Question-Based Selling: Transforming Conversations into Conversions with Christian Jack

Freddy D: 00:02:00

Hey, Freddie D. Here in this episode, we're joined by Christian Jack, a master of influence, persuasion and high performance sales and the founder of the sales dojo.

As a sought after sales coach and growth consultant, Christian helps scale businesses to eight figures and beyond through fractional CRO services, one on one coaching and custom sales training.

With the deep focus in communication, body language and leadership, he's empowered hundreds of professionals to elevate their performance, achieve lasting success both in business and in life.

Freddy: 00:02:38

Welcome, Christian, to the Business Superfans podcast.

Christian Jack: 00:02:42

Thanks so much, Frederick. Excited to be here.

Freddy: 00:02:44

Yeah, we're super excited to have you here. So tell us a little bit about the backstory of how the sales dojo came about.

Christian Jack: 00:02:52

The good old villain backstory. I love them.

The sales dojo came about from me getting into business and getting into sales, going into different businesses and seeing that one of the biggest, easiest in terms of revenue and growth was from a lack of sales skills and training for their salespeople. After having invested somewhere north of half a million dollars into my own training, I really enjoy sales.

I haven't been in it for a super long time, but I plan to be. I just found out how much more successful people could be if they learned how to do it correctly. So I decided to go ahead and start the sales dojo.

Helping salespeople, organizations and one thing led to another.

Freddy: 00:03:43

Oh, interesting story. Sales is a fine art and skill set, so you've got to really understand it. People buy emotionally, but they justify it logically.

So it's how do you connect with them emotionally is really one of the arts in sales. And the other aspect is to use your ears more than you use your mouth.

Christian Jack: 00:04:09

Very true. God gave you two of them.

Freddy: 00:04:12

Let's talk about your approach and some of the things that you've learned.

Christian Jack: 00:04:18

Man, there's a lot to go through there.

I'd say one of the bigger overarching principles that I live by is definitely leaning more towards the question based selling side of things in sales.

A lot of people, when they come into it, or business owners who are selling their services, come in with the wrong expectations, think that sales is this thing where you've naturally got the gift of the gab or you are able to talk somebody's ear off until they buy. And it's super normal. Right? Society portrays that in movies, social media, and pretty much everywhere that that's what sales is.

But I think anybody listening will realize very quickly that that's not very helpful in sales.

Instead of talking at prospective customers, I would rather ask questions that allow this person to realize things for themselves that will really lead into why. Question based selling works. One of the biggest principles in the dojo is what you say is gospel, and what I say is garbage.

I don't want to be saying hardly anything in a sales conversation. I'll be asking questions that get you to say what you believe, think, feel about things.

Because at the end of the day, you as a prospect, probably don't really care much about me as a salesperson. If you can swallow your ego. The goal is to get this person to make whatever decision is best for them and their future.

If that's to move forward with us, great. If it's not great. But ultimately, to make that decision, they have to come to their own conclusions. They have to come up with their own ideas.

They have to talk about their feelings. So whatever they say is gospel. In order to get them to say their gospel, I have to ask them questions.

Freddy: 00:06:13

Yep. I started out as an engineer and was in the software industry when it first began.

ording, I started in November: 1980

I had the manual, and I'm talking about training. It's not sales, but it is sales. Because in my world, and I'm sure in your world, the sale really happens after the sale.

Getting the deal is the easy part. The sale is everything that happens after the deal. And so I'm reading a manual.

I'm saying, okay, Christian, here's the commands you need to do in the computer. We're sitting next to one another. Obviously, that's not real good. When I was at a corporation, I was training a group.

The manager, he said it was the worst training he's ever seen. Gave me until tomorrow to get my act together, or he would call my boss and have me fired. I didn't sleep well that night.

But I created engagement training.

I stopped talking at people, which is what a lot of salespeople do, And I started talking with people so it'd be like, okay, Christian, what do you think of this type of thing? And, you know, this command string to generate a box or whatever. And it's. I think it's right. Mike, do you agree with Christian? Well, I think so.

Steve, do you agree with both of those guys? No, it's missing a syntax. Well, Steve, you're right. And that's how the training began.

And that carried me over into my sales world because I started asking questions and getting to Understand the challenges they were dealing with.

Christian Jack: 00:07:56

I'll bet you noticed a big uplift in the success of that program.

Freddy: 00:08:01

I was the most sought after training guy in the Midwest. I've trained Eaton Corporation, General Motors, Westinghouse. I mean the list is pretty long.

Ball Corporation, I was in the Midwest and then our company looked for salespeople internally and I raised my hand and I got picked. They invested a significant amount of dollars and I was flying to Boston from Chicago and I got six months worth of sales training. High end stuff.

Christian Jack: 00:08:31

Beautiful. It's phenomenal what happens when you start asking more questions.

Freddy D: 00:08:37

Yeah, it becomes a conversation and you're.

Freddy: 00:08:39

No longer selling, you're just talking, you're connecting. Exactly.

So let's go further into, you know, how do you work with people to really help transform them from throwing up, for lack of a better way of word, but an accurate way? Because as an engineer I was throwing up. And that's what changed me to go into sales.

Because I would see sales guys that didn't understand and we just talk about the features, the technology and all the cool stuff. Nothing about why it would help the business.

Christian Jack: 00:09:12

Yeah, usually the way that I start helping people is diagnosing where their broken belief set is. Everybody grows up with different childhoods, different situations, different experiences.

The first thing I always cover was figuring out what is inside their mind, inside of their mental models, inside their decision making processes that might be holding them back from accepting and looking at things properly.

As an example, if somebody comes into sales thinking that sales is all about pitching the features, pitching the benefits, I'll ask them questions about where think that comes from, who told that that's what sales was about.

And through, shockingly enough, asking questions, we start going down the path of helping them realize where those belief sets came from, where those decision making processes came from. We can ultimately help people see whether those are valid or not. And usually we come across the idea that it's not so valid.

Once we invalidate the root of all of this, there's essentially an empty flower bed. They get to choose new decision making patterns and new beliefs that can serve them. And so from there we can actually get to work.

I can prescribe them a certain part of the course modules, I can prescribe them to go to these specific coaching calls. I can prescribe for them to try this new thing out in the world. That's one of my personal favorite things to do.

I don't know about you, Frederick, but with sales it's so easy to practice things that you would do on A sales call outside of a sales call, and it solidifies the learning in your brain much more when you take that learning outside of its usual context, put it into another, and you gain the experience in that other context and then bring it back into sales. So maybe if you struggle with asking questions in sales, start seeing how you can ask those same questions outside of a sales call.

Start asking questions to, you know, I'm married. My wife knows all the questions that I know in sales because I've practiced them with her. You know, how was your day? Oh, it was great.

Oh, what was great about it? Blah, blah, blah. Like all of the little things.

So what are your thoughts on practicing things that you would usually use in a sales call, but learning how to use them outside and then bringing them back into sales for an increased level of retention or understanding?

Freddy: 00:11:48

It's very important. My now wife, we've been together for 12 years and just. We eloped a few months ago after 11 plus.

Christian Jack: 00:11:56

Congratulations.

Freddy: 00:11:57

Thanks. She's in the other room right now on sales. She sells hearing aids over the phone. She's one of the top 15 in the whole company.

The company's north of $100 million in sales. And she has conversations with people and she has a script that she's learned, but now it's personalized, so it made it her own.

So you were talking earlier about that and it's all about questions she's asking. What's the issue with the hearings? You have wax buildup, blah, blah, blah. And it's a conversation.

Some people buy and some don't because they can't afford it. They're usually older people on a fixed income. But she's one of her top salespeople, all because of the questions. That's really it.

Christian Jack: 00:12:44

Yeah, it's powerful.

Freddy: 00:12:47

When I was selling manufacturing software, one of my successes was I never got into the features and functions stuff. My style was very different back then. We didn't have all the technology that we have today. This was in the 90s.

I started actually in 86 was my first sales. I got the plaques on the wall for up sales guy. My approach was very different. I would send out letters to manufacturing people.

President, vice president of engineering and vice president of manufacturing, inviting them to an education seminar about how technology is changing the engineering and manufacturing world. That was my cold marketing. I would use the girls in the executive suites. I hired them to contact those guys and invite them for lunch and learn free.

We would demonstrate our software about how it's working and how it's changing the Technology and the approach, never really selling, just educating.

They would say, would you be willing to come into our office and take a look at our processes and share with us will this technology help us or not help us? That's inviting the fox in the hen house. Yeah, I got invited in. You invited me in. I didn't ask to come in.

And I closed more sales with that approach because once we got in there it was okay. What are the challenges? What are the financial problems? Scrapping metal.

That's a 20, 30,000 piece of metal that screwed up and you can't use it for that project. So now you gotta buy another piece of metal. How many of those a year you do? Oh, you scrap for six. Well, that just paid for the technology.

Christian Jack: 00:14:32

Yeah, it's powerful. But people wouldn't have realized that unless you had helped them realize that. Correct?

Freddy: 00:14:42

Correct. You don't sell, you get people to buy.

Christian Jack: 00:14:46

I think that's what creates superfans. Right.

Freddy: 00:14:49

What happened? Like this one mold shot. They started out 40 people and over five years that I worked with them, they went from 40 people to 140 people.

They bought both buildings on both sides of them, built breezeways between the two and then beyond. They were my superfan in the sense that they would have overflow work.

All of a sudden I get a phone call from some guy and it says, jack over in so and so says I need to get this technology because we're doing overflow work for him and we have data exchange issues. What's it cost me? How fast can you get it in here? That was a sale. Filling out the paperwork took me 30 minutes.

We drove there and brought our equipment. The guy goes, I don't need to see it again. Like I told you, just get it to me. So we filled out the paper, used her fax machine.

In fact, it's at the headquarters and got a sale. A hundred some thousand bucks.

Christian Jack: 00:15:50

Easy.

Freddy: 00:15:52

Sales is fun.

Christian Jack: 00:15:53

It really is. I don't think people realize how much fun it can be, especially when you're.

Freddy: 00:16:01

Empowering people and helping them. You're solving their problems or challenges and now you're a hero to them. So they're your super fan because you transformed their business.

Like a mentioned earlier, the sale begins after the sale. In my mind, the implementation of the service or the product needs to go smoothly.

If the implementation or delivery is a disaster, you've just killed all the goodwill you created in the beginning.

Christian Jack: 00:16:30

Yeah, very true. It's the idea that the selling never stops.

Freddy: 00:16:36

That is exactly correct. The selling never stops.

Christian Jack: 00:16:39

Everything in life is selling. From picking up the girl at the bar, from getting a promotion with your boss, from getting your kid to eat the broccoli. Right.

Everything is selling and it's always happening.

Freddy: 00:16:58

What movie are you going to watch?

Christian Jack: 00:16:59

Yeah, exactly.

Freddy: 00:17:01

Between you and your wife.

Christian Jack: 00:17:02

Go for dinner now. For my wife, I recently got this set of dice that have a different cuisine on each side and so now we just use that.

Freddy: 00:17:10

But I like that idea.

Christian Jack: 00:17:12

It's fun. I do have something that I think would be really interesting. I'm curious if you've ever heard of this guy before. His name is Chase Hughes.

Freddy: 00:17:22

I have no.

Christian Jack: 00:17:23

Chase Hughes is a world renowned behavior profiling and covert influence specialist. He works with a lot of three letter agencies and best in the world at what?

He does your podcast here and everybody listening knows it's about creating super fans. Right?

One idea that I had to bring here that I prepped beforehand is a way to create a super fan out of pretty much anybody in just a couple of seconds. And I wonder if you're open to chatting about it.

Freddy: 00:17:57

Absolutely.

Christian Jack: 00:17:57

See what you think. A concept that Chase talks about is the idea that every human being is wearing a mask.

The next law of that human behavior is that everybody acts like they're not wearing a mask. Right? Everybody wants to be seen a certain way in a social context.

Chase has distilled this into six different types of people and six different social needs. The first one is significance. Wanting to be seen as standing out from the crowd, leaving an impact on the world around you.

The next one is acceptance. It's the idea of being accepted into a group. This would be somebody who wants to be part of biker gang Example. Approval is next.

You get the approval of specific people in your life. Maybe you use self deprecation to get somebody else to approve of you. Maybe I would come on with my sales dojo coaching call. Be like you guys.

I don't think I'm actually that good at sales. A little bit of self deprecation in order for them to go, yeah, no, Christian, you're fantastic at sales. You teach us so much blah, blah, blah.

Intelligence is the next one. You just want to be seen as intelligent. Next is understanding. You want other people to understand how bad you have it.

This is somebody we often view as a bit more negative. Complaining. They want other people to see they've got it bad, basically. And then the last one is power or strength.

You want to be seen as powerful or strong in a social context with these six different social needs. The purpose is to Compliment somebody based on the needs they have.

There's this interesting mechanism in your brain that produces and receives neuropeptides. You're born with some receivers, some receptors, each of those different types of social needs.

But your brain will actually replace the ones that aren't getting used for ones that are getting used more. So maybe you're a kid and you're in sports, maybe a competitive solo sport.

You might get really well rewarded as a child for standing out above the crowd, for beating everybody else. So you might develop more of this social need for significance or power.

But then as you grow older, that affects the way that you operate in a social environment. As you up, you're nurtured a certain way and that affects you. Most people know that.

But once you know what need somebody has in a social environment, you can compliment that need and fire off a bunch of neuropeptides in their brain that will naturally make them feel more connected to you. That will naturally help them feel like, this person just gets me.

That will naturally help them open up and be maybe a little bit more vulnerable or be willing to share information that they wouldn't necessarily share. Chase uses this in interrogations. He uses this in his covert influence stuff everywhere.

And so from a superfans context, you can create a superfan in just a matter of seconds by complimenting their need. So this might sound something like, if I don't know which, which need should we do? Frederick, what do you think?

Significance, acceptance, Approval, Intelligence, understanding or power? Which one stands out to you the most?

Freddy: 00:21:20

Let's go with. A lot of people have challenges with approval they want to feel. If you think about it, a lot of people, especially low level employees.

One of my quotes in my book Creating Business Super Fans is people will crawl through broken glass for appreciation and recognition. So very true. Let's go with approval because that associates with what I just said.

Christian Jack: 00:21:51

It's true. So if you have the social need of approval, basically you want to be reassured and recognized by other people.

And you got to be a little bit careful there because significance could also be being recognized by other people as standing apart from the crowd. And some nuances here.

But then if you think about the opposite of what they need, what they're afraid of, sometimes that can help with coming up with a compliment. If you're needing approval, you might be most afraid of being dismissed, disapproved of, or feeling left out.

So when giving an approval mask type person a compliment, I might say something like, frederick, you do such a fantastic job with the way that you communicate and you don't rush through things. You focus on what matters. And ultimately I think that is just absolutely fantastic. An approval need is fairly easy to compliment, right?

Maybe we'll do a power mask. This one is always fun.

We've probably been in a sales conversation where somebody that's really dominant, really alpha, they just get to the end, right? Get to the price. I don't need to know. You don't need to ask me all these questions about where I'm at. I just need to know what you do.

I'll make the decision like that sort of person. It can help them to open up to immediately just compliment them and be like, you know, Frederick, that's powerful.

I love how you're just so straight to the point. I think a lot of other people in life just are weak and they don't understand what they want.

And I love that you have that strength to be able to go in and get what you want out of life. Love that. And then you might segue that into. In order for me to give you what you want.

Just help me understand a little bit more specifically, what is it that you want? The simple compliment can turn people into super fans of you personally so quickly. It's scientific, it's neurological, it's chemicals in your brain.

And funnily enough, it's pretty hard to get that part wrong in terms of it if you do things properly. It's a system, it's a process. It works.

Freddy: 00:24:10

Remind me of a short story. Back in my sales days in Chicago, I went to a railroad car manufacturer and they were looking for some technology for engineering and manufacturing.

The engineering manager and I got along, but we had to get it approved from the CEO. He's got signed off on his project. So we get a meeting for him.

Walk into the office and I notice it's a monster size office, glass wall, elo pad outside of the glass wall. So we're Talking about me, Mr. Power, okay. And he looks at us, he goes, you got five minutes. Looked up and said, I appreciate your time.

That's the first thing I started off with. He said, okay, go. So I happened to think and I looked at my watch and proceeded to give the presentation.

And I looked again, was virtually at the five minute mark. You know, the universe helps you out every now. And I stopped. This is my five minutes are up. And there was silence in the room.

Then he smiled because he didn't even get up, shake our hands, nothing. I mean, it's burned in my head because this guy was, you Know mega power.

Christian Jack: 00:25:22

Yeah.

Freddy: 00:25:23

You saw railroad cars. Big money stuff for sure. Smiles gets up and asks his engineering manager, are you happy with everything? The guy goes, yes.

You go, okay with the numbers and all that stuff. He goes, okay, hang on, picks up the phone, says, please prepare a purchase order for Mr. Dudek and click, that's it.

He walked around and shook his hand, said, thank you guys for your time. We were dismissed. It was a hundred some thousand sale one. I acknowledged him for allowing us the time and most important, I respected his time 100%.

Christian Jack: 00:25:57

At the end of the day, people are people. Sometimes we have these irrational things that we believe about the world.

If we sit down in a coaching session and you're happy to take my advice and view me as the authority and allow me to help you walk through it, I can. But then also sometimes in a sales context, you maybe don't have that authority. Maybe you aren't seen as higher in status than this other person.

And so just knowing how to play into the way that they view themselves and the way that they view the world, you won't figure it out unless you are inquisitive, unless you're curious. You ask questions whether it be internally in your head.

Like you walk in that office, you see the wall of windows, you see the helipad out there, probably ask yourself a question in the moment, you're like, huh, I wonder what that means. I wonder what this guy cares about that made him have this big office and not just normal sized one.

Why the office with the view of the helipad outside? Yeah, ego. So you ask yourself questions in order to then ask him questions. It's just everything, everything is questions. It's great.

Freddy: 00:27:12

So Christian share a story of one of the sales that had some challenges and how you overcame that and won the deal.

Christian Jack: 00:27:21

A sale with some challenges, man. One recent one comes to mind. I was on a zoom call with a younger girl and she wanting to get into college but needs help tutoring to get scores up.

We got to the end of the call and she doesn't control any of her finances, her father does.

And so we got to the end of the call and I had already known that was going to be the case, had the conversation, then started to inquire about, you know, what the conversation would be like with her dad, what was his viewpoint on her being able to go to this school? Was he supportive of that?

Eventually it came down to the point where I didn't really feel confidence in her ability to then explain all of this to her father. In a way that would actually lead to a good outcome for her and being able to go to her dream school.

And so essentially we needed to get the dad on the call and have this really interesting conversation with a protective dad who the daughter didn't feel like was super supportive of her going to the school, who thought that we were a scam, didn't believe in tutoring online, didn't believe in any of this stuff. And so essentially got on the call and it was this whole power play, right?

The dad who has all the control of the finances, who wants to protect his daughter, who knows what's best for her. So many different things at play there. We opened the call and it was all about getting him to let that guard down and be open to new ideas.

In order for somebody to be open, visualize them in a suit of armor. You have to help them take off one piece of armor at a time to get to the point where they are more vulnerable, open to things coming in.

That's essentially what we had to do. I did use a couple of needs, compliments. I knew that he wanted to be seen as significant in front of his daughter as well as powerful internally.

I could also tell that he wanted to be seen as part of a group. He had an alumni sweater for the college he went to. He had a Patek on his wrist.

So I knew he wanted to be seen as, you know, Patek watches as an example, as opposed to a Rolex. A Rolex is like new money. Patek is different. It's like older money.

Started kind of piecing all these things together, profiling him within the next seven or eight minutes. He was completely open, completely vulnerable. He didn't feel like he needed to be this strong, powerful figure in front of his daughter.

And ultimately we were able to help them make the decision to move forward. Daughter gets to go to her dream school, hopefully when she puts in the work and everybody wins.

Freddy: 00:30:19

You said a couple really important things there, and that's. You noticed a lot of little things. I always say the little things are the big things. The watch, the jersey.

All those things give you clues to incorporate into the conversation.

Christian Jack: 00:30:37

Very true.

Freddy: 00:30:40

So let's go into one more area that I want to cover, and that is how important is follow up in sales. Timing of follow up, because that's the other part of the question.

Christian Jack: 00:30:54

I get the sense that there's a story behind why you're asking.

Freddy: 00:30:59

No, most deals are done because of follow up. Thank you for the time to meet with me. If they're not buying Right then and there.

But it's a sales process where it may take several different visits. You're talking some high end type ticket stuff that's not going to be bought in one visit. It's going to take several visits.

You get a lead inquiry to your website. I look at it as you got a 15 minute window to respond to it and then how you respond becomes important too. Let's talk about that a little bit.

Christian Jack: 00:31:35

I think understanding the reason for the follow up is the most important thing.

Whenever I'm training people I want to not just follow up, the person won't necessarily today, but there's a reason behind when you plan your follow up strategy. It's probably going to be different for different contexts.

Whether you are a landscaper going around neighborhood selling railroad cars to an executive or selling tutoring to people trying to get into college. Number one, understanding what's going on inside of somebody's head will dictate how often and how intensely you need to follow up.

Once you figure that out, you can set the strategy and say okay, how often am I going to do this? What is going to be the game plan? But I say the one thing that I see people miss the most with follow up is providing more value.

Rather than being nagging little fly. A lot of people will follow up and just think, you know, hey, I'm just following up on this, did you get this? That sort of thing.

You might get one chance at that, but as soon as you do it once, you've probably ruined your chances for them to open any more of your emails or to actually take any sort of consideration to any more of your texts because there was no value there. I think the more creative you can be with your follow up strategies the better. Whether it be sending new content from social media.

Memes are fantastic. Sending gifts are a really big one when you get into higher level packages.

Personalized gifts based subtle cues from your conversation, what they're wearing, what hanging in their office can do really well.

I had a custom piece of art made for one guy that ultimately got me six figures in commissions because I sent him that as a follow up with a little note inside. The more creative and valuable you can make your follow ups, the more successful they'll be.

A lot of people just because they haven't put enough creativity or value in their follow ups think following up isn't worthwhile. But once you figure out how to do it the right way, it becomes quite valuable.

Freddy: 00:34:00

Yeah, follow up incorporates saying thank you, thank you for your time, thank you for the opportunity. Even if you don't get the deal, it's important to say thank you. I'm grateful for the opportunity to have been able to present.

Maybe today is not the right time, but let's stay in contact. Don't slam the door closed. Keep the door open. Because a lot of times it's all about timing.

This might not be the right time, but six months from now, nine months from now, it may be the right time. So if you handled it professionally with the thank you for their time respecting that person, they'll reach back out.

I've had things where a year later, all of a sudden they come up and say, hey, you know, we talked about this, I'm ready.

Christian Jack: 00:34:47

And maybe they even know somebody else that could benefit from what you're doing as well.

Freddy: 00:34:53

Yep. Frischan, as we come closer to the end here, how can people find you and connect with you?

Christian Jack: 00:35:01

The best way will probably be the link in the show notes. I've made a special page just for people who are listening here. There's some free stuff on there, some cheap stuff. The link will be down there.

The SalesDojo co superfans if you want to get in contact with me, you can find me pretty much anywhere. The fastest response will probably be on Facebook or the contact form on the salesdojo.co website.

Freddy: 00:35:28

Great conversation that we've had. We could talk for hours on sales. It's fun to actually speak to somebody that understands the sales process and everything else.

So thank you for sharing all the great nuggets that you shared for our listeners and we look forward to having you on the show down the road.

Christian Jack: 00:35:45

Appreciate you, Frederick. That was a great one.

Freddy D: 00:35:50

Hey, Superfan superstar Freddy D. Here before we wrap, here's your three A Playbook Attract, Advocate and Accelerate youe Business Power move for today.

Here's this episode's top insight Elite Sales don't start with your pitch. They start with your observation of the individual, their body language, environment and tone, followed by questions that unlock what's unspoken.

So here's your business growth action step. Practice this approach with three people this week so it becomes second nature.

Then, in live sales settings, ask real time questions that uncover what truly drives their decisions. If today's conversation sparked an idea for you, share it with a fellow business leader who would benefit and grab the full breakdown in the show.

Notes let's accelerate together and start creating business super fans who not only champion your brand, but accelerate your growth.