?” The reality is closing has nothing to do with closing sales and a whole lot to do with the quality of the questions you ask on the front end. If you’ll do those to solve your problems, you don’t sell the product anymore. You start helping people solve problems. That’s the view of selling shift.

He helped you solve the problem and he could even have been taken it one step further. I want to share it because all accountants, you guys can use this in your conversations with clients. If Mike bought the cheaper seeds and they would die off sooner if he missed watering and it had clover and weeds and had other issues, then he would have probably spent more money. He would be coming back more often because the grass would continue to die.

Showing up is half the battle. Click To Tweet

Sharing the opportunity cost is something I would add-in for all of your services via tax resolution, monthly bookkeeping high level, there’s a cost for messed up books. There’s a cost for not paying your taxes. There’s a cost for overpaying the government for those people who are not doing any tax planning on the preventative side of their work. There is a cost for any service that you sell now. If you’ve got one that you want to run by me, send an email to Hello@ThePitchQueen.com and I will tell you what the opportunity cost is. I have not met one account that doesn’t have an opportunity cost.

Mike, I know nothing about grass. I live in San Diego and have a condo, and I’ve got Palm trees. If you would’ve walked down the aisle and chose the cheaper because you were going to shop based on price. After it would die off, you’d have clover and weed issues. How many more times would you have gone to the depot to get more bags? The opportunity cost is I heard you’re meticulous about your lawn. That wouldn’t deliver the result that you’re looking forward to having a meticulous lawn. It would be brown every single few months because you would miss it watering organically if you were traveling. What you do for a living is you travel around the country doing sales training. I’m curious, how many extra bags do you think you would have purchased if you went with the cheaper option?

That’s a great observation because what would have happened is, I would have been disappointed that someone let me buy the seed and the fact is that it didn’t have the stuff that I wanted in it and it wasn’t the quality that I wanted. Therefore, I would have probably gone back to get 3 or 4 more bags at least to cover those spots. You hit an important point being that when we look at price versus cost. The price was more expensive, but the cost was much less expensive. It allowed me to do it correctly the first time. Price objections, when you can help break that down just like you did well in that example, and understand the difference in price versus cost, I don’t always have to be the least expensive price-wise, but I can save you a lot of money cost-wise if you do it right the first time.

I love the book Influence. Did you read that, Mike?

I have not read it.

It’s an amazing book. I haven’t read it either but I teach it all and I had no idea, but they’ve got this story about turquoise. I’m going to leave it at that so that you’re all curious that you go and read it or audio listen to it or something. It talks about the price versus cost and the perceived value. You would’ve had to buy 3 to 4 more bags of the cheaper stuff. Your lawn would have been brown and you would not be happy because you’ve been meticulous all the time. You also have to think about all the trips to the depot, lugging those bags and the lines. It sounds like a headache.

What’s interesting too is that guy that sold me the grass seed, his name is Allen. I go back to him every time I have a problem for years now. It’s not just with grass but with anything because Allen is a problem solver. I don’t see Allen as a salesperson. I see him as a problem solver there. He has knowledge about a lot of things. You think about that with your customers too. When they see you as a problem solver and you are solution-oriented, your confidence when you’re able to solve a problem for a client, you feel good about it. It also deepens the relationship. Every time you have a problem, we tend to shake our head and go, “Oh no, it’s another problem.” People who have a high level of emotional intelligence recognize, “If I solve this problem, it deepens this relationship and that customer becomes stickier that they go and tell other people about what service I provide,” as I’ve told you about him.

The customer becomes stickier but it’s being able to see a problem and then turn it into an opportunity. We have to have our head up and not be stressed out, and working 12 to 18 hours a day in order to observe these problems. When we can offer price versus the cost to clients, you increase your revenue and profitability. I know Mike that I have got to ask, but there are problems out there with sales training programs. For accountants reading who might want to explore and consider their options with getting trained in this area, what are some problems that you’ve seen with sales training programs that exist specifically for accountants?

AA 48 | Overcoming The Sales Stigma

Overcoming The Sales Stigma: People who have a high level of emotional health recognize that solving problems deepens the relationship.

 

Any sales training, it doesn’t matter which area you’re going to be in and I don’t care who you go with, go with a program that has a follow-up process to it. One of the big mistakes anybody makes is they bring in and they have an event, not a process. If it’s a sales training type of event where you spend a day or a half-day, everybody’s done that. You get up some folder or a book or something they give you and go, “This is good.” What happens is you go back to your desk and you go, “I’m going to use this. It was good, but I’m going to use it after I answer these emails. I have 40 of them because I was out for the day.”

I’m going to sit down and answer emails and I’m going to put that thing on the right side of my desk for a while. I’m going to put it in the credenza because now I’ve got many things that I’ve got to do like answer calls, and it goes away. I think we meant to use it, but life gets in the way. One of the things I’ll say is whatever process you go with, make sure it has the event because you need some training. I’m a fan of online but not for the initial seminar process piece. You need people talking to people and sharing real-life accounting ideas that are like, “Here are the challenges we run into, so you can deal with the real stuff.”

After that, there’s ongoing where you don’t just intellectually talk about selling in the classroom. You experientially develop the skill. What I mean by that is we’re going to take 2 or 3 bites-size chunks. I’m going to go out. I’m going to practice those and we’re going to come back and share how it works. We start to build some confidence because someone in the room says, “I had a person that was in this situation. I asked these questions and they told me those things and it worked out well.” Somebody says, “I have the same thing. What question did you ask?” You then start to learn and the serendipity of those things is that you build confidence and develop that on your follow-up process. I’m going to give you a shameless plug, but I believe your process has a follow-up process to it.

I’ve got follow-up. We have live talking people-to-people. My classes are not recorded online. It is live. We’ve got people in New York, LA and Texas. It is done on Zoom, but I’m all about the live interaction, live talking and learning from each other, and you have to develop the skill. This is great. This confirms everything for me. Having that real-life experience and being able to practice you say 2 to 3 bites, I tell them to try 100% and fail. Maybe it’s from personal experience. I’ve failed miserably multiple times. Once you do it once and fail miserably, you’re never going to do it again.

It could be anything from talking less and listening more. You focus on that plus the other main points, on one meeting and then the next meeting, you change it. You’re not going to ever talk 80% of the time again. You’re going to see a different result because of that confidence boost. You got a new client, a new customer, whatever it is that you’ve got. It increases that confidence a little bit every time. It’s like a treat with the dog. Do a spin and we’ll give you a treat. We have to train ourselves a new skillset. What other problems have you seen?

We do learn from it and move on if we allow ourselves to do it and move on. It takes a certain level of emotional intelligence because most of us do not like being that uncomfortable. You’ve got to get in the habit of being comfortable getting uncomfortable. That means now, I’m going to ask some questions I’m afraid to ask. Now, I’m going to call someone I’m afraid to call on. I’m going to do some things I’m afraid to do, and then have the emotional intelligence to step back and go, “Let’s see how that went.”

If it went well, then I can say, “That went great. What caused it to go so well so I can duplicate it?” If it was a crash and burn, which we all do, if it went miserably, then I step out and go, “What did that feel like? Where did I lose that particular person? Didn’t I listen enough? Did I talk too much? What was it that I did?” I can step back and learn from it and go, “Next time, I won’t do this. I’m going to change that up.”

You’ve got to go into it looking at those as not failures. Mistakes aren’t there to put you back. Mistakes are there to teach you something if you’re willing to learn it. You have to step back and go, “What am I going to learn from that? Let me try it again.” Soon, you start to get whatever your weakness was becomes your strength. That’s being tenacious. If you’re going to run a business and I don’t care what business it is as an entrepreneur, that part, you have to go, “I’m going at this with a good attitude. If I didn’t get everything I wanted out of it, tomorrow’s a new day.” You’re going to start over and I’m going to go do it again.

Good things happen if you talk to people. Click To Tweet

Showing up is half the battle. You hit on a few points there. It’s easier said than done. Base your success every day at the end of the day. It’s not whether or not I made a sale, but did I do the activities? I can control the activities but I can’t control who buys. Control the controllable, which are, I called on the people I tried to call on. I went and followed up like I was supposed to do. I did all the things. If I’m honestly doing those things, then things will start to happen.

It’s like going to the gym. If you’re going to the gym every day and you keep going to the gym every day, sooner or later, you’re going to see results. If you’re going and you’re not doing the results-producing activities, you’re just going through the motions type activities at the gym, then you can blame it on the machine or blame it on whatever else is not working. At the end of the day, it’s all about, did I do results-producing activities? Things will start to happen. Good things happen if you talk to people and that’s true.

If you talk to enough people, you’re going to probably want to help enough people. You get to improve on the things that will ultimately get the sale, but we can’t compare. Also, compare yourself to the day prior. You can’t compare yourself to somebody else. You can only compare yourself to the progress that you make as long as it’s in the forward-moving direction from the day prior.

There’s no win in comparison. It’s interesting how you can do nine things correctly and one wrong, and you tend to focus on the one thing you did wrong. You’re your biggest fan. You have to step out of your own way a little bit sometimes and go, “I goofed up on the one but I did nine things right. How could I change that?” You don’t find yourself focusing on only the negatives and that’s human nature.

I have that problem, but I work on it every day. All we can do is get better every single day and improve slightly. Are there any other problems that you’ve seen with training programs out there that someone reading who is considering enrolling in a sales training program for themselves, for getting better in their firm or they’re going to go from wantrepreneur to entrepreneur and go two feet in and start their own firm. They’re like, “I better do it differently so I’m going to enroll in a sales training program.” What’s something else out that you’ve seen that maybe we haven’t touched on yet that you think is important that we share?

We’re specifically in the accounting space is what we’re focused on here. I think you need to find someone that has walked in your shoes before. In other words, they’re in the industry that you’re in, or at least they know enough about the industry and you trust them that they can give real-life examples. If you’re going through training and you’re talking about things that aren’t applicable for what you’re doing every day, the skepticism starts to creep in. As specific as you can be. We do a lot in the medical device space, or we do a lot with different industries, banking, and different things that we do.

I make sure I go in and understand that industry before I work with them. You then start to be a little bit more of an industry expert and I would consider myself a little bit of an industry expert in these things that I work with only because I spent lots of time learning that business from people that are in it. I want them to have a little background so they can speak to specifics in your industry that they’re going through and it’s not a widget that they use as examples. Those are a couple of different things that I would look for.

Those are the problems to look out for in your sales training programs. What is your take on investing in a sales training program be it everyone that you’ve seen in banking, medical device, and physical therapist to an accountant? What’s your take on making that commitment and an investment? Nothing’s free and we’re all expensive. I’m curious to know what your take is on that.

AA 48 | Overcoming The Sales Stigma

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

I’ll use an accounting example, but there’s the old story of the guy who says to his manager, “We’re going to invest in this training but it’s expensive.” The guy says, “What if we invest in this and they quit?” He says, “What if we don’t invest in them and they stay?” We need to invest in our people and make sure that in this competitive environment from a hiring perspective, you need to do everything you can. If you’re asking people to hit certain results, you’ve got to give them the tools to be able to do those things.

I think for you and if you’re running your own business or you’re stepping out to do that, you’ve got to continue to invest in yourself. I know you do as well. I try to read good books and listen to things and there are many things that aren’t necessarily for me and not even new. I go back to How to Win Friends & Influence People or How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger. These are old books by Dale Carnegie, Frank Bettger, and Stephen Covey and they’re principle-based.

If you’re consistently putting those things in your mind, it helps you to stay away from the negatives and the scary Mondays and all those things. You have to be consistent because we all wake up at 4:00 in the morning and freaked out about what’s our next day going to look like. We all do that. You have to step back and go, “What are the things that I have learned at least to myself to say at the end of the day, ‘I’m done for the day. I’m finished so what’s tomorrow look like? Let me write it out?’”

If I can write out 3, 4, or 5 things that I have to do tomorrow before I leave today, something starts to happen subliminally in my mind that makes it start to work on it while I’m sleeping. I tend to sleep better because I don’t have this anxious stuff. What am I going to do tomorrow? One practice I’ve gotten into is going, “Every day, I’m going to write down some things that I need to do tomorrow and get that stuff already planned out so that tomorrow I’ll wake up with a plan.”

Reread your old books over and over again. That’s a key thing that you said is repetition, but you have a new one to go listen to and everybody else. It is called Influence, Robert Cialdini wrote it. Another one of my favorites, if you want the notes after you commit that you’re going to read it, I will email them to you, email me at Hello@ThePitchQueen.com, is Chris Voss Never Split the Difference, hostage negotiations. I always want to be in the FBI. I could listen to that over and over again. Thank you so much, Mike, for being here with us on the show. It was an honor to have you.

Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.

What an amazing episode with Mike Fisher. Even after we ended it, he told me about another book that I think some of you might like. It’s called The Inner Game of Selling and all is integrity-based selling, which is the way I teach and do. If you’re an Audible listener, feel free to get that. There’s also a different book that they wrote called Integrity Selling with similar principles that you can get. There are lots of book recommendations and lots of things to look out for in the problems that exist with sales training programs. I’m happy to share all of my sales training. I would call myself an industry expert for accountants. I can sell high-level tax plans. I’ve done $64,000 engagements all the way down to $20. I appreciate everything Mike shared. Thank you all so much for joining me and I hope to talk to a few of you soon.

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About Mike Fisher

AA 48 | Overcoming The Sales StigmaMike Fisher began his 30+ year career in sales as a college student, selling educational books door-to-door in the summers to pay for school. He was consistently a top salesperson among several thousand students. Since that time, he has spent his entire career in direct sales, sales management and most recently, sales training and consulting.

Mike is a Master Facilitator. His energetic and engaging facilitation style is filled with practical insights and ideas drawn from personal and professional experiences “in the trenches.” Mike joined Integrity Solutions in 2003 and has conducted sales and coaching training in five continents worldwide for a diverse group of clients, including Abbott Laboratories, Sanofi-Aventis, Johnson & Johnson, Nevro, Arthex, Coca-Cola Corporation, Enterprise Holdings, Delta Faucet, First Bank of NC, Comcast Spotlight, Quest Diagnostic and others.

Mike resides in Spring Hill, TN with his wife, while their two children attend the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. He enjoys golfing, motocross racing with his son and running.

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