One of the skills that I've noticed among all these great salespeople that I've interviewed

that I really haven't talked a lot about is their ability to build conversations that

aren't about the transaction, aren't about the product, aren't about them, aren't about their

company, and why is this so important?

It seems almost trivial.

And I'm not talking about sports and weather.

I'm not talking about small talk.

I'm talking about, most people would call this industry talk, networking talk, talk about their

business, curiosity about them, their career. And most of you are saying like, yeah, I think I do some

of that. Well, try this experiment. Just an experiment. Call up one of your prospects, a deal that

hasn't closed yet, a new account, meaning that they haven't bought anything yet, and don't

talk about the transaction. Don't talk about you. Don't talk about your company or your product and only ask

questions about them and see how it feels. It's probably different, isn't it? Because they're

going to push it to the transaction, and that's where it gets us because we feel like,

oh, they want to talk about the transaction. And that's where it gets us because we feel like, oh, they want to talk about

the transaction. Well, maybe they do or maybe they just think that's the purpose of the call.

It's one of the purposes of the call. It shouldn't be the whole call. Now, in today's example,

we have somebody who sells doesn't sell

basically works in the market of recycling catalytic converters. Now you can

just imagine how glamorous that is and how interesting it would be to talk about all the issues in that transaction. And he gets

into how he handles this, not only in one-on-one selling, but selling to SMB and companies, corporations.

Now, a lot of us, they go, why is this so valuable, Brian? It's because we want people to want to talk with us, not just have to. Now, imagine

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