Sales Is NOT About Selling | Kris Cochrane

Kris and Sharni are an Aussie sales power couple who built their dream life by breaking all the rules. They’re here this week to unpack with me their unconventional (but highly effective) sales strategies.

As partners behind Beyond Closers and The Remote Sales Institute, they’ve built hundreds of connections and created a system for a sales experience that feels like anything BUT a sales call.

Other topics we include:

• Why hiring based on potential is a recipe for disaster (and what to look for instead)
• Why “freestyling within a framework” is the key to authentic sales conversations
• The ONE SECRET to their success as business owners and as a couple

Plus, they hit me with a mind-blowing question that every entrepreneur needs to ask themselves.

Click that play button and let’s get started.

Follow Kris and Sharni at:

https://beyondclosers.com/
https://remotesalesinstitute.com/
https://www.instagram.com/kriscochrane/
https://www.instagram.com/sharni_campbell/
https://www.facebook.com/kriscochrane.profile
https://www.facebook.com/sharni.campbell.9

Follow Ken Okazaki at:

https://www.instagram.com/kenokazaki/
https://www.youtube.com/c/KenOkazaki
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-content-capitalists-with-ken-okazaki/id1634328251
https://open.spotify.com/show/09IzKghscecbI7jPDVBJTw
Content Capitalists YouTube

Transcript

Ken Okazaki: Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Content Capitalist podcast. Today, we get a bonus. We get two people for the price of one. And what's really cool is they're a couple. They work together both in business and in life.

And I have the privilege of bringing them on the show and talking about a few things. But of course we're going to cover sales because apparently this guy's an absolute gun at it and we're going to talk about that in just a little bit, but more importantly. They're actually raising a family together, working together and doing business together, which is a lot of things to balance.

Ken Okazaki: And, hopefully we'll get some juicy tidbits about how all that going, how all that is working out. Chris and Sharni, welcome to the show. Thanks so much, Ken. Great 

Ken Okazaki: Awesome. So why don't we start by, what I do know is that when he came on the show, you were highly recommended as being one of the best sales trainers. industry and, and then you actually accepted that and you reached out to me and said, yep, that's me. What gave you the audacity to say, yep, that's me? And I don't know.

I always assume people from Australia had tall poppy syndrome and you seem to not have that problem. Chris, how do you, how do you claim that, that, uh, that title and what, what makes you feel that you are You are worthy of that.

Kris Cochrane: I love it. Uh, well, first off, Ken, you can't sell a secret and if no one knows, then no one's going to find out. And so I think in sales, in coaching, in the coaching space, if you can't promote, uh, you're not going to get very far. and what, what makes me good? What makes me feel I'm good? I think just the results, results I'm getting, results I've gotten for students.

I feel like sales was something I was really good at, but something I've just, I feel like I'm even better at coaching now after reps. And so for me, it's just reps in the saddle, working with coaches. I've been selling since, um, I started in personal training. I was a fitness coach. and this is just the best apprenticeship for a sales person.

Because you're coaching people, you're having to sell them on why they shouldn't eat crap, why they need to exercise, why they need to get up in the morning early to come to your session, and you're selling every day and you're talking a lot and influencing people's behavior. yeah, over that journey, I've trained and coached over, you know, five, more than 500 salespeople.

And on top of that, probably another 200 fitness professionals that I hired over my journey in business, over the years. And. Yeah, just because of competency. So don't have any shame in saying I'm not too bad.

Ken Okazaki: I love it. I was testing it to see if you're going to back down and say, Oh, you know, I just kind of, you know, this is just something I say. You stuck with it. I really like that. And how much of that salesmanship technique and experience helped you in getting someone like Sharni in your life? Was that, was that salesmanship or

Kris Cochrane: All right. Well,

Ken Okazaki: that go the other way around? 

Sharni: because, uh, Chris's follow up game was horrendous. But what you don't know, Ken, is that I have a background in sales as well. And so my follow up game is on point. I think if it were up to Chris, we would have never met. Um, It was, it was, it's more the

Ken Okazaki: okay, Chris, I'll take on as a, as a project. We can

Kris Cochrane: Pretty much.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty much. I was like, we, uh, I'm not getting much engagement here and I love turning a prospect around, so let's, let's just, let's just see. It's actually a masterclass on DM setting. So the, you know, in the coaching world, you know, there's the, the sell by chat and the DM setter. And so Shani was a master of DM setting.

So, uh, she actually is to be honest, like, this is not a joke when we launched our sales training company. A lot of our success in the initial phases with our, pilot program was because of Shani DM setting in my DMs and her DMs, like through our Facebook group. So she's a DM setter from way back and she definitely DM set me through our Instagram journey together.

There was a few fire emojis on stories, a few flame reacts, a few. you know, DMs here and there, a few little chats and that turned into a relationship and we now have a beautiful baby and we live in beautiful, beautiful Palm Beach on the Gold Coast together. 

Ken Okazaki: That could be a new, like, hook to get, you know, prospects in. Like, are you single and lonely? What you need is sales training, so that you can close the love of your life.

Kris Cochrane: And the parallels between dating and sales, uh, it's this, it's influence. It's the principles of influence. If you're desperate, needy, it's going to repel the prospect. It's going to repel your love, uh, partner or potential prospects. it's so similar.. 

Ken Okazaki: Love it. Now, I know we've got both of you on here, so what I want to do is just go one step before, and not go all the way back, because that's going to We're going to stay here for a long time if we do that. But what were you doing before the iteration of the business you're in? You alluded to the fact that you're running an agency, like right before that stage, before you got into entrepreneurism, I heard a bit about your personal trainer, Sharni.

Could you share a bit about how you evolved into this space?

Kris Cochrane: Yeah, so my background, um, I went to uni for like two weeks and realized I absolutely hated it, but I always loved, uh, human psychology and, um, I ended up working in real estate at a young age. And so I worked in real estate for about four or five years, uh, real estate sales, uh, which at the time I did pretty well at, but I was young.

I was super young, working on high end property. and also realized that I was studying organizational psychology at the time. Um, and realized I kind of had a love of building high performing teams. I was working in a team in real estate as well. So I got really fascinated in the dynamic between the different, people on the team.

And so I looked into what I could do that would leverage my sales skills, but also give me. and ability to apply the knowledge I had around building teams and team dynamics and performance. And so I found recruitment, I kind of stumbled onto recruitment and landed a job at a big corporate recruitment agency.

And in my first week, I realized that it was actually sales and it was the perfect job for me. So it was the perfect combination of Sales, which I'd been doing, for quite a long time and the organizational psychology, and HR, I guess, kind of side of things. And yeah, so I did quite well there, but working in corporate was never going to be a long term thing for me.

I sort of, Didn't realize that at an early age, but had always had, you know, interest in entrepreneurship and I enjoy the freedom of being creative and, changing things and, all of those things that were disruptive in a corporate environment, but work really well for you as an entrepreneur.

And so I took the leap at 25. I started my own agency and I sort of thought I was earning about 80 grand a year, Australian. 

Ken Okazaki: That's 

good for 25 years old,

Kris Cochrane: It's not bad. Yeah, it's not bad. I was doing big numbers. Tell you the agency was earning a lot more than that from me, but they had a pretty good margin on my desk.

And I thought, well, if I can just do a couple of placements a year, I can replace my income. So I'll just do that. And I get to have the freedom, uh, to be creative and, you know, choose what I do. And yeah, I pretty quick, pretty quickly did that, uh, replace that income, I think within the second month. And so, um, the work kept coming in.

I realized I had to start building a team. And then all of a sudden, uh, I was a business owner and I, uh, you know, had to learn pretty fast how to run an agency. And we were recruiting in real estate. So recruiting salespeople, which is not the most straightforward thing in the world, and so I had to then learn how to, you know, manage other salespeople in my team, um, which is kind of where I met Chris.

Yeah.

Ken Okazaki: when you say you're recruiting salespeople, uh. I don't know how it works in Australia, but in Japan, then like my son got headhunted actually from my company to join another company. And literally it was like, let's meet in this, you know, clandestine restaurant where I can talk about stuff.

And then you have like this kind of like creating an escape plan period. And then is that what you were doing or was it something else?

Kris Cochrane: That's it. That's pretty much it. Yeah. So I would, um, kind of cold call people or, you know, I was working. So geographically I was based in a place called Newcastle in Australia. So it's a regional town. Um, it's a bit of a smaller town. Uh, so I would kind of, I had relationships that I would leverage, but yeah, there was a lot of, you know, um, I'm thinking about making a move, but I can't really let the competition who I

Kris Cochrane: All that 

Kris Cochrane: work for know

Kris Cochrane: engineering, all the different forces that are moving. Right. That's. It sounds like, uh, sounds like you could be, you know, very used to living two lives, you know, or helping people live two lives while they're trying to figure stuff out. Here's what I'm most curious about, though, and I'd love for each of either one of you or both of you to give your thoughts on this.

Like, you had to go and spot the superstar salespeople to recruit them. Otherwise, you know, people aren't going to trust you if you keep bringing them bad, you know, employees, right? And Chris, you're training people and you are a salesperson yourself. How do you recognize that this person's got it? Is it an innate skill?

Is it a certain swagger? Is it a level of confidence? Or is it what some people say is just the ability to have pig headed discipline and have a PhD to be able to do, you know, thousands of reps to get that good. Like there's all these kind of conflicting and overlapping qualities. What's the number one thing that you look at?

Kris Cochrane: I'll give you the, the cheat sheet and the, the secret sauce. And it's similar to if you were looking and researching a restaurant to go to or something to buy on Amazon, you're going to check the reviews. And so for many years, I mean, I've hired, personally hired hundreds and hundreds of salespeople, personal trainers, closers, appointment setters. And thought that I could read someone based upon what I could see the thought that that was, you know, I was excellent at that because I had so many reps, but I've been proven wrong so many times now that I, I just know now that, the human condition means that you can't judge the book by its cover.

So, so reference checks is probably the number one thing. So doing really thorough reference checks. so on, on the outside, people have to present with confidence. Confidence is king in sales. So mostly they're buying you first and as an employer or as a, as a recruiter, you're going to buy them and they're going to present you with a level of confidence, that's certainly gonna help you understand, get a feel for whether or not they're the right person, experience, track record is like hard numbers, um,

Ken Okazaki: a lot of

Kris Cochrane: number

Ken Okazaki: you have to do then, isn't it? To go and verify all the stuff, do your due diligence, and is, do you only do this when you're recruiting for your own business or is this like how, at what position of hiring do you put in that much effort to do all that due diligence?

Sharni: we, Chris and I met, through a mutual client. So Chris was their outsource sales manager slash training the sales team. I was their outsource HR manager slash recruiting their sales team. And that's how our relationship started. Um, our business now is we have an agency where we recruit, appointment setters and closers, and then we also have a training company where we train salespeople, So we do a lot of work in the agency because we only recruit really those two types of roles.

We do sales managers and things here and there, but we know the market so well. And we put in a lot of work upfront before our clients even come to us to say, I need somebody to know our talent pool. So to know the people that we're meeting, we're constantly meeting people. And when we're meeting them, we're assessing Is this person somebody that we would consider for future roles and may be suitable or are they not?

And if they are someone we would consider what's their suitability to different types of roles. So yeah, we, we put in a lot of work up front. so we only submit people, we only submit salespeople to our clients if they're recruited, if they're paying us for recruitment, we're submitting Only candidates who we've reference checked, who we know we've got their details.

So we know that they,they can do the job. They've got a track record and they meet the culture requirements that we were given. And so typically there's sort of three, maybe four submissions that we'll make to a specific role. our clients have very little work that they need to do to kind of verify everything, all of the details.

Ken Okazaki: But you really look at the past track record and you want to hire them, especially for sales closes. You want to hire on credential, not potential. Most business owners just don't have the capacity to train on the job. They just need salespeople who can hit the ground running. Good answer. Now, with your agency and your coaching program, is there a lot of overlap? Like, do people from, go through the coaching program and graduate and then get recruited through the agency? Or do you kind of see them as two separate tracks? One is for business owners and the other is for, or like small business owners and big business owners.

How does that kind of relate to each other?

Kris Cochrane: We definitely separated. So when we started, that was something I was really big on coming from a professional recruitment background, coming from a real estate background as well. I'm very clear on we are getting paid to deliver a service and. That service is to give the business owner the best person.

And so when we started both, and when we started training people and recruiting, know, we were both very clear from the get go that they are separate businesses. Of course, we take from the talent pool of our training company, but our job is to give a shortlist that has the best people in the market, not just find our training students, um, placements.

But what we've seen is that more and more now our clients ask us for our students. because they know that one, they're trained well and they can plug and play essentially, but two, they're actually really committed. they're the type of people who are going to invest time and finances into their own personal growth and development.

And those types of people just generally, you know, are more successful and perform better. So would you have Well, they, they also come with a, with a, I guess, almost like an assessment sheet. So you, you graduate high school and you, you've got your, you've got your marks, which the future employer will take into consideration or your, your college take into consideration all of your categories of study and your areas of learning.

And so it's, it's the same with us. Like we, we, we certify our students and we train them really, um, to a high standard as well. So they're very sharpened and I'd say particularly for appointment setters, The, a lot of the appointment setters in the marketplace, they don't have a lot of experience with appointment setting if you're hiring for an appointment setter role, because there's not a lot of appointment setters that want to be career appointment setters and just hop from one appointment setting gig for the

Ken Okazaki: Yeah, this is true. How do you get around that?

Kris Cochrane: Well, you're often transitioning an appointment setter from, a retail salesperson or they've been working in car sales and they're looking to get into a remote type of selling in the high ticket coaching industry or agency space. but these guys, they don't know if they don't know understand what a funnel is.

They don't know what a landing page is. They don't understand how to use a, a go high level CRM. They don't know how to do a triage call. And so if you're as a business owner, got the choice of hiring from SEEK or from referral, someone who comes with sales experience, but no appointments, any experience, and they don't know any of these competencies.

And then you've, yeah. And then you've got one of our

Ken Okazaki: I put out 

Kris Cochrane: certified

Ken Okazaki: and these guys had years of experience with, you know, with brands and stuff, but when I try to work with them, it's like water and oil. Like, they, they are used to meeting people in retail or setting up, like, The ones that are really successful, they are used to having like a six month sales cycle for, you know, like some kind of shipping container deal or something.

It's, it's so different. And the culture in that industry is so different than ours. So you're spot on. But as long as they understand the psychological process, Then I guess what you do is train them to adapt it to what happens online. How, how do leads move through different stages and things like that?

Uh,

GUESTS SOLO: it's a calibration. we're not teaching a duck how to fly like an eagle,because that's impossible. there are people out there who just shouldn't be in sales and who shouldn't sell and who, you know. They'll need a magician, not a sales trainer.

So we're working with people who've got the potential and I'm, we're certifying them, we're helping them calibrate to the industry, to this specific industry. And so for appointment centers, it's really important to get the, to get that. For closers, you really, it's helpful to have people who've got life experience, business experience, a lot of sales experience.

and then if they do have the, the high ticket, well, again, high ticket experience is really important. Uh, we train, we do train closers and help them transition, um, from another sort of form of selling to closing. but yeah, for both of those roles, it really helps, really helps to have what our training is.

It's the calibration, you've got a plug and play, bachelors included, person who can hit the ground running and use your, your systems and perform. Okay. And what kind of company or what stage would a business need to be in an order for it to make sense to work with your agency? We normally would say seven figures, you know, if you're doing seven figures running paid advertising is probably the two, I guess criteria that we've found really works. Strong lead flow, you know, if

Ken Okazaki: Yeah, because if you bring on a full time salesperson, then. Like, I'm assuming that your agency is going to have, is there, is it commission based, base pay, a blend of both? Could you walk me through

Kris Cochrane: it depends on the role in the company, appointments is in Australia.It's very different to the States. Now the coaching industry is in America is so different to Australia and Japan. I'm sure. the labor laws here make it really difficult to just hire a contractor on a commission only basis. and then you find that if you're paying a commission only, let's say appointment center and they're earning max two, three K a month, you're finding people who are broke, they're students, they are desperate for money, they're just not good. And so what we've found, like the ballpark for an appointment set at the moment in Australia, we normally, it's a base salary, 60,000, and then your OTE is somewhere in the ballpark of 80 to a hundred, potentially more depending on the offer.

And then for for a closer. it's much more common to have a closer, who's a commission only contractor. but often because they're earning good, they're able to earn better money. And so they're a bit more sticky and a lot of good closers. They want to work on commission only because they can earn higher.

but there's also companies that offer a base salary, lower, they got capped commission. So it's a lower OTE, but the downsides capped. So yeah, there's many models.

with your agency, you just help to source them, and then they go work for your clients. It's not like they're working for you. you through the agency. Yeah, we, yeah, so we source that, we do permanent placement because we, yeah, we've been exposed to the whole done for you model. we decided really early on that is not, that's not for us. It's not what we're about.

Ken Okazaki: lot of hand holding and, and, you know, babysitting is what, is what goes on when you, when you adopt that model, which, which by the way, I'm in. And, I, I've, and at 

least, yeah, it's,

Kris Cochrane: Respect to agencies, like marketing agencies and content agencies, where you really get into a business and you kind of have to work with what they've got. You've got to work with their systems and the way they run their business, the way they deliver their product and. Um, and you probably have your own thoughts on it.

It's, you have your thoughts on how

Ken Okazaki: Well, I'll share a bit of what, uh, what's going on for me. And after this, I want to read out a few of your posts that you put out and get your, get your expanded thoughts on that. But yeah, I've been, I got into the agency space As a result of having run a lot of large scale events here in Japan, anywhere from two to 8, 000 people.

And we'd run these like every month. Uh, every other month was like a big one and a small one, big one, small one. And through that, I was able to hire world class speakers, you know, people like Robert Kiyosaki and Nick Vujicic and Tony Robbins. And what happened was I started building relationships with these guys because I'm promoting events.

There's thousands of people showing up. We're doing, you know, millions of dollars and then I realized that I didn't enjoy running live large scale events. It just was so too much logistics, financial risk every single time. And, but what I did enjoy was the creative part was creating ads that put butts in seats. And we were good at it, you know? So what I did is I actually wound down that, the whole events company. Uh, also it wasn't a huge success. Like on the outside, it looks like all the, you know, it looks amazing, right? Uh, if you look at the actual numbers, you know, like how much it cost to put these on, then you'll see that it's not all a bed of roses, but you know, we did okay.

But I was able to take a lot of these speakers who have seen a track record of me filling rooms using video ads. And I said, would you like me to start helping you to fill up your rooms globally? And that's how I started my agency. And then we just started doing, uh, you know, organic content, podcasts, and just kind of spread out from there. And I, I really enjoyed that because I get to travel and spend time with these guys. And, uh, usually people will pay, you know, like upwards of 150, 000 just to be in a mastermind with 200 other people to be in the same room with them. Um, I get spent a lot of one on one time with these guys and just pick their brains and talk about marketing and then, you know, help refine their message.

And I love that. COVID hit and now everything had to go remote and they all switched all their live events, you know, got canceled. So I had to quickly pivot. And then, so we continued providing a service, but it became a very different one where everything was done remotely. So that's. And then it just kept kind of going level from there. And then I realized that, you know what, I think that the clients would get better results if we coach them first. So, because right now in the agency, when someone comes in, they have their preconceived ideas and they tell us, Hey, do this, do that. Sometimes I'm just like, I don't think this is going to work, but we're not the strategic partner.

We're the content creation agency. And then when things don't work, we get the blame, you know, which is, which is fair. We actually did the actual work, but thinking to myself, you know what, I would rather bring on people for a short period of time coach them about my philosophy and strategies around content creation and marketing.

How do, how do you win trust, build an audience, gain authority, and turn that into leads and sales? And then for those who, after working with us for four months, which is the current, you know, running period of the coaching program, if they like it, then we'll introduce them to the agency where we'll do that version of content marketing and creation.

And, uh, that way I stay out of putting out fires and trying to manage people's expectations and methods and more into just training and, uh, the way that we want to do it. So, uh, that's, that's why we flipped that model. I simply wanted people. agency clients who got better results and who, and who bought into what I feel is the best way of doing it.

Kris Cochrane: So yeah, that's, that's how we started. so landing for us, yeah, we've, it's so, so similar. The, the agency is so similar because we, our product, the human, we are human traffickers, essentially, with the recruiters, uh, so we're recruiting salespeople and they're, People are the product, but then people, you know, are also, they're entering an environment, and, and our A players are entering an environment.

And if they're entering a B environment or an environment that's not set up properly for them to succeed, if they don't have the right systems or the onboarding experience is shoddy. Maybe if leads are slow, maybe if they're being managed poorly, has happened. we've had a few, we've had a number of replacements that we've had, which causes us extra work because as a recruiter, you guarantee your placement for a specific period of time.

And within that time, if we have one of our candidates leave, we replace, which means we do it again. We do the whole process again, which is a great benefit of a recruiter because, as a business owner, you're going to hire people, they're going to leave, and then you've got to do the work again anyway.

as a recruiter or hiring a recruiter, you get, you know, we just do it again, but often the reason that the candidates are off or leaving, decide to leave is because of those things. And so we've had the same. We've had the same epiphany. We're just, we're at the point where we've got, um, a lot of the content to deliver to clients, uh, who are looking to build sales teams, who are looking to build the foundations of a sales team, the process, um, that they could bring the people into, and then also the leadership and the systems to actually manage salespeople properly.

Because a lot of our clients are, you know, they're a coach or a, They've been on the phone selling, they've been closing, they've been doing all the work. And now that it's time they've turned on an ad campaign or they've grown really rapidly and they, it's their first time building a sales team. And so they're going to get stuff wrong.

And so a lot of these guys need help with, you know, onboarding with even just JD's compensation plans, how to manage what to, yeah, what to, what data to collect and how to,

Ken Okazaki: right? They just don't know how big that whole department needs 

or how well 

Kris Cochrane: No, because you throw a person at a problem, but if the process is lacking, um, you just get bigger problems, I think.

And so it's

Ken Okazaki: So this is what you do in your coaching program is, is help them build out their entire sales processes and systems so that you have interchangeable. pieces or people that could go in those roles and then get all the training needed so that they could do your version for your company. Is that it? 

Kris Cochrane: it's been more of a consulting package where I've done it for them and I work with the business owner and I, we work for a period of time, three, a few months and I kind of take all the templates and I build all the systems and we, we catch up for calls, but that model doesn't work because I can't scale and we're moving it to a coaching program from consulting because we do agency plus process consulting where we build out your sales system so that you've got scripts, you've got onboarding playbooks, you've got, um, management playbooks internally, And then coaching you on how to use them, and then coaching on how to get the most from yourself, but, but it doesn't scale.

So we're, we're, and we're getting more and more inquiries. And so we are, we're building out the coaching program. We're right in the midst of

Ken Okazaki: great. Well, Chris, maybe you and I should have a conversation later on, because what I know is that up until now, all of my clients have just come in through referral. I don't, I've never run ads. Well, sorry, scratch that. I have run ads, but like not for I've run short term ads like to fill up a webinar once every now and then, but not any ongoing thing to fill up a salesperson's calendar.

And what I do want to shift into is, especially as the coaching program I'm doing is ramping up is actually get out of the sales, you know, position. So yeah, let's talk about this a little bit later. It sounds really interesting. But before we do that, let me read you something, and this is something Chris that you put online, and I want to hear a hot take from Sharni first, uh, about this, alright?

So Chris, you wrote, Good morning to everyone, except people still reading from a script on their sales calls. 

Sharni: I told him to post that. I think he was going to keep that to himself.

Ken Okazaki: that's the best comeback ever, but give me some 

Kris Cochrane: more context on this. Okay. Well, one of the, one of the principles I live by, and I teach is freestyle within a framework. And often, you know, people who are selling are not, most business owners who are selling often are people who are not. They're not salespeople. So they, you know, they, they get on calls and they think they need a script and scripts are great. They're, they're really helpful and it really does direct you on what you want to say and how you can handle certain situations. But when you're on a call, we need to adapt to the free flowing nature of a conversation. So people need to feel authenticity to feel connected to you. A prospect needs to feel connected and like you're present. And if you're writing a script. And if a salesperson or a business owner is reading from a script, it can sound scripted and it can be very disconnecting, and you just don't get the result.

And it's also riding your bike with the training wheels on. How long are you going to, how long are you going to ride the bike with the training wheels? So, um, freestyle within a framework means that we have frameworks, which gives us objectives. So we're looking, the script is the process, so it's the shovel, but the objective is the goal.

So why am I asking this question here, but what am I searching for? So it's better for the salesperson to understand the goal that they're searching for with their shovel, which is the question or the dialogue. What are we looking for? Pain? Is it a problem? Is it a need? Is it a, um, urgency? Is it a, um, a reason why now is important for them to make a decision?

Ken Okazaki: If we're going to search for that, um, we will, be better off with, a framework and it's much easier for a framework. Cause you're at, if you're in your head, you're dead. You're reading a script. are possibly going to come across strict scripted, so better to freestyle within a framework. There's also a parallel there for content creation, when people are reading a teleprompter, or trying to memorize stuff. It feels so dead. But when there's a specific framework they follow, then it, it comes across so different. The one exception I'd make though, is that the hook, in most cases, I think should be scripted.

And it might be like the opening statement, which is, would you say that part script is like, uh, just, you know, what are the,

Kris Cochrane: memorized,

memorized. seconds of the conversation should be memorized, right?

Correct. 

Ken Okazaki: the pitch and the pitch, the pitch of the beginning and the end of the sales goal is, um, but again, you don't want to be reading it. You want to have that memorized and do the work before you get on the call.

Kris Cochrane: There's a, there's an old saying, by the way. If you didn't, there's a guy called, um, David Sandler, who's got a, um, a system called the Sandler Method. It's like one of the most, a lot of the tech companies like Salesforce, they use the Sandler system and he's got a saying, if you didn't bring it, you ain't gonna find it here.

And that's if you didn't bring your preparation to the golf, like it's a golf analogy. So he, he's talks about going to the, he's, he's about to play golf. He's with his buddies. He shows up an hour early to get to the driving range to, you know, to hit balls, to find form before he goes out into the, into the course.

And his buddy turns up five minutes before tee off. And he says, man, if you didn't bring it, you're not going to find it out here. Like you bring your preparation before the call. And how do you prepare before a call? How do you prepare? Well, mostly mental, mostly mental priming. So we, we've got a, a thing I've, I've, called the ignition routine. it's about mental priming. So cultivating a state before stepping onto a sales call

So Chris, that sounds great. Could you, like, specifically tell me, like, what is it you actually do? Like, do you jump in an ice cold bath? Do you, does your, do you go, you read some affirmational quotes? Do you meditate? What is it?. Yeah, it's a mixed, emergency state reset methods that you can, you can implement if you need an emergency state reset. Sometimes if you had a really bad call, if you had a bad morning, or if you've just had a Like an argument or if you've had a really rough night because the baby's been up crying all night, these things happen.

But then if you're going to drag that state into a sales call, it's not going to end well. So there's things, you know, jumping into an ice bath, um, Wim Hof breathing, going for a walk without your phone, you know, pushups, star jumps, just to really change the state. So give yourself a shift. priming is stepping into your leadership is there's a, there's two thingsthat I do and that I teach.

And the first is to review your wins, which is reminding you of your greatness. So it's looking across your last 10 sales that you made. To remind yourself you don't suck. It's like reminding yourself, Oh, actually I'm good at this. I can sell. Often you might have a sales call, but you've got three or four or five previous sales calls, but they haven't closed yet.

There's deals out, there's agreements out and you're waiting and you're feeling a little bit low because you haven't closed. And sometimes we need to be reminded that we are good. We can close. We can do this. Uh, and so that's number one. And number two is there's reminders. So I've just got a list of like 50 quotes that I have, uh, that are relevant to me.

It's, you know, they, an example is people need a leader. They don't need a friend. People, you know, people, someone didn't wake up this morning to get on a sales call to meet a new mate. And that's for me, if I'm having an issue with being a bit too nice. On calls or being a little bit too stuck in the friend zone.

' cause a lot of people and salespeople, closers can start to drift into friend zone, which is a bit of, bit too dangerous on a sales call. So there's just reminders, you know, good quotes that kind of pull you out of, uh, just remind you about where you need to be and what another, another reminder might be.

if people want it bad enough, they'll find a way. if they don't, they'll find an excuse. And that just reminds you as a salesperson before you, just before you hop on a call, like I'm not going to buy their bullshit reason why they can't do this. If they really want their vision, they will find a way.

And so I'm going to, I'm going to try to pull that out and build their vision and sell them on their vision, sell them on why they need to achieve their vision and not buy their BS excuse as to why they can't do it. And there's lots of others, but you know, for me,I will, I rock up to the call.

I'm primed, I'm cult, like I've cultivated, I've been intentional about having a leadership state. I also do vocal, like, this is, this is going to sound a bit weird, but, I've got a thing called the Lazy Mouth Destroyer, which is, it's about, it's like a mouth warmup. So before you go to a, you deliver a keynote, or you, you get on television, you know, there's a vocal warmup. And if you're on a sales call and you've just woken up or

Ken Okazaki: Nobody else is listening. This will never go anywhere.

Kris Cochrane: I teach this to my students. We do this on the role play session. So I've got role play sessions. We always start with a bit of a vocal warmup and I'll give you, I'll give you the, she thinks she's like, what is dad doing? This is so, I don't know if she thinks there's two versions. I've got, there's, there's a whole, like, there's a list of things you can recite.

You've got a pen in your mouth. If I need to find

Ken Okazaki: Okay, let me, let me, try to do this with you. I'm going to grab a pen.

okay, can I share, can I share the screen potentially? Yeah, there's a share screen button at the bottom of your, of your, of the window.

Kris Cochrane: easy, I need to, give me two seconds, I have to find this.

Sharni, you're looking dashing today. Okay, what we'll do, we'll just, we won't do the, we won't, we won't do the pen in mouth, um, actually we'll do the pen in mouth, let's do the pen in mouth, we'll start with like five pen in mouth, all right, so we're going to do pen in mouth, all right, and we're going to, we're going to say, Um, it'd be helpful if we had the thing, but we're going to say, I'll say the thing and then you say it after me. All right. Okay. Eat each green pea. Eat each green

Ken Okazaki: eat eat green pea.

Kris Cochrane: Aim straight at the gate. Aim straight at the gate.

Ken Okazaki: Aim straight at the gate.

Kris Cochrane: Edge set, get ready. Edge set, get ready.

Ken Okazaki: Egg set, get ready.

Kris Cochrane: Ed said, It is in Italy. It is in Italy.

Ken Okazaki: It is in Italy.

Kris Cochrane: Father was calm as he threw the bomb on the dock. Father was calm as he threw the bomb on the

Ken Okazaki: understand that one. Father was calm as he threw the bomb on the dock.

comments, he threw the bomb on the dock. All right, so we had some

Kris Cochrane: that's the first. You did that well. That was almost too, that was almost too good. And then, uh, and then there's just like warming up your face. So the first one is big face. So you've got it. and the little,

Ken Okazaki: Okay. Okay.

Kris Cochrane: right, and then up, and then down, and then we yawn.

We do that twice. And then there's a bunch of other things, but we finish it with a tongue twister, and it's Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, a peck of pickled peppers, Peter Piper picked, if Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, how many pecks of pickles would Peter Piper pick? You go Ken, you

Ken Okazaki: So I don't, I can't. Yeah. I, I, Peter Piper picked a pepper, something. 

Okay. 

Kris Cochrane: I'll send it through. But, um,

of so this, this, this also boosts confidence, this boosts confidence. It helps your articulation. So when you're on a sales call, you are delivering a performance. And if you're slurring or

before this podcast? I actually didn't today. No, did you? I didn't do this. We do it before. I do it before our podcast.

Ken Okazaki: did today.

Kris Cochrane: We've got a podcast. I got on the call. I'm like, man, I haven't done my vocals. no, but we do, we do it before our podcast. it's 

Ken Okazaki: something that I I could probably, uh, learn from. I got one more thing I want to read to you. All right? Your words. You ready for this?

Kris Cochrane: Got it.

Ken Okazaki: and Sharni, I want to hear from you first because Chris has been hogging the mic 

like a pro. But this is, I'm not sure. Maybe, maybe you wrote this or he did.

I don't know. 

Kris Cochrane: Sales is ruthless. Sales teams are not families. Families love and accept everyone for who they are. You can get away with a lot in a family because, hey, we're family. Sales teams are like sporting teams. Positions must be earned. Perform or you're out. Simple. mean, I didn't write that. Uh, that's pretty brutal. I mean, I

Ken Okazaki: you feel about like this, it feels good. I definitely, it's one where I told Chris to post it as well because It's the truth. It's the truth. It's a horrible truth to admit, but you know,

Kris Cochrane: Why would you say it's horrible? it, I think some people could read that and think that

Ken Okazaki: Some people might get offended

Kris Cochrane: get, it might get triggered.

I think maybe get triggered. Um, It's all right. You're going to go. I posted this and again, I just want to caveat. I don't always need her permission to post. Sometimes, um, I do.

Ken Okazaki: Yes, thank you for the caveat because

Kris Cochrane: Sometimes I do ask her, I, I run them by her. And so what are your thoughts? Yeah. Uh, this was, I think this post, I wrote this post in response to. there was a video that was circulating on Twitter and it was this, uh, you know, in big corporate sales, they do hiring rounds and they do lots of firing rounds.

And if you're on a sales team, that's, and you're in the bottom X percent, there's a lot of layoffs. And so in the high ticket coaching world, where you've got more, you've got smaller businesses, it's not as relevant, but these, I think there was a videoof a sales rep or an SDR that was being fired.

And she, I think she'd just been hired, or she'd been hired a few months prior and she was filming herself being fired on Zoom and had some big post about how it wasn't

Ken Okazaki: I think I saw that one. And people were going back and forth in the comments how it's fair or not fair or da da da da da. And she had all these excuses about how she had all these, you know, these conversations in development and they didn't, just didn't come through yet. And is it that one?

Kris Cochrane: it's just, it Sales is about results, which is the f which is the best part. The best part is that you can be measured. it's not a popularity contest. it's literally the results will speak, numbers talk, and if the numbers aren't there. you haven't earned your spot, and any manager who doesn't apply those rules is not doing the best.

He's doing a disservice to the business and the team. And the team, I think that's a good point as well, is that most high performing people want to be around other high performers and the team. Notice the standard that you accept as a sales manager, as any manager, um, really, and it's your job to protect the standards of the team.

And when you accept. low standards, you're telling the team that that's okay. And so, yeah, I think it's a good reminder that you don't, you know, your job is to protect that standard. And the culture, the culture is so,

keep them on the team. I think culture and a team values that a team lives by and the standards that they live up to is so important.

When you start to build a larger team and yeah, like Shani mentioned, I've been on teams where I've been, and this is not me just being perfect. I've had, I've accepted mediocrity. I've accepted low standards. I've kept people on too long.I think a lot of business owners have gone through that. but it also impacts other people and people recognize when you, uh, allowing stuff to happen. So then the standards across the board 

what do you think about extroverts versus introverts for a sales position? some of it, most of our best performers, scientifically, if you look at their profiles and we've profiled them, um, and also self declared introverts. yeah, I think it's really, the big part is from what my understanding is and from my experience is more about EQ. So you've got personality profile.

I don't know if you can hear me properly, but you've got personality profile. And, um, science kind of tells us that that doesn't change too much over time. I can, for some people, they can have variants, but it's normally pretty set. Um, and that's your traits, um, and you know, introvert versus extrovert is a trait. Um, so that doesn't change too much, but your EQ can grow. time. And so EQ and self awareness is part of EQ, uh, I think is the more important thing to measure than hiring. And a lot of companies used to, I know big recruitment companies who, they had a certain disc profile and they would only hire that profile.

which works for certain roles. but in my experience, it's more about EQ and self awareness. And understanding the introvert, understanding that where their strengths lie and how they can re energize themselves throughout the day, because they're going to be giving a lot of energy, obviously spending time talking to people. There's um, one of the, many of our, many of our top, Salespeople have been got the dis profile of an accountant although the top salespeople that I've worked and coached have got the dis profile of an accountant and you know, they, they have developed EQ, they've developed skills. they just

So that's that high S and C, low D and I. Exactly. Exactly. Um, I think the rule doesn't really work if you're looking at someone's experience, their knowledge, their background, their skill set, that even if they've got a,

Ken Okazaki: That's, that's what you're, we're

absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. All right. I want to wrap this up soon, uh, respecting your time. And if you would each answer individually, What do you think is the biggest misconception that you're, or the biggest mistake, industry mistake about sales that you've seen, and that you're constantly having to, you know, re educate people about?

What would that be for you? A

Kris Cochrane: I think the biggest misconception is that sales is about selling. And be good at sales, you have to have the gift of the gap, what you just said before about, you have to, you have to be an extrovert in order to sell. Often it's the, often it's counterintuitive where the less you sell, the more you close. if I'm being salesy, if I'm extroverted, if I'm extra on a sales call, if I'm bringing lots of personality, lots of what I call push selling, it can cause someone to feel like they're on a sales call. So the biggest mistake that a lot of sales people make is that they just allow their prospects to remember that they're on a sales call. And so the remedy to that is. to be the opposite of a salesperson. if your sales, if your prospect forgets they're on a sales call, cause they think they're chatting with an advisor or an expert or a consultant, the, their guard comes down dramatically. And they're far easier to influence with no guard, with their guard down.

I think sales is very counterintuitive and, the biggest mistake is thinking that you have to sell in order to

Ken Okazaki: isn't it? 

Right? Like you come across,

Sharni: Thanks.

Ken Okazaki: And you try to close a marriage on the first encounter, that's, it's gonna scare a lot of people away very quickly. And 

Kris Cochrane: very, it's reverse psychology

yeah, yeah, it is so much psychology. It's, it's like, Hey, yeah. Yeah. I think mine's more related to business. It's more related to business owners and, uh, it's sort of piggybacks off what we were talking about before. Um, but I think it's thinking you have a people problem when you really have a process problem. And so trying to solve a process problem with a person, as Chris said, it often just creates a bigger problem or more problems for you. I think the biggest misconception or, uh, mistake or the area where we find ourselves having lots of conversations is that people come to us for recruitment and they think that they need, you know, more people.

Ken Okazaki: They need, um, a person to come in and increase their sales when really. What they really need is they need a really solid process that works and it's, you can replicate it, and you can manage it and measure it. and so I think that's the biggest one. I think you can hire Lance Armstrong, but if you put him on a unicycle, then he's not going to win the tour to France. That's a good one. That's very true. Very true.

Kris Cochrane: Even, even if he's on the, even if he's on the juice, even,

Ken Okazaki: Even if he's on the juice. Yeah.

Kris Cochrane: even if he's on the

Ken Okazaki: version of juice would be for a salesperson. 

Would that be like an 

Kris Cochrane: telling lies, caffeine, caffeine,

Ken Okazaki: Yeah, caffeine.

modafinil, Yeah. Or prime energy drink or something.

Kris Cochrane: prime energy. Yeah, definitely not monster energy drinks.

Ken Okazaki: Yeah. Yeah. Or maybe it's weed, you know, so you just chill out and, you know, become more relatable

You connect a lot. You're deeply connected or like, um, micro dosing. You're like connected with you. You're connected with the prospect. You're connected with nature around you. You're really purposeful. Like that could, that could be, I haven't tried it. We need to, I might need to test that Yeah, get a

Kris Cochrane: on a call. Yeah, I don't think under supervision Australia.

Ken Okazaki: Yeah. All right. Like 

where would people go if they wanted to find out more about your coaching program or your agency? What's the best place for them to look for you? Well, our website for the recruiting agency and our business coaching sales business coaching for sales teams is beyondclosers. com for sales training or anyone who's looking to transition from selling stuff in person to selling stuff online and having a remote lifestyle, it's theremotesalesinstitute. com. All right. So for all the listeners, we're going to drop those links down below. If you're watching on YouTube, then check out the links in the description. If you're on podcast version, go to the show notes, you'll find the links there. Chris and Sharni, I love closing these with one final thing from all my guests.

And that is to ask the listener a question, because the reason I do this is because It's easy to spout out advice and then the person who's listening can either accept it or reject it and they're hearing advice all day every day. But if they ask themselves a genuine question that will bring them to a realization about something they can actually do differently, that's usually much more effective.

So you could ask them a question that they can answer for themselves to help them make progress, what would that be? And you probably ask these questions all the time on your sales calls. So 

Kris Cochrane: I think for me, and I've just, I'll use the, I'll use what I've been asking myself, lately. I think that might just be the most relevant, what is the number one constraint that's stopping you from progressing to where you feel like you need to be right now? And if you just attacked that one constraint and let everything else go, could you be in the next 90 days?

Thanks.

Ken Okazaki: I love it. I love it. Thank you for that. Now, Sharni, you've had a minute to think. What question would you ask the listener? Let's bring the mic right close

Kris Cochrane: Right over and not take it back. So I think my, and we haven't really touched on this, but I've been thinking while we've been chatting today, you know, where is it, where, you know, what's the area that business owners really need to focus on when it comes to hiring salespeople and. The most impactful question I think that business owners can ask themselves when it comes to hiring anyone is who is the most successful person I have ever hired or the most successful hire I've ever made into my business what values did they display that made, made them so successful? 

Ken Okazaki: that is really good. I'm going to use that myself. 

Kris Cochrane: Love it. Thanks so much for having us, man. Thanks so much, Ken. Hey Ken. can we ask you a question before we can, before we hop off,

Ken Okazaki: let's do it. You're the first one to do this. 

Kris Cochrane: What is the question you think we should be asking ourselves based, given our business? And what you know about the business. What do you, what is the question you think we should be asking ourselves, given that you've also researched our social profiles? I think that, um, okay. Give us a moment to think. It's how can I use as little words and time as possible to generate the most engagement from the right people. Wow. Oof, man, that's so powerful.

Ken Okazaki: get one like and one view or get one video with a thousand likes and views? The answer is obvious. You don't need more content. need more engagement.

And after you get a ratio of engagement to content created, Then you gasp up on the content. People, they put out posts just like, it's barely getting any views. Could you, could we start doing three posts a day? And I'm like, you know what? The, the problem with sushi when it's stale, is that it doesn't get better by eating more of it.

Kris Cochrane: No, you just need to make better sushi. Stale sushi sucks. Don't eat more of it. It's just so topical for us. we engaged an agency to help us and, uh, we feel like we've got mass produced podcast snippets. And you're, talking about the engagement, it just gets lower and lower.

So you're putting more color, more quantity, but the quality seems to dip. and the engagement

Ken Okazaki: the same amount of views just spread out thinner, you know, it's like when the dog shits in your kitchen and you bring a dry mop and try to you know, clean it up. It just like makes a big, round, you know, smear. Right. It's, that's what's happening. That's just thinning it out. And, uh, and I've seen too many people make this mistake because they listened to the industry leaders who are doing, you know, 20, 30 posts a day. But they didn't get there by doing that. They're doing that now because of the stageeer hat. And people forget that no, no, no, they started by putting out a video a week or maybe a video a day, but then engaging with every single comment and engaging with every single person, researching that person and DMing them and connecting with them.

And that's what built the engagement so that it made sense later on to do a lot more of it. All right, well, Chris, I'm going to wrap this up first, and then we'll loop back around.

Kris Cochrane: Then you can close this. Then you can close this with, uh, with your

Ken Okazaki: then, and then you, afterwards, you could let me know, like, okay, if you said this, I would have closed sooner. I would have paid more or whatever that's going to be. I'll take all those notes in.

Kris Cochrane: Love it

Ken Okazaki: All right, I got to wrap this up. Thank you so much, Chris and Sharni, for being on the show and we will continue this conversation and for everybody else, thanks for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed this. Make sure you check out the links down below. You'll find Chris and Sharni's social media and their websites to figure out what they're all about.

And if you're listening to just the audio version, I highly encourage you to go check out YouTube where you'll understand why we sounded so weird like we did. We had these pens in our mouths. Also, you're going to also appreciate .How good looking this couple is, which you can only hear if you're on the audio.

If you're on YouTube, you can actually see it. It's worth it. And I will see you next week.

Music: 
No hustle worship here, we're a different breed. Action is what we got if action is what you need. It's Content Capitalist, we're breaking the mold. Cause the old ways fade, new stories to be told. Content Capitalist, get to the prize.