7 Minutes to better Selling Podcast Ep. 22

Welcome to the 7 Minutes to Better Selling Podcast

I'm your host, Colin Lake, President and Founder of Developing the Next Leaders. Hey, Colin, thanks for having me

Yeah, I'm thrilled you're here. And we'll get caught up in a second from our personal perspective

But Tim is the National slash International Business Development Lead for Pilot

which he'll tell you a bit more about it. But we are on the heels of Memorial Day

And I think it's important to note, Tim, hopefully you can share a bit more about that in your past

Tim has done a wonderful job at serving our country over a long, long period of time, multiple times coming back in to serve our country

So, Tim, thank you for your service. Absolutely. I appreciate you having me on in reference to Memorial Day

Yeah, I spent 22 minutes. How the heck do you get to where you are today

You've done some amazing things over the last 25 years. How did you get here? I spent 22 and a half years serving the United States Navy

I've spent 4,000 flight hours flying in the C-130s and spent about a bunch of time overseas

but about 85 different countries. I went in the Navy in September of 92

It's almost 30 years ago. So I served in the 90s, the 2000s, and the 2010s

It gave me a unique background to where I am today and that I dealt with people all over

the world, internationally, nationally. So having spent four thousand flight hours in the air, I mean, just imagine the time interacting with people

I mean, thousands of different people. And one of the things that I chatted with you about is we were actually rated for our customer service because we had passengers on our aircraft

And that kind of led me to where I am today. We used to get paper documents about zero to ten rating about how we interacted with our with the crew and the passengers and the like

And then towards that time when I got out they were using phone applications to rate us So even the military gets rated on their customer service ability and how well they do their job So it was kind of unique and kind of leads to where I am

today. And so Tim, you're taking people from like point A to point B and like it's perhaps like

other military and they're rating you on how like how that whole process went

Absolutely. Was it comfortable? Was it timely? Did they do a good job that the people that were

serving them that they seem professional. I mean, think about it. You're going from

you know, the Middle East to California and you're taking almost days to get there

You wanted to make it to be a comfortable, enjoyable experience regardless of the situation

There were times we were taking people out of really hot areas and they wanted to get the heck

out of there. Oh my gosh, that's just so cool. Okay. So, so maybe dovetailing from that thought

is you come into this sales world with all of that life experience

And so you see the sales world from a different perspective, which is why I'm so excited to hear your perspective

So the sales world is under pressure to an extent. People are like, I can get your information

I don't necessarily need you to tell me about your product. I can figure that out on your website

So what from an opportunity perspective have you recognized or would you suggest other people should pay attention to

that salespeople have today? I mean, the most important thing is establishing a relationship

a valuable relationship on both ends. Everybody, every successful company out there today uses a

CRM system, a customer relationship management system. The most important part in my mind is the

R, is the relationship. I look back on my time in the military. I look back in my time in the

private sector and it's those relationships i found so i find so valuable at the end of the day

the selling experience are you going to go to somebody you don know are you going to go to somebody you don like are you going to go to somebody you think of as a friend And the beginning of that relationship beginning of that sales experience is hey I starting a friendship Think about that

It's valuable on so many different areas. One, yes, they're going to go to and buy from a person

that they think of as a friend, but they're also going to be honest with you. When you make a

mistake, who's the first person to tell you on a normal basis? It's your friend. They're going to

tell you, hey, you didn't do this right. And they're going to be able to fix it for them

Oh my gosh, you're even building up the relationship even more. Let me ask you this, Tim. I listened to a podcast from Ryan Rosillo. He's a sportscaster on ESPN and

I think other places as well. He had Charles Barkley on there, Charles Barkley, the NBA basketball

retired NBA basketball player. And he said, if a normal person wants to strike up a friendship

with you, how do they do it? And Barclay's answer was, they can't. They can't. I'm not just going to

strike up a relationship out of thin air with someone I don't know. So using that as the

backdrop, how do you, like you come from 21 to 22 and a half years of service from the country

and you come into the sales world, how do you strike up relationships quick? Like

how do you make that happen fast, like in the introduction phase of the conversation

It's solving a problem more often than not. A person is going to come to you

especially in my world where I sit now in the travel industry, they have a problem, they have an issue

they need to fill a gap in there. If I am initially able to fill that gap, it almost doesn't even come down to price anymore

It comes down to, that's great, I need this fixed right now. At the end of the day, being a problem solver for folks that have

I mean, even million dollar issues on the horizon, I mean, how much more valuable can a person be for that entity

that industry, that organization? Yeah, that is really valuable perspective. And here where we on the exact same wavelength I got to do a little bit of research If I going to reach out to someone and try and strike up a relationship with them so that I can ultimately be you know they can be a client of mine I can sell them something I have to like do enough research to identify like where the issues may lie or may be and then come in as that resource to provide that because that the ultimate building block of trust

Like, I've solved something that was unsolvable up until now. And that's that building block of trust, which, of course, trust builds relationships

And you just picked up something. You're doing research to be able to be available to your customers. If you enjoy that, if that's in your world, regardless of your industry, if you get down to the granular data of what's going on, what's coming up on the horizon, if you enjoy that, which I love

I mean, I had to learn about a multimillion dollar aircraft out of the blue, you know, 20 years ago and become a subject matter expert

And this just leads into what I'm doing today. I need to know. And if you're if you're available, if you're, you know, energetic about gaining that new knowledge on a regular basis, you're going to love your job

Tim, how do they how do they find you? How do they find more about pilot? How do they find out more about you in terms of getting connected with you

Yeah, we're all over the Internet. We're we're on Twitter. We're on LinkedIn. Pilot.com is a great resource. And just to give you a visual, our number one

product that we like to sell is our sequential LED flares. It's just a good visual right there

This replaces the old Fusey flares that used to have to light off the side of the road. You see

police officers at an incident on like on the turnpike. This replaces those. And the cool thing

about it now, and I talked about it earlier, is connectivity. So if you just Google that

there's that type of information, Pilot.com. We got some really good videos on there

and Tim at pilot.com is my email address. You can reach out to me

Yeah, please do reach out to me. How about like LinkedIn? Are you on social

Is LinkedIn? I am on LinkedIn. I post on a regular basis. Our videos are all over there

Check us out on YouTube, pilot.com. We try to make our safe as available as possible

on social media