Deb Zahn: I want to welcome you to this week's episode of the Craft of Consulting podcast. So we are going to dig in yet again to sales because it is one of the most important things that you have to do in order to have a thriving consulting business. And I brought on someone who just released a fabulous book on this which is called Sell Without Selling Out, Andy Paul. And he's going to talk to us about an approach that not only is going to increase your comfort at selling your services and your products, but also the effectiveness by which you do it. And we get into all kinds of great nitty-gritty detail about how to do it and some of the specific strategies and techniques. So let's get started. I want to welcome my guest today, Andy Paul. Andy, welcome to the show.

Andy Paul: Deb, thank you for having me.

Deb Zahn: So let's start off, tell my listeners what you do?

Andy Paul: What do I do? Well, a lot of things actually. I have a podcast and I've been doing that for gosh, almost seven years now, Sales Enablement with Andy Paul. We're up to 1,040 episodes. Author, I just published my third book. A consultant speaker, the usual list of things.

Deb Zahn: And you are all about sales and how to do sales true to who you are?

Andy Paul: Yeah. I've been in sales my entire career, but I've served out on my own for gosh, 22 years now. And I worked with a wide range of companies from pretty small raw startups to Fortune 50 type companies.

Deb Zahn: That's great. And we're going to talk today about some of the good things in your book. And there are so many juicy things that we could pick from, but I want to start off with…because I just loved this when I saw it, the difference between, as you approach sales, selling out and selling in? Can you describe what the difference between those two things are?

Andy Paul: Yeah. It really starts with sort of a perspective about what your job is, right? And so most people serve, especially I think consultants, right? They don't come from a sales background. They sort of think, "Well, there's this act you have to put on to sale or have to sell something." Right? So I have to assume the sales persona and what do I know about that? Well, that must mean I have to be sort of pushy. I've got to be really sort of focused on trying to persuade somebody to buy my service and purchase my service, engage with me and that's not really what sales is about at all.

I mean, selling really from a different perspective, what I call selling in, is not about persuading somebody to engage with you or to buy your service. It's to first listen to understand what are the most important things to this buyer, right? What are the most important challenges they face, most important outcomes they want to achieve and then help them get that. And that's a completely different mindset, right? If I start with a perspective of saying, “Look, my job is really to understand what's the most important to buyers and then help them. As opposed to, “I'm trying to convince you to go do business with me, a completely different way that you approach it.”

Deb Zahn: That's right because the latter is, what's the most important thing to me and that's money and getting business and now you might as well be a used car salesman.

Andy Paul: Well, yeah. And all intents and purposes. Absolutely. And unfortunately, people have this idea, this is what sales is about, this is the way that we largely train salespeople these days anyway, in the business to business world. And yet we have so many data points that aren't just recent but go back decades. Let's say, well, buyers don't like this, right? And this is not the most efficient, that's not the fastest way to be able to engage with somebody. It's actually putting impediments in your own way.

Deb Zahn: And you mentioned persuasion. So I know a lot of new consultants truly think, even if they think, "Oh, I really care about helping this particular potential client I'm in front of." They still think their job is to persuade them to hire them. And you differentiate between persuasion and influence in the book. Can you say more about, how does that work? What's the difference between those?

Andy Paul: Well, it starts with this idea that, and there's been research on this book written not that long ago by a professor from Wharton, Jonah Berger, talks about this is that, humans as a species. We instinctively resist being persuaded. So just take that as just a basic starting point, right? So if we all resist being persuaded, do we really want to think that persuasion is the way to get somebody to want to do business with us or to build a connection with them or build trust with them because it's all about us, right? And it's about not understanding because we don't really care, really to some level, what your problem is because I need to convince you to buy this product or this service. And even look at the definition of it as I talk about it in the book, it's really about prevailing on someone to do something. So it's at root, sort of a core type behavior.

Influence, on the other hand, it's about having an ability to have an effect on the thinking and actions of others without the apparent use of force. And that's what we're trying to do, right? Is we're trying to be on the same side as the buyer, right? We're here to help you. We're coming from a position of service, and I can't help you if I don't first really understand what it is that you're trying to achieve. What are the things that's at the top of your list that are most important to you? If I do that, then we can work together, as I talk about in the book, to create this vision of what success will be like if you work with me. And it's really important again, for people that are just sort of getting, maybe newer into the business trying to sell their services is remember that the client is not buying your service. What they're buying is this vision of what success will look like having used your service.

Deb Zahn: That's right.

Andy Paul: That's really what you're influencing them. That's what you're selling them is this idea, is this is what success will look like. So you have to create that vision of success with them.

Deb Zahn: And I have found, having been in consulting for the last 12 years, they don't always know.

Andy Paul: Exactly.

Deb Zahn: And so how do you in that process help uncover that with them in that good version of a discovery process?

Andy Paul: Well, sort of through the questions you ask, right?

Deb Zahn: Yeah.

Andy Paul: And it's giving free rein to your curiosity. If you've done sales, running length of time, even just maybe it's a few years you've been out on your own, you've sort of discovered, "Well, hey. Here are these lists of questions that I typically want to ask somebody." And then oftentimes people just sort of stop. They get the answers they're sort of looking for, but at that point you have this collection of information. So you know something about the client, but what do you really understand about them?

And this is where digging a little deeper, but really before you can sort of give free rein to your curiosity, is you have to be able to connect with that buyer on a human level, on a personal level, you need to build a level of credibility and trust with them. Especially as a consultant, what we're asking people to do is enable us to stick our noses into their business.

Deb Zahn: That's right, which can be uncomfortable.

Andy Paul: Which can be uncomfortable for them. So unless there's this level of trust there to say, "OK, yeah. I get it. You seem to know what you're talking about. I'm going to give you a little more information than I might have given someone else because we've built this level of trust." And that's really essential because what the buyer is looking for, what your clients are looking for from you is not just tell them how to achieve something. What they want you to do is help them think differently about what it is they're trying to do.

Deb Zahn: I love that. And we're already dipping into the four pillars, which I want to dive into. I don't want to dip. I want to dive into. So you have four pillars that sort of form the core of the book. And we've touched upon the first connection, but do you want to go through the four pillars and give us the highlights of why these matter and how you apply them?

Andy Paul: Right. So let's contrast them with, in the beginning of the book I described these behaviors that are selling out and the contrast to that is selling in, and this is what we should be doing, is selling in. So it's built on yes, four pillars, which are connection, curiosity, understanding, and generosity. And as we talked about before this, this idea of persuasion-based selling, so the fundamental problem with that is that's a learned behavior, right? No one's born being salesy. And it's a question you're, I talked about in this book, this is a question a customer will never ask you. A customer or a client will never say, "Geez, Deb, we want to purchase your service and have to engage with you, but you're just not salesy enough. Could you be more salesy." They'll never ask you that, right?

Deb Zahn: I've never gotten that.

Andy Paul: Right. So on the flip side of selling in and these behaviors, the connection, curiosity, understanding, and generosity, these are innate human behaviors, right? We're all wired to want to connect with another person. We're all wired to want to use our curiosity because it's our curiosity that enables us to navigate things that are unfamiliar to us, right? Such as a new client that we know nothing about their business, perhaps or little about their business. Understanding very critical because God, if we don't get this level of understanding, again, we're sort of lost in the world and understanding also enables us to have empathy for people.

And then generosity is about, well, giving makes us feel good, right? We evolve from tribal beings that we gave freely because this is how we all survived. So it's just innate human behavior you want to lean into, but one sort of builds on the other. You can't, I said that before, you can't deploy your curiosity in full unless you've earned some level of trust with the buyer. You're never going to get to the level of understanding that you need if you don't deploy your curiosity and we can't help the buyer if we don't understand. We can't give something of value to help them make a decision.

And why they're fundamentally looking for you, when you think about this is, I touched on before, but there's been surveys recently saying, businesses, clients or buyers, they don't really want to talk to the salespeople. They prefer to do as much as they can on their own which to me it's like, "Well, that's nothing new in that." I think it goes back to the beginning of the first salesperson that ever existed in history, I'm sure their buyers didn't want to talk to that person either, but they do want to talk to people who can help them get their job done. They have time for that.

So, as I said before, if you can come in and help them think more deeply and broadly about the problems or the challenges they face and help them think more deeply and broadly about the outcomes they can potentially achieve as a result of solving those problems, that's what they want, right? That's what they want. They don't want you to sell a service. They're asking you to sell a solution for them.

Deb Zahn: I love that. Now it sounds suspiciously like you're saying that it's humans that buy and not companies and organizations?

Andy Paul: Well, it's not only that, but it's they buy from people. And there have been multiple studies talking about this as a challenge of sale, people have read that, talks about it first or other stuff talk about it is that, really at the end of the day is if you're selling a service that's perceived to be largely the same as some other service, which we have this as consultants, that's true if you're selling products especially more so these days, what's the difference in the mind of the buyer that helps them make a decision? What's the difference is you, right? So it's not just you are selling to them, they're buying from you. Their decision is largely based on their experience working with you during their buying process.

Deb Zahn: That's right.

Andy Paul: So think about that. I mean, that's really the critical thing. So you've ultimately sort of become the product. And so you have to be very intentional about how you go about interacting with people, be very intentional about how you build your connection and the questions you use and so on throughout the four pillars.

Deb Zahn: And let's dig into that a little bit because one of the things I liked about your book is you went down a few layers to talk about some of the specifics of how that happens. And one example that jumped to me is empathy. So empathy is very important, but you're not talking about the type of empathy where you're like, "Oh, that's rough."

Andy Paul: No.

Deb Zahn: You talk about something else. So explain the difference between that's rough empathy and the kind that actually helps you in this process?

Andy Paul: Sure. Well, people have defined all these various types of empathy in the world, but this one that we are most familiar with, we call compassionate empathy, which is I feel your pain, right?

Deb Zahn: Yeah.

Andy Paul: I feel your pain. I feel how you feel. And sure, that's sort of human emotion we can sort of identify. I think if we're not sociopathic, we can sort of identify the pain people feel in some regards, but when we're talking about our clients we tend to default of, "Boy, that must be rough." As opposed to saying, “I really want to understand why you feel the way you do. Not just how you feel, but why you feel the way you do.”

The important thing with empathy is not knowing how someone feels but knowing why they feel the way they do. It's the type of empathy you want to get to. Well, that's what comes from truly understanding somebody and their needs is now I have actually information. Well, I understand why you feel the way you do. Then I have information to say, "OK. Well, what can I do to try to help you feel better or to resolve this problem you have?" If I don't understand the why, I'm just sort of putting band-aids on things.

Deb Zahn: Yeah. And I know that when a lot of, especially new consultants who aren't as comfortable or familiar with this process, they will ask questions like: “What is it that's causing you pain?” “What are you trying to achieve?” And things along those lines. But they don't dig in the way that you're talking about to really get to the why. Why are these things happening? Why are you feeling this way about it? What are some of the types of questions that somebody could ask? And I know you talk about this quite a bit in the book, that would get to that layer and not just stay on the surface?

Andy Paul: Yeah. So a couple of different question types that I talk about in the book. I have six question types actually, but I'll give you two here. One of my favorites says, what I call impact questions, which is you ask the buyer to quantify the impact of a change or not making a change, right? So instead of saying, "With our product or our service we'll enable you to do X, Y, Z." You would say, I want to think about that, "So what would the impact be on your business if you could do X, Y, Z?" So now when you say what's the impact, is you're going to drill down. So what is that impact, right? Is that more dollars, more revenue, more bottom line, we save time. What is the ramification of doing that?

And then you can now, and I talk about in the book because you sort of look at this as a layer as you are going to ask that question, what would the impact be for the organization, what it might be for the team, perhaps that you manage, you the decision maker. I'm talking to you. What would the impact be on you personally? And take it down to that level, start big and then bring it down to them specifically. And this causes the buyer to stop and think because if they haven't been asked this by other of your competitors or other consultants, they don't have that ready answer.

And that's really what you want, is you want them to start thinking, "Well, hmm. What is the impact?" And maybe follow up and say, "Yeah, let's talk about that in terms of hours, let's talk about that in terms of dollars savings." Or whatever the specific unit you're denominating it in. But those are really powerful questions to get people to think, what would the impact be either of making a change or not making the change, right? You can phrase the question both ways.

And then in the book I provide two really simple forms of follow-up questions, especially as a consultant, you don't really want to take anything at face value that the customer can help. And it's not because they're trying to mislead you or something, but you are earning this level of trust, you're getting to this conversation. People have agendas that you're beginning to uncover and surface as you go through. So a follow-up question is a great way to sort of say, "Well, OK. That's interesting. So what else can you tell me about that?" Right? Or, "That's interesting, tell me more." And you can sort of string a few of those together, "Ah, all right. Well, tell me some more about that."

And as you know, you've been in consulting for a long time, given the opportunity, people do like to talk about their business because they're proud of it, they're engaged in it, they maybe have a concern they do want to get help. So when you give them a license to talk freely to somebody who's coming across as sincerely interested in them and trying to help them, then you're going to get more information.

Deb Zahn: Yeah. And though often my experience is particularly when I'm talking to a CEO who doesn't have anyone else to talk to about these things.

Andy Paul: Exactly. And that's a great point, right?

Deb Zahn: Yeah. It's often sometimes the first time they've really asked themselves that question and had to answer it, but too, the first time they're in front of a neutral party that truly just cares about what the answer is and they can't talk it to the folks that report to them, they can't tell their board or their trustees, you're it.

Andy Paul: It's such a great point. I talk about this all the time with people. It's like with my clients, same thing as CEO clients, they need a sounding board, right? For reasons you just talked about, they can't talk about it with people that report to them, if they're a large enough company, they have a board or it has advisors. He or she just will say, "Yeah, I don't have this person I could talk to comfortably and safely and bounce these things off of." So another reason why your questions become very important, not just in terms of capturing the business, but once you're in that engaged is to keep learning and also to help your client keep learning as well because they learn from your questions.

You are this choice. I talk about this in the book, as well as phrasing something as a statement of fact, "I can help you do X, Y, Z." Or you can turn it into question and say, "Well, so what would the impact be for you if you could do X, Y, Z?" The customer gets the message, the client gets the message either way, right? It's, "Oh, they can do X, Y, Z." But if you've posed it as a question, what's the impact would be, what the value would be? Could you quantify the impact? Then it starts feeling a little more tangible for them because they have to start thinking through the ramifications and implications of actually doing X, Y, Z.

Deb Zahn: That's right. And you also avoid dirt roads often because if you ask those questions, you might come to the realization with them that, that isn't actually what they first said they wanted, isn't actually what they wanted. And so now let's talk about the real deal.

Andy Paul: Well, it rarely is, right?

Deb Zahn: Yeah.

Andy Paul: I mean, I think that in the book I talk about our job is to listen to understand what's most important things to the buyer. You take that a step further and there's really, in my experience, whether it's selling consulting services or selling products and services of a different sort, is that for the person making the decision, there's always one thing, one thing that's more important than all the others. And if you can uncover what that is, you're going to win the business because there's always one thing. You go through your discovery process and you say, "Oh, they want to do these five things." Sure, what's the one thing.

Deb Zahn: That's right.

Andy Paul: I discovered this early in my career. I was selling computer systems to companies in the construction industry and this one customer, this is pretty early in my career, runs. Through a ringer in terms of, we demonstrated every single accounting package and the general luxury you could think about and did it multiple times, did an onsite demo and trial and a whole suite of things. And I go back and visit the company maybe six months later after our success team had helped them get installed and it's like they're running just one package. They're just running the billing package.

I was like, "Fred, what games? I mean, you made me jump through numerous hoops to get to this point and you're just running this?" And he says, "Well yeah because this is what's paying for it." Now, if I had a little more experience, maybe I would've said, "Ah, why are they were running us through the ringer and all these other things?" I would have known there's just one thing that's really driving the decision. Then we could have tailored the proposal to that and said, "This the real value proposition for you."

Deb Zahn: And you also talk about in the book, which I loved and again, this is why I love the book because you had layers in it, it can be both tangible and intangible. So it's not always because we want this to work, it could be kind of intangible. What kind of things have you seen that would sort of fall into that intangible bucket?

Andy Paul: Sometimes just from a company perspective, it's just how they're doing in their business, how they're doing as their competitors. Maybe just a level of service they want to provide that further differentiates them in the marketplace. I mean, it could be things just like that. It doesn't have to be, we're making 2% increase in market share or we're making 10% more the bottom line or any of those sort of obvious metrics. You're dealing with people and their personality is involved and humans involved and that's not always a clear cut.

Deb Zahn: That's right.

Andy Paul: So that's why you really need to spend time to make sure you're really comfortable. You've uncovered what that one thing is and who it's most important to.

Deb Zahn: That's right because different things might be important to different folks in the mix.

Andy Paul: Different people. Absolutely. And again, you just can't assume. I met a client that was working with a really big company and they were in the food delivery business for corporate lunches and so on. And they had sort of gotten in through the ground up. They had worked a number of sort of lower-level people that were ordering their service sort of at a department level, but there was this big push because this company was spending so much money with them, big push to sort of centralizing the purchasing and procurement.

And what they found when they really dug into it because I started cautioning, it's like, "We don't really know the one thing here yet." What the one thing was, was that the person who wanted to make that decision was the head admin in the CEO's office. And she had sort of always prided herself in being the focal point through which all the people that were ordering lunches were also admins, right? So she had built up this network of admins within the company that she had this great influence over. She didn't want that to go to procurement.

Deb Zahn: That's right.

Andy Paul: But if you hadn't really dug into it and said, what's really happening here, you would've missed that.

Deb Zahn: Yeah. Or not even known who you were actually selling to.

Andy Paul: Yeah. Who would've thought? This was a multi-billion dollar company, who would've thought that this key decision-maker was the EA to the CEO.

Deb Zahn: Oh yeah. I learned that early on when I was in a big company that the gatekeepers, of all things, were the admins. And if I wanted to get something done, it was them in the mailroom. Those are the two power brokers within the organization that make things happen.

Andy Paul: Yeah. They can make things happen because first of all, they're tuned in to what's going on, right? Especially lots of admins, executive assistants they're right there, the right-hand person to the CEO, they know what's on the agenda, they know what's most important to the CEO. If you're not aware of that, if you're not attuned to them and enlisting their help, you're selling yourself short.

Deb Zahn: That's right. That's important. I think it's always important to identify who has to say yes and what do they care about? What's their one thing because I often work in organizations where there's multiple decision-makers. The CEO is the ultimate, but she has to make the people who are under her happy enough or she will have to deal with that later.

Andy Paul: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you see that happening a little bit more and more is that the CEOs really want to see a consensus coming from their executive team or whoever's making the recommendation. That always happens. The thing is with any of these decision-making groups there are lots of things written about this, we're much more consensus and so oriented and so on, but if you put six people in a room there's going to be one person who is dominant. And there was a study that was actually done about this by a couple business school professors, well, actually one named Steve Martin, not the comedian, but Steven Martin from University of Southern California, who said, there's always sort of a bully in those environments. So you may have five decision-makers you want to build a consensus, but you need to find out who is the dominant personality because actually, their vote will carry the day.

Deb Zahn: That's right. And you got to know what they care about.

Andy Paul: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Deb Zahn: Your last pillar is the one that made me smile the most. I loved all of them, but generosity is a big deal to me. It's a big part of my brand as a consultant. And I know when a lot of consultants are engaging with prospective clients for the first time they have a worry, which is something I never worry about that they're going to give away their secret sauce. And so they have to because they don't recognize that they're the secret sauce, but they feel like they're going to give it away. So they hold things close to their chest. So that's why I was so happy to see that. So define what you mean by generosity and how you like to see that appear in an effective sales process?

Andy Paul: Sure. Well, just start by taking the perspective that I gave you, what sales is, right? Your job is to listen to your buyer and be generous. I mean, most sellers don't go and really listen to their customers to understand what the most important things are to them are two generous acts. Three, and then help them get that. So that's the very definition or sort of saying you're being generous at helping the buyer, understanding the buyer, helping them get what's most important to them.

And the way you're going to accomplish that though, is being very intentional about helping the buyer make progress toward making a decision. And that's really the critical thing is people, when you're selling something and again, if you're a little newer to sales, just keep this perspective in mind, is that when you ask for time from a prospective client, they're looking at it like an investment. They're investing their time and attention in you. And they have a very limited amount of time and attention, just like you have a limited amount of time and attention, but what they expect from that investment is a return. It's an investment. They're investing in time. How do they measure whether there is return on their time? It's because as a result of talking to you, they're closer to making their decision whether to go forward. So this very simple metric is as a result of talking to me, did the buyer make progress toward making their decision?

Deb Zahn: Yeah.

Andy Paul: Now, to your point, if you feel like you're withholding information or keeping things close to the vest, you're really sort of defeating yourself in many respects because you're not helping the buyer make progress toward making the decision, but on my end too, is you're overestimating your own value.

Deb Zahn: That's right.

Andy Paul: Right? Because if there's something that you'll say in an hour-long conversation that replaces what you would help the buyer achieve in a six-month engagement. Maybe there's not so much value there, right? So you give the gap in this world increasingly. And looking at my own self, I've probably posted most of the content in this book on LinkedIn over some period of time. I post multiple times a day, I do my podcast where I'm giving away tons of content, that's just the way the world works. People want to learn from you before they engage you and that's part of your job, is to help people with that. So you got to get over this idea that I don't want to give it away for free.

Now there are instances, right? Where that could happen. If you have this abnormally long, extended sales process, then yes, there are people that sometimes do milk you for information, right? There's no getting around it, but it's your job and say, "Look, this isn't going anywhere." To stop investing your time and attention in that person because that's all they're doing, is they're milking you.

Deb Zahn: Oh yeah. Which, again, I've seen. I haven't seen it that often, but I've seen it where someone keeps saying, "Oh, let's go out to drinks." And then what they're really getting is free consulting in which case you can say, I would love to continue these conversations, it has to be under a contract. And then they make a decision about what they want, but I've built a very successful consulting career on the basis of generosity.

And that's why I was so happy when I read your book to see some of these things that again, I experienced, which is, I always felt that the first time they talk to you, you should be their first experience of value. This means they walk out and even if they don't hire you, they are clearer, they feel

better. Whatever those outcomes are because you've helped them in some way make progress towards something, obviously if it's a fit, you want that to be towards a sale.

Andy Paul: Sure. But it's really, to a bunch of points you made. This is so critical to keep in mind is that every time you interact with the potential client, the net result of that interaction has to be that they're closer to making a decision than they were beforehand. Otherwise, by definition there was no value for the buyer or the client in that interaction which means you just wasted their time, which means you wasted your own time, right? You sell time. We're consultants. We sell time. So we don't want to do that, right? We want to be generous, but we also need to say, look, we need to be really intentional to say that every interaction I have with a potential client counts.

Deb Zahn: That's right.

Andy Paul: And something I didn't write about in this book but I've written about before is, Daniel Kahneman who's a famous Nobel Prize winner, did some research. I forget when precisely he did it and came up with this rule they called the peak-end rule. And what he says, when people go through an experience and they look back to make a decision about that experience is they primarily taken account of two factors, the peak event during that experience and the last event in that experience. So look at your clients' buying process as an experience. So what is the peak event going to be during that experience of engaging with you? Well, things you can't predict in advance what that's going to be. So since you can't predict, you have to be intentional about making sure that every interaction is the best it can be.

So I talk about in the book this idea of creating just a really simple value plan for every interaction, which is saying, look, you'll answer two questions and if you can't answer these questions, you're not ready to have this next call with your potential client. And that questions are, what value does the buyer need from us in this call in order to make progress toward making their decision? And there's various forms that are both tangible and intangible forms of value you can provide, it could be something as simple as a question you ask, it could be something more tangible, maybe a case study you've done or a white paper you've done, but what is that? You need to know what that is.

And then secondly, as a result of having given them this value, what are they going to do in return? What are the commit steps are they in commit to taking as a result of receiving that? Just two simple questions you should know about. Every time you go out to engage with a prospective client, what's the value they need from me in this interaction, it doesn't matter if it's an email, phone call, Zoom call, whatever, what do they need from me today to make progress? And as a result of getting this from me, what steps are they going to take?

Deb Zahn: Yep.

Andy Paul: Very simple.

Deb Zahn: And don't leave that to chance.

Andy Paul: And you don't leave it to chance, right? Just don't show up hoping you're going to make progress. What's the plan?

Deb Zahn: That's just beautiful. Well, as folks can tell, this book has a lot in it. And I've listened to a few of your podcast episodes, those also have a lot in them as well. So where can folks find you?

Andy Paul: Sure. So they can find me on LinkedIn. I'm posting a lot there. It's just a great way to engage in conversations with people and sort of, that's what I love, right? I love people sort of engaging on various topics because I'm continually learning as I do that, but LinkedIn, for one. You can listen to my podcast, Sales Enablement with Andy Paul. I think episode 1,040 this week and come to my website, andypaul.com. So if you do go to LinkedIn, connect with me, message me. If you have questions I'd love to connect.

Deb Zahn: That's wonderful. Well, let me ask you my last question, so when you're not teaching people how to sell in a good way, how do you bring balance to your life, however it is you define that?

Andy Paul: Well, we're starting getting back to that actually, right? So the balance, I got out of whack during the last couple of years.

Deb Zahn: You did.

Andy Paul: Yeah. So we have a sort of unusual situation. My wife and I spent time on both coasts. Her work is in New York, but our primary residence is in San Diego. So we go back and forth quite a bit, but for us getting back into that balance was important. She was remote fully for a little over a year, but we have two kids in New York and two kids in California. So being able to see people more regularly is part of that. And then now we're starting to get back on our regular, excuse me, regular travel schedule for us. So we travel as much as we can and enjoy that and we really haven't been on a real vacation till next month. So first in two years, really. So for us the return of normalcy is big and we're anticipating that.

Deb Zahn: Who knew that would be the new balance.

Andy Paul: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's all sorts of things. It's like, "OK. We're going to our first Broadway shows." Which I hadn't done for a couple years or just book tickets to go see a concert, which I hadn't been to a concert in a couple years, so it's hopefully knock on wood. We're in a phase where we just do these things safely and comfortably and everybody is healthy.

Deb Zahn: And if when this airs that's not true, everybody say a silent prayer for Andy to travel again.

Andy Paul: Yeah. I know. We've got a trip booked to Hawaii here shortly, which would be the third time. We've scheduled it twice before, it's been canceled. We've determined, it doesn't matter what's happening, we're going.

Deb Zahn: If you have to scream.

Andy Paul: It doesn't matter, we're going.

Deb Zahn: Good for you.

Andy Paul: So we've cleared up the deck. We have to quarantine for five days afterwards. Fine, we've got the time we can do it. So come hell or high water.

Deb Zahn: That's good. I love that. Well, Andy, thank you so much for being on the show. We're going to put a link to all your good stuff, both the LinkedIn podcasts and the book, so no matter what anybody can find you in one of those places.

Andy Paul: Yeah. And…shameless plug, buy the book. Amazon, wherever you buy books and we've got bonuses you can get if you purchase a book as well.

Deb Zahn: And I definitely encourage it. I read it cover to cover and just loved it.

Andy Paul: Well, thank you. Thank you very much.

Deb Zahn: You got it. All right. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Craft of Consulting Podcast. I want to ask you to do actually three things. If you enjoyed this episode or if you've enjoyed any of my other ones, hit subscribe. I got a lot of other great guests that are coming up and a lot of other great content and I don't want you to miss anything. But the other two things that I'm going to ask you to do is, one is, if you have any comments, so if you have any suggestions or any kind of feedback that will help make this podcast more helpful to more listeners, please include those.

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