Watch above or read below.

Dennis Collins: If you’re a founder and you’re thinking, “Gee, I’ve had this thought, and I don’t have a solution, and it’s kind of bothering me. And by this point in my life, I should have figured this stuff out.” Well, get in line. We are here on Connect and Convert to talk about the true confessions of business owners and business founders. The true confessions they don’t tell anybody. They don’t even tell their spouse. These are their secret thoughts, as if they were written in their diary. And we’re getting inside their diary. Aren’t we, Leah? Aren’t we, Paul? We’re getting inside their diary and saying, “Ooh.”

Leah Bumphrey: It’s one of those little locks with the little key.

Dennis Collins: Yeah. Remember those.

Leah Bumphrey: Easy to break into.

Dennis Collins: I used to break into my sisters’.

Leah Bumphrey: Oh, I knew it. I knew it.

Dennis Collins: I had three sisters and they had those little locks on there. Oh, boy, I became a lock picker.

Paul Boomer: So all you need to do, you guys, is take somebody out to coffee and just start asking questions. You end up picking.

Leah Bumphrey: You’re so sweet. There’s no fun in that.

Paul Boomer: I know.

Dennis Collins: So anyway, we’re back on Connect and Convert. We tell the real stories, the true stories, the true confessions of small business owners and business founders. We try to make it safe for you to think those thoughts and to name those thoughts, because you can’t do anything about it until you name it. So this podcast is 100% about you, about helping you name it and helping you find solutions. So today, here’s the confession of a small business owner. And these are real, by the way. We all have multiple decades of experience.

Leah Bumphrey: I feel like these confessions came wrapped in brown paper. And I keep waiting, I keep waiting.

Dennis Collins: Brown paper. Yeah. Yeah. No…

Leah Bumphrey: No return address.

Dennis Collins: No return address. Exactly. Or from the dark web somewhere, from some unknown email address.

Paul Boomer: Actually, before you get to the confession and that nice wrapping paper is, as a listener of this podcast, what I want you to do is I want you to go to whatever program, service, whatever that you’re listening to us on, and I want you to write a comment.

Leah Bumphrey: Yes, please.

Paul Boomer: As to what you’re getting out of this and, more importantly, what keeps you up at night. Because those things, the more detail, the better, but even simple things, it helps us provide more value to you.

Dennis Collins: For sure.

Paul Boomer: So please, take just a few moments and go find the comment section and just add your comment.

Dennis Collins: And especially if you disagree, because you’re going to hear things on this whole series of confessions, you’re going to hear things you don’t agree with. Or maybe you have a question about, “What the hell do they mean by that?” That will give us direction. We actually read those. So thank you, Paul, for that. Okay, you ready? You ready for the confession?

Here it goes. Real confession from a real business owner. “When we lose a deal, almost 100% of the time, they tell me it was because our price was too high. Now, I’m not stupid. I know the high price excuse used by salespeople, that’s been going on since the beginning of time. That’s easy. It puts the blame back on me. It’s not their fault; it’s my fault because I’m setting that price as the owner. Well, guess what? I don’t believe this. I don’t think that’s true. I don’t trust my salespeople. I’ll be real frank. That’s part of my confession. I don’t trust them. I don’t think they’re giving me the right information.”

They’re just not telling me the truth. I don’t, and I don’t know how to address this effectively. I mean, I’m not sure, you know, my belief is that buyers are willing to pay more when they trust you and they value the seller and the solution. So, but honestly, I have no idea how to track this down. It’s just a fear that I have, and it’s something that is a trust issue with my sales team. And that’s not good.

Leah Bumphrey: Paul, I’m letting you go because I am getting so irritated listening to this ass.

Paul Boomer: Maybe I don’t want to go.

Dennis Collins: Oh, ass.

Paul Boomer: Maybe I don’t want to stand in front of this train here. But what I will say is…

Dennis Collins: Yeah, duck, Paul, duck.

Paul Boomer: Yeah. In this, in that confession, what I’m hearing is the pricing excuse is simply an insulation from bigger problems.

Dennis Collins: Bigger problems? Like what?

Paul Boomer: Clarity. Understanding.

Dennis Collins: Clarity.

Paul Boomer: Self-value. Not just in the service or product, but in thyself, the salesperson.

Dennis Collins: Self-value. That’s a good one.

Paul Boomer: But it also goes into leadership value. Leadership in themselves, I’m sorry, confidence. And confidence within themselves and in the organization as a whole. The pricing excuse is simply an insulation to bigger problems.

Dennis Collins: Wow.

Leah Bumphrey: The only thing this guy said that has any merit is that, yes, buyers will pay more when they trust and value the seller and the solution. Yes, people buy more or are willing to pay more. That’s the only thing he said that I think has any validity.

Dennis Collins: Why are my salespeople telling me it’s always price?

Leah Bumphrey: Well, he said it. I’m saying you, Dennis, I don’t mean to direct this at you, but you read this guy’s stuff. He’s all about not trusting his people. He doesn’t trust it; he doesn’t believe it.

Dennis Collins: I don’t trust ’em.

Leah Bumphrey: He doesn’t even trust himself to know how to have any transfer of confidence to his people. His whole thing is shaky. There’s no way this business should be in business. This guy should not be owning, he should not be owning a business.

Dennis Collins: Right. They shouldn’t even be in business.

Leah Bumphrey: No. If he doesn’t understand why his…

Dennis Collins: He should be deprived of his right to own a business.

Leah Bumphrey: Yes. I sure wouldn’t work for him. Would you guys work for this guy? He doesn’t trust you.

Dennis Collins: Not knowingly, no, of course not. Who would? But remember, Leah, these are silent confessions. They don’t tell anybody this, not even their own spouse. This is their silent alone moment.

Leah Bumphrey: And there’s no absolution from me on this one. Sorry. We’re going to have to dig; we’re going to have to dig really deep.

Paul Boomer: Well, so you say these are private conversations or private thoughts. No, I’ve had this conversation many times with a few different owners.

Dennis Collins: Well, they will have it with us as confidence consultants.

Paul Boomer: Yes. Exactly.

Dennis Collins: Yeah, again, but they don’t tell their team this.

Paul Boomer: No, hell no.

Dennis Collins: I mean, they won’t say, “Hey, I don’t trust you guys.” Oh, some of them do, and then of course we have a whole other problem. 

Paul Boomer: Well, actually I can name a few; I can think of one right now.

Dennis Collins: Yeah, I can too. So I guess that’s not universally true, but most owners are not going to go out there and just accuse them of being untrustworthy.

Leah Bumphrey: And I’m going to soften, I’m going to soften a little bit because he is asking how to address this effectively. And what I believe he’s asking is: how does he correct his lack of trust in his salespeople? Because if he thinks they’re lying, we need to fix that. When I was a new mom, there was stuff I didn’t know, and I thought I was going to be pretty good, but there’s stuff I didn’t know. How did I solve that? And I thought I was going to be really good because I’m the oldest of seven, so I had experience with babies.

Dennis Collins: Wow.

Leah Bumphrey: But, how did I solve the problem? I talked to other moms, I talked to my mom, I read tons of stuff, and I made mistakes that I then corrected. Because if you believe you don’t know how to do something, there are ways. And so he’s taking that step with us.

Dennis Collins: Yeah. So, Leah, what you just said is very consistent with what you’ve said on some of our other confessions, right? That if you don’t know how to do something, buck up, buddy. Get it done and figure it out. I don’t know. That sounds a little harsh to me.

Leah Bumphrey: You know what? It’s not. It’s harder not to, because he’s going to end up not having a business. These salespeople are not going to have a job. If there are reasons why, and if he can’t- if he’s not a trainer, some people are not trainers. We all love training. Some people are not trainers. Then you hire a trainer. You hire a trainer to be able to, okay, because sometimes people come from selling low-end products. We all know you have four choices with a product. You can be cheap, you can be fast, you can be good, you can be expensive. You only get three of those, right? You can’t be cheap and good. You can’t. So if you don’t know how to…

Dennis Collins: Something like that.

Leah Bumphrey: Yeah. You have it on the tip of your tongue better than me. I just, I feel it in my heart.

Dennis Collins: I always get confused on that one, but I know what you’re talking about. You can have cheap, fast, or good. I think it’s three, but you can’t have all three.

Leah Bumphrey: Right.

Dennis Collins: I think that’s how it goes. But anyway, go ahead. But I get the point. Okay.

Leah Bumphrey: So hire someone to help you do this. And if you can’t hire someone, then again, it’s communication.

Dennis Collins: Let me ask you this, okay? So basically, a business owner and a business founder, in my experience, generally did not come up through sales. They were not great salespeople. They became good at some level in sales because at first they were probably the only ones selling whatever it is they do. But later, as they scaled, they had to pass that off to somebody else. Okay. So the big question in my mind is, are business owners and founders, for the most part, great coaches and trainers or lousy coaches and trainers? Can we put a bucket together, two buckets? They’re great coaches and trainers; they’re lousy coaches and trainers. Which way would you tend to go, Paul? Which way would you go?

Paul Boomer: The one question I think I heard was, are owners typically good or not so great coaches? Is that correct?

Dennis Collins: Training and coaching, yeah.

Paul Boomer: Okay. In my experience, yeah, they are not good at coaching or training.

Dennis Collins: Okay.

Paul Boomer: Let me back that up actually a little bit. They’re good at training the thing that they are selling. Meaning, if they’re selling a service, they’re good at training how to use a service or what the service provides or whatnot, which can translate into great training for sales if they understand what they’re doing.

But most owners that I’ve interacted with, they became an owner either because they inherited it or because they’re really good at this one thing, and they said, “Hey, I should go do this. Leave this job and go do it over here.” And they started to do just that. Which is great, but there are also many other aspects of having a great company that require completely different, completely opposite knowledge. And to be good at what you do, being a business owner, you cannot do it all.

There’s no possible way, especially if you want to scale. Now, if you don’t want to scale, fine. That’s a whole different subject. But if you want to continue to scale, not everybody wants to or has to, you’ve got to bring people on from the outside who can do those things.

Dennis Collins: I can’t afford that. Come on, man. I’m trying to make a little profit here. So you’re saying…

Paul Boomer: You can’t afford not to.

Dennis Collins: Well, yeah, but you’re telling me that I’m not a good trainer, I’m not a good coach. Okay, I’ll buy that. I’m probably not, but I’ve got to go out and hire somebody. That’s going to cost me a bloody fortune. You guys are just trying to sell sales training, aren’t you? You’re just…

Leah Bumphrey: Okay, why is it that we are comfortable going to a doctor for expertise?

Dennis Collins: ‘Cause I’m sick.

Leah Bumphrey: I’m comfortable going to somebody who knows computers to help me set up my stuff. I am more than happy to let somebody else tell me why my four-wheel drive is not going into four-wheel drive.

Dennis Collins: All right.

Leah Bumphrey: But when it comes to something intangible that I just, for some reason, feel I should have magical abilities, I’m not willing to go to someone else. That just, it’s a license for failure.

Paul Boomer: Okay. So there’s a thing out there called immunity to change.

Leah Bumphrey: Oh, there’s another fabulous word.

Dennis Collins: Boomerism.

Paul Boomer: No, that is not boomerism. That is Dr. Richard Keegan.

Dennis Collins: You’re right. You told me about this before. Yes.

Paul Boomer: And they both teach at Harvard; they’re both professors. And everybody, just like our bodies, we actually have an immunity, well, we have an immunity to change. Our bodies are working in a certain way. And when we push it, it’s going, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, I don’t want to do that.” Like working out. We know we need it, but our body’s saying, “Yeah, it’s much better just to sit here and go.” Right?

The same thing happens psychologically. So it’s much easier; I can give myself excuses all day long saying, “I can’t afford that. No, it’s going to eat into my profit margins,” this and that. Because there’s an immunity, because it’s comfortable. Great. But what is really, honestly underneath that comfort level? What are you truly afraid of? It’s not about spending the money. It’s about possibly not looking the part that you think you should be owning.

Dennis Collins: So in other words, if you hire an outside sales trainer, and we’re talking sales today. But you hire an outside sales trainer, that shows that you’re incompetent.

Paul Boomer: For some people, yes. But they won’t admit that, and they may not even know it.

Dennis Collins: No. That’s an interesting take. So they take it personally that they should be able to do this and they can’t, so they’ve got to go hire someone else to do it.

Paul Boomer: Yes. And what’s even worse is that…

Dennis Collins: Back to the doctor thing.

Paul Boomer: Quite often they have other people in their lives saying and reinforcing that desire not to change. “Oh, you’re the owner. You can take care of that. You don’t need to hire somebody else.” And they internalize that and just disable that.

Leah Bumphrey: Is this a muscle you can exercise, Paul?

Paul Boomer: Oh, yes. It is definitely a muscle that you can exercise. But I will say it requires somebody who understands how to take somebody through the process to dig deep, because it is some deep work to understand, okay, why am I not doing the thing? Why am I not taking heart medicine when I know it’s the thing that’s going to save my life?

Dennis Collins: Oh, yeah. So here… Something just popped into my head based on what you guys are telling me, I think. One of the things that I deal with salespeople when talking or training salespeople is creating the fear of doing nothing. What is the fear? What’s going to happen if you don’t solve this problem? Okay. That fear, and it’s called FOMO sometimes- fear of missing out- what are you going to miss out on if you don’t solve this problem? Isn’t that what we’re talking about here? Isn’t that about how to create a case for hiring outside training?

Leah Bumphrey: Well, it’s even more dangerous than that because you’re recognizing an issue. You’ve recognized that this is something you have to fix, but you’re not willing to do it. So it’s more than just even a fear of missing out. It’s an active immunity to change issue that you’re just not willing to move on.

Paul Boomer: And so what it comes down to, I think, is a lack of trust that doesn’t start with bad intent, but it starts with a missing language. And when you have a language, then you’re able to do something about it. And when the language is missing, training turns into guesswork.

Dennis Collins: Okay, stop right there. Another one. Training turns into guesswork. Tell us more about that.

Paul Boomer: You don’t have a language. Leah often asks us to define. What is the definition of?

Dennis Collins: Right. Define your terms.

Paul Boomer: If you don’t have the terms, if you don’t have the language, then just hiring somebody to come in and train or yourself train just turns into guesswork because you’re floating around trying to do something that you don’t all agree on because you have different points of view.

Leah Bumphrey: And it might not be industry specific. It might not speak the language of your area. Up here in Canada, there are different specifics that are necessary and important that a salesperson transported from the southern states here wouldn’t necessarily get.

Dennis Collins: Interesting. Yeah.

Paul Boomer: And I feel like we’ve kind of gotten off course a little bit because we’re talking about pricing and people say, “Well, our price is too high.” Maybe what we should change it to is we don’t know where the trust broke down. In my opinion, it’s about trust. We don’t know where the trust broke down in the buying process. They’re trying to figure that out, and they don’t know how to figure that out. And when price is blamed, it usually means that…

Dennis Collins: With the customer you’re talking. The customer.

Paul Boomer: Right, right.

Dennis Collins: Not inside the business. To the customer.

Paul Boomer: No, it can be inside the business too. But yes, the customer out here I’m talking about. Sorry. But when price is blamed, it usually means value wasn’t experienced, but it was only explained. Right.

Dennis Collins: Ooh, there’s another good one. Value was explained but not experienced.

Leah Bumphrey: And that comes down, that makes me think of storytelling, which, of course, we’re sponsored by WizardAcademy.org, which is all about stories as kind of a portal to what’s next. So we can all think, and we’ve identified different areas where people do this, but having a story and having business owners be very specific with someone who knows how to pull that language out.

Paul Boomer: Yeah, because pitching is loud, right? Pitching is loud, but trust is quiet. And quiet things are harder to track. If you can’t articulate why buyers don’t trust enough to proceed, the price becomes the default explanation. Again, that’s the insulation from the bigger problem.

Dennis Collins: And that’s the easy thing to blame. Exactly. That’s, “Oh, it costs too much.” So should I, as a business owner, go out and hire – is there a sales trainer that helps you understand how to build value? Is that what I’m hearing? That’s who I should hire. I need to do something.

Paul Boomer: It doesn’t, actually, no. This is contrarian a little bit right here.

Dennis Collins: All right.

Paul Boomer: You don’t need a sales trainer. Not yet. Because, as I believe, again, this confession shows a bigger issue, and that issue starts at the top. The person at the top is not clear; either they aren’t clear or haven’t clearly articulated what they’re so clear about to everybody else. So therefore, you have people saying, “Oh, it’s the price, it’s the price,” right? You don’t need a sales trainer yet. You need somebody to get in the head of the owner to yank the stuff out and say, “Okay, how far have you really thought about this? How much have you really thought about this? And how much have you actually communicated consistently to your staff?” Until then, you can hire sales trainers, and yes, you’ll make progress most of the time. Not all the time, but most of the time.

Dennis Collins: No, not all the time.

Paul Boomer: But until you have clarity from the owner and from the leadership team, sales training only goes so far.

Dennis Collins: So you’re getting back to, you know, how many times we talk about clarity in these episodes?

Leah Bumphrey: Yep.

Dennis Collins: I’ll bet if you go back and listen to all the podcasts in this series that we’re doing, I’ll bet the word clarity is the most often repeated word. Would that be a fair statement?

Leah Bumphrey: I think so. There’s also something, something really basic that we’re ignoring, you guys.

Dennis Collins: What’s that?

Leah Bumphrey: Are they too expensive?

Dennis Collins: Aha!

Paul Boomer: Aha. 

Leah Bumphrey: Okay.

Paul Boomer: That’s very valid. That is very valid.

Leah Bumphrey: Just because we’re going in, and I know we work with many clients and it’s high value propositions and they are the highest value and the most expensive and for a reason. But I’ve also worked with people, and it’s, “I’m sorry, you are pricing yourself out of this market,” or your price is not a reflection of the service or the actual product that you’re doing. This stuff is crap that you’re getting built overseas and bringing it in. Is it too expensive?

Dennis Collins: Wow. How do you determine that?

Leah Bumphrey: That’s where you’re talking to yourself; again, clarity comes from communication. You talk to your competition, you talk to your staff, you talk to your manufacturer or where this is coming from, and you do a marketplace analysis.

Paul Boomer: So not only are we asking our listeners, you, to comment on this, but also in the description of this podcast, you will find a downloadable PDF, The Founder & Small Business Owner Sales Trust Playbook. And the principle number four is titled “Price is the final chapter, not the first argument.” Right. Download it. Download it, read it, ingest it, understand it, the rest of it, and this will all start making much more sense than we’re already attempting to do.

Dennis Collins: Well, we think we’re making sense.

Paul Boomer: We think we’re making sense, yes. But go download that. You’ll find that link in the description of these podcasts. But I want to start wrapping this up because you’re absolutely right. Price may be the actual issue, but you have to understand, okay, is it? How do you do that? What do you do with that? Can you go up? Can you go down? Things like that. What do you each get out of this conversation?

Dennis Collins: Well, I’ll tell you what my experience is. My experience is that it’s usually not price. That is a false response from salespeople who have not learned how to create value. Is it impossible to be on price? Not impossible, but it’s rare that your price is too high. If it is too high, you didn’t do your homework in the first place, and shame on you for mispricing it.

A couple of phrases that stuck out to me: value explained but not experienced. Wow, that’s powerful. I explained the value, I walked you through it, but I didn’t tell you the story, did I, Paul? I didn’t tell you the emotional story of someone who realized the emotional value of what we sell. Value was explained but not experienced. And price may be too high, but I would say, in my experience, that’s usually not the case.

And training can only do so much. We talked about mindset; we talked about clarity. If you adopt any type of training, particularly sales training, you better have a very tight definition of what you want to accomplish and how it’s going to be installed. The biggest problem I’ve seen from small business owners is doing a one-off training event, a day away. We go out, and we have a party, and we learn, and tomorrow 70% of it is already forgotten. That’s a waste of time and money. If you want to just have a party, go ahead, don’t even bother with the training ’cause you’re wasting your money.

Paul Boomer: Leah, bring it home.

Leah Bumphrey: I think that sales, I’m sorry, business owners, we deal mostly with family businesses. I know business owners that mortgaged their homes, who borrowed money from their aging parents, who put everything they and their spouse had into buying out their parents. My heart is with business owners who are family-run businesses, and as they grow, sometimes it’s hard to even recognize them because they get so big.

But with that has to come the realization that you can’t do everything; you don’t know everything. There’s power in people helping. And that applies to business; it applies to real life that we live every day. If you’re not willing to ask for help, if you’re not willing to be vulnerable, man, there’s only so much you’re going to be able to scale. And that’s not where I am. I want to help people, and I know, gents, you too. We want to help people go like, “Wow, I didn’t know how easy that could be.” That’s fun.

Dennis Collins: I love how Leah packages things. You’re a good packager. Okay, well, don’t forget to follow us, like us, subscribe. But most of all, as Boomer pointed out earlier, please, we love your comments. And argue with us. Tell us we’re full of beep. Maybe we really…

Leah Bumphrey: Not me, not me.

Dennis Collins: Well, you can tell me, I don’t care. I’ve been told that so much in my life, I’m immune to it. So we’d love to hear from you, and we’d love you to join us on every episode of Connect and Convert. I’m Dennis, the good-looking one is Leah, and the smart one is Paul. Okay? It’s Dennis, Leah, and Paul. We are Connect and Convert.

Just so you know, we have spent decades listening to small business owners and founders just like you. We’ve listened in to their fears, their confessions, and we’ve worked with their teams. So in this podcast, we talk about only real fears, real pressure, real moments that decide whether a business is going to grow or quietly stall. This is where those conversations finally happen, right here. You’re safe on Connect and Convert. We’ll see you next time.

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