Michael Webb:                 B2B sales and marketing works to find the highest quality prospects, reach decision-makers and sell value. Operational excellence uses data and systems thinking to make changes that cause improvement and eliminate waste. My name is Michael Webb and this is the Sales Process Excellence podcast. In the next 30 to 40 minutes, we're going to destroy the myth that these two groups conflict and show you how to bring both strategies together to create more wealth for your company and your customers.

Michael Webb:                 Hello, this is Michael Webb and I am thrilled today to be able to introduce you to Bob Lambert. Bob is the president and I believe co-founder of Samurai Business Group. Is that right, Bob?

Bob Lambert:                     Yep.

Michael Webb:                 Okay. Boy, we've known each other since my days back in Chicago more than 10 years ago. Please tell the audience what Samurai Business Group does and how you got to this point.

Bob Lambert:                     Well, thanks Michael, first of all, for having me on. You're right, we've been friends and trying to conquer this thing called sales and metrics and all the rest of it, but Samurai Business Group was started up in '01. It was my fourth startup company, which is no longer a startup, and for the last close to 20 years what we've done is flipped the coin on the whole sales process, and that is about how people buy versus how you sell them. I jokingly tell people today, I feel like Willie Nelson, that it a 25 year overnight hit. Because all of a sudden he was a big ... We've been talking about this for over 20 years and all of a sudden we're seeing the direction of things starting to change at the buyer's journey.

Bob Lambert:                     It's about the buy and all that stuff. But what we set out to do, Michael, back then was to change really what classic sales training had been. My partner and I had been through a lot of sales training, a lot of leadership training, and we just kept thinking it was going against what we really basically want to do, and that was relationships with human beings. Because when you boil it all down, and the whole essence of what we're talking about here is exactly that, because human beings are buying something. And so through neuroscience and behavioral science and a lot of studies, not our own stuff because it wasn't self-serving, is taking the viewpoint of the buyer when they're making this decision to buy. What that really started to manifest itself in, there is a process. There's a system people go through all over the planet pretty much all the same type of way that they go through it, but there's no two people that do it the same way, and you won't do it the same way a second time.

Bob Lambert:                     So there's a discreet way that you go through this process and we blocked that out in our buying decision model. We've had the privilege, the honor now of being affiliated with DePaul University for over 18 years and their Center for Sales Leadership, that is the number one sales curriculum in the country now, has been for some time leading the charge. When we started with them only 30 colleges and universities had even a sales class or curriculum. Today there's over 160, so we're very proud of the fact that we were invited in to be a part of that curriculum and then also invited in about six years ago to put together a semester-long case based on the buying decision model that we created.

Michael Webb:                 It's a very successful track record. I've already got three questions here in my head I want to ask you about. Let's start with this one that we had mentioned before we got on the show here. The idea is, there's been some substantial sea changes in the market, in the economy in the last 20 years, and as you're pointing out, the way that you sell seems to have changed. What are the big changes that you've seen, and why are they such challenges?

Bob Lambert:                     Well, without question, 1995 was a pivotal turning point. When we published the book in 2010, How to Put the Wind Back in your Sails, it really was an introduction of how the internet has impacted sales. It's really mitigated the whole sales process, the whole upfront process. Up until '95 if you want to buy something, generally speaking a buyer would ... I'm talking about the marketplace and corporations. Business to business, they would have to invite salespeople in to get the information because they had the keys to the kingdom.

Bob Lambert:                     That turned dramatically with the internet, with all the Google and the information that's available now. Buyers know more about you, your products, your services, your competition, your pricing before you even walk in the door. So you better be prepared when you're walking in there to find out through a discovery process what is it that the buyer is really looking for? They'll tell you, if you'll let them. Our method facilitates that. When you start thinking about focusing on human beings and not on products or services, that was a big tipping point, because buyers today want to understand what you're going to do for them. What's in this for me if I do business with you? They're not doing any business with anybody they don't trust. So fundamentally what we get to is the relationship, because corporations don't buy, people do. They buy for their own reasons and they buy in their own self-interest.

Bob Lambert:                     And so through the body of research and the work we've done, and of course thousands of people we've had through the program, this becomes really a self-revealing thing, once people start to realize when you get on that side of the table and you make this a joint thing, it's not a we/they thing, it's us versus them, it's we together are going to help to find some kind of a resolution, a solution to some of these issues you're having. What we've identified is three apparent reasons why somebody will even have a conversation with you that lead to three what we call compelling reasons why they'll buy. We know now through empirical data and also studies now that people buy do buy emotionally; they intellectually justify that decision. What that looks like is basically that when you are emotionally connected to something and you can talk about any of a number of things that you're emotionally connected to, even the most hardcore procurement agents I've interviewed and been with will relate that, because when I start to share with them, the salespeople have called in, the ones you bought from what is distinct about them?

Bob Lambert:                     Invariably it's a human connection. It's an emotional connection that they go to, why they buy from these people. It could be that they've got my back, they always have my interest at heart, they bring me new information. They are constantly thinking about us and ways to improve the business, outside of the scope of what they may even provide. I published an article. This is a freebie for anybody who wants it, called Beyond Trusted Advisor, Becoming a Trusted Asset. In...