In our 37th episode of #NutsAboutSales, we got some brilliant sales insights from Nick Cegelski, Founder of 30 Minutes to President’s Club.
Watch this amazing episode to learn his golden rule in sales and his best sales tip, to understand why he thinks the product demo is like a symphony and to hear about the embarrassing time his sales demo environment collapsed when he had flown to a sales meeting.
Watch the video or read the transcripts below:
What’s your name and where do you work?
My name’s Nick Cegelski. I work at an organization called 30 Minutes to President’s Club. I’ve sold software my whole career and I’m based in Southern California.
What’s the craziest thing that happened to you during a demo?
We once had a total system outage of our demo environment. Nothing worked at all, and I’ve gotten on an airplane to fly and meet this customer and so the meeting was for naught. And yeah, we didn’t get that business.
What’s your golden rule in sales?
The customer doesn’t care about your solution, they care about solving their problem. And so the foundation of every communication with them should come from a place of attack the problem, don’t talk about the solution.
What’s your biggest challenge when demoing?
I think about a demo as almost being a symphony. You’ve got so many different things that you’re trying to manage: The software itself, making sure what you show and talk about actually matches what the customer is struggling with. You might have multiple people in the room and so you have to manage different personalities. So I think it is navigating all of those things in a hyper-intense environment.
What do you love the most about sales?
I deeply appreciate the psychology side of selling. I think there are lots of things that you can do on the psychological level to get the other person to lean in, and commit, and figuring out how to do that and how to do that without changing who you actually are to me is really fascinating.
What’s your best sales tip?
My best sales tip is to use the right tool for the job. The best tool is a synchronous conversation with somebody and I think the best way to do that is by calling somebody. If they answer the phone, great, you have a conversation. If not, leave a voicemail and then direct to an email saying: “Hey, here’s why I called you. Here is what I want to talk about.”
How do you celebrate closing a big deal?
I usually just walk into the living room behind me where my girlfriend works, and I go “woo woo” until she says “all right you’re getting annoying now”, and then I go back into the office and I work on the next one.
Sell me a walnut?
Typically when I meet with Heads of Marketing at the end of their workday they are exhausted from doing interviews with people like me who ramble and ramble and ramble, and they don’t even have a chance to eat and so I have no idea if this is even relevant for you but I’ve got some walnuts if you’d like to see a demo of how they work.
