Maestro Mastery Hits 100

Maestro Group has reached a major milestone this week. This is our 100th Maestro Mastery blog! The occasion led me to go back and look at what we’ve written about over the years. In doing so, I’ve discovered that:

1. “Sales is science and art” is not just something we say—we delve deep into the often-underrepresented science behind why certain approaches are successful and people respond to them the way they do.
2. If you’ve been keeping up with the blog, you are asking better questions than you were two years ago.
3. The more you understand cavemen and the evolutionary forces under which human brains developed, the better you’ll be at sales.
4. Chanukah is much more important to me than it should be. I regularly force “fun Chanukah facts” on others and get irrationally angry when I can’t find the right candles and wrapping paper.

Perhaps you’re new to the Maestro Mastery blog. Or maybe you need a quick refresher on question trees. Or maybe you want to introduce someone new to the blog and need a good place for them to start. You’re in the right place. I present to you, a Maestro Mastery retrospective.

MILLION-DOLLAR QUESTIONS

We are obsessed with questions at Maestro. Whether it’s asking better questions, asking bolder questions, or using question trees for better preparation, we are here for it. If you’re looking for a quick primer on asking better questions, Questions, More Questions, Then Silence is a great place to start. Learn why all questions are not created equal as well as how to wield the power of the pause.

One of the most useful strategies we teach is how to use question trees to prepare yourself for any situation in sales. Use Question Trees to Prevent Sales Fumbles provides an overview of and instructions on how to develop question trees. You’ll also learn why former NFL defensive end Jevon Kearse thinks I’m a total moron. Now that you know how question trees work, go over to gotensai.com to put your new skills to the test.

Do you need questions that will shorten your sales cycle? There’s a blog for that. What about questions for identifying your prospect’s success factors? There’s a blog for that, too. Are you working on asking bolder questions? You get the point,

If you want to truly bring your questioning skills to the next level, take a look at Game Theory in Sales. By applying the questioning skills you’ve learned to game theory, you’ll be able to anticipate your prospect’s next steps, have more successful conversations, and close more deals.

CAVEMEN ON COMPUTERS

Imagining a caveman holding an iPhone might make you laugh, but we bring up cavemen in so many of our blogs for good reason. For most of human history, things were quite different than they are today. Why should we care? It’s important because it’s in that quite different environment that the human brain evolved. 

Despite being able to say, “Alexa, order pizza,” and having dinner at our door, our brains did most of their developing in a world in which survival was top of mind. Having strong social bonds with everyone around you meant the difference between life and death. The fact that our brains developed in that environment helps explain why we hate silences in conversation and why we respond so positively to gifts.

A review of our blogs reveals that we’re nearly as obsessed with cavemen as we are with questions at Maestro. For an excellent overview of how our caveman brains impact our decisions and relationships, read The Hidden P of Psychology (in which I talk about Chanukah again even though it was written in June—I have a problem, I see that now).

If you’re interested in how specific sales and marketing strategies speak directly to the caveman brain, take a look at our blogs on mirroring, gifting, and storytelling. One of the most critical social skills cavemen relied on was figuring out who they could trust. Whether or not someone can be trusted is of such fundamental importance that our brains make initial judgments in a matter of milliseconds. For more on developing trust with others, see Predictors of Trust (but be warned that you might become self-conscious about your face shape).

If you’re a longtime reader of the Maestro Mastery blog, we’d like to say thank you. If you’re new, welcome. I’d also like to thank all the writers, readers, editors, and contributors that have made it possible. Keeley Schell, Andrés Peters, Chris Chaisson, Charles Carlson, and Jessica Walczak—thank you!!!

Here’s to the next 100! (And Chanukah starts December 18th this year, Target—if you don’t have gelt, you’re going to hear about it.)

What do you want our next 100 blogs to be about? Let us know at mastery@maestrogroup.co.