If It Feels Like Selling, You’re Doing It Wrong
- Susan Tatum
- Jul 14
- 31 min read
Veteran sales leader Anthony Mayo joins Stop the Noise to explain why real selling doesn’t feel like selling at all. With 40 years of experience - including deep work with emotional intelligence and the DISC framework - Anthony shares how to lead conversations with empathy, curiosity, and presence. If the idea of selling makes you cringe, this episode will show you a better way: one that builds trust without pressure and wins business without pitching.
Notes from the Show
Selling is just effective communication. When it’s done right, it creates alignment - not resistance.
Don’t rush to solve. Jumping to a fix before understanding the real issue kills trust and credibility.
EQ beats ego. Emotional intelligence helps you read people, ask better questions, and earn faster yeses.
Adapt your approach. Understanding your DISC profile, and your buyer’s, helps you connect across styles.
Lead with curiosity, not credentials. Trust grows when people feel seen, heard, and understood.
Quotes to Remember:
“If it’s done right, it doesn’t feel like selling. It’s healthy communication creating alignment.” - Anthony Mayo
“We set the tone. If we’re curious and transparent, people usually show up the same way.” - Anthony Mayo
What’s Inside:
How is EQ used in sales?
Busting past sales “noise”.
Focusing on data before selling.
Engaging in communication for connection.
Mentioned in this Episode:
cell phone: 949-355-1950
Transcribed by AI Susan Tatum 0:00
Welcome back to Stop the Noise. I'm Susan Tatum, and today I'm talking with Anthony Mayo. He's a partner at Chris Jennings group, and he's been in sales for 40 years. But this isn't a typical sales conversation. Anthony and I got into what selling really looks like when you're focused on understanding people, not pushing solutions. We talked about emotional intelligence, how to have more natural human conversations, and why trying to solve too soon can actually work against you. It's packed with insight, especially if you're someone who hates the idea of selling so let's dive in.
Susan Tatum 0:43
Hi everyone. Welcome back to Stop the Noise, and today, my guest is Anthony Mayo, who is a partner at Chris Jennings group. Possibly more relevant to this conversation is that you've got 40 years of experience in sales. Sales,
Anthony Mayo 1:00
yes, makes me feel old when you say that. But yes, I'm turning 60 this at the at the end of this month. So
Susan Tatum 1:06
you've been in sales your entire life.
Anthony Mayo 1:08
Really have, Yeah.
Susan Tatum 1:09
So you spent some time with Sandler? I think.
Anthony Mayo 1:12
Yes.
Susan Tatum 1:13
Can you tell us just a little bit about that? Because there may be some folks on the on the listening that are not familiar with I know Sandler is one of the major sales models.
Anthony Mayo 1:22
Yeah, David Sandler is a fantastic story. I really enjoyed the team. It's a great group of professionals. Somewhere along the line, started a self development and sales program he got tied into. He ended up buying that company, and really, some of that company was tied to emotional intelligence and EQ is just starting to emerge in the early 70s, and I think it was Daniel Goldman's book. I have it here somewhere. Daniel Goldman's book Emotional intelligence, and the Nixon administration had adopted for the for terrorist negotiations, I think was FBI, and they started adopting some some of his concepts of emotional intelligence. And Sandler was really based in that and way ahead of the curve. Nobody was talking about that,
Susan Tatum 2:06
and I didn't know it went back that far
Anthony Mayo 2:07
It did. He was a early 70s. He's thinking he started franchising in the 80s, and a big part of his system is all the sales systems were headed this way. He was actually going the opposite way, and it was a lot about talking to professionals and people that weren't sales professionals, but there were engineers and architects and accountants who didn't have sales background. How to have some savvy read the room, talk with people and get them to to to business conversations. So it was fascinating to me, and he added all this structure and process and lots of psychology to it, and I really liked it, and I I love what they have done so.
Susan Tatum 2:42
you know, let's just jump into to this EQ and the and the concept of emotional intelligence. I do want to back up a minute, because before we started recording, you were saying to me that you looked at the you were looking at other episodes of the podcast, and you realized stop the noise, and that our listeners are likely to think of sales as equaling noise, and it's all a matter of perception I believe you said perspective. So then I'll ask you the question, How is sales not noise?
Anthony Mayo 3:11
Well, that's a good one. I think the way most people experience sales is it's noise. It has an agenda, it's irritating, it's self serving. I have landed on the spot, or landed of the mindset that selling is really communicating. If it's done right, it doesn't feel like selling. It's healthy communication, creating alignment. And I'm going to make alignment interchangeable with conflict, because rarely do people come together and totally agree, right? So through a conversation, you're creating alignment, and that is at the core what communication is. So I have really landed I don't even like to call it selling anymore. It's communicating. And somewhere along the line, I don't, I don't wish I could, I wish I could put my finger on it. I think it's the old Carney that's at the carnival that's selling snake oil selling became about me telling you how great my product was, and that's noise. That's irritating, honestly, yeah, I think, right,
Susan Tatum 4:05
yeah. I don't know anybody, well, maybe the old carnies, but I don't know many people that don't think of that as being irritating. But you're talking about conversation. I've heard sales referred to as change management, and I think of it to me, it's you're helping someone solve a problem, whether you're the solution or not. The person that the potential buyer has some kind of problem or some kind of opportunity that they want to take advantage of or get rid of. And where our conversations are about figuring out if we can help them, if not, who can
Anthony Mayo 4:37
I actually think it starts earlier than that, and this is where EQ comes into it. I think if you think about the idea of solving a problem, it's all logic, like, here's the problem, here's the solution. It's just a simple but the reality is, the human experience is that with a problem, it comes all this emotional parts of it, And so we have to UN we have to peel back the layers and get into like, well, what. Is the problem? What's your experience of it? How is it affecting you? And when you get into the emotional intelligence piece, you know, I joke around about this, because I get brought in to bring into organizations to help improve sales performance. And I'll talk about emotional intelligence, I'll say, just coming to this meeting, some of you had emotional experiences like, Why do I have to go to this meeting? This is silly. You know, I'm not doing anything wrong. Why are you going to make like we that's the that's the human condition. So there's an event, but we have an emotional experience tied to that event, and if we're not appealing that in our communication, we're not really getting to the real issues. I think.
Susan Tatum 5:34
I agree with you. I think you know, we well, when I was growing up in the technology marketing arena, years and years ago, it was all about feeds and speeds and that give them, you know, give them the data, give them the it's the logical decisions. These are business people. And then I think psychology began to show that, no, it's we're all people, and it's very emotional the way that we're making our decisions. And we'll often justify those with logic, but you can't, so you gotta have a mixture of both, I suppose.
Anthony Mayo 6:00
Well, yes, and there's been a lot of really cool stuff that's happened the last seven or eight years, with the neuroscientist studying how we make decisions, what we do. More and more, you're you're going to find your they're finding the neuroscience. You can look at it, but look it up, but that we make decisions emotionally and we justify them logically. And one of the reasons Sandler talked about pain. Pain is the strongest of all emotions. When I'm in pain, I get my fingers slammed in a door. Let me think like you'll do anything to get out of pain, right? Negative emotions cause us to change our behavior. So if we're doing business like you said, Change Management. Number two is fear. Fear is another very strong emotion, and it's, it's pain in the future. I'm afraid I'm going to be in pain, right? The lowest of all emotions, and you'll hear people say it in selling and communicating is, are you interested in? Are you interested in? Is a very low, non moving emotion. It's curiosity. Maybe. So it goes pain, fear, pleasure, now, pleasure in the future, and then interest. So the scale of getting people evolved emotionally about their experience of a situation or event EQ means we have to explore that. We have to actively connect, listen, communicate, and understand where the other person is coming from. And it's I've seen it happen a lot. If you solve too early and you don't really understand someone. You just lost all credibility, right? I was just at the doctor, and I was telling him about some of the things that I want to do at Kaiser, by the way, when my wife hates and I've had the most amazing experience with them, and I said, Hey, you know, I've got this guy goes, Okay, great. He goes, let's do this. Let's do some blood work and see what's happening before we try to solve anything. And I was glowing. I'm like, That's the perfect answer. So I went down and got blood. You know, they gave blood and did my blood work, because he wants to analyze what's happening and what Lyme experience is and what the facts are, before we start just throwing solutions at it.
Susan Tatum 7:54
I you know, someone somewhere recently. I mean, not too recently, but not too long ago, was seeing where one of the things that consultants can be guilty of seeing from the buyer's side is walking into a meeting thinking they already know the answers and know what the solution is before they even listen to the buyer.
Anthony Mayo 8:13
Yes
Susan Tatum 8:14
He's laughing at me for those of you who
Anthony Mayo 8:15
laughing with you, not laughing at you, there's another sales methodology. I believe it was the Challenger sale, great sales methodology. A bunch of researchers. They did two books, Challenger sale and challenger customer, the follow up book, Challenger customer, I think, came out in 2015 or eight I can't remember
Susan Tatum 8:30
right over there on the shelf. Yeah.
Anthony Mayo 8:32
And in the in the research they did in challenger customer, they interviewed the buyer and they interviewed the seller. And one of the greatest pieces of data from that book was, and I'm 90% sure it was, that book was, hey, you met with that person. How well did they fix your problem? I'm sorry. They interviewed the seller first. How well did you help that person fix their problem? And it was north of 85% Oh, yeah, 85% of time I helped them. Now they talked to the other person and they said, How well did you? Did that person help you? It was under, I think, 15% so think of the Think of the gross miscommunication that just happened from both sides. I wonder if they were even the same room, right? And what happens is, the seller has an agenda and talks about features and benefits and never actually listens, listens to what the other person says, and there's a disconnect, and they shut off. It's very common. I see it all the time.
Susan Tatum 9:26
What do we do? How do we avoid that?
Anthony Mayo 9:31
I think there's a couple very specific tools that you have to have. And I read a lot of books, so I'm a big I'm big by pull from all the different things that people have done. And I think in the Book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he talked about the fifth habit, which is seek first to understand then to be understood. Most sales people do that backwards. That book was written 20 plus years ago, way ahead of its time. And I think you have to go into a call with a seek first to understand what's happening, logically, problem and emotionally. Okay, so I think that's one of the first things I teach a lot of my salespeople, is they say SFTU Seek first to understand, okay, then we need to ask questions and we need to be present,
Susan Tatum 10:15
which means actually listening.
Anthony Mayo 10:16
Well, actively listening? Yes. So presence is the precursor to active listening. Active listening means I ask the question. When I get an answer, I can feel that answer as if I was giving I can feel the emotion behind it, the impact of it. And there's some new research just came out probably four years ago. I just heard it. I can't cite the reference on it, but it's, I know it's on there. You probably find it on Google that when we actively listen to someone, the body sensation they experience is the same as love.
Susan Tatum 10:44
You get the dopamine kind of a thing.
Anthony Mayo 10:45
Yeah, yeah, when we're attentive and we're present and we're focused and we're asking and we're exploring, exploring and love show up in the frontal part, frontal lobe of the brain at the same time with the same release of brain chemicals in what we do. So if we seek first to understand and we explore and we ask questions and we actively listen. We totally change the environment of our communication with somebody.
Susan Tatum 11:07
So how do you, how do you establish the type of, I guess, trust or rapport that I mean, if you're I think people are probably more comfortable with talking about business pain at a certain level. They're not, maybe going to tell you all their secrets. But then if you start really trying to understand, well, what's going on behind all of this, and what does this mean to you? Mr. Buyer, how do you? How do you, how do you pull that off?
Anthony Mayo 11:33
It's complex. I'll add, today's buyer is the most intelligent buyer has ever existed on the face of the earth. So it's a definitely a higher level skill set than we've ever had. What I like to use as a guideline. I hope this isn't controversial, but I think women are innately way more emotionally intelligent than men, like maybe 10 or 15 years ahead of them, okay, I find that women naturally read emotions in a room better than men do in general. Okay, but I do coach a lot of men that say I want to become more emotionally intelligent. What do I do? And I do? And I will point them to disc. Disk is the most commonly used assessment tool, and it puts people in one of four quadrants. It's task driven, versus people driven impulsive, versus needing a lot of detail to make a decision. Each one of those people makes decisions based on different types of things. Okay, so someone's high task, low detail, their biggest fear is losing control. I'm going to assess where that person's at, and I'm going to talk about their experience of losing control of a situation and how that affects them, knowing that that's one of the things they're very sensitive to, and that starts the gateway of the emotional intelligence conversation.
Susan Tatum 12:36
So how do you do that? If it's one you don't know there was a there was an application, if it's still around, and I can't think of the name of it, but it would go and look at like, LinkedIn profiles and things like that, and then tell you was, it was a combination of disc and something else. It would tell you about their their personalities or whatever, and how to approach them. Often, I wonder what happened to those folks, but that seemed to me, I mean, that's a great thing to be able to know and understand before you get into a conversation with someone.
Anthony Mayo 13:04
I think you can tell if you do your homework and you understand your DISC profile. By the way, understanding your DISC profile is the most important, because you have a bias towards your DISC profile like you, anybody that's like you, you are like and when you're dealing with the opposite quadrant, you typically have a hard time communicating. Because for me, for example, I'm more people oriented than task oriented. Not a lot of detail to make a decision when I deal with people that are more task oriented and very detail oriented, we're on different universes.
Susan Tatum 13:33
to really be impatient.
Anthony Mayo 13:34
Yeah, I have to really adjust my approach to their style. But I do think I teach a technique to people that I think you can assess someone's DISC profile in under 30 seconds, if you know how to do tell. So what I do is, if you ask, if you think of quadrants like this, I try to put them above or below the line. So if this line is, this is task oriented, this is people oriented. And you ask them, How are their day? Is? How are you doing today? What do you think a high task person says? How do you think they answer that
Susan Tatum 14:00
they tell you what they had been doing, they're busy, or what they got accomplished.
Anthony Mayo 14:04
No, they're I'm fine, I'm good. Let's get to the task. I don't want to chit chat.
Susan Tatum 14:08
Oh no, chit chatting.
Anthony Mayo 14:09
Yeah. So they'll say things like, Hey, how's your day going? I'm fine. I'm good. That's how they always answer, without fail.
Susan Tatum 14:13
And their and their pen is, like, pounding on the table,
Anthony Mayo 14:16
yeah, they're ready to go, like, it's either task. I don't want to so you can tell they're above or below the line. And then below the line, if they're people oriented, and you say, Hey, how's your day going, they tell you everything about how their day is going. They're people oriented. Oh, my God, my teenage daughter is such a problem. I dropped her about high school, and it was the first day of school, and she was she didn't want even me to be dropping her off near the school, because she wanted her friends to see they tell you everything. So you you can determine pretty quickly if they're more task or people oriented, I think, and then the left to right. People that are typically people that are don't need a lot of detail to make a decision, and I'm like that are they talk fast? They talk fast because they don't care about all the details. However, people that need a lot of information to make a decision talk slower because each and every word matters. So you can assess somebody pretty quickly and get where they're at.
Susan Tatum 15:04
I think you know what came to my mind when you were saying that Anthony was the differences in the speech patterns of people just around the United States, where you've got someone from New York or something that's a fast talker. And then I come from the south, where people tend to be, draw things out a bit more. Now, I've been in California longer than I was in Georgia, but that's got to play into it some I would think,
Anthony Mayo 15:30
I don't know. Know that I noticed a difference between dialects. Once you get tuned into the emotional part of how people are wired, and we tend to really connect with people that are like us. It happens naturally. In fact, most salespeople sell to people that are just like them. If you look at data, the average sales person sells about 20 to 25% four quadrants I sell to the person in my quadrant. Yeah, the skill is to play at the higher level is that I can relate to everybody in the other quadrants. And that's the emotional intelligence. That's just the start of the emotional intelligence. And I want to make sure you and I are talking about EQ emotional intelligence. The big factor here is that if we're talking about logic and facts, it's often what people experience in the real world is they, they do a great job solving problems, but decisions delay and delay and delay and delay where, when you talk about and you get emotion involved, it drives you to make a decision more quickly. So you want to be setting up a conversation that you're talking about the emotions and the logic related to a problem so you fully understand it. And then you ask the person, do you want to address this issue? How important is it to you? And when they kind of get tied to the emotion and the logic piece that they need to address this it accelerates. And that's kind of the definition of EQ, is using emotion to escalate or de escalate a situation to drive you to the objective that you're trying to get done on both party sides,
Susan Tatum 16:48
and that that is really it's interesting that you mentioned that because, just because of the business environment that we're in right now, I have a lot of hear a lot of consultants talking about jobs that have been put on hold, or they've gotten through the selling process, and it's like, no, we're not, either not going to do this, or we're going to hold it until things change. Would a different approach have put the consultant in a better position of saying, if you're thinking about if there's an emotional tie to it,
Anthony Mayo 17:17
Well the I think there's some more context there that I would be careful about answering. But typically, I find, if someone's in pain, and you help them fully understand the impact of that pain or problem, or what I call their why, their why, that will accelerate and move happen very quickly, regardless of circumstances. If what I think you're suggesting is that currently, as we have changed administrations, and there's some doubt and fear in the market because of tariffs, and there's a mass fear in in the market of people are afraid. When people get afraid, they tend to go into a holding pattern, which is emotion changing decisions, exactly what we talked about.
Susan Tatum 17:59
That is a really good point.
Anthony Mayo 18:01
Yeah, yeah.
Susan Tatum 18:02
So what kind of questions, how does the conversation go when you're you know, typically like, do you? Do you have tips that we can you can share with us about, how do we, how do we get the conversation to where it's on a more emotional level?
Anthony Mayo 18:19
Yes, there's a lot to that. I'll break that into a couple areas, and I'm going to give you a specific answer based on a context. So there's initial contact that we meet someone at a networking event, or we're, you know, we bump into them at a golf tournament, or maybe we meet them through some mutual contacts. So there's initial contact that happens. I actually like, from the very beginning, even in the initial contact, to understand where somebody's coming from, what role they're in, and the kind of issues they face. That's where I'm heading. Now, there's many approaches, by the way, that you can use. I found this to be the most the one that's most effective early on. Okay, so there's initial conversation, and then there's first appointment. I actually think most of the magic happens in the first appointment. When I have I think it's 45 to 60 minutes to be in front of someone face to face. And if you've ever been in those meetings and someone just takes out their laptop and drops a big PowerPoint, 200 slides on you, it's, yeah, they
Susan Tatum 19:22
hate me now,
Anthony Mayo 19:23
kill me. Like, it's just like, kill me now, right? Yeah, and so it's what everybody hates, which is the noise. That's the point you make. Like, stop the noise. Stop the PowerPoint deck. Just leave me, go away, right? Oh, I just got an emergency. I gotta go, like, right? So that's what you just do not want to do. In fact, I'm not a believer that you should ever be solving people's problems until they're paying you. That's my personal philosophy, okay? And if you get to that, you'll start to see that life goes way better. So then what do we talk about? I think we have to talk about, hey, I'm in here for a reason, and we know that people hate to deal with salespeople. There was a study in a book called escaping the price driven sale. Some of people know that book because they introduced the idea of the trusted business advisor. Maybe you've heard that, and they said that the value of a salesperson in the beginning of a sales call on a scale of one to 10 is negative two, negative two. Yet they still meet with you think about that.
Susan Tatum 20:12
So there's a need there.
Anthony Mayo 20:14
Well, we don't know there's something going on, but they don't
Susan Tatum 20:17
really bored
Anthony Mayo 20:18
Well, now I don't find that bored people meet with salespeople for fun. I've rarely seen that, but so they're giving us a shot to understand and and I like to if I know their business, I've done their homework, I like to begin to seek first understand and say, Hey, we've got some time blocked. I'm not sure if I completely understand why you want to meet. Help me understand what's happening, why you want to chat, what issues you're facing. I just put it, I start with that. And people tend to love to talk about their issues and their problems. Has been my experience. It's it permeates all, all barriers, I think,
Susan Tatum 20:49
yeah, and the chance to talk about ourselves, that's another dopamine hit, or whatever you call the right thing. But, um, that the way that, that I heard you phrase that, Anthony, it sounded like this is a person that came to you, so maybe the marketing engine was driving someone in. What if you started the conversation? And I know that you advocate some cold outreach to get to to people to see if they want to talk with you,
Anthony Mayo 21:15
I could talk about hours on cold outreach. I actually don't think it matters. And I've wrestled with this for probably seven or eight or nine years. I have quite a few couples that I've known that have been married over 30 years, that hated each other when they first met somewhere, a spark happened that changed from hate to connection, right? Yeah, so I always wondered what that was. I think of a particular friend of mine, and they were both from Chicago, and they're riding in a car to California, and they hated each other. By the end of the ride to California, they were like, wow, there's this person. Might be someone I could date. I think if we seek first to understand, we explore their world, which is a term that we use. We ask questions, we listen, we're present, we actively listen. It changes the dynamic in the relationship, no matter what how it started, and that's our job to be that person. And I heard a stat from one of my friend's wife is a psychologist or a therapist, and she said that 90% of people in America feel like nobody listens to them. What a great opportunity to enter innate communication with somebody.
Susan Tatum 22:16
gotta start it somehow, though, right?
Anthony Mayo 22:19
Yeah, I like to ask questions like, Hey, I don't know what it's like to be on your side of the desk. Tell me a little bit about your role. I might start with some situation questions I don't come out of the gate. Like, tell me what your pain is that that can be weird, although I've had that happen.
Susan Tatum 22:30
Or what keeps you up at night?
Anthony Mayo 22:33
Well, that's, yeah, that's an old one that people use just help me understand it. What kind of issues do you face daily? You know, what kind of problems are you facing that are related in our business? And if I know their business and what my business is, I'll introduce those. So I work as a consultant, and I consult sales and sales teams and owners, and one of the things I used was typically, when I'm talking to someone in a sales organization, they're telling me they have these kinds of problems. They're doing lots of proposals and not getting answers. The environment's super competitive, and they know how to separate themselves from the competition, and they're wondering if they're gonna ever be able to make enough money in this profession of selling to have a solid career. And I go, I can't imagine you have any of those problems, do you? And I just drew you into a story. And you have people say, oh my god, I have that all the time. I'm like, really? Which one or else they'll go, Are you videotaping me? How do you know I have those problems? Because I know what the market and the people that I work I know the problems they have that I help them fix. So if you're a professional in security, or you're a consultant that deals with revenue and systems, or maybe you're an Eos, there's all kinds of consultants, you should know the kinds of problems that people are experiencing at a logical level, but what you have to explore still deeper is the emotional effect, the full impact of that problem on that person that you're in front of. And I hear things like, we just change marketing companies. I'm the new person to marketing. If I don't get this right, I'm gonna lose my job, and I'm terrified. Or I remember talking to someone who just recently became the CEO of about $100 million company. He said, Well, we haven't made a profit in three years. This is my only year to make a profit, and then they're going to terminate me as a CEO. So I got to make it happen on this one. And if you don't create the space and the room and be the human being that can have that conversation, it's a missed I think it's a huge missed opportunity. And I find that leaders have very few people that they can pour their hearts out and talk to,
Susan Tatum 24:19
right? The higher the higher up, the fewer people, huh?
Anthony Mayo 24:22
Yeah. So I'm not, the higher up, the more I'm going to lean into those conversations. So I think it's a it's a mindset of, I'm going to be I'm going to seek first and understand I care about this person. I want to understand the problem and how it's affecting them. A good friend of mine just went through five hour surgery for prostate cancer, and I called I'm like, How are you doing? What are your fears? You need someone to talk to. That's part of being a decent human being, and it's communicating. It's not, Hey, are you taking Advil so you don't hurt as much? That doesn't fix the problem. That's not a human connection, is it? I mean, yeah, think about it, right? Yeah. He's like, I had a elevated PSA level. I'm terrified. I don't have any symptoms. And the doctor said, We gotta do a little surgery. Next thing, it turns into a five hour surgery, like, Oh my god. How you feeling? What's going on, Mike, are you okay? You need someone to talk to. I'm here for you. It's not much different than, you know, in any business
Susan Tatum 25:11
in a business, yeah, so because we are all humans, I think sometimes it's hard to be vulnerable, and maybe that's especially for guys or women too, because we've been pushed for so long that we can't act that way, that there's, there's a bit of a societal world worldwide issue with that. But I hear what I hear you describing is certainly a much more comfortable conversation.
Anthony Mayo 25:33
It can be, you know, we, we talked about my partner, Chris Jennings, and I talked a little bit about it, you know, he I made a comment, a comment of it, but our book is Conversations made easy, but we talk about, what's the problem you have? What's the impact of it? Do you have any money to fix this problem? Sometimes people don't even have money. Like, how are you going to make the decision on this? I'm convinced it's simple, basic communication. And the idea of pitching to people, forcing PowerPoints down their throat, talking about features and benefits. Here's the solution. Here's what you need. You should do this. That's an era of they worked in the 70s, maybe in the 80s. By the 90s, I'm convinced it was dead. And the new era is, I think, this idea of emotional intelligence, which means, here's what I think, how the other person experiences it, the buyer, if you will experiences as this person gets me, they understand where I'm coming from. They understand me mentally, they understand me emotionally. And because of that, I trust them. That's that's the right spot to be. The other side of that is they don't get it, and nobody wants to give their money to someone that doesn't get it,
Susan Tatum 26:38
or that's just trying to ram something down their throats.
Anthony Mayo 26:41
Yeah, well, still they don't get it. It's all about them. They don't get it. They're just trying to do a transaction and get me to buy something. And I have a running joke about this, that once I feel pressed, or I feel sales pressure, I take my right hand, I put it on my wallet, and I slowly back up mentally, physically, or both. And everybody does that, I'm convinced,
Susan Tatum 26:59
yeah, right, oh yeah. You just get it's like, yeah. It's a very negative feeling when you feel like somebody's forcing something on
Anthony Mayo 27:06
Yeah. And we have a saying in our what we talk about if you're honest and you're transparent and you're curious in a conversation, we believe people will show up the same way with us. If we're fake friendly and we're transactional and we're selfish. People will show up the same way.
Susan Tatum 27:23
You're gonna see right through it.
Anthony Mayo 27:24
We set the tone for that. I think,
Susan Tatum 27:24
what do you think it is that makes, I think a lot of consultants and experts feel like it's expected of them to command the conversation and kind of show off everything that they know and that we're learning turns people off.
Anthony Mayo 27:40
It's a great question. And so that the premise here, if I get it right, you just validate if it's true or not. What I'm saying is that, because I'm so smart and I know all the answers, I have great credibility, is a premise,
Susan Tatum 27:51
if I don't, that that's that's one, yeah, it could also be, if I don't, if I if not, if I'm not sharp, and have all the answers, then you're going to think, I don't know what I'm doing,
Anthony Mayo 28:03
and I'm going to say, that's a half truth, because what is credibility? So think about this. We actually talk about this a lot, what's the one thing? And I would whoever's listening to this, if you'd say, what's the one thing that when you say to people, they're like, Okay, I'm buying that's it. You just said it doesn't exist. There's no one thing you say that because it's so credible. Like, Oh, that's it. I'm buying right?
Susan Tatum 28:21
How much? What do you want?
Anthony Mayo 28:24
So we're building the case that you establish your credibility by we understand the problem so well, and we understand your experience of the problem so well, we're gonna even be better at the solution. So we cover it, and you establish your credibility there.
Susan Tatum 28:38
I hope everybody's listening, because I do, I do 100% believe that that's that's absolutely true.
Anthony Mayo 28:44
Yeah, I was just talking with my doctor, and he said, he said, Hey, have you done blood labs recently? I said, Yeah, I did them in October. And I said, I got him. He looked at him. He goes, those are pretty good. They don't look bad. He goes, October. That's like, eight months ago. Can we do another Are you okay doing another one? I love it, because he's like, Hey, let's just look at the facts. Let's understand what you're going because are you experiencing this or experiencing that? What are the endings you're concerned about? So let's do this. You run your blood, get it done. When I get them, I'll read through them, I'll send you a note, and let's get back together and talk. He could have solved he could have just said, Hey, I'm the doctor do this. And that's what a lot of us
Susan Tatum 29:17
I think a lot of doctors used to do that too, where a lot of them still do, but it I prefer the ones like you described that are that are like, let's not jump into anything too soon.
Anthony Mayo 29:26
Yeah, I think a lot of that. And remember that being the smartest person in the room, I think comes out of a sales methodology. Down in Texas, there's a guy named Tommy Hopkins, and Tommy Hopkins, Tom Hopkins, and he wrote a book called, I think it was needs based selling or something to that effect. He said you had to find people's needs and then show them that you're the smartest person in the room and solving it. And it was a sales methodology that was taught old, very old one. By the way, it was like probably mid 80s, late 80s, mid to late 80s that came up. And so, you know, a lot of what we see in the sales marketplace were sales methodologies. Dale Carnegie did the book, How to Win Friends and Influence people back in the 20s, and his premise was, people are going to spend money if they like you, they're going to spend it with you. So you get a lot of salespeople that are people pleasers, and they take that and that used to work until people feel like felt like they they realized they could take advantage of people and get into all this stuff for free, right?
Susan Tatum 30:16
Well, like you said, you got to be authentic.
Anthony Mayo 30:19
Yeah. Authentic is a really, really good word here, and authentically be we teach to be humble, curious and a little bit skeptical. I think it's the perfect posture for a sales professional or someone suck humble, because I don't want to come in and be the biggest thing in the room. Curious means I'm going to ask questions and explore little bit skeptical, because I'm going to call baloney. If I see baloney. You see it?
Susan Tatum 30:41
Yeah. Well, this is, this is really interesting. And I could talk to you for several more hours, but
Anthony Mayo 30:47
this is what I do, and I love it, like when the light goes on for people, they, I believe they transform. And I have, I've helped a lot of people do amazing things. I I'm thankful that the good Lord uses me to help them. I, I'll share one quick story with you. I was working with this guy was referred to him up in the northwest, same with Seth. And Seth had a family contracting business. Had never done that well. And I told him, Hey, I'd like to work with you. And I told him how much it was I could see him, kind of like, Oh, God, that's expensive. I thought, I don't think he wanted to work with me. But he goes, Okay, I'll try it for a little bit. And we had this discussion about all the leads that came in the web. He goes, I qualify these leads based on this data. And I go, Well, how do you know that's valid data? He goes, I don't I go, so you're just guessing. He goes, Yeah, they go, You mean, these people went on your website, they looked around, they looked at your product, and said, Please call me, and then you just throw them in the trash based based on some you don't even call them. Are you kidding me? And he's like, Yeah, I guess the way you put it that way, I hadn't thought about I said, So Seth, can you do something now, Seth had this funny statement. I'll never forget it. He said, most people wake up in the morning, they're excited about that. He goes, When I wake up in the morning, I'm excited about aluminum railing. He loves aluminum railing, right? That was his passion life. So I said, Why don't you connect your passion to what their Why is? And so I just want to call him like, Hey, this is Seth. You called our company. You put you want me to call you. I'm curious, why are you reaching out to us? What's your why? What's your issue? And you will know like that, if there's someone that's serious about your product or not, or their what the connection is. And so he did that, and he called me about three weeks ago. He goes, You're genius. You're absolutely a genius. I love what I do so much now I'm not even running the shop anymore. I'm not just selling full time. And after about, I don't know, 15 or 18 months working with Seth, he called me and he said, Hey, I just want you to know I've never made more than a couple $100,000 a year. I'm going to be in seven figures for the first time in my life. And I love what I'm doing
Susan Tatum 32:25
fantastic.
Anthony Mayo 32:26
Because his his objective was to help people. Because of his passion for lumen railing, it was his family business. It was passion of life, and he got to help people. To help people and connect with them. And so whatever you're doing as a consultant, I hope you're passionate about it, and I hope you're wanting to help people solve their issues and connect to their issues, and connect to their problems and their emotional experiences tied to that before you solve it. And I recommend you don't solve it until they're willing to pay you. Let them see your passion. Let them see that you care. And it just makes it more fun. It's never, it's never noise, it's music. Now, right? Because we talked about music versus, you know, Tommy Dorsey versus ad AC, DC at the beginning of our our conversation,
Susan Tatum 33:15
it's a big jump, a big jump. Well, do you any any last tips or advice to give the listeners and me.
Anthony Mayo 33:24
yeah, don't be afraid to fail. Go out. Be vulnerable. Go after it, and you're gonna crash and burn. And when you crash and burn, don't cry. Take out a pen, take out a paper, and say, What did I just learn from that? How would I have handled it different? And when you do that, you'll find you're dealing in the real world, how to interact in the market and with people, and you just it's a swing and a miss. And so next time you just make an adjustment, much of this is about your personal style and being authentic. And I can't tell anybody how to be authentically them. What's authentically me is not what's authentically you. They're just different. And so go out, put yourself out there. Be transparent, be vulnerable. Be humble, Be curious, be a little skeptical, be in that spot and just put yourself out there. And don't get so attached to outcome and results. You're on a journey of learning and help and figuring out how to help people, and not everybody wants help, right. And then you need to build better with time you build your own journey. I think you and I talked about this when we did kind of initial meeting. I believe it's why, what, how? Why is this important? What do I have for you, and how am I going to do it? How is the amazing journey of life that we're on? If you start with how you miss why and what
Susan Tatum 34:34
true? What am I trying to accomplish? What am I trying to solve? Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Well, thank you so much for joining me and sharing so much.
Anthony Mayo 34:44
I have loved interacting with you. I can see the wheels turning in your brain a little bit there about how to apply this stuff. So I like that. That's my passion in life. I have a life purpose that I've defined as inspiration to action, and I want to inspire people to take action for the passion. In their life so
Susan Tatum 35:01
well. And I think this will inspire people to think more about the emotional impact and how to be just more more comfortable and more real, and not feel like selling is noise, because it doesn't have to be.
Anthony Mayo 35:16
Yeah, it doesn't have to be. You're exactly right. You've hit that. And if there are people that actually like noise and think it's music, or you can listen to you, listen to Philip Glass or ACDC or metallic, and some people would actually think that's music I like some of it that I like. Other people would say, No way. Is that music? So, you know, a little bit of that's perspective
Susan Tatum 35:32
to each his own. Yes,
Anthony Mayo 35:36
yeah, yeah. Cool.
Susan Tatum 35:37
All right. Well, again, thank you so much. And if anyone I understand you don't work with independent consultants individuals. Or do I have that wrong?
Anthony Mayo 35:44
No, I will. I'll be open, just because of what my passion is to help people. So someone's to reach out to me. You can get to me at Anthony at Chris jenningsgroup.com, Chris Jennings is spelled like this, right here in the logo. And shoot me a note. I have a spot in my email that you want to meet and you can you can book. I have a green square in my signature that you can book a meeting with me if you want to chat. I'm happy to do that. Also. I have, you can reach out to my cell phone directly, 949-355-1950, if you have questions, or you want some support material, or whatever, much of what we've done was, was in the book. Like we do, we decided to argument what we've been doing for 10 years. We should write this stuff down. It's good, and you can get that on Amazon. So
Susan Tatum 36:30
Fantastic.Yeah, we will put those in the show notes, and enjoy the rest of Your day.
Anthony Mayo 36:34
I will, Susan, it's been a delight.
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