215: Kory Angelin: Experience is how you sellout of your products

215: Kory Angelin: Experience is how you sellout of your products

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader podcast, where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

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Okay Fast Leader legion today I’m excited because I have somebody on the show today who’s really going to help us get down to the essence and the most important thing in regards to us selling out. Kory Anglin was raised in Long Island, New York along with his three siblings Cara, Keith and Kyle. He was the youngest one which led always to being competitive. His father was a businessman and accountant and graduated college in three years. His mother was a teacher for 40 years and dedicated her life to helping others. It was at this time where Kory learned the skills of hard work and dedication. At a young age Kory could always be found competing in anything he participated in, school, sports, and even Trivial Pursuit at home with his family. Kory is known for having a range of skills that transfer to any industry including communication, accountability, execution and the ability to motivate others. 

He believes that people don’t buy what you do but rather why you do it. It’s in that motto that Kory believes a salesperson must convey to their customer. A customer should not only focus in on what you have to sell rather why you want to buy it and why in the first place.  Kory is an award-winning trainer and two-time publisher author with over 25 years in the fitness industry. His most recent book is entitled, Sellout: How a great experience can help you sell out of your product. He has worked for some of the top fitness brands in the world teaching brand experience. His industry experience includes partnering with Nike to launch their spark brand, worked with a variety of athletes from the NFL and NBA and has been featured in Sports Illustrated, USA Today, Training and Conditioning and STACK magazines for his work in the fitness industry. 

Kory has been an on-air host on QVC and as a sought-after motivational speaker. Kory currently resides in Farmingdale a village in Long Island with his wife Dawn and his son Cameron who is a spitting image of Kory–God bless him. Kory Anglin, are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Kory Angelin:     I am so pumped up. I need to hire you wherever I do a speaking appearance you’re going to intro me. 

Jim Rembach:    I’d be glad to do that. Now I’ve given my Legion a little bit about you but can you share what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better?

Kory Angelin:     I like myself, I believe that I just love helping others. It’s kind of cliché but when you’re in an industry that’s personable your entire life. I have interactions with people every day especially in the health and fitness field it really teaches you the power of what you can do and how you could change someone’s life every single day. 

Jim Rembach:    As you were talking I started also thinking about just kind of for me, being an old guy, just this year 50 this year, I workout four times a week and I start looking at different places where you can go and work out everything from the YMCA, private places to some of the chains and some of those places it’s kind of like that restaurant that you always see in your town it’s like it’s been 10 different things there must be a death nail. And so some of these Fitness places I’m like, how do some of them go through the January swell and the February flop when it comes to memberships and people exercising it’s like a very dynamic industry. So how do people differentiate in that industry, because I think it’s a huge learning opportunity for many years? 

Kory Angelin:     Great question. There are two principles I learned in business early on that makes or breaks someone. Whether it means coming to a gym or being successful as an (4:23 inaudible) indoor whatever industry you’re in and it’s accountability but more importantly its consistency. Yes you can go to the gym every single day in January because of course you have a New Year’s resolution that you want to get in shape but ultimately it doesn’t work if you don’t come in February. So that means planning on what you’re going to do to reach your goal. In my case it’s always been reaching some sort of health and fitness goal. It’s interesting because people say all the time, why do you write a book about sales you’re in the fitness industry? And I go, the fitness industry is one of the best industries to look at where you’re looking at a great salesperson, we don’t have something we can sell. In other words if I go to a watch salesman they could put a watch on me. I could feel the watch I could see the watch, but really what we’re selling is a dream. 

The reason why I became a great salesperson was just by chance because I learn the skills to build a great experience and then in return most people would buy something from me whether it was a personal training package or nutritional products or whatever the case may be. That’s really where I learned that skill set from. 

Jim Rembach:    As you were talking I even started thinking about how many financial institutions are doing the same thing whether it’s banking, insurance, investment banking, I mean they’re all trying to sell that that dream. And so when you start looking at the particular elements, you hit some of them, but when you start talking about experience you talked about accountability, how is that really a differentiator from one to the other?

Kory Angelin:     As you just said that I just thought of a great commercial I just saw to prove a point. I now back up for a second—many years ago I saw a study in a magazine it was called club industry magazine and they had a study done and the study was the top three reasons why someone joins a gym, it’s really the top three reasons why people buy stuff, but we’re going to relate it to a gym. Number one was customer experience. Number two was cleanliness. And number three was price. Most people however try to sell something based on price they’ll even use the words, we’re running a great sale today right or we just had Black Friday or Cyber Monday and these are typical days of the year where people go, oh, it’s Cyber Monday there must be great sales in other words thinking about the price. But what you’ll find is that great brands, to be a differentiator from other brands—let’s look at Apple, Disney, Starbucks, what they do differently to differentiate themselves from everyone else is they focus not on the money aspect. In fact, have you ever seen Apple run a sale? Never. They never run a sale. And the reason is because it’s because they’ve already built value. If you talk about Starbucks I’ll tell you the differentiator in Starbucks. Every single day no matter what state I’m in New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland, Florida or Colorado, California I buy a cup of coffee from Starbucks twice a day. I don’t even like the coffee but do you know why I go to Starbucks twice a day? Because of the experience. If you look at that experience—you walk in first thing you see—what do you think the first thing you see in a Starbucks? What do you see the people doing?

Jim Rembach:    I don’t know.

Kory Angelin:     They’re sitting down and you’ll see them on their laptops they’re doing work they’re doing term papers some people go on dates and they meet at Starbucks some people do job interviews at Starbucks. So I noticed that first I noticed that you can get stuff done in your life at a coffee shop. I then get online and I see the people I’m back in the counter they’re actually working. I never see someone back of the counter texting someone on their cellphone they’re working. We even call them baristas, what a great name, baristas. And then we even speak Italian in Starbucks and I never take an Italian but you will see Kory Angelin online in Starbucks saying something like this, venti macchiato, that’s pretty powerful. And I go to Starbucks not for the taste of the coffee but for the experience. So what makes a differentiator in any industry or any brand is that they focus on that experience. 

The second thing I was going to tell you what you reminded me of there’s a commercial on right now for Capital One Bank. A bank right, right? What they decided to do, and you might have even seen this, is they built a Capital One cafe now. When you go to into a Capital One Bank it’s a café. And you know why they did that? To build a better experience. How powerful that is? It’s pretty powerful because I’m even remembering it right now, and I don’t even bank there. That’s how powerful a great experience can be a differentiator from everyone else. 

Jim Rembach:    For me when you when you’re talking and I’m starting to look at the marketplace and many of the conversations that I’ve had it it’s almost to me like sales is no longer sales, sales is experience expert. You talk about barista, I think we’re seeing this whole shift take place and now that goes into an issue that you actually mentioned in your book where you’re saying how so many people just aren’t really equipped or have the skills to really do selling. 

Kory Angelin:     Yeah, you know what’s real funny but you’ll appreciate since I’m from New York, whenever I do is speaking appearance the actual opening line I use I say, everyone in this room sucks in sales. And I say kiddingly of course, right? But the reason why I say that is they really do, if you think about it. And it’s not their fault, it’s because we don’t go to school to learn how to sell. I always tell a famous story, I majored in sports medicine at no point in my life in college did I walk into my anatomy and physiology class and the professor turns to us and says, today class we’re going to learn how to sell,  that never happened. Really where most of us learn how to sell is just through trial and error and most of the time it’s error because we don’t have that skill set. But what I find is that when I sit in front of a group and I give them a skill set I put tools in their tool belts to help them learn how to build a great experience how to ask great questions it really does make them better at sales. And what I find is that there are two types of salespeople, you have great salespeople and then you have everyone else.

Jim Rembach:     Okay as you were talking I started thinking about a couple different dynamics associated with that and how that number of people who are sucking at sales is probably increasing at an ever increasing rate. We talked about the loss of empathy, we talked about the rise of incivility in society and in the workplace and all these factors that the whole selfie generation and all these people younger people getting into the workplace that they haven’t really learned some of the emotional intelligence skills in order to be able to make that experiential connection with a lot of the people who they’re trying to get to buy or sell out their product. So when you start looking at those core elements and finding people who you can equip, what do you see down the road or is that being more difficult? 

Kory Angelin:     I am ready to do push-ups I am so pumped up that you just said that. There are two things to what you just said, there’s asking for the sale—they haven’t said no yet, and then there’s what if they say no you just hit the nail on the head. When you ask great questions—prior to you right about before you ask for the sale there’s something you need to do there are actual questions that you can do to activate a customer’s emotional part of the brain. I’ll give you a quick example, what’s your fitness goal, Jim? What’s your fitness goal, for real? 

Jim Rembach:    My fitness goal is to, I would dare to say have overall body strength, build stability. 

Kory Angelin:     Okay great. Here’s an example of a great question a salesperson would ask you to tap into the emotional part of the brain. How would it feel if you were able to achieve that goal? How would you feel?

Jim Rembach:    It would be a peace of mind…

Kory Angelin:     Good, stop right there. Do you see what I mean? Like right now you go into, wow, okay, and you start thinking about, and the middle part of the brain is the part that does that, the more times I can do that the more you’re going to trust me because I’m making you more emotionally adaptable to what I’m selling. The second part of that is which you actually hit the nail on the head was, what if you say no? The biggest skill set a sales person lacks when someone says no to a sale is empath. The first thing you do if someone says, I want to think about it, I want to talk to my spouse, I want to shop around, whatever the most common objections are is they need to come back with I totally understand, that should be the first phrase out of any sales person’s mouth but we lack that that’s the part we lack. So to your point those are two key principles right there to when you’re taking someone through a sales experience. 

Jim Rembach:    And as we’re talking and I’m thinking I’m like, with this are really have become core fundamental and foundational skills regardless of what you do. I mean it isn’t a scenario where you only need these skills and tactics because you’re a person who is accountable or selling. It is, hey, I need to get my colleagues to buy into my ideas I need to, heck, get my friends to try to do this vacation that we’re going to do together instead of that one because I like it or to do these things. All these core fundamental elements of selling and persuasion and influence and all of that is something that we all need to learn regardless of where we are. 

Kory Angelin:     We actually do it. We sell all the time which is laughable because I always tell people whether you’re in sales or not you really are in sales. Have you ever tried to get your spouse to go see a favorite movie of yours? Or get your friend to your point maybe to go to your favorite restaurant? And we’re selling them on an idea. We don’t know we’re doing that we’re trying to convince them but convincing is trying to sell. It’s funny in a way because we’re all salespeople at some level. And then that also transfers into an actual industry that you might be in what you’re really doing that on a daily basis. 

Jim Rembach:    It’s kind of funny I started thinking about my youngest son, he’s 10 years old but he’s created this really expert level a knowledge in regards to world geography, and I mean he’s just one of those things that’s focused in on and he was given a globe for his birthday and he just studied the globe part of that is I think kind of comes from you being one of the youngest and that whole competitive piece, he’s trying to keep up with his older siblings, but when he meets people he starts spewing all of his knowledge about geography and stuff try to gain acceptance. I’m trying to teach him, son okay, and he’s very empathetic he really is. I said, you need to lead with the empathy component not with the component of what your prowess and knowledge and skill is in world geography. Focus in on the other person and I’m trying to make sure that he does that. When I think about the education process that all of us go through we don’t learn that stuff. 

Kory Angelin:     No, not at all. 

Jim Rembach:    About the anatomy class, so how could we change some of this?

Kory Angelin:     We have to practice. We have to lean on podcasts and interviews and YouTube and read, who knows that people do that anymore unless it’s digital. But yeah, what I find funny when I get in front of a group of people and I’m teaching them sales philosophy is that you have to be like an athlete. Athletes who I’ve sat in front of and worked with professional athletes many of them in my career they practice. Even though they’re making millions of dollars when they don’t play a game they practice and yet almost everyone else that’s in a job never really practices. Some of these skills whether it’s asking great questions that activate the emotional part of the brain, or how to overcome objections, it’s great if you get in front of a guy like you or me and we can teach you the skill set but if you don’t practice it you’re not going to be better at it. 

Jim Rembach:    I think that’s a great point. We all need a coach we all need to practice. I get the opportunity to do that almost every single week by the guests that I have on the show, I love learning from you so thank you very much. But when we’re talking about all of these, the practice and the effort and all of that we need our motivators and one of the things that we look at on the show or quotes to help us with that. Is there a quote or two that you like you can share? 

Kory Angelin:     Absolutely. My favorite quote is by Simon Sinek, pretty famous leader in the industry and in business and he always says and talks about people don’t buy what you do they buy why you do it, so that’s the quote. What that really means is the goal should not be for a person to sell something to someone because of something that they have. If they sell something to someone because they believe in what you believe if you don’t believe in what you’re selling you’re not going to be successful at selling it. So a salesperson at a gym needs to believe in the gym of the membership that they’re selling. If they don’t even work out in that gym it’s hard for them to sell a membership at that gym and the same goes for a car salesman or whatever. 

An interesting thing I always like to say when I’m shopping for a car, I just got a Ford truck about a year ago, I asked a dealer what kind of car do you drive? Wouldn’t be great if he goes, I drive a Ford. But many times that’s not the case, so yeah you have to believe in what you’re selling. So I believe that’s one of the ways to do that. 

Jim Rembach:    I think that’s a great point as well it kind of gives you that idea of whether or not you can trust that person.

Kory Angelin:     Absolutely. 

Jim Rembach:    I think that’s a huge component in being able to influence and all that. But I would dare to say that for you I know the whole competitive component—being a younger sibling, you had a dad obviously who was really focused in on goals—graduating in three years and your mom helping others it’s a fantastic dynamic to grow up in but I’m sure it wasn’t all bliss you had humps you had to get over.

Kory Angelin:     Sure. The first hump was going back 20 30 years ago. I grew up until I was about 12 and then my parents divorced. It was a great divorce if that’s such a thing because really you would think they were still married so I was fortunate in that. But my older siblings who were much older than me really didn’t experience that because they were in college at that point and it obviously it had an effect on them. I remember as you bring up my father, a motivating factor, every time I played a sport specifically soccer he would offer me $3 for every time I scored. If you were to ask any of my siblings or me, what was my motivating factor growing up? It was money. So, as you were talking about that—but yeah, those are very common hardships, divorce or whatever in most people’s lives probably more people’s lives in less people’s lives nowadays. But from that point on one of the things I give my parents credit for is they always put the kids first, which is I think is a great life principle to go by, they still believe in dedication, communication, accountability all of those key principles. If you really think about it transcends to any industry not just family but those transcends even more to business specifically. I think that’s why I overcame some hardships and brought it to where I am today.

Jim Rembach:    I appreciate your sharing that. I have to ask because one of the things—we’re talking a lot about finding that emotional connection as a motivator and things like that and having the opportunity to interview so many different folks throughout the years is that—I hear that money should not be your motivator so while as a kid money can be really enticing however it doesn’t cause you to persevere and overcome. In other words, I don’t necessarily focus in on a process of becoming a better soccer player that I have to work on my foot trails I have to work on my—a lot of crazy things that I have to work on my conditioning and this and that in order to be able to get to the money, it’s that I just want the money. I would dare to say you’ve had to make that shift at some point, when did that happen?

Kory Angelin:     Sure, wow great point. Because if you really break down what I just said in a specific instance on a soccer field I can’t score and get that money unless I beat that other kid to the ball. So that man in my head I learned early on that I need to be faster, if I want more money I need to be faster. Well how do you be faster? You got a train every day. What do you do when you train every day? You have to do speed and agility drills. It’s no coincidence I became a speed and agility coach early on as a trainer that’s really my passion when it comes to fitness. There are things that you have to do we call it the cause and effect. Like you can’t reach the result unless—I always say look at your goal first or look at what result you want to have, great, but then there are steps you have to take so work backwards from that. If you want to lose 20 pounds that’s going to take 20 weeks. We need to focus on, okay, let’s work backwards and figure out how we get and then that really lays out a plan for you to your end result which is getting paid more, scoring a goal, or whatever the case may be. 

Jim Rembach:    I think that’s perfect and I think for me, right now I’m caught up into certain areas of discipline learning about human behavior and human dynamics a lot of decision-making and one of the places that I’m at right now is this whole self-discipline component of how do you create that because having and trying develop and help and support three growing adults is that man the whole self-discipline thing is tough it’s very tough. And so because they’re always talking and seeing the shiny object in the goal and they’re like, I want it, I want it, I want it. Whoa, whoa, back up back up let’s work backwards and I don’t want to do that because no, no I want it now. So I think that whole youth and wisdom thing don’t go together and so I’m trying to hopefully get that into them before they get too old and then they look back and they’re like, I wish I woulda coulda shoulda, but it’s not easy. So when

you start talking about working with organizations and helping them grow their business, how much are you having to have them take that step back to say, okay, let’s ground ourselves and really work the process or figure out the process?

Kory Angelin:     It’s very interesting. Some are really open to that and then some are just, let’s look at the bottom line here. Let’s run a sale we’re behind on even the number or whatever it is for the year but it is coming around and usually what happens is when I get in front of someone, or someone like me who’s this passionate about customer experiences I am, it’s much easier to turn that around. I recently talked to a food company that was looking to do something with me on social media. I felt myself pitching to them what I can do to scale their business. In my head though I’m passionate about really what I can do for them and it really was about tweaking their brand forgetting the price. Listen, people will pay for something as long as they understand the value, Hence, why I have a thousand dollar phone, an iPhone X, hence why I spend two thousand fifty cents on the coffee I don’t even like, hence, why I spend $175 to go to Disney for one day, people will pay. So when I get in front of someone and I explained to them that piece of it it’s a lot easier for them to agree to that and tweak the way they think. 

Jim Rembach:    I would dare to say with—talking about your job, talking about parenting, talking about the books, talking about the speaking and the consulting that you have a whole lot of potential targets as goals but if you were to say one of them, what is one of your goal you can share? 

Kory Angelin:     Great question. Just one? Wow. Okay, really I want companies or in any industry to understand that sales is not an evil word. There are companies that I know that they used to call their salespeople sales advisers and then now they call them something else because they’re afraid of the word. I hope that more companies take the message that sales is a great thing as long as they have the right messengers. And then if we can put more time and effort into the education of onboarding salespeople that would be my goal for–any company or individual. 

Jim Rembach:    And the Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor.

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Okay, Fast Leader legion, it’s time for the Hump day Hoedown. Okay Kory, the Hump day Hoedown is a part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us a robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Kory Angelin, are you ready to hoedown?

Kory Angelin:     I am pumped up. 

Jim Rembach:    What is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

Kory Angelin:     The bandwidth to reach more companies outside the fitness industry. 

Jim Rembach:    What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

Kory Angelin:     People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it, that famous quote I said before. 

Jim Rembach:    What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

Kory Angelin:     More empathy goes a long way much farther than it would if you were not open to that when someone says no to a sell. 

Jim Rembach:    What is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

Kory Angelin:     Asking a great open-ended question in any customer experience so it allows the customer to speak longer. 

Jim Rembach:    What would be one book that you’d recommend to our legion, it can be from any genre, and of course we’ll put a link to, sell out on your show notes page as well. 

Kory Angelin:     Start with the Why, by Simon Sinek.

Jim Rembach:    Okay, Fast Leader legion you can find links to that and other bonus information by going to Kory’s show notes page and that could be found at fastleader.net/Kory Angelin. Okay, Kory, this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you can take all the knowledge and skills that you have and take them back with you but you can’t take it, actually you can just use one. So what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

Kory Angelin:     Great question. Man, I will tell you, at 25 years old I would have learned more about business and finance than I care to at the time, having to do it all over again, a little bit more knowledge in other industries rather than be pigeonholed into whatever I was doing at the time expanding that knowledge base would have been a lot better for me.

Jim Rembach:    Kory it was an honor to spend time with you today. Can you please share with the Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you? 

Kory Angelin:     Sure, koryangelin.com or @koryfit and be part of my Instagram family. 

Jim Rembach:    Kory Angelin, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster. 

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