Relationship-building isn't a soft skill—it's a strategic advantage, especially early in your career. Sean Hand, CEO of Selling by Hand, returns to the podcast tomorrow to share how reframing "sales" as service can unlock trust, referrals, and long-term success.

Show Notes Info:

To learn more tips from Sean, pick up his book “That Was Awkward - 7 Secrets of an Awkward Networker.” To request him as a speaker, find him on LinkedIn or email him at sean@sellbyhand.com.

Hi, I’m John.

And I’m Julie.

We’re the hosts of the Hartford Fund’s Human Centric Investing podcast.

Every other week, we’re talking with inspiring thought leaders to hear their best ideas for how you can transform your relationships with your clients.

Let’s go.

Sean, welcome to the Human Centric Investing Podcast. We’re so excited to have you here with us today.

I’m excited to be here, Julie. And thank you for inviting me and John. I really appreciate it.

Sure thing. Sean. Well, Sean, you know, we love having conversations with you about the topic of networking and connecting and building relationships. It’s funny, as I reflect back on my formative years, even coming into this industry, you never took a course in college on building relationships. You you know, when somebody asked you what you wanted to do after school, hardly anybody ever said sales. And yet that’s I think no matter what profession and whether you’re in whether you’re a doctor, whether you’re a lawyer or whether you’re a financial professional, you are trying to persuade someone to your point of view or to engage your services, whatever, through whatever means makes sense to you. And so my question to you to lead off our podcast today is you work with industries and professionals of all stripes, not just financial services. What are some of the trends that you’re seeing happen out there in terms of how it changes that client professional relationship?

It’s a great question. And you know, it’s funny, we were chatting about this before and there’s actually like a interesting inverse relationship where a lot of I was at KPMG for 15 years. The first five years was in tax, the last ten was in sales. And so that’s my upbringing. And now that I’m out here doing a lot of sales of relationship development, coaching and consulting, I’m in a lot of different industries. Like you mentioned, some of the industries that a good portion of them are audit tax advisory consulting, law firms, engineering firms. They have an interesting trend in that usually the career architecture happens where you start out as a staff member doing your job, your vocation, whatever it might be, tax, advisory, whatever. Love, lawyer, litigator. So you’re doing the action and then after about five years after you’re they have your feet under you. You are a self-described subject matter expert. Then they layer on the people management stuff and they say, Hey, you’re a manager now. Manage the next crop of direct hires and that kind of thing. So you do that for a few years and then you move up to the sales conversation. And now you want to become partner. Now you want equity. Now you want to be managing director SVP. And now they start layering in. Okay, well, then you’re going to have to go out and sell. And there’s pushback, as these individuals are saying, well, I’m 12, 15 years into my career. You never I shouldn’t. I know this was coming, but this was never encouraged. And so sales is almost like their third career by the time they get to it versus a lot of your listeners are sort of the inverse of that. They come in knowing that if you want to be successful here, you have to sell. You have to build your book of business assets under management assets under the assets of the manager. This is the focus. And then as they progressed through their career, now they have the people side and now they have a little bit more of the, you know, create the white papers, be the subject matter experts in other areas. But the people side of it comes in. So it’s an interesting relationship where it’s sort of inverse, I think where you are in your career when you begin the sales journey is really important. In the other industries that I mentioned. You can’t sell anything if you don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s just flat out because this is these are high consulting, you know, law firms, engineering contracts. If if you’ve never done the work, you can’t sell it. Right. In your industry, an industry that your listeners are in, you’re doing as you’re selling. Right? So you’re doing both at the same time, right on the get go. The one thing I will say, regardless of where you are learning the sales of this development side, I have this, I’ll give it away. But the workshops that I do, the way I kick off most of them is I take a pen out of my pocket and I find someone in the crowd that’s like looking down. Looks like they were volun told to be here and probably doesn’t want to be here. I find that person and I say, Hey Julie, how are you? And they slowly look up from their book and I say, Send me this pen. And I wait about three seconds and I go, I’m just kidding. I’m not going to make you sell me this pen, but I want you to appreciate the look you just had on your face when you thought, this is going to be a sell me this pen exercise. And I point out and it’s it’s the same. Look the entire table had of. My God. Here we go. Right. Conjures up all the Wolf of Wall Street boiler room nonsense. And the reason I point that out, I’m like, that’s the same look everyone has when they hear the most dirtiest five letter word in the English language, which is sales. And so if you know that the words sales and the action of selling is going to conjure up that reaction, then we need to rethink how we’re selling. And we need to make sure that we’re coming across as advisers, helping people versus I’m here to peddle you the latest product. And last thing, I’ll stop talking in a second. But the one way I really drive this point home when I do some of my workshops is I say, who’s had a recent home renovation done? And as people raise their hands, I’ll ask I’ll ask them what they’ve had done. And sometimes it’s a it’s a new roof. I just have a deck put on, you know, kitchen. For most people, it’s like the whole house. The whole house is crumbling. I have so much home projects happening. And then I ask a follow up question. I say, Why did you go with the contractor that you went with? And as we go around and people tell me that the deciding factor is why they went with the contractor they went with, which is a mental exercise they probably never thought to do, as they say, keywords. I put the keywords up. Well, you know, I’ve known for a long time and trust reliability. They were the only one that gave me a quote. How responsiveness. Okay what value of referrals or big. So I write all of these key words up and then the next slide is a crystal ball with all of those words in it. And I’m like, the key point here is, do I look like a fortune teller? You know, in my Ms. Clio to date myself a little bit. I’m not a fortune teller here. So how is it that I knew that these were your buying patterns? That this, these these are what these characteristics are? What contribute to you buying? Also, everyone in the room are these characteristics that you feel like you can exhibit on a day to day basis. Quality, trust, reliability, responsiveness. These are these are easy things. So maybe the idea of sales, if we stay away from that five letter word, what are we really doing? We’re advising people and we’re making sure that we exhibit these behaviors on a regular basis so that people feel like they’re buying, not that we’re selling. And of wrap this up with a phrase here. People want to feel like they bought they don’t want to feel like they were sold to. And I use that home renovation example because that is one area. For some reason we always felt like we bought right? And I got a great guy for you. You should use my my deck on my deck. And we all we don’t feel like we were sold to ever. And so I like to use that example because it’s like that’s the kind of mentality we’re trying to display with our clients and our prospects.

I love that reframing of that. How how do we do that? What are some activities that you work with your coaching clients on to begin that process? Because obviously none of this happens overnight and it’s not in one activity or one conversation. Obviously it’s multiple activities, multiple conversations and really obviously starts with yourself and your own mindset, I would imagine. But how were you walk us through how to begin this process of sort of transforming.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we’ve talked about this a little bit before in terms of making sure that we’re doing whatever we can to make them more successful, learning about them as individuals. Keeping in mind the fact that. I know. I have a quota. I had it. I hold up. I carried a bag for ten years. That was in the millions and millions. And every year it started back to zero. And I would look at my goal. I’d have a million and a half in the pipeline and a goal of 22 million. I’m like, that pressure of every conversation have meaning so much that to pass that out and make sure that that doesn’t influence the conversation is really important. You don’t want that old girl needs a sale kind of feel when you’re talking with clients and prospects. So establishing that trust is really important upfront. Another area that I try to hit on as much as I can with people is the referral aspect is massive. I mean, it can’t be understated. If you look at the I think it was the American Marketing Association or the American Marketing Journal, I think just came out with a study last year that said 80% of B2B decisions are made from a referral and the person awarded the work or the company award, the work came through a referral. Developing COI developing referral bases is is fundamental and is key. And you bypass it’s like you get to the sixth day upfront, bypass all that upfront work of developing trust and all that kind of thing. And all you need to do is make sure you’re reiterating what this person heard when the referral came through and then following through appropriately. And so when I help a lot of my clients audit their network, a lot of times what we look at is and I hear this phrase sometimes where they say, I go to this networking event or I go to this conference and I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like the right people are in the room. I hear that a lot. Just just didn’t feel like the right people were there. And I challenge that notion because some might. Who are the right people? What does that mean? Like an active buyer? Do you think you’re just going to just meet active buyers all the time that are that are ready to just buy? It doesn’t work that way. Sales cycles are very long. We know that. But also, just like the two of you right now, you might not buy my services ever. However, we’re happy to go to the podcast era, building a little bit of a relationship. There’s a good chance you might be able to refer me into other organizations that you’re a part of. And so building those referral connections upfront and built in, adding them and auditing your network to say who is a buyer, who’s a referral source, who’s someone that can greatly access to rooms that I might not otherwise have access to, looking at all of those different characteristics of who is in our network is is key. And I I’ll I’ll I’ll stop talking here. Any other questions. But I’d partner a lot with one of my best friends, Matt Blanke, and he talks a lot about this. And I’m going to give him credit here because I borrow it a lot. It’s just it’s a perfect way of of establishing the ask when you are making an ask for a referral or for work itself. I think that’s where a lot of us get caught up, especially early career professionals, because they know they know how important it is to get to that signature at the end. And so they’ll they’ll maybe either go to direct or not direct enough. And, hey, if you if you know of anybody that could, you know, maybe buy my services or could use some help, know, let me know. And they go the passive route or they say, are you ready to, like sign on with me? And they go away to direct the way Matt and I kind of frame this out as is really just three main words to start every ask whether it’s asking for a referral or asking directly for business. And it’s just if I could and will from less passive to from more passive to more direct, if it’s just, hey, if you know of anybody or or if you have any more questions about your, you know, financial planning, let me know. Right? There’s no real ask there. It’s just if and the person will say, yeah, sure, absolutely. I’ll keep you in mind. And then they look at their inbox and they completely forgot about the ask, right? So if is much more passive, it’s just a way of sprinkling it and letting them know that you’re here. And maybe on the third or fourth interaction, you’ll move a little bit more to the direct side. The more direct side is could and will. So, John, I noticed you’re connected with so-and-so over here who could buy my services or could help me in some way? Hey, could you do me a favor? Could you maybe make an introduction to that person that could really help me out? Right now? I’m asking you something. And Will is even the most direct. All right, I’m looking over my dues here. Know, John, you and I are going to connect to talk about that other thing. Hey, Julie, will you do this thing for me? Will you invite me to that next conference that you’re going to so I can join you? And, you know, maybe we could network together? Very direct. I keep saying the last thing I’ll say. The last thing I will really say on this topic is whether it’s if could or will the important part, especially for early career professionals. But it applies to everybody. If you’re like me who likes to talk, I love to talk. This is going to be the hardest part for you once you make the ask. Shut up. Just stop talking. Let that silence linger. I talk all the time with one exception, which is immediately following and ask. So could you make that introduction for me? And just looking into my eyes, she’s like, my God. People will fill fill that void. So they’ll volunteer for stuff you didn’t even ask for. Yeah, yeah, no problem. You know what I’ll do? You will. Because times are really such a big problem. And they go nuts. They go nuts because they hate that silence. And so if you’re like me and you don’t like awkward silences and you like to talk really mentally, prepare yourself, if that ask is coming and you know you’re going to be making the this individual, be sure to get ready for that forced silence. And let them volunteer for all of the activities that you need them to volunteer for. So I was sort of scattered all over the place, but hopefully that was helpful.

Absolutely. Sean, I have a question thinking about that, the business development, development acumen, if you will, kind of knowing that I’ve got to work on building my business and I’m thinking specifically about two different types of financial professionals, and I’m not going to leave the third out. The two are the young professional that’s just joining the industry. The second is someone that maybe built a career in another industry, has retired and now is joining the financial services industry with which they were unfamiliar prior. And then the third, which I’ll leave on the side for for now, is the old dog. New tricks, right. I’ve been in the industry forever. I’m pretty good at what I’ve done. I’ve been pretty successful. You know, do I need to reexamine my system? But let’s talk about those first two groups. And here’s my question. So this is that the young professional or the person that is starting for the first time in financial services, maybe after successful careers. When you think about building a network, do you physically draw out what that network might look like? Like sometimes I think we try to keep it all up here in our heads, like, I’ve got family members, I’ve got friends, I’ve got business. So do you do you use any kind of a mapping technique? When you think intentionally about networking or beginning to build these business relationships?

For sure. I bet it’s a great, great question. And I mentioned it earlier, the the when I help people audit their network, we have a spreadsheet that’s all the different characteristics of what I call your network ecosystem. Your network is an ecosystem. Everybody plays a part. And I’m talking down to restaurant tours. I, I, I know if you restaurant tours, they can’t buy my services. Maybe they can make referrals, but that’s not really what they’re there. Because if I want to entertain a prospect or a client, I can text one of those people and say, Hey, carve me a little VIP area off to the corner and make me look good. I mean, all the way down to the throughout your network, how all of these people can possibly contribute to this network ecosystem you built. So one, I like to illuminate that for people that it’s not just buyers and non buyers, it’s buyers referrals and all everybody down the list. So that’s one too. Again, I like to play in whatever CRM system they’re using Salesforce, HubSpot, you name it, and make sure that they’re there. They’re setting that up so that the information that they’re putting in is then contributing to the longer sales cycle of of what it might be. What I would also say for the early career professionals is and I don’t want to paint with too broad of a brush stroke, but in this virtual world, I don’t think, gosh, I hope I don’t get in trouble for this. I don’t think management overall. Is was prepared for the level of. Difficulty building a network in this virtual world has. I say that because I lived both. So I was in sales when I walked halls and knocked on doors, and I knew that. John, if I didn’t see you today, I’ll see you tomorrow. You probably had something going on, but I know you get Starbucks at 815 every morning and so I’ll be here and we’ll happened happenstance got into each other. We don’t have that luxury anymore. That that luxury of spontaneity was removed from us. Also, the luxury of knowing that if I invite you to an event, you’ll probably go, We’re not doing that anymore. People are going to events with. With utmost intentionality because I’m a father of three now. When someone invites me to something and I’m home though, you know, like and my kids are used to taco Tuesdays and. And so now I’ve. I’ve seen what it’s like to be here and comfortable and not have to deal with traffic and not do all these things. So now inviting me to an event, if I’m the prospect, the need for absolute intentionality is really fundamental because there’s a really good chance. I’m just going to say, Hey, I wish I could, but not going to be in the city or not going to be there or I have to take Eric to baseball tonight, whatever the excuse might be versus, well, I’m in the city anyway. I’ll stop over for a drink, say hello. It’s different. So I would say overall, none of us were prepared for those massively different changes for the early career professionals who are trying to build that network. That was a luxury I had. I knew that if you were my client, I was going to find you one way or another because I knew it was now might not happen. So I think we need to really dive deeper into helping early career professionals, a build their virtual brand so that we’re walking the halls virtually at our clients and our prospects. I’m very big on that with early career professionals. Again, I’m not talking like tick tock, like let me do a dance while I talk about interest rates. I’m talking more about like LinkedIn and stuff like that. I think it’s really important to walk the virtual halls, have your image, your likeness, who you are, show up in people’s feeds so that they know what you’re about. They know you exist. I think it’s really important for the professionals. I would say for the people who are starting, this is a second career. I many of my clients, I would say the majority of them, they hire me when they’re in some sort of point of transition, whether it’s into a different industry, different field, different employer, because there’s a lot of transition challenges that arise. You mentioned a couple of them. This is in my industry and I have two credentials myself. It’s a very competitive industry. How do I differentiate my brand from all the other really strong brands out there? So there are definitely a lot of challenges. What I would say is I initially in the first month, try to help my clients realize that whatever industry they came from brings a whole lot of value to the new industry that they’re in just because of the roles, responsibilities, just because, you know, the names, codes and industry codes don’t align doesn’t mean the skills and the experience aren’t transferable. And it doesn’t mean that and I tell people this all the time, I see how you exit one room is how you enter the next exits with strength, exit with intentionality so that you enter the next one with strength and intentionality. And I reframe it for everyone to say, Look, I know it sometimes feels like you’re running away from your prior industry or your prior employer. Get that out of your mind. You weren’t running away from anything. You’re running towards this other opportunity because you know what you bring to it. And that helps with brand identification. That helps utilizing the network and the body of work that you’ve done in your past life, bringing that forward into the new industry that you’re in. All of that goes goes while there. So I would say you’re not starting something new, fresh. You’re trying something different. You’re utilizing what you believe to be your highest and best use. That’s my old valuation term. I use for everybody is, you know, if you’re if you’re a snow blower that someone’s trying to use to to mow the lawn, your value is zero. But you know, your highest and best use is where your value is. And so that’s what this transition is. So for me, that first month about breaking down that mental barrier, making sure that we identify all of the assets tangible and tangible that we can bring with us from the prior employment to the new employment, including the network. And then once we bring that network up, let’s break it down and then let’s let’s see how that network applies to this new ecosystem that we’re in.

Thank you.

This is so great. I’m curious when what are your thoughts on the preparation for these conversations? You know, it doesn’t seem to me like these discussions are the time to be winging it. You know, especially when you’re introducing yourself or you’re talking about your capabilities or your team’s capabilities, you know, if you’re part of a team or if maybe you’re the more seasoned team member introducing the newer team member and kind of helping them form that relationship, it seems to me like there should be some practice and preparation and, you know, some maybe script building, if you will. Obviously, we don’t want to sound like robots, but, you know, the opportunity to really think through this. Will you talk a little bit about the preparation that could and should happen in advance to these discussions versus just, you know, winging it and sort of practicing on the potential client or prospect for sure.

We winging it is never a good I would never promote that. So yeah, here’s the framework. Okay Let’s let’s say you’re having a 30 minute check in, call a 30 minute client call prospect call. Here’s what the framework should look like first and foremost. This is the one area I think a lot of people forget to do. I did it today when I when we jumped on and we were prepping for the podcast is the what’s new elements. And for a lot of people they they just kick off the call Hey, how is your holiday? How is New Year? Was it good? Did you stay local there? That’s like and it’s all good. It’s what everyone does. I’d like to start out my calls with what’s new and it’s what’s new in my life. I mentioned to you, Julie, that this was the first day as we’re recording. This is the first day, and it was four weeks that I didn’t have kids in my house because of illnesses and snow days and holidays. So I’m just loving life. And you can probably tell in my emotion today that I’m just happy. So immediately when we started kicking off the call, we dove right into conversation about whatever the topic might be, but we didn’t have that awkward start of a day. So how’s everything going? And I ask you the same question you were just asked every meeting prior. I’m kicking it off. What’s new? Here’s me, here’s what I’m about. And then almost every time it gets reciprocated with what’s new in their life. And so I think it’s a major element. What’s new in your life? Start with that. That leads to the personal. And now we’re probably the five minutes in. No longer you don’t want to have these 25 minute calls where you just talk about pleasantries and you don’t get to the business side. So about five minutes you might start transitioning into past business. Hey, how’s how’s everything being how the 2024 shape up for you here your you’re listening for anything that you could have helped with back in 2020 for any pain points you’re taking notes. Then you want to transition to future business. How’s 2025 looking for you? What’s the outlook here? You’re looking for ways to help them, whether it’s you as as for employment, you know, for them to hire you or just as a friend. Like I mentioned before, how can I help you as I and cause this is where you want to start focusing on how can I help you? So what’s the future look like this year? What are some challenges? What are some big opportunities? I’m taking notes as that introductions I can make for you. Anything I can do to help you. And then I want to get to that to ask, which we’ve we’ve talked about making that ask. And then the most important part. My God, Just please, please. Now that you hear this, please do this every time before you get off the phone with a client or prospect, secure the follow up meeting before you get off the phone. The advantage in this virtual world is that we are all one click away from our calendars. We’re literally always attached or calendars. So before you let that person say, I have a few things here for you, action items, few things want to follow up on, want to be cognizant of your time. What’s what’s the week of the 17th look like for you? Like are you around? And then again, stop talking. Yeah, because I’m like free from 2 to 4, soundly put on for two and then you secure the meeting, send it to them, they accept it. Now you end the call with whatever the action may be. But securing that follow up meeting while you’re on the call, it’s so much more difficult to for someone to cancel a meeting than it is to just ignore the request for a follow up. So that’s another key element to that making. Part of that is.

Well, Sean, thanks for all the points today on our podcast. And one of the points you’ve mentioned over and over again was asking the question, how can I help you? Well, there is a way you can help us, and that is every episode of the Human Centric Investing podcast. We like to ask our guests what we call lightning round questions to help our audience get to know you a little bit better in terms of kind of the person that you are. And so if your game, Julie and I are going to fire some really top level questions at you and just want your initial reactions so that our audience gets a better look into who you are as a person. Good to go.

Let’s do it. Fire away.

Sean, what did you want to be when you grow up?

Early on, I wanted to be a football player. I wanted to be a linebacker for the Philadelphia Eagles. And then, you know, I mean, in eighth grade, I was five, nine, 150, then at 37. I’m 5’9 155. So I peak early and then I got to stay there. So after that, I’m pretty close to it. I would say standup comic. Early on was was when I really considered, but I’m pretty close to it. I always wanted to be in some sort of performance role and a lot of what I do is performance based and so, so I’m pretty close to it.

What’s the last TV show you watched?

During the new year, my wife and I went down to Ocean City, just the two of us. It’s our little New Year’s tradition. We just start the year off with the two of us. It’s like a little business retreat where we go over our goals for the year and stuff it. It’s fun. But we totally binge watched the entire season of 18. 1923 was 1883 and it was like 1923, I think it was. yes. 1923. Yeah, it was good. I love that whole series.

So my last question, Shawn, do you use a paper to do list or a digital to do list?

Man. Paper. Good to pick with with the Asterix keeps My wife listens. It’s like paper. And then I take shots of it and I send it to her because she’s the one. She’s the very organized one. I’m the, you know, creative. I love to be out talking to people. And she’s the one that’s like, don’t forget, you told them you would send the proposal by Friday, you know? She’s my backup.

It still feels good to cross things off the paper, though, doesn’t it? I don’t know. There’s just something about that.

And then that little cheat code where you write something you’ve already done just across it all. Yes, You do that.

You. Yes, I do. My husband catches me all the time. He’s like, Did you just add the thing we just did? Too darn right I did. I really want to cross it off so well. And for me, my last question is, what’s the first concert you went to?

Man, this is going to be so embarrassing. It was.

You know, it’s Miley Cyrus. It’s okay.

You know, I don’t over the name of it. No. It was like.

You could just sing a song if.

You knew yourself. I forget. It was like a grunge, I think. You know what, dopey? I think it was called. I forget they had, like, one really good song.

Must’ve been a good concert.

Yeah, it was. It would. I would say. Yeah, I know. It was a it was an embarrassing day. I it was like the of the forget the name of it was but it was a long time ago and then my favorite concert that I’ve been to I would say what, what. Well yeah I would say the Lumineers. The Lumineers are really fun. I like very cool for them at the Mansour.

Excellent. Well, we can’t thank you enough for joining us here on the Human Centric Investing podcast to share your insights. And for our listeners if you’re interested in learning more. Sean has a book called That Was Awkward Seven Secrets of an Awkward Networker. And also he is a speaker, as he also mentioned. You can look him up on LinkedIn Sean Hand or email him at Sean at cell by hand.com. Again, thank you so much for sharing all of your networking insights with us today. We can’t tell you how much we appreciate it.

It’s so much fun. Thank you so much for having me.

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The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the guest who is not affiliated with Hartford Funds. Hartford Mutual Funds may or may not be invested in the companies referenced herein; however, no particular endorsement of any product or service is being made.