So, they called security on me. I couldn't believe it. Hi, my name is Dave Lorenzo.

This is the Inside BS Show, and today we're talking about the three most important aspects of consultative sales, but I have to tell you, I was shocked when they called security on me. You see, here's the situation. I was a big ticket consultant.

I was an outside sales rep, and my inside sales partner had made an appointment for us to go see a company called The Casual Mail. Yes, that's the actual name of the company, The Casual Mail. They made clothing for people who were irregular sizes, well, men who were irregular sizes, so tall men.

They called them husky men, and as I say that, you know, I feel like I gotta unbutton my coat a little bit because I'm feeling a little husky myself. This company made clothing for tall and large men, and we were to meet with the executive vice president of marketing, and the deal was I had a product, I had a consulting product, and the name of the product was the CE11. It was a survey that we would do of their customers to tell them how to position their brand in a way that would make an emotional connection with their customers, and James set the appointment up for me.

He gave me the background on the people who we'd be meeting with, and I was very excited to have this meeting because this was a senior level person. The guy had budgetary authority. So we're ready.

We go into the meeting. I set up my computer in the conference room. We got a projector.

I've been carrying this computer and projector around from New York to Boston, all in meetings all day in Boston. I've been lugging this heavy equipment around. This is the early 2000s, so it wasn't a small projector.

It was a big deal. So I put it on the conference table. I set it up.

I get my presentation ready. I got my little remote control in hand, and I'm ready to start the presentation, and James is excited. I'm excited.

The executive vice president of marketing walks in with his assistant, shakes my hand. I introduce myself. I introduce James, and boom, I'm off to the races.

I'm doing the presentation, and I'm talking, and I'm gesturing, and I'm magnificent. I'm doing fantastically, and the executive vice president of marketing raises his hand, and he says, excuse me, I have a question for you. Will this help us connect with people who have purchased once but have never returned to the store? Oh, certainly, Mr. Executive Vice President of Marketing.

That's on slide 56, and I'm on slide 12 now. Let me get to that when I get to that in the presentation, and I continue on, and I'm demonstrating, and I'm presenting, and there's animation in the presentation, and it's beautiful, and James is sitting next to me. He's looking at me adoringly, applauding, saying, oh, you're doing a great job, and the guy goes, one more thing.

I just wanna know if this will help us reengage those customers. Will we be able to do it in a way that gets them back in the door and increases the lifetime value of the relationship? Yes, as I said, Mr. Executive Vice President of Marketing, that's on slide 56, and I'm now on slide 18. Give me a chance to get to that, and I'll be happy to get to it as soon as I can in the presentation, and again, more animation, more slides, more graphs, more data.

Finally, the guy says, Mr. Lorenzo, all I wanna know is can we reengage these customers, get them back in our stores, and get them to spend some more damn money, and I go, Mr. Vice President of Marketing, I understand. I'm on slide 22. I just got a few more slides, and I'll get to that, I promise.

The guy throws down his notebook, storms out of the room, yells to the assistant. The assistant comes after him. I look at James.

James looks at me. The presentation was going great, right? Yeah, Dave, it was going really well. You were doing those animations on the slides.

They were fantastic, and your presentation. I've never seen you do better. You haven't made any mistakes at all.

All of a sudden, into the room walk two security guards, and they say, sir, I'm sorry, but you're gonna have to leave. And I said, what? I said, we were just here speaking to the Executive Vice President of Marketing. He just left for a second.

We're gonna finish our presentation. Sir, he's very upset with you. Unfortunately, you're gonna have to leave, and I'm gonna have to escort you out, and I said, all right, all right.

Let me pack up my stuff. No, sir, we'll take you out to the front of the building, and we'll pack up your things, and we'll deliver them to you at the front of the building. You need to leave right now.

I mean, that is every salesperson's worst nightmare, being thrown out of a building by security, and people have worked their entire career, 40 years in sales, and they've never been thrown out. I was thrown out of that meeting, and the reason I was thrown out of the meeting is because I was stupid. See, there are three critical aspects of consultative sales, and I violated all of them.

I'm gonna share them with you right now, and I'm going to hope that you follow this guideline so you're never thrown out of a sales meeting ever again. The first rule of consultative sales is get your message right, okay? So what does that mean, get your message right? Well, before you walk into the meeting, you need to know what the person you're meeting with wants. You need to know why you're the right person to help them with the thing that they want, and you need to understand why they want it right now.

You see, when I got thrown out of that meeting, I was not paying attention to what this guy wanted. We didn't do the upfront meeting prep appropriately, so my message was wrong. My message was, look at my data, look at all the stuff we've done, look at how great we are.

I never focused on them, and your message has to always be focused on the client. The second thing is the audience. In this case, it was a client.

So your audience, who are they? Why are they stuck, and what happens if you don't help them get unstuck? So let's take the example that I gave you where they threw me out of the room. This guy was one of the most important people in this company. He was stuck because he couldn't increase the lifetime value of the clients.

We found out later that he was gonna get fired, and in fact, he did get fired because he couldn't increase the lifetime value of the client relationships. There's only so many tall and husky people out there. They need those people to come back over and over again in order to be successful.

This guy had his butt on the line. I didn't even know that. Had I known that, all I would've done was speak to that pain.

So he's the executive vice president of marketing. He's got buying authority. He was stuck because he needed to increase lifetime value of the client relationship, and what would happen to him if he didn't do it? He'd get fired.

He had urgency, and I blew it. The third element is the delivery. I was not focused on the tone of my presentation.

I wasn't focused on the timing, why it was important for me to be there right now, and I certainly wasn't focused on the right media. You see, in this situation where they threw me out of the room, my tone should've been more of a peer coming to him asking questions, and I should've been more concerned, more empathetic. Instead, I was authoritative, and I was delivering the greatest presentation the world has ever seen, and I was like a performer performing a play instead of a consultant asking questions.

The timing, it happened to be that this was eight weeks before a board meeting, and this guy needed to present something at the board meeting to save his butt. I was the solution. If I had known that the timing was right, an 18-month sales cycle would've shrunk down to like two or three weeks.

They would've given us the deal. I would've hit the ground running. He could've taken me with him to his board meeting.

He could've been successful, and then the media. I used this slide presentation, this projector and PowerPoint slides in a big conference room, and there were only four of us sitting there. I should've just had a conversation instead of using that mass media.

So when you're thinking about consultative sales, the most important aspects of consultative sales are your message, the audience, and delivery. Now, here's the thing. I know that may be difficult to remember, so I'm gonna give you an acronym, and you're gonna think of this story of me getting thrown out of that boardroom.

The acronym is MAD. The guy was mad at me, and he went and got security and threw me out. I'm probably the only salesperson to ever get physically thrown out of a meeting by security, and the guy was mad.

And think of mad when you think of consultative sales. Message, audience, and delivery. Now, if there's one secret to success that I can share with you, when it comes to your three aspects of consultative sales, if you can find a way to wrap all three of those up in a story like I did today with the story of me getting thrown out of that meeting, you will find that your consultative sales strategy works very, very well.

If somebody, if you ask people a question, and you can answer that question and share a story with them, they'll remember the story, you'll connect with them on an emotional level, and you'll be viewed as someone who's a peer who's consultative and who's looking to help them. If you want more great tips like this on consultative sales, you're in the right place. I've got a video for you to watch right now.

I want you to click the video that's filling in right below me. That video there is a video about identifying your ideal client. This will make it much easier to employ these three aspects of consultative sales.

Click that video about identifying your ideal client right now, and I'll see you there.