Becoming A Growth Leader With Scott Edinger

Sales training is often ineffective without strategic leadership and broader organizational support. Mark Cox sits down with Scott Edinger, CEO of Edinger Consulting, who shares how he successfully drives sales by becoming a strategic growth leader. He presents his Five Flags Start framework to elevate your sales approaches, create value that goes beyond tangible products, and achieve your very own idea of success. Scott also discusses how to harness the power of AI and technology in shaping the current world of sales, all while keeping the human sales experience alive and intact.

---

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Becoming A Growth Leader With Scott Edinger

Team, we've got a great show for you. We've got Scott Edinger on the show. Scott is the CEO of Edinger Consulting. He's also the author of the book we're going to be discussing, The Growth Leader: Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Lines. It's a great book. It is a New York Times bestseller and a USA Today bestseller. There are also interesting and a couple of great things that come out of the book.

First and foremost, this is a book with facts and data backing it up. I like that, as anybody who tunes in to the show knows. There's this opportunity for a few more facts: data research backing up the profession of B2B sales. Scott's book is chock a block with that kind of research. It has a lot of data points I hadn't seen before, some of which knocked me over. One of the key ones was the percentage of a company that doesn't understand the business strategy of the company. There were some stats in the book that talked about somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of employees not understanding the core business strategy of the company they work with.

When we start to think of sales, it is so important because every sales call communicates the core business strategy to that client or prospect, because that's our value proposition message. If we don't understand the strategy, we can't communicate it. A lot of this book is about the alignment between leadership and the sales organization, and this discussion about the sales organization being almost the personification of that business strategy. That tight alignment was so important.

One of the things that we get into in the episode is that we talked a little bit about Scott's amazing background.  He started with the Huthwaite Group, which is Dr. Neil Rackham in SPIN Selling for those who remember that back in the day. He was with that organization for seven years. What a great start. We also talk about multiple different HBR articles that Scott's written. A couple of interesting ones come out in the episode.

As part of this book, we do get into his Five Flag Start model, where we say, “For leaders today, thinking about how we start to better align the strategy with the sales organization to make sure everybody's enabled to execute in the field.” We talk about this Five Flag Start process where we first define success, and then identify the power play. We talk about understanding your competitive advantage in the marketplace, communicating that very clearly, and leveraging that to win.

We talk about identifying the ideal customer profile for you and the customers, creating value, and then number five, execution. Define success, identify your power play, identify your customers, create value, and execute. Scott takes us through each of these components in detail in this episode. This is a super interesting discussion.

I enjoyed my conversation with Scott. I enjoyed reading and studying The Growth Leader: Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Lines. You're going to enjoy this episode, too. When you do, please like and subscribe to the show. Thanks for doing that. That's how we get great guests like Scott. Folks, here he is, Scott Edinger, author of The Growth Leader: Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Lines.

Scott, welcome to the show. What a pleasure chatting.

Thank you. I'm thrilled to be here talking with you.

You've written multiple books, but we're talking about The Growth Leader: Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Line. Right off the top, there are a couple of things I loved about the book. First of all, one of our pals, a friend of In The Funnel, and certainly a friend of this show that people will recognize, Frank Cespedes, a senior lecturer at Harvard, wrote a glowing introduction to the book.

I am very grateful to Frank for doing that. It’s wonderful.

Everybody on this show knows he's a hero and a mentor of mine. When I got down to studying for this episode and I read that, I got keyed up for the rest of the book when I saw Frank's introduction. The second thing that I thought was amazing was this warning or suggestion at the top of the book that says, “If you're a sales leader and you receive this book, The Growth Leader, because your CEO gave it to you, give it back to the CEO.

Scott Edinger’s Career Adventure

Tell the CEO he or she should read it, and if they need another book, I’d be happy to send another book.” You said, “Make sure they're not trying to absolve themselves of the responsibility of sales and growth.” That is a great move at the beginning of the book. We're going to get into that. Maybe for the folks tuning in, I wonder if you could give us a little bit of the short story of your career adventure that's brought you to this point here.

I struggle to make it short because it's long and winding, but I started my career in human resources at a Big Six firm. I date myself. Now, there are four. It was a firm that ultimately became PricewaterhouseCoopers, PwC. It was Coopers & Lybrand before that. I was in human resources there. I got into human resources for all the right reasons, which were people development and wanting to help others do great work. The partner who recruited me talked with me about it. I helped to manage the most strategic assets of the firm.

What I realized, and I mean this with no disrespect for the human resources people who work strategically, is that most HR is not strategic. Most HR was administrative. It was going to be a long haul for me to get to do anything strategic. I did not like that. The more I explored, I looked for opportunities to combine that desire to help people do good work and be more successful in their careers with an interest in being on the revenue side of a business. I found that in the sales training business, where I spent about a decade.

I joke with clients that sales training might be the most frustrating business on the planet because executives are, even if they're happy with the results, still a little bit disappointed at best. They are very disappointed with many sales training companies because the reaction is, “I sent them away for two days, and they didn't come back as different people.”

Sales training might be the most frustrating business on the planet. Even if they are happy with the results, many executives are a little bit disappointed at best with sales training companies.

It’s like, “We didn't grow sales by 40% even though I sent them away for 2 days, and I have no idea what they went through.”

You'll hear the rootstock for The Growth Leader in this. When I talk to salespeople, they're frustrated. I hear things like, “This is great, but it is hard to do this. Nobody realizes in my company how hard it is, and we're not managed this way.” The consultants are often frustrated because we are frustrated that nobody is exactly in leadership doing what we suggest in order to drive the kind of growth that sales training could bring you. I love the work, but I got out of it and ultimately started my own strategy and leadership firm.

I love that work, too. Back in the day, I went through strategic selling probably 4 or 5 times. We've had one of the Heiman ladies on the show. Alice Heiman has been on the show. Her sister's coming on the show. Their dad was Robert Heiman from Miller Heiman Strategic Selling. I love the model. I love the methodology originally. I thought there was huge value in it. We all know about the forgetting curve out there. Nothing sticks unless it's reinforced, managed against, and coached continually. One-time training never works. It never sticks. There's no evidence of it a year later.

You mentioned the introduction of The Growth Leader, where I very clearly say CEOs don't delegate this book. My experience on that is that the thing that makes any initiative around revenue growth, particularly in SALESGO, is that it's got to be connected to strategy. It's got to be driven by leaders. When you put sales in something, like sales enablement, sales training, sales coaching, anytime the word sales appears in something for executives, it gets delegated. It gets pushed to sales. Sales can never make those kinds of strategic shifts on their own. They need broad, based, high-level leadership support in order to drive change. That's why I wrote the book.

Selling Well Matters

First of all, this is a great book to pick up. We put people on the show where we've read the book, and then we go find the person who wrote it to try and get them on the show. One of the things that is generally missing with a lot of sales advice, direction, or thought leadership is facts, assessments, research, or surveys. This book is a chock block full of them.

We have facts to back up the opportunity in front of us. There was one great piece of research in here where you talked about growth companies, the difference within industries, and how you sell could have a 20%, 30%, 40%, or 50% difference on the impact on your organization based on industry. It is this concept that selling well matters.

You've been published in Harvard Business Review multiple times. One of the ones we always point back to was, back in 2012, teaching sales. It was a July-August issue of Harvard Business Review. The whole issue was on B2B sales, the entire issue for a change. They had the stat from the Chally Group that said 39% of the time, a B2B purchasing decision favors the company that sells better versus the company that has the best price, quality, or service features. We reference this stat all over the place because we believe, like you, that selling well matters.

There is a forgotten, unknown, discarded fact about what I will call here the sales experience. Your customers' interactions with your prospects or even your existing customers' interactions with your sales team, in my book that I cite, are 25% as great as 53%. Your 39% stat in here. We're saying that somewhere between a quarter and a half of the decision is based on the experience the buyer or prospect has with your company before they even become a customer.

That's more than price alone, more than brand alone, more than service alone, and second only to the actual things they're buying. When you think about looking for ways to develop a competitive advantage, a way to stand out in the market, or a way to separate yourself from the competition, this factor of the sales experience is almost never talked about.

Isn't that amazing? It’s flabbergasting. It's also not taught in most business schools and most MBA programs. Far more than half of those schools in the US, when you go through an MBA, you're not getting more than 1 or 2 courses on sales.

It is amazing to me because what you hear a ton of is that we differentiate on customer experience or CX, which is the popular term. I did an interview for a Harvard Business Review article. The paraphrasing of what I said was customer experience is great, but in the world of CX, if the sales experience is the first mile of the customer experience, and it's not good or not even better than the competition, then your prospects will get off at exit one and they will go have a customer experience with someone else. This is a massive differentiator often not thought about in the boardroom and the executive team meeting. It's delegated to sales as, “Go do it.” That's not enough strategic direction, and it's not enough strategic support.

Business Boards Not Understanding Their Own Business

Let's touch on the strategic direction. That’s so well said. At the beginning of the book, you focus a lot on this issue that most people walking around a business don't even understand the strategy of the business they're in, let alone the salespeople that are tasked with articulating that business strategy in front of clients and prospects. I found those stats flabbergasting. The one that kicked me in the tummy was there was a board that doesn't even know the strategy.

Too often. There is are lot written about strategy. The litmus test for me is if you ask sellers, “How well do you understand the go-to-market strategy of your firm?” When I did that, the average answer on a scale of 1 to 10 was under a 4, like 3.7 or something. That is dangerous. If you consider this, and not enough leaders consider this, sales is the execution of your strategy in the market. Every sales call represents success or failure.

I write in The Growth Leader that this is either a massive accumulation of wins or it is death by a thousand cuts. That's a leadership issue because if you think about your strategy, where does it show up? Not in the boardroom and not in internal meetings. It shows up at the client meeting with the prospect. Are they the right kind of prospect? Are they the right level? Are you having the conversations that would lead them towards your best solutions, not whatever the sellers are comfortable pitching? Are they achieving the right kind of results there? All of the elements of strategy show up on the sales call hundreds, sometimes thousands, of times a day for companies.

You touched on this as well. You start to think about the impact not only on the top line, as you say in the title of the book, but the bottom line. In your HBR article, you define value. We'll get to it in a second. The value is the impact or the benefit minus the cost. If I'm targeting the right client, and this is so important for medium-sized enterprises, like In The Funnel, they pay for the value we provide. When our team targets the wrong client, we're going to the wrong market, they don't have the problem we solve for, or they don't want the benefit we provide, then we get into this cost battle.

Getting A Tighter Alignment On Core Business Strategies

Whenever those cross my desk, we're walking. We're professionally out. We know it's not the right fit for us. This connection between the company's strategy clarity on the company's strategy and making sure the sales team is enabled with that strategy is so critically important. You identify the problem, for sure, in the first chapters of the book. What are some of the solutions? For the folks and leaders who are tuning in, how do we get tighter alignment on the core business strategy, to start with?

This is the heart of the matter. Think about your strategy. It probably addresses key questions about your objectives, competitive advantage, target markets, or ideal client profile, but nearly all strategy models are missing. That is the one that's in The Growth Leader. All strategy models are missing this essential question. How does our sales experience create value?

I'd suggest to you that if you are a leader and looking to grow your business, then the answer to that question might be almost as important as what you offer and who you offer it to. The ability to make it part of your strategy that says, “Do you know that 25% to 50%-ish of the decision is based on this piece of sales experience? We're not going to push that off to sales and say, “Go sell. Sell more. Sell better.” We're going to say, “This is important enough.”

We're going to make it a part of our strategy. We're going to define it. We're going to get precise about how we create value above and beyond the products and services that we offer.” When you can do that, it's a downhill roll from there. It's hard to get that boulder up the hill, get executives to do that, and recognize the value of that. Once something's in your strategy, you do a whole lot more to resource it, to pay attention to it, and to drive success in that.

Once something is in your business strategy, you do a whole lot more to resource, pay attention, and drive success into it.

What a great approach. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I read in the book that a great question to ask our leaders is, “Would your client or prospect pay for a sales call from one of your people? Are they getting that much insight, value, knowledge, or help? Are you uncovering problems they have? Are you uncovering issues they don't even know they have?

Are you bringing outside insight and knowledge, not just about you and your product, but about their business and their industry because you have a line of sight into hundreds, if not thousands, of other clients that look like them?” In this day and age, anytime you interact with anybody, the number one goal is, “Are they better off because of this discussion?” If we start there, then good things are going to happen for us down the road, for sure.

That is a critical element to this. I credit one of my early bosses and a mentor of mine, Neil Rackham, who is the bestselling author of SPIN Selling and Rethinking the Salesforce. If you're tuning in to this show, you probably have heard of his name. I worked for Neil for seven years. Neil used to ask us this question, “Would your customer write you a check for the sales call?” In my smart-alecky 30s kind of way, I'd say, “It's hard enough to get him to write us a check for the actual services we're selling, let alone the sales call.”

That question and this idea of sales calls or a sales experience, if we update that a little bit, that your customers would be willing to pay for, then that's a provocative question that starts you thinking, “What do we do that's valuable here above and beyond what we're offering, but how we offer it?’ In that way, they're not writing you a check for the sales call, but that negotiation becomes easier. You probably get a higher margin. They're willing to recognize, “They may cost more, but I want to work with them instead of this other team.” That's where you get your money. If you're looking to expand margins, they're hiding for you on every sales call.

My mistake. At the beginning, you mentioned the Huthwaite group, and I went to strategic selling. It's  SPIN Selling. That was Neil's company. Neil Rackham's company was the Huthwaite group that did the research with Mike Bosworth and Xerox originally back in the day.

If you trace the origins and the history of sales training, for anybody who cares about that, which is probably less than three people who are tuning in, you, me, and maybe one other person, all of that research is powerful. Neil was a real leader in that.

It is so great to think of it. Back in those days, it would've been hard to do that research. It was all manual.

I had the good fortune to work for seven years at Huthwaite. I joke with people that it was like dog years in selling working for Neil and doing that.

The Five Flag Start

Let's touch on a couple of the models that you've brought up. This is a very interesting read with good examples. It's a book where a fact comes up, and there's some data to back it up, and then there's a bit of an approach and a solution. In Frank Cespedes' very gracious introduction of the book, he said, “You've got this amazing model to convert any good idea into execution.” It's the Five Flag Start. It talks about define success, identify your power play, identify your customers, create value, and execute.

Let's talk a little bit about each of those, if we could, because that's something that would be a great takeaway for many of the people reading. They could capture that and start to think of the way they've got to go to market model. I loved your explanation of this in the book where you talked about the flags at a NASCAR race. You're covering every nationality. You got the folks in loving NASCAR. You got some folks loving hockey with the power play. You covered everything here.

When I said all strategy models leave out this idea of the sales experience, except for the one in The Growth Leader, that strategy framework is called the Five Flag Start. The notion of this is that any good strategy ought to answer a few key questions that establish a framework that allows leaders to make decisions, take actions, and make choices within that framework to drive their strategy forward and move their business forward. That's the Five Flag Start.

Let's start at the beginning. Let's talk about them, if it's okay.

We’ll dig right into that.

The first flag is define success.

Ever since Stephen Covey wrote to begin with the end in mind, we've always thought, “What is the goal here? What's the objective?” In the Five Flag Start, flag one is about how you define success. What are you aiming for? Is it revenue? Is it net income? Is it the number of products per customer or wallet share? Is it market share? Is it a measure of customer loyalty? Whatever it is. Growth of some kind in all of those is probably important, and for leaders to do a good job of identifying what that success is.

There's nothing necessarily revolutionary or revelatory about that first flag. What I'd offer is this, and most leaders don't think about it. The success that you are aiming for as a company is the result of every individual sales call. You can draw a clear line of what's happening in that sales call. Are we moving toward that objective? Part of this is about how you get a clear line of sight from that C-Suite all the way straight through to the customer and the front lines. Here's part of how you evaluate that throughline. Is it happening there? If it happens there, it'll happen on your balance sheet.

The success you are aiming for as a company is the result of every individual sales cost.

After this, we'll get into how we track and understand if it's happening there. Let's finish with the five flags because these are so good. The next one, which is speaking to my heart, is identify your power play.

The notion of competitive advantage is common in business. I use the term power play because I was always fascinated by this idea of an unfair advantage where you genuinely outnumber the competition. All of this is about how you align your strategy with sales. It's done in a way that says, “What do I want to show up in the sales call?” Most people think about competitive advantage, and it's like a laundry list of everything their company does. In truth, there are probably only a few or maybe one reason customers are choosing you.

If you think about that in terms of what you offer, that's what you want discussed in every sales call. Make sure that you're explicit, precise, and crystal clear about that so that your sales team can be asking the kinds of questions that surface the need that draws to that. When companies aren't clear, precise, or pragmatic about what that is, then salespeople pitch whatever they can. The Growth Leader is all about how you affect this kind of change, not by micromanaging sales, but from the leadership side. Getting clear on this part of the strategy is a big part of it.

Strategically, the executive team needs to be able to articulate the value proposition. We believe the value proposition is, “What do you do? What desired outcome do you provide clients? Number three, what's your competitive differentiation?” The competitive differentiation has to be fact-based and relevant to the client, and then relative to competition, including the number one competitor, which is to always do nothing or make no change. It is the status quo.

I find it so difficult to capture that. You talked about how many companies go through a laundry list. The reality of it is, in any communication, your client is not going to remember a laundry list of anything. They're going to remember, “These are the two reasons clients pick us over anybody else.” It is the Mark Twain, “I wrote a long letter. If I took more time, I would've written you a short letter.” I was saying we need the short letter.

Leaders, sellers, and everybody in between ought to understand the notion of argument dilution. That is the more stuff you throw and you've got a competitive advantage at, the more skepticism you create. As soon as I can find one of them that you're not as good at, then that calls into question everything else. These long pitches from sellers are less successful than ever for that reason.

I've never heard that before. That is such a great takeaway. Argument dilution. Do the hard work. Decide on the 2 or 3 things that you can defend that are fact-based.

I almost went to law school. That's where I learned that term.

It's coming out. There are the facts, evidence, and data.

That's the old lineage.

HR. Law. You did everything around sales.

I was doing everything I could to avoid sales, truly.

Per your HBR article, get over your fear of selling. Get over your fear of sales.

That's right.

Keeping on the Five Flag Start, number three is identify your customers. This one seems self-evident.

I want to highlight some nuance or subtlety, and I would hope for differentiation here. The point I drive home hard in The Growth Leader is to be clear about who you're walking away from because that's what's going to make a difference in your market success. All of you who are reading, you'll cringe if you knew how much time, money, and energy your sales teams are spending pursuing business you wish you didn't have.

All in the service of trying to make a number for a quarter that you're pressuring them on, they are experiencing the unintended consequence of pursuing the wrong kind of business. Every leader I talk to, from a venture-backed startup to a Fortune 500, is pissed off about that. If you do the Five Flag Start right, you'll get clear on this.

Bravo. The reality for the salespeople tuning in is that this is hurting you because the wrong clients are harder to sell to. Your productivity dramatically increases. If you've identified your ideal client profile and your value proposition resonates with that client, they're easier to sell to because they value the unique things that you bring to the table.

Let's face it. They're the ones who are making your life miserable anyway. You'd rather not, but you're doing so because you feel like you have to in the absence of something else when you would be better off allocating that time towards someone who's more likely to buy, even if you're to lose it.

Beautifully said. Five Flag Start number four is create value.

This is the centerpiece of the Five Flag Start in my view. The real point of differentiation is the executive saying, “We win on what we sell, which is our competitive advantage and our power play, but we also win on how we sell.” We create value in the sales experience. It's not just lip service. I tell the sales managers, “Get out there and do it.” It's part of our strategy. Get it in there. That's flag four of the Five Flag Start.

Finally, execute. You've got a bit of a catchall here for execute.

Most good strategy models leave execution out. If you're reading, see if this fits somewhere. “We had a great strategy, but the execution sucked.” There's a professor at the Rotman School of Business, Roger Martin. He has also written a few different books on strategy. He says, “I'm a believer that that is a cop-out.” His example of that was when have you ever heard of a brilliant political strategy where the candidate lost, or an amazing film with a great marketing strategy tanked at the box office? Execution and strategy are linked. Within strategy, you have to create the mechanism to execute it.

Execution and strategy are linked. Within strategy, you have to create the mechanism to execute it.

The last part here is to answer this question. What do we need to improve, build, or acquire if we're going to execute this strategy? Answer that question, and that gives you your bridge to what you're going to need to do to execute. If all of the strategy is forward-looking, then your ability to say, “If we're going to make these objectives true in this part of the market with this advantage creating value this way, then there are things we got to get better at, and there are things we don't have that we need that we either build or we got to go get them.” If you broadly look at that, that will give you your roadmap for what you have to do to win in your strategy.

Roger Martin is somebody else who's been on the show. Of Roger's strategy books, back in the day, he was writing those with the CEO of Procter & Gamble, whose name escapes me.

A. G. Lafley.

Keeping Up With Changes And Innovations

Thank you. A lot of that is making those decisions that we’re not to compete. One of the core tenets of his strategy, the same thing with one of the core tenets of your five flags, is the ideal customer, deciding where we don't want to compete, and make sure we're spending all of our time where we do. You are seeing salespeople train thousands, probably on a given basis, in a given year. There are lots of amazing things happening in B2B sales.

If we believe social media, the whole business discipline is failing, and there are all these issues. Frankly, I don't buy it. We come across so many organizations where their values have dramatically increased. The insight and opportunity value they put into the world has increased. That's all on the backs of the B2B sales organizations. They're driving revenue. There are some amazing things happening in B2B sales. What are you most excited about for B2B sales moving forward? What are you seeing out there? What are you excited about in terms of the future?

The thing I'm excited about is that the more companies try to use technology to substitute salespeople, the less consumers seem to like it. The thing I am most excited about is that the value of the sales experience when it's done well becomes even more powerful than it has been. I don't know about you, but all of the AI chatbots that I'm involved with, the telesales robots, and all of these mechanisms where technology is looking to insert itself in place of the sales experience, I know that there are places where it does work. There are elements of it, certainly, if they are transactional sort of stuff. If you're selling anything where the interaction with the seller and the buyer matters, things are getting better for you because, roundly, I don't hear people saying they're having great experiences with anything that is a technology substitute.

It’s a great productivity tool for salespeople for research and planning.

I will offer this on something I'm excited about. I do see the use of AI, whether it's ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or any others as a means to doing good research so that a salesperson can show up with greater knowledge about the company. They can say, “Analyze the last four quarters of earnings calls from this company and help me summarize the issues.”

The ability to become more quickly knowledgeable about your prospects and clients is wonderful. It's like back to the early days of Netscape. It's like, “I can go download a 10-K.” Now, I can have an analysis of the last couple of years of them in less time than that. If you consider the ability to use technology to get better, not more efficient.

How do you stay current with what's happening both with business and in B2B sales? Favorite authors and sources of information? The folks who tune in to this show are growth-oriented. They want to get better. There are lots of other places in addition to this show where they can continue their learning. What are some of the sources for you?

For business, I try to keep a relatively low information diet because there's so much available. I do read the Wall Street Journal. I get a summary of pretty much every article there every day, and then I can click and look further into it. In terms of business, I tend to look at the people whom I like and what they write, their blogs, and their articles.

The people you've mentioned here, who have been on your show, be it Roger Martin or Frank Cespedes, are a couple of luminaries in my mind. The place where I tend to learn the most is when I'm in the field with clients and I get to watch them in action, see what's happening with their customers, and then what's happening in the boardroom, and connect those two things. That's where I tend to learn the most.

The Growth Leader: Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Lines

Get In Touch With Scott

Scott's book is a Wall Street Journal bestseller. It's also a USA Today bestseller. The book we've been talking about is The Growth Leader: Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Lines. It's been great having this first conversation with you. I have a feeling we'll be chatting again, for sure.

I'd love that.

Thank you so much for joining

Thank you so much for having me here. It's been a real pleasure. I enjoyed the discussion.

Thank you. Folks who are reading are going to want to learn more about you. How else can they learn more about you or about Edinger Consulting?

First off, I do hope you get the book, and I hope you like it enough to write a review. Beyond that, I do my best to make it easy to find me. My website is my name, ScottEdinger.com. On there, there are over 100 articles for free that I have written for Harvard Business Review, Chief Executive, and Forbes. I hope you can go to those and learn more. I've got a new video series that's coming out soon on every part of The Growth Leader. You can learn about that and the announcement for it if you sign up for the monthly newsletter. I know everybody wants another newsletter.

They want good ones. We're in.

My promise is always two things. Number one, it'll be short. Number two, never commercial. What I hear from clients is that it's always got good insights and stuff I learned. I'm on LinkedIn. Follow me there. I do a once-a-month live stream event, like a podcast with guests. That’s better than reading an article or watching a video. You can interact. We can figure out how the ideas work for you. Those are the places you can tend to find me, and I hope you will.

That’s awesome. Our special thanks to Scott Edinger. We've been talking about The Growth Leader: Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Lines. It is a great read. I'd also like to thank you for tuning in to the show. We run this show to improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales because we think that in doing that, we improve the lives of professional salespeople.

Thanks for tuning in. We appreciate everybody's support. We also know we can continue to improve this show. We're growth-oriented. If you've got some constructive criticism for us, please send it to me, MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal In The Funnel email, so I respond to every bit of constructive criticism. We love constructive criticism.

Some of the guests and the way we run the show have been a result of the feedback you've provided, so thanks for that. If you like this episode, please like and subscribe to the show. That's how we get great guests like Scott, so that matters to us. In the meantime, good luck to everybody. We'll look forward to seeing you all next time.

Important Links

• Scott Edinger

• The Growth Leader: Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Lines

• Scott Edinger on LinkedIn

• How to Sell in a World that Never Stops Changing with Frank Cespedes

• Professional Sales with Alice Heiman

• A New Way To Think with Roger Martin

• SPIN Selling

• Rethinking the Salesforce

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

About Scott Edinger

Clients in the Fortune 50 and across the globe trust Scott K. Edinger as their premier consultant for leading business growth. Scott has worked with CEOs and senior leaders to develop pragmatic strategies and execute approaches to drive top and bottom-line results. He has written three books and over a hundred articles in Forbes and Harvard Business Review, among other prominent publications.

As a consultant, author, advisor, and speaker, Scott creates positive change for clients and is recognized as an expert in the intersection of leadership, strategy, and sales.

He is the Wall Street Journal and USA Today national bestselling author of The Growth Leader: Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Lines, as well as the bestselling co-author of The Hidden Leader: Discover and Develop Greatness Within Your Company and The Inspiring Leader. His Harvard Business Review article “Making Yourself Indispensable” has been called a “classic in the making.”

Scott has served as an affiliate faculty member for the University of North Carolina, Kenan-Flagler. School of Business. He received a B.S. in Communication Studies and Rhetoric from Florida State University, where he sat on alumni committees including the Board of the College of Communication and Information, as well as the Seminole Torchbearers. 

Selling From The Heart: Larry Levine's Authentic Sales Secrets Revealed

Building genuine connections is the key to "selling from the heart," a strategy that transcends mere transactions and fosters lasting relationships in today's challenging trust landscape. In this episode, Larry Levine, author of "Selling from the Heart" and "Selling in a Post-Trust World," joins us to explore how authenticity fuels successful sales. Larry, with his extensive experience in the office technology channel, discusses shifting from product-focused approaches to relationship-centered interactions, emphasizing that everyone, especially in competitive markets, is essentially in the people business. We delve into actionable methods for establishing trust rapidly, connecting genuinely with clients at all levels, and transforming existing relationships into powerful growth drivers. Whether you're a seasoned sales professional or just beginning, Larry's insights will guide you in enhancing your people skills and achieving sustained success through heart-centered selling.

—-

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Selling From The Heart: Larry Levine's Authentic Sales Secrets Revealed

We've got a great show for you. We've got Larry Levine. He is the author of Selling From The Heart: How Your Authentic Self Sells You! Just a great book, great read, a lot of great expertise that Larry's brought to the table because he spent literally almost three decades in the photocopy industry. When you think of a successful career as a salesperson or sales leader in that competitive industry, some might say it's a very commoditized industry. The only thing that differentiates in the marketplace is how well you sell.

These days, that's also highly applicable for almost anybody reading. No product sells itself. It's the salesperson who can make the key difference. How well you sell can be your competitive differentiation. A really clear message from Larry in this great conversation where he shares that we're all in the people business and the relationship building business regardless of technology, we're in the people business and the relationship building business. He and I talk a lot about that authenticity.

How do we get comfortable being ourselves in front of clients and prospects? We might be new to sales, we might be new to business, and selling to a CIO. How do you get comfortable in that conversation so that you can have that authentic engagement? We talk a lot about very helpful tips for our existing client base. No matter who we are, we want to grow through new logos. We want new business.

Part of the path there is understanding your existing clients. The more we help and support our existing clients, doors it opens to new logos and new clients. What do we do outside of engaging them? A, when there's a new deal on the table, or when there's a problem, or when we do a fly by. What else do we do? What's the target? Larry does a great thing at the end of this show. He asks us all a couple of questions to think about regarding our most important client, however we define that.

He wants to know how well we know them. What are their top priorities over the next 90 days? What are some of the issues and challenges to getting there? I think it's a good exercise to think about regarding the most important clients that we're working with. Folks, I enjoyed the energy, the enthusiasm, and the positivity of Larry. I think you're going to enjoy this episode as well. If you do, please like and subscribe to the Selling Well podcast because that matters to us. Please enjoy my discussion with Larry Levine.

Larry, welcome to the show. This is a long time coming, and I'm so thrilled to finally meet you.

This has been more than a long time coming. It's so awesome. I'm so thankful to be here. Thank you for having me.

We're talking about selling from the heart, how your authentic self sells you. You've got two books, very successful books, out. The second book is Selling in a Post-Trust World. That's interesting. There's a real connection between the two, of course, but we're going to start with Selling From The Heart. Larry, just to kick things off, maybe give us that short story of your professional career, which I loved because there's some alignment here. Tell us about how you got to where you are.

Office Tech & Kodak Days: Building Sales Skills & Company Culture

I've been looking forward to this because Mark, we're kindred spirits. I'm in Southern California. I've grown up in Southern California, just North of Los Angeles. My whole entire sales career was in the office technology channel. Love it. In other words, I sold copiers. I was a business partner in several copier dealerships. I have toner in my blood. I see from the late ‘80s to 2015 selling copiers and all the peripheral supplies that go with it.

I've been around the block a time or two in sales. I always say, “If you can make your way selling photocopiers in a highly commoditized market, you're worth your weight in gold out in the marketplace.” I just bring a passion for the first sales, but selling something, where I always said, it's a race to the bottom. God bless all the people who are still in it. It's a race to the bottom in a very commoditized market. I just figured out how to make it work by bringing my authentic self to the forefront and building relationships, and bringing meaningful value.

First of all, so many things to unpack, just on the fun front. Many of the folks who reading know I started in that industry, and I loved it. My first corporate job was selling big photocopiers for Kodak. First of all, that company had one of the nicest company cultures I've ever come across, even since. It was just such a lovely company that there are lots of business cases on Kodak now, that they had a tough time cannibalizing their core business, which was traditional film.

They got disrupted by those folks in digital, but they had a great marketing education center. We got hired to sell photocopiers. We got sent away to copier school. Three months before we even met a client, because we're going through the educational process, it was competitive, Larry. We were in Rochester for that period of time, and every week, a few people got touched on the shoulder because they weren't making it. They got sent home. It was over, but just a wonderful formal education.

It was a little heavy on product education, not as much on sales education and sales strategy, but it was Miller Heiman back in the day. You're right. Even back then, there was not a lot of differentiation in terms of products. The reality of it is that for everybody in SaaS out there who thinks they've got a unique and different product, it's only a matter of time. There's nothing unique and different anymore. Everything can be replicated. Learning to sell a product that could be quite similar to something else, you had to rely on your sales skills to make the difference. That's exactly where we are a couple of decades later.

It's a 100%. You're so right. I enjoy saying that goes “What's forever old is forever new.” The things that we were doing back in the day, when I say back in the day, when I started in the late ‘80s, isn't it interesting? It has all come full circle. All the tech that's out there, and I'm not here to say any negative things about tech, whatsoever. Tech is wonderful. It's facilitating our relationship and how we've built ours, but it gets down to the very core of the subtitle of selling from the heart. It's how your authentic self sells you.

If you can make your way selling photocopiers in a highly commoditized market, you're worth your weight in gold.

By the way, and this is my belief, Mark, everybody's in a commoditized market. Somebody's always going to come out with something that's bigger and badder than yours, that's going to be priced differently than yours. All these kinds of things. However, what's unique is you. We've got to be able to sell our authentic self as the key differentiator and not so much lean on the product. I've always told those people in sales, “We've got to step in front of our company and in front of our product and not hide behind it.”

Ditching The Veneer: Embracing Authenticity In Sales

Well said. We were laughing at the beginning, Larry and I, because I put a post on LinkedIn a little while back, which was my original business card for that first shot.

It was, I saw.

Your beautiful head of hair, young guy. I was so excited to be a part of that company. It's funny with those posts. They go crazy. In terms of response and comments, it's the personal ones that get the response. I want to touch on this authentic self because, and this is something I pulled from the book that I love so much, Larry, that guy in that picture, the Kodak business cards put their picture on it. He was not authentic. I was not my authentic self. For some reason, I thought, “There was a private personal party, Mark.” With all my buddies and all the craziness we did, and there was lots of craziness.

Suddenly, when I was selling copiers in downtown Toronto, I had the suit on, and I felt like there had to be this veneer of being perfect. I was anything but perfect, but it felt like that whole personal thing. I just wanted to keep parked somewhere because to me, it seemed crazy, the whole lifestyle of being a young person like that. It came across because I was just too uptight all the time. I just didn't feel comfortable or confident. Maybe it's part of self-esteem and so forth, but you also talk a lot about that in the book.

Do you know what's interesting? I'm sitting here listening to what you're saying. I just had flashbacks to my very first year selling copiers. I write about the beginning of selling from the heart, is I was trying to be somebody I wasn't, because back then, you went to school and all that. I didn't have the luxury of spending three months at a school and getting that sophisticated education on how to sell the products I was selling. I was on the independent side of life, where it was up to the dealer principal owner as far as how they trained and coached their salespeople.

The dealer network.

A 100%. This is so interesting. I spent a week watching, now I'm dating myself, but you'll get this. There'll be people reading. You'll get this. I was watching VHS tapes. After a week, miraculously, my business cards were done. I got my business cards, and then I had to go out in the field and start cold calling. Once I brought the cards back, I had to start following this script, and then I would start writing out with salespeople.

Somehow, something tells me that's still happening. However, where I latched onto this is as I was trying to mirror and mimic scripts and what other salespeople were doing, I lost my identity because I was trying to mirror and mimic the top salespeople, because those are the people I was doing field write-outs with. All of a sudden, I'm like going impressionable twenty-something year old. I go, “I want to be like Mark because Mark's successful.

He's got the big corner office. He's got the nice car.” A 100%. I'm riding out with him. All of a sudden I start mirroring his mannerisms. I start using his vocabulary, and guess what? It wasn't working. I six months before I ever sold anything until I finally said enough's enough. I throw my hands up and say, “There's got to be a better way.” The better way is what I innately knew all along. Focus on the other person. Don't focus on the product.

We need to coach and train our youth today on how to have confident, comfortable business conversations.

Ask really great questions. Bring curiosity to the forefront. It was innate in me already. I knew that, but I was mirror and masking everybody else. I expand upon that by selling from the heart. That's why I believe if you're authentic self, if you can open that cupboard and find out who you are, bring that to the forefront. Don't second-guess it. That's what people connect to.

Sales For Everyone: Navigating B2B As A Young Professional

It makes so much sense. You and I having this conversation now, Larry, we have a little bit of experience between us where we've had this validated. Maybe along the way there's a little bit of, “I don't care anymore. I am who I am.” It's not that I don't care, but I have no other option. This is who I am now. For me, I probably happened maybe almost ten years after that first job, a little less where I just started relaxing and being myself, but being the best version of myself.

A well-trained version of myself or a well-prepared version of myself for a call. I never knew really what else to do on a sales call except ask questions because I never really wanted to be the person pitching or all that stuff. It didn't suit me. I love your advice, as there are so many amazing young people leaving college and university and going into professional B2B sales. In fact, our pal from Harvard, Frank Cespedes, who's written nine amazing books, of the most recent is called Sales Management that Works, but he's just fantastic, a professor at Harvard.

In that book, he says, “If you graduate college or university, you've got a one in two chance of being in a professional sales job at some point in your career.” Daniel Pink, everybody's in sales. How do we get people comfortable listening to the BDRs, SDRs being their authentic self and, knowing that line? You see a lot of these internet platitudes and all of these things talking about different things people do. How do you get comfortable being on that call? You're speaking to a CIO and you're two years out of school, scared to death, and thinking the CIO understands so much that you don't.

I am so glad we are having this conversation. Much needed. Thank you for bringing it to the forefront because I see this. It runs rampant. I'm going to answer it through a story. I think this will play out in what you just said. I remember the transition from analog, copiers, to digital. I remember that I was right smacked in the middle of that transition, and it scared me like none other because I'm not the most technically inclined person.

Now, all of a sudden, I'm going to start having conversations with technically oriented people, and I'm not technically oriented. What's going to start happening? I realized real fast, I didn't have to be the smartest person in the room. I just needed to understand how to facilitate a business conversation. Young people, you know how to use tech. You've grown up with tech. What we need to be coaching and training our youth of around is how to have confident, comfortable business conversations.

When they can do that, they start raising their confidence and their believability in themselves. They get scared. Sometimes I feel sorry for them if they get scared talking to somebody two times their age, maybe sometimes three times their age, because they don't want to look like they don't know anything. You don't have to. You just have to know how to facilitate that conversation. The way you do it is possibly start reading and listening to the things that these people read and listen to. Just bring up some of these things in conversation.

Whatever framework you're asked to make calls around, make it your own and watch what starts to happen. You might say, “This is really simple stuff.” It is, but we overcomplicate the art of having a conversation because I believe there are youth of are so fixated and focused on the conversation and moving it to the next step that they lose track of. I just have to have a conversation with this person in order to move it to the next step. If I cannot engage in that healthy conversation, I cannot get it to the next step.

It's so well said. I think that you focus on that outcome, and you feel a bit of that pressure and go, “I've got three conversations.” Let's say I'm a BDR and SPR. “I've got to get one of these to book a meeting with Larry next week. I'm in this conversation, and all I'm thinking is book the meeting. Again, authentic self. I'm not in the moment, and I'm not making the conversation about them. Making the conversation about me.

I love that idea of just say, “Listen, let's just have a great conversation with someone.” There is work that we can do prior to that conversation to say, “We might have some insight and knowledge and value because our company and my teammates deal with other clients. We know what's going on with them. We can help make sense of some of the things going on in the marketplace.”

Back to the book and just being authentic, like caring about what's going on with the business, earning the right for that conversation with research and some preparation. One of the things we coach on, I'm certainly interested to hear your opinion. We don't mind doing the odd workshop with a company saying, “Let's just do a mini MBA.” I think sometimes the world of business seems so complex to people.

If you haven't lived a bit in seen a few businesses, and been at a couple of different levels. At the end of the day, everybody makes a product or service. They'd sell it to somebody. Who is it? How do they sell it to somebody, and how do they expect to compete and win in the marketplace? Particularly if they're a publicly traded company, they explain to the universe their strategic priorities in one-syllable words.

41These are the three things we're trying to do this year. By the way, these were the three things we tried to do last year, and how we did against them. It's reading the first eight pages of a 10K report and forget the P&L and statement of cash flows, and balance sheets. The other 200 pages don't matter that much. Just take the chairman's message and the president's message, and you can get a sense for what's happening with that business.

The People Business: Coaching Sales Teams On Relationship Skills

This is so good. You'll get a kick out of this. Always ask this. I ask this to executives, but I also ask it to salespeople as well. This ties into really the underlying theme of selling from the heart, and selling in a post-trust world is, if I asked executives in the people business, forget about your products and all that, just set your products aside for a moment. Are your salespeople in the people business and relationship-building business? Simple yes or no, that's all I'm looking for, and they shake their head up and down like you are.

Yes, my salespeople are in the people business and relationship-building business. Fair enough. I agree, by the way. Here's my question. As the executive, the person who's steering this corporate ship, what are you doing and what are your leadership team doing to coach and train your salespeople on people skills and relationship-building skills? They're the profit and generating and revenue generating arm of your company. How are you doing this in a world that unfortunately doesn't view salespeople through a trustworthy lens?

I hear crickets, and I hear that with salespeople as well. That's the big mission at Selling From The Heart. With Selling in A Post-trust World is if we elevate the people skills and relationship building skills, some might put a little air quotes around soft skills, but those drive hard dollars in today’s day and age. Everyone does great product training, sales skills training. I'm not here to take a stab at that. The opportunity to increase revenue and profit is to elevate the people in the relationship-building skills of your salespeople.

I completely agree. Again, back to the photocopy world, the joke of that post where my wife, Donna, had found that picture, and I put it up there. I literally was the demo king for North American. I got all these awards, and I couldn't sell because I hadn't connected the dots between them. Forget the demo. How does this thing pay for itself in a print shop, and how do the features tie to an outcome that the print shop runner or the company needs?

What do we do for the company that they care about? They don't care about me in the demo, as perfect as it was. By the way, I love the VHS. We used to record ourselves on VHS to watch the test was like an actor. It was fantastic. I think this thing goes back to the people skills, I believe there's this common sense revolution taking place a bit in sales. Ironically again, driven by technology because AI will take down the pitching, the cajola, all that's all gone.

Elevate your salespeople's relationship-building skills to increase revenue and profit.

What's going to exist through a few years from now is back to what it was back in the day, you have to have consultative skills, problem solving skills, curiosity, the ability to make a connection, the ability to connect the dots, the ability to identify problems or communicate problems to a buyer they don't even know they have. It was back in the day.

We had this whole thing where technology got in the way, and then suddenly we said, “Just demo a product.” How does demoing a product ever sell anything? Imagine if you tried to demo Microsoft Excel. Everybody uses Excel. We use 3% of the functionality of Excel. Excel is a relational database. You can do a solver. The finance people can make it sing. Most of us use it as a spreadsheet program to do basic functional math for our home budgeting.

Guilty.

The people who really know, we wouldn't demo Excel with Solver. 90% of the world doesn't know what Solver is. They don't know it's a relational database. It's really saying, “What do you want to do? I want to do basic math faster.” I think there's this opportunity out there. I love this about you, talking about the soft skills, and you talk about what you are doing? I like that question, Larry, to the CEO saying, “What are you doing to enable your teams with those relationship-building skills, the ability to make a connection?” When they have a blank stare on their face, what do you suggest? How can you help them?

That's the opportunity. I'm not here to say that what executives are doing to coach and train their salespeople is not working. That's not the point behind this conversation.

No, of course.

The point is, I know they want to increase revenue. I know they want to increase profits. I know they do. However, their clients, their marketplace is changing. Their clients are changing. They're expecting more out of salespeople than ever before, not less. In a world, unfortunately, that doesn't view salespeople as being the most trustworthy people out there. If I'm an executive, I'm looking at how fast my salespeople can build trust. How fast can my salespeople connect and relate to our clients and our future clients?

This is what's interesting. This happens in the very first conversation that a salesperson has. By the way, that conversation doesn't have to be face-to-face. That conversation could be phone. That conversation could be over email. That conversation can be over a message center and a social platform. That conversation can be on a social platform. It doesn't matter. Salespeople are either establishing or eroding trust the minute they open their mouth, put fingers to a keyboard, or phone to an ear. As executives, we have to be cognizant of this.

I'm a big believer in coaching salespeople on how to establish trust, how to connect real fast by the words and the messaging that they use to get engaged with whoever they need to get engaged with, based on whatever market sector they're calling into. What I do is not rocket science. I'll share one more thing because it's a commonality that we have still to this day. I don't know how a copier works. I spent decades in the business. I don't care. What I cared about was the other person sitting in front of me. It wasn't.

The copier was just a means to an end. It just happened to be the vehicle upon which I sold something to earn a living and to help somebody in a better place than they were before. I'll use Mark, I'll just use you as an example since we're having this conversation, I just knew this, and I want people to key in on this. I knew that if Mark was the executive sitting in front of me, the more comfortable he became about me, the more Mark starts to open up and share what I call his business secrets. That does not happen with everybody because I've connected and related, and I've made Mark feel comfortable.

Salespeople establish or erode trust the minute they open their mouths, put fingers to a keyboard, or phone to an ear.

Building Digital Relationships: Trust & Connection In The First Meeting

Let's keep pushing on that, Larry. That's super, this is gold. How do we do that? You talked about, “We might have this start of a relationship digitally, and your pal who gave you a wonderful testimonial for the book, Tim Hughes.” We love Tim too. He's been on the show a couple of times and Adam and the gang over there, but he talks a lot about building, leveraging things like LinkedIn, not as a sales platform per se, but just like a digital cocktail party where you're both interested and interesting.

If we have that face-to-face meeting, there are still people coming in, thank goodness for face-to-face meetings, first meetings. What do we do to prepare for that first meeting or that first Zoom call? Maybe we're walking into meet somebody more senior than us, and we're trying to introduce our company to theirs. How do we quickly build trust and credibility?

This is good stuff. I'm going to give you the complete polar opposite answer which is probably what many would say. This is people skills, relationship skills. Think about this, and I'm a mindset guy, Mark. I'm going to give you a verbatim here in a second. What I want people to think about as they're reading what I'm saying and how Mark set this up is I want you to think about the first meeting. You could be doing the dancing and all of that with email and engaging on social posts, and sending them a message inside LinkedIn. Let's call that dancing.

You're dancing to get to that very first meeting where they agree to agree. I don't care if it's face to face or it's on any virtual platform, Team, Zoom, whatever, doesn't matter. That's just a call in the world. It's not face-to-face. Let's say it's all virtual. Mark agrees to have this virtual meeting with me, Larry, and we've been dancing around, we're connected, and all of that. We agree that's the magical day that I'm going to have that meeting. I can guarantee you this. Mark is the executive is probably thinking, though he may never say it, that this call is going to go down like the other five that I've had this past week.

What's Larry going to say that's going to get me to think? Larry's probably going to say the exact same thing. The other five salespeople said within the first five minutes, Mark my word, that's probably going through Mark's head. What I would say is this. I believe this, the first couple of minutes, you're either going to establish trust, or you're going to erode trust. This is people skills, relationship skill building. I'd say something like this, and I lay this on CEOs and presidents, and I'm just like, I just love watching their facial expressions.

“Mark, I'm super grateful for our time together here. Thank you. It's been wonderful getting to know you. I've been looking forward to this since we agreed to agree to this meeting two weeks ago. Thank you.” Silent pause, and then I lean in. When I lean in, I say, “Mark, tell me something good. What's been going on with Mark Cox lately? Talk to me. What's been going on?” Pause. Mark will tell you something. “By the way, Mark, thanks for sharing. Before we get started, I'm just curious. This morning in my reading. I was reading a great book. I was reading Learn to Love Selling.”

Thanks for the plug, Larry.

It's all good. I'm staring at it, Mark Cox. Beautiful setup. Seriously, “I'm curious. This morning I was just reading Learn to Love Selling, a great book. In the first chapter of that book, this particular section stood out to me. The reason it stood out to me is dot, dot. Mark, how's this sit with you?”

Larry, here's the thing. I believe you. When you do that, I've had enough interaction with you in the last hour. I'll mention one other thing, but you believe what you're saying. This isn't a sales pitch. You are that guy. You'd have the same start to a conversation if you met your friend at church, or you met your friend having a beer after work, or whatever. That's it's just you.

Selling From the Heart

A 100%, I want to let everyone know something. Mark's in sales, I'm in sales. You all have to grow your business like we have to grow our business. I will tell you this, the things that I'm sharing, I use. I got to share a funny story. This is a very true story, as true as true gets. This was about two months ago. Two months ago, I had a division president of a very large company I set up some time with. We were connected on LinkedIn, and moved it off of LinkedIn to an agreeable time to connect. The agreeable time was a 30-minute Teams call.

Mark, I always launch my calls early, like ten minutes early. I schedule it. I block it in case something happens. I reboot all of that. Just FYI, don't launch your calls 30 seconds before time because poopoo might happen. My camera's on, he pops in, camera comes on. Insert name. “I am super grateful for our time together here. I just wanted to say thank you. I've been looking forward to this conversation. Just wanted to let you know that.”

Insert name. “Tell me what's been going on.” Five minutes later, he tells me what's been going on. Here's the hook on this because I believe executives will test salespeople. This person goes, “Tell me your backstory.” Now, most salespeople would fall for the hook. Tell me your backstory, Joe. Joe starts telling them how wonderful he is and all that.

Beyond Backstories: Focusing On Client Needs, Not Sales Pitches

Insert name, and I said, “That's not why we're here. I would be more than happy to tell you my backstory, but quite frankly, you'd probably roll your eyes and tell me exactly what you'd probably tell most other people. I expected that. More importantly, this is about you. What's your story? Will you be willing to share?” I never said anything for the next twenty minutes. That 30-minute initial conversation went an hour and twenty minutes.

First of all, awesome. For those reading, I'm to tell you, this is the guy Larry is. I don't know if Larry remembers, but we're supposed to schedule this episode about three weeks ago, four weeks ago. Something big came up for me with one of our clients, and I went upside down and backwards. I had to send Larry notes saying, “Listen, this has come up. I'm so sorry.” Think about how busy you know Larry is, and he's scheduling these back to back, etc. Rather than coming back saying, “No problem. I'll just reschedule, etc.” Larry sends me a note and goes, “Mark, is everything okay?” That was the note. Do you remember this?

Yeah, I remember his plans day.

It wasn't anything about Larry, and it wasn't anything about the podcast. It was, “Everything okay?” When I had sent the note, I was in this mental state where it wasn't all okay. It wasn't okay. I was going, “I got to do a couple of things here and get, do some dancing.” It took a pause. Before I respond to it, it was such a helpful question because the reality of it is this was not life-changing what I was going through. It is just something I had to work through. I thought, “It's nice that somebody asked me that.” I came back and went, “Larry, it is okay. We love our clients.

Something great came up. We've got to, we've got to jump on this one, but it's all good.” It was just such a nice way of saying nothing about you and your day and the impact on your schedule. It was a lot about, “Are you okay?” We hadn't even met. There's this idea of authenticity. I love your approach on that sales call, by the way. I'm such a fan of gratitude because gratitude helps me. Forget what it does for the rest of the world. I feel better when I'm grateful. Again, your pal, Anthony, wrote some great stuff about that in the negativity fast. The physical and mental manifestations of gratitude are shocking. It's like exercise. It's so good for you.

A 100%. What we're talking about goes back to the two words. It's connect and relate. I want to be able to connect to somebody. If I can connect, if I can start to relate, we start to form the basis of trust. In a post-trust world, everyone's swimming for it. When there are high levels of trust, I know what happens. Things speed up. When there are low levels of trust, things slow down. It just turns into a price war.

Beyond The Sale: Cultivating Lasting Client Relationships

By the way, at some point we're going to bring you back. We're going to talk again about this trust, just so I think there's a whole podcast on trust. While we've got you this time. Larry, one of the things that jumped out to me about the book was this clarity. I think this is an opportunity for anyone reading. You have existing clients. This idea of managing, maintaining that relationship after the sale.

You talk a lot about, Larry, in the book, average salespeople only interact with an existing client when the client comes to them with a problem, or there's another opportunity to sell something. There are these very limited interactions, or they do the proverbial fly by, I'll just grab a cup of coffee. We see that a lot of lunch. Everybody out here has existing clients. What are a couple of things you might suggest, I think you talk about the three kinds of keys, for building a better relationship with your clients? Just a key takeaway people can leave with.

I’m a massive believer in this. I learned this through all my years doing what I was doing, is I'm a fan of selling more to your existing customers and growing new business. I knew this, the way I would increase my business was to increase what I know about my customers. This plays out both ways. The more I started to know my customers' business, the more I grew with them. The more I started to build authentic relationships and bring some meaningful value, not just that salesperson who just stops by and goes, “I was in the neighborhood. I thought I'd stop by. Is everything okay?”

You don't know where I'm going with this. Absolutely no value. They go, “I got great relationships with these people.” I'm not going to doubt it, but I probably not, but you probably don't. I knew I just want everyone to hear me out on this because it just goes against the total grain. The more frequently I spent inside my customer's offices, walking the halls, getting to know people, upper-level management, mid-level management, and lower-level management. The more I got a chance to meet people and shake hands and slap high fives, observe by watching, listening, meeting people, asking questions, the more I started to grow my business because I understood their business.

The first couple minutes, you're either going to establish trust or erode trust.

I found other things that I was capable of selling them to layer on top of that. My new business grew through my existing customers by taking care of my existing customers. The bow on this is to grow your business through your customers, not at the expense of your customers. The way you do that is by building genuine, authentic relationships, high, wide, and deep. When I say this is you got to get to know these people personally and professionally, what makes them tick? What are their goals, dreams, and aspirations? Where do they see themselves a year from now?

Knowing Your Customer: Deepening Personal & Professional Understanding

What are they working on this quarter? What did they need to remove from their business plate? How can I or somebody in my network help them do that? The personal side is, I want to know what makes these people tick outside of work. I want to help them grow their business. If I can help them grow their business, I believe this, I've earned the right to have them help me grow mine. By asking for referrals or by saying, “These are five businesses I'm trying to go after. I got to grow my business just like you got to grow yours.” Do any of these businesses ring a bell to you?

Are you familiar with any of these? “That one. Tell me, what do about that business?” People, it is not that hard to grow your business, but if you can agree you're in the people business and relationship-building business, grow the people skills and relationship-building skills with your current customers. Go high, wide, and deep, personally and professionally, and understand who's who inside the businesses you're working with. Get to know these people. They will help you grow your business, but you have to put forth the effort to help them grow their business.

Well said. By the way, the nice thing about the book is that it's also said very simply. I just find you you must have good editors or did a lot of passes on it. You had some great people who provided testimonials. We're big fans of Bernadette and Anthony.

Bernadette is a dear friend of mine.

They're all great. Let's also think about what we want to do with our lives. This is what I want to do with my life. This is what we do in the funnel. Now we do this because we want to, but I want to get to know people. I like people. I want to help them run a better business. I don't want to be the fly by sale, “I'm gone.” All of that stuff. I want to make sure that somebody who made a decision to move forward with us, we make them look very good for having made that decision.

That's our mission is to make sure that they become the hero for making that decision. This is one that I find very interesting for the folks reading. I find this topic to be some of the lowest hanging fruit out there, where you just say, “We've got an existing business. We've been doing it for years. We have a client base. We know them well.” I think there's a difference between we know them or we've set up a structure to have engagement or meetings with them, where we go to a different level of conversation about them and their business.

When there isn't a deal on the table for us and we call it a health check. With folks reading, find if you've had these clients for years, you get a little complacent in your relationship. I might have a social relationship with them. See them at hockey, etc., but I think they know us, and they think I know them. Every once in a while, I like to try and trigger a different meeting where maybe a few different people come into a room and we have this conversation about, how are we doing?

I like a QBR. We get into “How are you doing? What's going on with your business?” I find that depending upon whether you sell into a large enterprise or an SMB, if you're selling to middle management, VPs, and a large bank, they need to think about the answer to that question. You think they know what's in their 10K report and how they're progressing against key metrics, and exactly how those things cascade down to their division and so on and so forth. They don't always.

If I go by for a coffee and go, “Tell me how you guys are progressing against your CEO's top three strategic priorities.” They don't have the answer. Sometimes, if you put in a little easy agenda and say, “Listen, I'd like to talk about this. Let's just find out what's new with you guys and how you're doing against the strategic priorities.” They prepare for it.

Grow your business through your customers, not at the expense of your customers.

The Best Customer Challenge: Deepening Client Knowledge & Connections

This is what's interesting. I'll throw everyone a challenge. Can I throw everyone a challenge before we wrap?

Absolutely.

It plays on what Mark just said. Here's what I want everyone to think about. Follow along with me on this one. I want everyone who's reading or watching to focus on their single best customer. However, they choose to define that, I'm going to leave that one all up to you. I want you all to visually think about your very best customer. This will be the one that, if you're having a bad day, you had a bad call, you're picking up the phone because you want to hear their voice, because it's going to put a smile on your face.

If you all believe you're in the people business and relationship-building business. I hope this gives you a gut-check moment in a very positive way. I want you to think of that customer. This is the one if you lost, it would hurt. I want you to think about the following. How many people inside that organization do you know? How many of them know you? What do about them personally and professionally, and vice versa? How many people at the upper level, mid-level, and lower level management do you know?

You're all going to be telling me, Larry, “Don't worry about it. I got great relationships with these people.” “What do you know about these people?” Now here's the gut check moment. What are their goals, initiatives, and challenges over the next 90 days at said levels, upper-level, mid-level, and lower-level management? If you cannot answer that question on your single best customer, that client customer, however you all want to refer to it, is vulnerable.

I want everyone a I hope this inspires you to think a little bit differently, but you're in the people business and relationship-building business. “I trust you should know this. I trust this, just in case that's your homework.” Isolate your single best customer. Go 5 or 6 people deep. What do I know about these people, and what do they know about me? Do I understand their goals, initiatives, and challenges over the next 90 days? If you don't, that's your homework. If you do, you get a pass on this.

By the way, if you do, go to the next one.

Go to the next one.

Go to the second one. By the way, I'm thinking about that. By the way, what a great universal tip for everybody. Larry, what a pleasure meeting you.

Thank you. Mine as well.

Just a real joy to read Selling From The Heart. By the way, let us know a little bit. How do people who are reading, who want to learn more about you and want to engage with you, how do they do it?

I'm not too hard to find. You can find me all over LinkedIn. Very simple. Just Larry Levine, but my LinkedIn name's Larry Levine 1992. You can find me all over the place. Just go to SellingFromTheHeart.net. It's the easiest place. You can find what we're up to. It gives you links to things I've written. It gives you links to the Selling From The Heart podcast. The simplest way, go to SellingFromTheHeart.net.

Team, that link will be in the show notes. Selling From The Heart, you want to pick that up from Amazon. We also want to pick up Selling In A Post-Trust World. These are great reads, fun reads, enjoyable reads. Pick these up, so we read the books usually first, and then go after the podcast guest. What a real treat to have you on the show, Larry. Thanks again for joining us.

It's my pleasure. Good seeing you, Mark.

---

Team, thank you so much for joining the show. As you know, we run this podcast because we're trying to improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales. In doing so, we believe we're improving the lives of professional salespeople. We appreciate you reading. If you enjoyed the podcast, please like and subscribe to the podcast because that's how we get great guests like Larry. We also love constructive feedback. If there are other things we can be doing on the podcast that you'd see value in, please let me know. I'm MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email. I respond to every bit of constructive feedback we get. We love constructive feedback. Thanks for sending it in. We'll see everybody next time on the show. Thanks so much for joining.

Important Links

• Larry Levine on LinkedIn

• Selling From The Heart: How Your Authentic Self Sells You!

• Selling in a Post-Trust World

• Sales Management that Works

• Learn to Love Selling

• Selling From The Heart

About Larry Levine

Larry Levine is the best-selling author of two books, Selling from the Heart and Selling In A Post-Trust World.

He is also the co-host of the award winning Selling from the Heart Podcast, as well as the Culture from the Heart Podcast.

Blending a heart of service with over three decades of in-the-field sales experience, Larry helps sales professionals develop a mindset and skill set for authentic success.

In a post trust sales world, Larry helps sales teams leverage the power of authenticity to grow revenue, grow themselves and enhance the lives of their clients.

Larry has coached sales professionals across the world, from well-tenured reps to new up and coming salespeople entering the salesforce. They all appreciate the practical, real, relevant, relatable and “street–savvy” nature of his coaching.

Larry believes people would rather do business with a sales professional who sells from the heart as opposed to a sales rep who is an empty suit.

Leveling Up B2B Relationships With Dr. Ryan O'Sullivan

Building B2B relationships is one of the most important lifelines of any business. If you do not connect with the right businesses and maintain long-lasting partnerships, your very own venture is doomed to fail. Dr. Ryan O'Sullivan, Global Account Manager at Introhive, is here to discuss how to create B2B relationships that lead to growth and success. Joining Mark Cox, he discusses his seven-year study on the importance of creating a network relationship map, doing in-depth intelligence gathering, and taking advantage of trigger events in sales. Dr. Ryan also explains why internal relationships are as essential as external ones, as well as the proper way to create a good first impression without actually selling.

---

Watch the episode here

Listen to the episode here

Leveling Up B2B Relationships With Dr. Ryan O'Sullivan

Team, what do the contributing factors that determine rate, quality, and business relationship? That's something we all want to know. We want to be able to teach and coach our team to elevate performance. It's also something that Dr. Ryan O’Sullivan spent years researching then getting a PhD when he did his dissertation on this topic. The result of that is an amazing book called Building B2B Relationships: How to Identify, Map and Develop Key Relationships to Win More Business.

Ryan wrote the book to help us do three things, to win those deals in the first place, to then manage those accounts so that we can grow share a wall with clients, and to get better results from large projects that were managing. This is an amazing book. Everybody should be picking up. Anybody in sales is going to want to take a look at this because Ryan gives us the strategy of what we're trying to do and he gets into some great tactics in terms of how to do it.

He's broken the book into three categories. Part one, what are trusted relationships and why do they matter. Part two is an overview of how to build an execute a relationship map. Part 3, we talked about putting the relationship mapping process into action to win those key deals or to manage those existing clients. There's a level of detail in this book. It's almost like a textbook that's well written, but this is something all of us can do a little more work on, and what a keen on is this research process and then figuring out how to map out the key stakeholders for a deal where working.

That's something I don't think many of us spend enough time on for most important deals, but the paradal principal runs most of our funnels. As companies, we're still living in the world where 80% of the revenue comes from the small number of really important clients. We want to figure out how do we replicate those clients.

By leveraging relationships, it ends up being the only differentiation because almost any product or service at some point gets viewed as a commodity by the buyer. It's that relationship that makes a difference. We've got a great conversation with Dr. Ryan O’Sullivan. You're going to enjoy this. I enjoyed it as well. If you do like this episode, please like and subscribe to the show. Tell your friends. That's how we get great guests like Dr. Ryan O’Sullivan. Here he is.

Ryan, welcome to the show. It's great to meet you.

Pleasure, Mark. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Ryan On Studying About B2B Relationships

As we said in the introduction, we're talking about the book, Building B2B Relationships: How to Identify, Map and Develop Key Relationships to Win More Business. It’s close to my heart, this topic and this subject matter as we'll get to in a minute. Maybe we'll start here because I find this so interesting that you were wondering about these contributing factors that determine a good quality business relationship as we all are and as we all think about. You were so determined to get answered to evidence-based questions here. You want to think through it. You spent seven years researching this and got a PhD. Tell us a little bit about this journey that got you to where you are.

Thanks, Mark. Anyone who's in our business, even more broadly speaking, should have an entry inter relationships and how relationships form. That was something that I felt. You're often find people saying they have a good relationship with somebody. Whether they do or not, that can be more of a subjective perspective. When I was working back at Infosys, a big IT service firm. We were working on some huge outsourcing deals. It’s often $100 million plus deals and big global accounts. We were focused accent on what relationships mean when you've got those types of numbers that you are dealing with. That coupled with my entry inter relationships. It led me to think, “What is a good quality business relationship?”

That took me on this journey as you hinted at the part-time as well as working full-time. Interviewing CXOs. I was quite fortunate and through the relationships I had, I've got access to a whole bunch of very senior people across global corporations such as JP Morgan, AmEx and BP. All these types of big names when and spoke to these individuals about what is a good relationship from their perspective. They're on the receiving end of a supplier or a partner relationship.

That was the genesis of my doctorate research. That, in itself, is a body of work. People can search my name and Portsmouth University and find the whole doctor available online for free. There's a lot of content in there, but the way I describe my journey is that I understood relationships are important then I jumped to, what is a good relationship? As I was finishing the doctorate and getting into the details of the insights from that and the different factors that support a relationship. I realize I missed the step out, which is such there’s no such thing.

We all know relationships are important, but then, who should you build relationships with? It's, “Do I have good relationships with those people?” That was the focus of the book. It was to say, “Before we start to define whether we've got good relationships with people,” just understand and even take a step back at a deal level or an account level. Figure out who are the key people that are relevant to me and my business and what the executives and the key buying personas for the service line. I suppose that's in a nutshell my journey for years through the doctorate and the book.

What an exciting one, by the way. The book is doing super well, and I can see why because you've focused in on a very important subject, but there hasn't been that much time in attention spent on this specifically. One of the things I would add. You talked about the what you're trying to do. I got a lot of value, frankly. What I found while reading the book, there's a lot on the how. Team, as you're reading through this book, in some cases, it's almost like a well-organized easy to read textbook, but it takes you through step-by-step how do we do some of these things.

Being First In the Door With The Right Solutions

If I am trying to make an amazing impression on that senior executive, once I've executed on my relationship strategy and gone in front of them. What are the elements required to make a great impression? What do we do? The, how we do this is also contained in the book. There are a couple of things that jumped out. We love facts, data, and research associated with B2B selling, Ryan. A couple of things just in the introduction that jump out.

Craig Elias from his book, Shift says, “From his analysis, when you're the first to engage with key decision makers, with the right solutions, you win 74% of the time. First of all, when we start to think of win rates and conversion rates and you referenced in your book, our pals Matt Dixon, and Ted Mckenna. I'm talking about deals that go to know decision. The percentage of deals going to know decision in their book, The JOLT Effect, to think you win 74% of the time by being first in the door with the right solution. What a crazy stat.

You need clients on the other side of a business relationship who will tell you things you do not want to hear.

That's an interesting one. I don't know if you know Craig. I've had a chance. He’s a fellow Canadian.

We're going to have to get him on the show, for sure.

You should because at the pleasure. He did offer. That's something I should take him up on. I mentioned my book and I let him know what I was doing. He's got some great content, but it talks about this concept of a trigger event in sales. You’ve got to look for the trigger, which is obvious when you understand. When you look back in the deals that we've won in significant events, there is often a trigger.

When you think about that stat in particular, there's a few components to it. You’re talking about the right individual with the right solution and first. As we talk about professional services firms, there are often industry or regulatory type of events that are happening in any given industry and in any given day. Even the micro level or regional level, so that's happening. Often, you'll have your research teams preparing to the thought leadership content around that.

It's like, “Who's the right person for us?” You should get their hands on this. It's about, the who part if it's for a specific service, line cybersecurity, or whatever it might be. You need to know who that person is and have the relationship with that person to get it into their hands. Whether you directly or someone else within the organization or your wider relationship network to get this into it hand first.

You go into week 3 out of 4 of those conversations and it will turn into business because you've got that trigger event. I try to incorporate a few of those components. There’s another one which I often use and I don't think I mentioned it in the book It’s from Heidi Gardner's work with Smarter Collaboration                   . That's about some analysis she's done about the relationship network, the size of your network. She did some analysis around digital twin, I think she called it. They looked for a lot of factors that were similar about their tenure, role, and sector.

The only difference at one end of the spectrum, one individual had a low network and the other had a high net worth by comparison. When they looked at the revenue generated, the person with a high network generated four times the revenue of the person with a low network. There's a bunch of these stats that are starting to come out now that support what we already knew that relationships matter.

First of all, our books are in the same boat. I released it months ago. I wrote it a year before that. I always often forget bits and pieces that are in my book as well, Ryan. You do have that in the book. You reference Heidi right after you reference Craig in the introductory area. It's so important like this topic to focus in on. It’s so important because it is one of those things where this assumption made about relationships.

A lot of times, we win. You’re talking to deal teams and go. Why did we win the sales leads going to come back and say, “It’s because of my relationship.” Frankly, they may be right. If we can define it and understand it, what it means is we can repeat it, teach it, and measure against it when we're trying to measure progress with a particular pursuit or particular deal.

How To Differentiate Yourself From The Rest

The book focuses in on building these relationships with three goals, winning those larger deals, managing and growing large accounts, and then managing large projects. There's nobody reading this episode that doesn't want to do one of those three. The other thing is such a great point you reference many times in the book and outside of the CEO and founders, reading to this show, we can all relate. To the world, most the companies you've talked about being a part of all look the same to a client.

If you are not addressing a potential business partner’s priority, it will be difficult to get a mind share. Otherwise, they will immediately clear their desk for you.

If it's a mega Indian outsource company like, Wipro or Tech Mahindra or Infosys, the reality of it is, those look very similar to a client. Whether it's a massive law firm or massive professional services firm. They all look the same. The reality of it is, they are the same. They have the same resources moving from company to company and the same executive moving from company to company. The delivery of the project and the strategies are all extremely similar. This point of differentiation comes down to the relationship is where the point of differentiation comes into.

We think about in the sales context. We think relationship is convincing them to buy our stuff basically, but there's so much more to it than that. When you're getting beyond the sale, which is the wedding, not the marriage. The marriage follows. The relationship is the intimacy within that engagement. Often, you need to have clients or people on the other side of the relationship are going to tell you the things you don't want to hear.

They will give you the feedback, which is tough to take. They’re the best type of feedback because that can help you to adapt and to adjust because there's nothing worse than getting some bad news when it's too late, so that in the nuance of a relationship is important. One thing I evangelize in the book, and I since then talk about it, what are the key parts here? One is around the intelligence gathering, especially with LinkedIn.

They coined the phrase like a warm introduction, so we get a warm introduction. It's great for that, but the power of a relationship network and if you apply the way I evangelize it to map this out is to identify people that can provide insights within the account. It’s not available online. We know about AI now and how easy it is to capture already published content. That's only going to get better, but the real detail around the competitive landscape around the real priorities that people are talking about within that team within or that division, what's the mood when you walk in the corridors.

This is the stuff that comes from relationships and from getting access there. When you couple that with an integrated into your conversation with one of those key exists that you've mapped out in advance, maybe you're meeting them for the first time. That's the power of coming into that conversation with that context. It’s going to set you apart and build trust, the magic five letter word.

It's so difficult to do in a short period of time. Again, that's where I enjoyed some of the how. Part two of the book was this overview of how to build and then execute this relationship map. Team, one of the key takeaways and we can all continue to get better at this. Our belief is you can likely get one meeting with almost anybody. You can likely get a first meeting with almost anybody if you came from one of the organizations that you spent time with, so global leaders, the top 300 companies globally.

Three Components Of Mutual Disclosure

If you're one of those companies, you can get a meeting with all most anybody. If you don't execute that meeting well, you're not going to get a second one. What I enjoyed about the book is when you're interviewing, you were interviewing those CEOs and senior executives running things. You suddenly asked them a question about the best client executive or account manager they ever worked with. You said, they lit up. They still those relation, got energized, and enthusiastic in terms of talking. It sounded like they were gushing about these people in some cases. What were some of the real key insights you pulled out there?

That's the doctor insight. Anyone that doesn't know that purpose with any type of research, particularly a doctorate level is, what's original, what's unique, and what doesn't exist already. That's what you're fishing for the end and you're hoping you've got it.

You’re hoping to find something.

There’s two parts to it. One is what’s called mutual disclosure in the literature. It's a phase between not knowing someone at all and building trust because you don't automatically start to build trust with someone. I'm trying to unpick that because that is an important element to the relationship building process. It's more what not to do. There's three components that I uncovered around what I call mutual disclosure.

When you're meeting someone for the first time, there's first few interactions. What's going on there that is going to open the person you want to build a relationship with welcome you. There's three elements to it. One is surprisingly and unsurprisingly do not sell. The one thing, they are detestable to every single one of these people I met. They don't want people to sell to them and I know that's my job a lot of the time, but that is something that is very off-putting.

It's obvious but it's difficult to maneuver around that. When I introduced decorative, they were describing the best person they worked with. They often said they didn't feel in a ten-year relationship that they ever were trying to sell them anything. It would be great to pull that off. I'm not selling. That linked to understanding their priorities and trying to align with the key objectives and key challenges.

It's all around being a partner and all of the stuff we talked about, the books behind me about The Trusted Advisor, the things we know about. Not selling his key. Two is not to have a clash of personalities. That's another thing which is I think if you're aware of it, you can maybe avoid it. I talked about that in chapter ten, which is how the final chapter like, where do we go from here? Which is a bit using social styles to understand someone's personality. Also, then understanding what can irritate them.

There was a strong theme amongst the people I interviewed around. If it doesn't click, if we don't get along, it's not going to work. There needs to be that dynamic energy flowing. That was a what not to do again. The final part is you've got to have knowledge, experience, insight, or something valuable. If you imagine you've done your research, you understand the priority, the competitive landscape, and what's keeping them away at night.

You don't have to ask them that. You already know it and you're not selling. There's not a clash of personality, then you've got to position what you have. They recognize and respect you. There's some credibility there. That's a good combination of what you need to come to those initial interactions with and set your stall out with that in mind.

It's such good advice. Again, these are things, you would expect we would know, but the opportunity to continue to get better at doing this, the knowledge and insight and value is a lifelong pursuit. All of us continuing to level up our business acumen so we can have that conversation. Whether it's understanding that particular buyer persona or understanding what's affecting their business and their industry or understanding what we're seeing with all of our other clients and what they're thinking about in the future. Executives now know they think about the future, but not managing and maintaining the past. They're thinking about the future. They're wondering what's out there that I don't know that's going to come and kick me in the ass?

I’m going to add to that, which is one of the other interesting insights that came out from the research was I asked these senior executives about the best person they've ever worked with from the vendor side. As we've discussed, we went through that process, but there was another theme that came out from this. This is very telling. Every single one of them without fail, the person they were describing was working on an fundamentally important project for that person.

It wasn't that this guy, this person I met was brilliant doing something periphery for me. In some cases, this was an actual career defining projects. Again, it links to working on things and being involved in things that matter to that person. It comes to the priorities and the things that are driving their business forward. It all sits underneath that.

I was at a dinner discussing some of these subjects and that came as a question from the room. It’s tough to build new relationships. How do we do it? We were going around to sharing up thoughts. I just came back to that point, if you're not addressing something that you know is a priority, it’s going to be very difficult to get the mind share. If you are, they will clear their desks and have you in 9:00 in the morning if they feel that is something that can support their specific priorities. That, again, feeds back into this research and intelligence gathering phase.

These are all great reminders. I'm even thinking about this for us and our business. One of the other things that hit me about book and the approach, Ryan, we've always been big believers and research preparation, preparation meets opportunity, and good things happen. I believe this book takes it to another level in terms of thinking through before that moment of truth, what's the order and the priority?

B2B Relationships: You need someone on the client side to be your ally, support you in meetings, help you get access to the right people, and give you feedback.

If I'm trying to penetrate a new account, I'm trying to get to a certain amount of leaders or executives, what do I do to desktop research that I can do to understand what's going on with them, the business, the industry, and the priorities, then I'm going to be leveraging a network of relationship map of folks in their company and people outside their company. It could be channels or people in my company who used to work at the company.

It's thinking through, how do I get insight and knowledge? In that moment of truth, you're not going to get too many opportunities to make that amazing first impression. I can certainly add in the funnel, call that out. We don't spend enough time and that's one of the things I pulled from your book, is just measure four times, cut once, and do the preparation before the meeting. For some of the folks reading this, whether you're penetrating major accounts or Global 100 companies, or North American Top 500 companies.

When you're thinking about those meetings, leveraging the resources in and outside your company to get this point of view. Large software companies, by the way, call that point of view value engineering. They will bring in a team of MBAs who do nothing but all of that research. When we've got the meeting, we've had a team of MBAs figuring out key business metrics, how this company is performing against their peer group, and what they've been saying publicly.

Taking A Different Approach

You add to that what you're hearing informally through the channels and the networks. That can make for a very powerful first impression. For that reason alone, this book is just a great read. Regardless of the level in size of your business, we can all be doing this better. Again, this all leads to the account management side of things.

We're working with existing organizations. We've had relationships. As you say, we might be a little single threaded. How do we take a different approach in 2025 to say, “I'm going to land, expand, and figure out how to grow this account?” The vast majority of revenue growth for most companies comes from existing accounts.

Correct. I'll give you a stat. I mentioned this in the book as well. We all know the Pareto rule 80/20. I'm fortunate enough to manage some big clients and the number of the big four included in there. I was chatting this through with one of their executives. She corrected me and said, “It’s not 80/20 on our side. It's more like 99% of the revenue comes from 1% of the clients.”

You can imagine, because there's such a small number of huge clients and a long tail. It's possible. She was half joking and half serious, but it was closer to that, maybe 20/80. That's important. To think about the leveraging the partner network and relationship, that's all crucial and figuring out that the process from which to do that. I call it panning for gold in the book. Mark, you'll appreciate for any deal. Even the ones we talked about prior to these $100 million deals.

Often, it's one relationship that makes the difference. That's what I'm evangelizing here. It's about putting the hard work in to cover all the bases. It comes back in spades because the client knows it. By doing that through osmosis, you're picking up other bits of intelligence information. You might meet someone, your so-called junior person in the organization or left that you may be used to go to college with or someone previously did. Putting that work in and picking those tidbits of information up when you get the opportunity as part of that deal process or account.

Even in an account, you are still trying to sell more. You got big deals to cheeky deals within those existing accounts and they keep projects. It helps you and it proves to them that you're putting in the work and that's what they want to see. We have to keep reminding ourselves that the clients that we’re selling to, those people are among the most intelligent people on the planet to get into that positions, that big Global Fortune 500 companies by accident.

Even if you think they can't see it, they are smart as hell and treat them with the respect they deserve. It requires a certain amount of effort. As we said, it doesn't have to be like big global companies. It can like strong companies or big brands that make maybe strong in their local or specific vertical. That, to me, is the differentiated.

Automation and AI make it harder and harder to sell, not easier.

I mentioned AI already and we seeing even on ChatGPT now with this work you can do in the sources. It's amazing. I used to devote a lot of my time to the research side and that's how I could differentiate myself. I feel it focuses more now on the intelligence gathering, which we aren't seeing much from AI. There's a software available in the market and another that can help with that process like LinkedIn. We know that as well. It's just piecing that together, being diligent, and putting the right combination of context into the right format to have that intelligent exec level conversation.

These are fundamentals that haven’t been changed in 125 years. Outside of the technology, Dale Carnegie is saying, “You can make more friends in two months by taking an interest in somebody else than you can't in two years by trying to get them interested in you.” This relentless focus on just helping that company, that individual, and their company achieve this desired outcome that's meaningful to them. The more they believe we're helping them do that, the better our chances of winning.

Correct, and you talked about the history. I'll give you another name. Todd Caponi, I don’t know if you come across that one.

I haven’t.

I've done a few sessions with him but he has an Instagram page called the Sales Historian. A history buff in the field of sales. He pulls out these statements that you would think some bright intelligent person said in 2025. He'll say, “This is from 1924.” Many years ago, they were saying this. The handbooks, the training, and all the stuff. It is a sense of history repeating itself, but it's fascinating to me to see this has been there in front of our eyes for all this time. I feel as though the way automation and AI is moving now. It's harder to sell. Not easier.

You're right. You reference Gardner in your research and in the book a couple of times. I was taking a look at their 2024 Chief Sales Officer conference. I should get this stat, but the top insight was 75% of B2B buyers say they prefer a wrap free experience. Some of that I always think is a little overblown. I always like to dive a bit deeper into the research, but nevertheless, what it screams in a positive side is this opportunity to stand out by taking that consultative approach.

Everybody talks about selling, consultation, and solution selling. A consultative approach is knowing so much about the client's business that they see you as a resource that can help them. They see you as part of their team that's helping them achieve that desired outcome. A couple of things to share that is helpful. I love the way the book is structured as well. The way you put this together, Ryan.

We're talking about Building B2B Relationships: How to Identify, Map and Develop Key Relationships to Win More Business. Everybody reading this and in business wants to do those things. You've broken the book into three parts. Part one, what are trusted relationships and why do they matter, so defining it. Part two, an overview of how to build and execute a relationship map, so lots of great detail in terms of what to do and how to do it. Part three, putting all of this into action.

Getting The Time And Attention From Key Resources

One of the things that I call out is one of our final questions, Ryan and I was struggling with this as we prepared for this episode. You and I chatted. You've done very large deals and so did I. At one point in time, I spent years and did a couple of hundred million dollar deals in that time. One was North of ability. These were large outsourcing contracts. You had a bit of that background with the global tech giants you worked with.

One of the things that we had going for us on those deals was that was my only job. When I was leading these deal pursuit teams to close these mega deals for this company, we were so dedicated to this. We did not even go to company meetings. There'd be town halls and meetings. We have to apply it to any process that existed in the organization. We literally had groups hived off. We had different real estate and because those deals were one of the top priorities for the company I was working for, we got executive team anytime we needed.

You cannot start a relationship by asking someone for something.

Our executives would help us be part of that relationship mapping exercise. They were first to the table for all of those things. The organization through nothing I did was rallied around these deals. One of the things that might be a challenge for those reading is they might be chasing some of these deals but have the difficulty dedicating time to these deals amongst everything else they're doing.

Setting up this cadence to get the executive attention for their firms, or their teammates attention who have competing priorities to focus in on these pursuits. Any thoughts? I'm sure you deal with that as well. You would have dealt with that in your background or your past life where there were lots of deals that emphasis or Tech Mahindra, or anybody could have been pursuing. How do you get the time and attention from the key resources for your deal?

This again is back to relationships, but this time it's internal relationships, which is also a crucial factor. Back to Heidi Gardner’s statistics, it is not about external network, but internal. I talked about this as well when I speak publicly. We think about your team within your own organization and how we tend to be grouped together is with people doing the same job as me. That tends to be your team, so your other account executives or whatever. That's not your team, is it?

You can ask me if they've got a deck on X, Y, or Z. A team that helps you to be successful is the multitude of other departments within the organization. The executives are at the top, but you've got your legal team. You've got your solution consultant, finance team, direct manager, the other support agents, and marketing. In chapter three of the book, I talk a bit about this organization or network analysis thinking.

That's the way I laid this out to get this chapter going. At least the book going in that first part. Think about your organization and how well networked you are because that's what's important. That's what will help you to be successful. You need to bring in the right level of support to help you get the depth in the solution because you can't do everything. We often talk about you as the lead being the director of the film or the maestro in the orchestra. You can't do everything.

That's another thing we need to realize now. You need to take a step back and bringing in the right folks to map with the right people, but getting the visibility of the right folks is down to how well networked you are within your own organization. If you're feeling a bit isolated, that's a place for you to start. You can't just go the same as we talked about building relationships. You can't start a relationship by asking someone for something.

We know that and we see that in everyday life. If someone drops me a message on LinkedIn. You know that there are about to request a favor in advance. You've categorized those people in that scenario. Don't do that. You need to invest the time and catch up. Say, “How are you doing?” Be proactive because nobody wants to be used even in turn. At least, you've got to build that credibility. Build your network as well.

It's about putting the hard work again. You've got to recognize people. Sometimes, there’s a tendency, maybe not so prevalent, but to take the credit when things happen. I know if you’ve worked on a few deals. We do get the credit for when the deals come, but is a village, as they say, that brings these. I know we get the blame if things don't go well as well. Maybe keep the blame for yourself, but share the credits when things go well.

That helps to then get trust. Again, the next time you need some help, you can get that in and you may be a product if you're in a software firm or you might need support with product development and things like that. You tend to close everywhere and get the right folks to a client. What I would also say is, when it comes to building relationships on the clients and that's why this relationship map is so important because it's not for you to map everyone on the client side and you to own those relationships. It's the opposite.

Who do you pair with who? Who's got the right personality, that job role, or the profile? If you’re speaking to someone in the info check, or technical or data privacy, you need to pair them with the right person. That builds some credibility. It gets people talking internally. It will bubble up to the execs as well if this is a significant deal. It doesn't need to be financially, but strategically as well. One thing I will say as you go through the case studies I share at the end.

I was talking about this as well. There is one key factor which is present in anything you're doing and that at least one champion on the client side. We hear about the champion. That's fine. They're supporting you, but I'm talking about someone who is emotionally invested in your success and the intelligence gathering. We've talked about the complexity of deals and the number of stakeholders involved on the client side.

You need to engage with those people. You can use your network. You can try and piece this together and get this much fame warm introduction. The best person to do that is someone on the client side. If you can get someone as an ally who's helping you to be successful, but also not just supporting you in the meeting when they need to, but helping you get access to the right people in giving you feedback. I get to the situation.

You're drafting a team's note for them to shoot at in a chat and you’re using them as proxy almost for the effort but willingly. That is crucial. I've not seen anything significant happen at a deal level or an account level that does not have at least one of those people on the inside. That is an important factor to self-evaluate as well.

I 100% agree with you. We didn't win any super large deal where there wasn't somebody on that side who was a champion who had a medium to high degree of influence on the deal that said, “We want you to win,” and they could articulate why.

They're helping you navigate as well in getting you introduced. Whatever it is, 8 to 12 to 15 people that are involved and banging this on the table when it matters and saying, “We need this.” That's a huge component but also, helping you navigate. I've worked with people where they may not consider themselves particularly senior and not particularly involved in a thumbs up or thumbs down, but they are right suitably emotionally involved and supportive of the project that they're part of your team.

That's argued out the most important member of the team. They are sharing insights on the old chart and movement. Finally, all this stuff and a new role has been talked about. I remember for one client, we had a M&A use case. There was a role that came up about post-merger integration and it’s reporting to the CEO. That was a perfect use case for our solution. This role was being talked about, but this lady had happened to figure that out and got us in front of this person. It turned into a huge success. That was all thanks to the intimacy of those conversations and willingness to support.

Get In Touch With Dr. Ryan And Episode Wrap-Up

A great discussion. We could talk about this for hours, Ryan, but we won't. Given your time, I know you've got top of the hour here. First of all, thank you so much for joining. How do people learn more about you, what you do, and Building B2B Relationships: How to Identify, Map and Develop Key Relationships to Win More Business?

I was a big shareholder in LinkedIn before Microsoft bought them, then Microsoft as well is a big believer in LinkedIn. That's where I developed most of my time, to be fair. I'm not too familiar with all these other platforms. I tend to focus on LinkedIn and share my thoughts there. I’m happy to connect with anybody, or follow. Whatever you want to call it. I do a bit on X or Twitter, but most of my focus is on LinkedIn. I’d be happy to chat to anybody then.

LinkedIn is our main focus. Ryan, great to meet you. Thank you. Team, thank you for joining.

---

The intent of the show is to elevate the performance and professionalism on B2B sales. We believe in doing that we're going to improve the lives of professional salespeople. I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you did enjoy the show, please like and subscribe and tell your friends because that's how we get great guests like Ryan, that matters to them. In the meantime, good selling to everybody. Until the next episode.

Important Links

• Ryan O’Sullivan on LinkedIn

• Ryan O’Sullivan on X

• Building B2B Relationships: How to Identify, Map and Develop Key Relationships to Win More Business

• Infosys

• Shift

• The JOLT Effect

• Smarter Collaboration

• The Trusted Advisor

• Sales Historian on Instagram

About Dr. Ryan O'Sullivan

Ryan O’Sullivan is a senior executive, board member, business adviser, university lecturer and author. He has spent his career perfecting and then evangelizing a ‘relationship first’ approach to growing revenue.

This has resulted in many awards and accolades over his career, including the most net-new clients in a year on multiple occasions, fastest net-new client in the organization’s history, first strategic deal (total contract value over $50 million) in a new country and largest deal in the organization’s history. He has won deal of the year and salesperson of the year on multiple occasions and has been the number one annual revenue earner many times, often for consecutive years.

The Loud Impact Of Power Cues With Dr. Nick Morgan

Sometimes, the loudest messages are conveyed without using any words at all. Mark Cox chats with communication expert Dr. Nick Morgan about the subtle science of power cues and how they play out in the world of sales. In this episode, he explains how facial gestures, body language, and vocal cords override even conscious communication. He breaks down several tips for self-awareness and mastering non-verbal communication, making sales pitches more relatable and authentic. Dr. Nick also shares about three pivotal moments in his life: being inspired by the teachings of Dalai Lama, learning his father was gay, and having a near-death experience.

---

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

The Loud Impact Of Power Cues With Dr. Nick Morgan

Team, what a great show that we have for you. We've all heard the platitudes that people make decisions emotionally and then they back it up with facts. That's how people make decisions. In this episode, we're talking with a global communication expert that has all the research associated with that concept. It's Dr. Nick Morgan. He's the Founder of Public Words Inc. He’s one of America's top communications and speech coaches.

He is a former fellow at Harvard Kennedy School of Government where he’s affiliated with the school's Center for Public Leadership. The book we’re discussing with Nick is Power Cues: The Subtle Science of Leading Groups, Persuading Others, and Maximizing Your Personal Impact. I also loved his book, Can You Hear Me?: How to Connect with People in a Virtual World. We don't get to talk about that in this episode the concept from is so incredibly powerful for anybody interacting with other human beings.

The concepts most of our communications unconscious. Our conscious brains can handle something like 40 bits of information a second, but are unconscious minds handle 11 million bits of information per second. There are these two conversations taking place in any form of communication, the conscious one, and the unconscious one. We talked about these Power Cues that help with the unconscious conversation.

Nick breaks it down in the book to variety different chapters, but he talks about these seven Power Cues self-awareness, nonverbal communication, reading others unconscious signals, mastering your own voice, communicating as a leader, using your intuition effectively, and then synchronizing minds. Putting all of it together. Team, this is a great conversation. We talked about all of this leads to what we do every day is professional sales.

People will talk about why it's so difficult to build trust and connection in a short period of time with someone. Talk about real practical exercises to prepare for that next live conversation or that big meeting. I had this one highlighted as an interesting podcast a long time ago when I read Nick’s book. I'm so glad with the way things turned out for this. I hope you are, too. By the way, a pleasant reminder, team. If you like this episode, tell your friends and please like and subscribe to the show. Here's Dr. Nick Morgan.

Nick, welcome to the show. It's so great to meet you.

It’s a great pleasure to be here. Happy to take some time with you to talk about, I presume, communications. It’s one of my favorite subjects.

Three Pivotal Moments In Dr. Nick’s Life

We think it has something to do with B2B selling, but it goes riveted and couldn't wait to get you on the show because somehow you hadn't been on my radar. I first read, Can You Hear Me?: How to Connect with People in a Virtual World. Given the fact it's 2025, I probably read that a little late, but it’s a fantastic book. You referenced Power Cues frequently in the book, The Subtle Science of Leading Groups, Persuading Others, and Maximizing Your Personal Impact. I was hoping we could focus in a little bit on Power Cues. It’s an incredibly riveting book. Most of things that was most impactful, Nick, was what led you to write it? What happened to you when you were seventeen? Maybe we can talk a little bit about the trigger for this.

I was happy go lucky seventeen-year-old and not thinking about matters of communications in any deep way. Three things happened to me that led me to start focusing on communications and indeed then it became my career in life and obsession. The first was, I read a book about the Dalai Lama and he became a hero of mine. The second was, I learned my father was gay and the third was I died. Maybe I should take those three in order, if I may.

I read a book about the Dalai Lama. He became a hero. When I had a chance to hear him speak a few years later, understand this was pre-Dalai Lama social media Rockstar character. He was a relatively unknown Buddhist thinker, but he had come to the University of Virginia, where I was a graduate student because he was interested in comparing Buddhism and Western medicine. He had a contact there. A doctor who was doing research and the subject. This was a public seminar he gave while he was there, but I was very excited because in my mind he was a rockstar.

I go to the hall where he was to be. I noticed it's small. They're all these seating for 35 to 40 people. We're a bit crowded because other people like me wanted to sit at the feet of the master and he wasn't there. That was the second thing I noticed. Five minutes went by, 10 minutes went by, and 20 minutes, went by and he wasn’t there. At this point, were muttering amongst ourselves and wondering how long do you wait for a man who's on his fourteenth reincarnation? It wasn't clear.

Finally, 45 minutes goes by, and he shows up. He comes running in all apologetic and out of breath. He says, “Sorry to keep you waiting. I better say something amazing.” He sits down and just looks at us. He doesn't say anything for one minute of stage time, and two minutes of stage time. Anybody who's presented knows how long that is. Can you imagine just sitting there looking at the audience? Four minutes of stage time, at that point, I was timing it. I was curious to see how long it would go and he started talking.

What had happened in those four minutes to me was life-changing. I had the feeling that he had looked at me and somehow, he had connected with me in a way that felt very deep. It felt like it had changed me. When I talked to people afterwards in the audience, they said the same thing. “No, he looked at me and changed me.” We had this absurd non-Buddhist argument about which one of us he looked at. The point was he had some ability to connect with people that seem very profound and I didn't understand it. I wanted to know more. How did that work? It was clearly a nonverbal communication.

What was so powerful about that? Could I do the same thing? It felt very profound. Back to age seventeen. I have to give my dad a present for Christmas. I gave him a book that I knew we hadn't read because it had been published. That was my concern because he was a bookish man and well-read and I wanted to get him something that he couldn't possibly have read. In this case, it was a book by E.M Forster that had just been published because it had been embargoed for many years after his death.

I only knew E.M Forster from high school reading, A Passage to India, which was required reading in those days. I don't know if they still read it, but so I knew a new book. I had a vague idea that it was his autobiographical novel, and it had been embargoed because it was about homosexuality in an era when that was illegal in England still. This was in the back of my mind, but it wasn't the primary thought. I wrapped up the book, put it under the tree, and then when Dad opened it on Christmas day, he gave me a funny look just for a split second. In that funny look, a wheel turned in my head and I said, “My dad is gay.” I just knew it.

Nonverbal communication back and forth and somehow you know this.

Yes, and he didn't come out to the world for ten years after that. When he finally came out, he called me up and said, “I have something important I’m going to say to you.” He announced this the world to me first. I went up to see him. We were walking and talking. He was hemming and hawing, and saying, “This is hard to say.” I finally said, “Dad, I know you're gay. Get over it. It's not a big deal.” He said, “How did you know?” Suddenly, where how odd it sounded.

You have to get to know somebody well to know what their baseline of communication is.

I said, “That look you gave me years ago on Christmas Day.” He had no memory of it. The thought process I had was, “Good heavens. What is the power of nonverbal communications? What do we exchanging we humans that so profound that my dad could let slip to me a secret he had kept all his life?” It was a very complicated thing in those days and yet, not even be aware that he had done it. That was the second piece of non-verbal information that I needed to know more about.

The final one was this is the public service message in our episode, which is, I was tobogganing with friends again at age seventeen. Don't toboggan. If it's important to be able to steer because toboggans are very clumsy things. You can only steer by leaning. You might have a rope you can pull on. It’s very hard to steer. In this case, we didn't make it around a necessary turn. I crashed into a tree. I fractured my skull and I was in a coma for a week. I'm very fortunate to be here because of some great neuro surgeons. Thank you.

When I awoke, I had died briefly during that five-day week-long period just for a couple of minutes. I'd been brought back to life with the paddles just like in the movies. They give you a test when you wake up. A quick, do you have what's called threefold awareness? Do you know the year that you are in? Do you know where you are? Do you know who's President? That's usually the question they ask you. It's just to see if you still got basic orientation to the world around you and I did.

I passed that test, but it became clear with the days following as I recovered that something else had happened that was far more profound for which there was no test and I couldn't articulate it. Nobody asked me about it, which was I could no longer do what all of us, all of your readers and viewers can do automatically without thinking about it, which is we can read the body language and the emotional state that the body language suggests of people that we know well. An awful lot of time is spent in the media, in the world of experts like me on body language and train people to read the body language of relative strangers. The truth is, we're bad at it.

Except for Paul Eckert.

Paul is pretty good, but that was his life's work. He trained the CIA and the FBI and people like that. All kinds of spies to try to be better at it. After all the work that they did in terms of detecting a liar, which was very important in their minds when they're interrogating a witness, let's say, or a prisoner. Is that person telling the truth or not? They were able to get accuracy only up to 51%. That's 1% better than chance.

I wouldn't want to bet the farm on that. I don't know about you, but those aren't good Vegas odds. We're not very good at it. The problem is, and this is the point, you have to get to know somebody well to know what their baseline of communications is. If I walk into Roman, I'm waving my hands around. Does that mean I'm all excited or am I just always that way? Those are the kinds of things you don't learn until you know somebody.

We're very good at reading the body language of people that we know. We're not good at reading the body language of strangers, but what had happened because of the accident, for some reason was, I had lost that ability. When I looked at people, I could see they were making faces but I couldn't connect to that automatic sense of, “She's happy. He’s frustrated or angry. She's sad. Whatever.” I started staring at my friends and asking them and making them feel very odd and uncomfortable saying, “Are you angry? Are you happy? Are you sad? What's going on?”

It took about a year for me to retrain myself and probably just to recover. The brain heals over time and the result was that I became fascinated and made it eventually my life long study, to be able to decode body language in a way that was conscious and I could codify, talk about, and think about, or as most of us, as I say, are experts but we're unconscious experts.

When a spouse or a family member, if you have kids, when you're kid walks into room, you don't think to yourself. You just know it. That's your unconscious mind. It's much faster than the conscious mind. It immediately goes to the read of that situation of that person because you know them. That's the basis of nonverbal communications, and what I was eager to retrain myself to understand.

Folks, you can see why I was so riveted to the book very early on. Everything that Nick's explained, either the introduction or the first chapter, it becomes riveting. In that same area, you said, Nick, most of our communication is indeed unconscious and our conscious brains can handle something like 40 bits of information per second. Our unconscious minds can handle 11 million bits of information per second, so the conscious brain and unconscious brain.

Communicating With The Unconscious Mind

All of this flabbergasting 10 million of those bits of information per second were all visual. We're pulling this all in visually. One of the reasons I was so excited to speak to you is there's lots of information in our world, in the selling world about helping people and working with people and how people make decisions emotionally then back it up with data.

Frankly, it's pretty high-level advice. When I dove into Power Cues, the facts, the data, and the research. It’s something like you make your decisions, emotionally or unconsciously and it takes a long time for your conscious mind to catch up even sometimes up to nine seconds. Unconsciously, you make a decision. You're acting on it. You don't realize you've made the decision.

That's correct. Therein lies both the challenge for communication because if you're a B2B seller or anybody, trying to communicate. You need to talk to that unconscious mind because that's where the decision is made. All of us are trained and we spent our lives focusing on conscious stuff, our expertise. I want to tell you about my IT system that I think you should purchase or buy materials or the things that you should buy.

I'll give you conscious reasons why you should do that. If I have been connected with your unconscious mind, I haven’t created trust and made an emotional connection, then the decision is over. It's done. It's made before I ever get to all that lovely conscious data I have to talk to you about. That's the reason why this is important to study and why it matters in these situations.

Inspiration From The Music Of Beatles And Bee Gees

The heart of the book is some things we can think about to help with that. One of the things, just looking at your background, it jumps out at me. You talked about how the Dalai Lama had made this amazing connection with you and 35 or 40 other people in a room. Each of you felt like somehow, he was speaking to you personally and directly.

I can't help but notice. You’ve got some very cool Beatles paraphernalia behind you and you start to think of what happened with those four people, where somehow, they were making an insane emotional connection with the entire world. First of all, you must be a fan. Have you ever connected those or thought about that? How did they turn the whole world upside down and create a love affair with the whole world through music and also badly recorded music.

Compared to what we know now. A single monaural sound is a strange concept to us. We're used to multitracking and everything else. The Beatles had, let's call it an unfair advantage, which is that music. It goes directly to those emotional centers. In a sense, it's a way of connecting with people that bypasses the intellectual aspects of human connection and goes right to emotion because music hits, what we call the back part of the lizard part informally, but the part of our brain that isn't the prefrontal cortex were executive conscious decisions are made.

They connected with those teenagers and I was one instantly and unconsciously. We couldn't help ourselves as it were. There was something about energy of the music. You can get quite technical about certain kinds of music and why it connects. I'll just give you one very little. For instance, a rising melody is something that connects with us positively and gives us a good feeling. It makes us happy. One of the Beatles earliest hits was a song called, those of you old enough to remember, you'll recognize it. I Want to Hold Your Hand.

The innovative thing about that was when Paul McCartney sang that line, “I want to hold your hand,” and the hand note was an octave higher and an octave jump. That was very unusual in pop music in those days. It still is. It's quite a leap to make just vocally. Usually, singers don't give themselves something that difficult, but that huge leap.

Imagine a tune that goes up note by note and step by step. If it jumps an octave, that's eight steps as it were eighth notes. It hits you with a powerful force of positive energy. It makes you feel good like that. There were a number technical reasons why their music was so uplifting, fun, exciting, and connected with us so well. Overall, they brought energy, excitement, and all sorts of useful emotional connections with their fan base.

Every generation can connect with the Beatles. That's the unbelievable thing about it. When we were growing up, we had one of those very large piece of furniture stereo systems that took up half the wall and we only had three albums. Two of them were Beatles albums. We were a musical family with piano and the rest of it.

I'm a musician still, but it's amazing to me. We were down in Vegas seeing Love a few years back. When that music came up again, I started tearing up and I had no idea why. I was happy of those kinds of good things, but the emotion just overtook me. Something like Eleanor Rigby isn't on that pot happy sight. Suddenly, it's targeting your heartstrings for some amazing reasons. It’s fabulous.

If you walk into a room with a poor posture, people will think you lack confidence and disengaged.

By the way, without going down to tangent, you start to think of the other almost Beatle Mania. It was the Bee Gees in the height of the disco era. At their peak or their height, they sang falsetto, which is an octave plus. It's at the highest range and that certainly had a connection with a good part of the universe at that point in time that became enormously successful for a period of time, that type of singing.

There's a useful lesson in there for your B2B communicators, by the way. Broadly speaking, without getting into too much detail here. We talk at a conversational pitch, but I am speaking certain notes that we could find on the piano just as you are. If I held, then we could go find that on the piano. Our speaking could be noted just like music.

Very broadly speaking, as you go up, you signal certain things to your audience. As you go down, you signal certain other things. I mentioned that going up in music is positive. It also has a double-edged aspect to it, which is as we indicate excitement and energy, our voices go up in pitch and this is speaking as well as singing. It also indicates stress, tension, and anxiety. What happens is, if you're tense, let's say, you're going into important meeting and this is the big pitch. This is where the client is going to say yes or, no.

You're stressed out. You get that fight or flight, that adrenaline response. One of the things that does in addition to making your heartbeat fast and your palms clammy and all the other things that symptoms that you know, is it a tightens up your vocal course. That pushes your voice up and one of the extraordinary things about people is we are very good at hearing tension in other people's voices, even if we don't know them. This is one of the exceptions to what we were talking about earlier that you have to know people well to read their emotional state.

We recognize tension invoices. If you walk into that room, you normally talk like this when you're relaxed, but walking into the room because there's so much at stake, you've got the adrenaline flowing. You start talking like this. Your pitch goes up just a little bit. Even though you don't know me, you're starting to hear the tension in that voice, and that's going to make you uneasy. You're going to think, “What's wrong with this guy? He's nervous.”

The way you read nervousness is you think, “He doesn't know what he's talking about.” Right away from the start, even though you're not consciously aware of it, that nervous energy is causing you to come across as less confident and less authoritative than you would otherwise. Becoming aware of that is extremely important. What I recommend to people is, for these high stakes moments. Record yourself on your cell phone talking just for 30 seconds when you relaxed so you know what your voice should sound like.

Play that in your ear before you go into the meeting. That will help ground you and you'll think, “That what I should sound like.” Instead of walking in and suddenly going with a high pitch voice, “Hi, Mr. Smith. Great to me.” You say, “Hi, Mr. Smith. Great to me you,” with a low voice, and you come across this confident and relaxed and self-assured.

What a great tip. Thank you for that. Nick, in our world, that's not just for the high stakes meeting that big discussion or presentation. Portion of the people who are reading do demand generation. They reach out into their target market and interrupt somebody in the middle of their day. Whether it's by phone or email. They're trying to get a meeting or trying to have a live conversation with someone to quickly share their value proposition and understand if that person's got the problem that they can solve for or help with.

We train a lot on this, but it's very difficult to inoculate against fight or flight when you're doing that because you're dealing the phone twenty times and you have no idea when somebody's going to connect with you, and they are on the line. There's a mediate imposter syndrome. If you're 23 years old and the person on the other end of the line, you used an IT example, but it’s the VP of IT for a large telecommunications firm. That nervousness comes across and the recipient doesn't want to be speaking to somebody nervous and anxious because as you point out in the book, we mirror the effects of other people. It makes us a little bit uncomfortable.

Using Power Cues To Make A Good First Impression

By the way, how do we exert that leadership? How do we become the leader in the room or exert our confidence in leadership? It's talking about how these unconscious cues define a leader in any situation. Team, we're not going to have time to go through all of them, but when you read the book, in chapter one, it’s knowing your own power cues, taking charge of your nonverbal communication, reading the unconscious signals of others, and mastering your own voice. We talked a little bit about that, about pitch and tone. That's beautifully laid out in the book.

Also, breathing was so important. Singers and musicians, we’ll talk a little bit about that. Communicating with the leader then using your intuition effectively and synchronizing minds. Nick, I know your time is so valuable, but given time here, may we talk about a couple of these? As helpful tips for people walking away from this. The first one is self-awareness, taking an inward look.

You used a very good example there, coord your voice when you're feeling great. Listen to it. It puts you in the frame of mind. What are some other tips on the self-awareness starting with ourself? A lot of people are very uncomfortable with these things that we're talking about. Things like public speaking or big presentation. What do we do internally to help ourselves with that first?

Power Cues: One of the extraordinary things about people is their ability to hear tension in other people’s voices even if they do not know them.

You want to think about a couple of things. First and foremost is, how do I show up when I first walk into the room? That first meeting and that first impression is so key. A simple example of this is something I blame on one of these objects. It’s a mobile phone in a very nice case and I'll turn sideways to show this. The thing that happens with a mobile phone is, we tend to pitch our heads forward and our shoulders round, so we lean into the phone. We spent a lot of time like this. I was at the airport. They were 80 people waiting at our gate and I looked around all and 78 or 79 of them had their heads down.

It's unbelievable, isn't it?

The 80th was me. I looked around and I thought, “How sad,” then I was soon in the phone like everybody else, so the number became 80. Why is that a problem? It's because if I walk into a room like this, and I've tested this with audiences many times and done a research project on it that substantiated this. People think all kinds of thoughts, but they're all negative. They say, “You feel bad. You lack confidence. You're disengaged. You feel subordinate. Not powerful.”

They're all kinds of feelings associated and ways that people read this posture, but none of them is ever positive. The first thing I say to people is, “Go back to the wall. I'm going to stand in front of the Beatles here.” Find a wall somewhere in the men's room or the lady from, and put your heels against the wall or butt against the wall, or shoulders against wall, or head against the wall, so you're standing up straight. You will convey a very different impression in very important person or team that you're meeting and you will find it strange. That's what everybody reports.

They say, “I feel weirdly upright. Don't I look strange?” I'll say no. For the first time, you look confident and you're taking up your full height. That's the important thing. We humans are incredibly good at unconsciously reading the difference between this and this. Even though I've only shrunk the quarter of an inch or something like that.

We read somebody who takes up their full space as somebody who has power agency. Not in an arrogant way, but in the way they're entitled to. Whereas somebody who shrunk like this, we say, “That person is not fully present. They lack confidence. They're unhappy and subordinate, on and on.” That first impression in person is extraordinarily important in that sense. That's why I'd say where it starts.

It's such a great tip. Some of us were athletes. We're natural slow slouchers because of some of the sports we spent years playing. I was a goalie in hockey and always about rolling over. It wasn't like now, it’s always been over. Every time I get fitness training, they're always saying, “We got to start by pulling everything back,” instead of this rolling over and crafting.

Let's look to the second one, the nonverbal communication and there's these thousands of nonverbal communications when we're enacting with someone else. There's two questions there, Nick. Oftentimes, we love to pick up on a couple of tips when I'm looking at someone else when I'm working with someone else. The second thing is about this misinterpretation of somebody else. There are people in the world that have a natural smile on their face. I married to one of those. Thank goodness, but I'm not.

I'm extremely pleasant, positive, and optimistic, but the natural state of my face when I'm relaxing is almost a frown. Yet, I'm funny, engaged, and positive all the time. If I'm not speaking, people misinterpret it, or if I'm in a room, they'll think I might be cross. I have to consciously put a little smile on my face even though it's not a natural thing for me. What are some tips so consciously, we don't go down the wrong path? When we're trying to assess what's going on with others, all about this trying to make sure we make a good impression. What are some tips we should consider?

The way about it is the first thing that has to happen between people is that we have to be open to each other. If we're closed off, in terms of our body language, then communication isn't even going to start. You need to think about what are the cues I can send out that I'm open because you alluded to the idea of mirror neurons. What happens is if I go in and I'm open, friendly, and clearly want to connect. That raises the likelihood at least that the other person will experience the same feelings and emotions out of unconscious level pretty quickly on their end.

That's the first step. It’s to make sure you're expressions and your body language are open. You mention an important one which is not having, what we call an RBF. I won't spell that one out because it's a rude phrase. Having a smile on your face, having a positive affect and there are four aspects to that. You want to think about raising your eyebrows from time to time, because that looks like you're asking the other person, how do you feel? What do you think? It brings the other person in.

If you replace fear with a positive mantra that you chant over and over internally, you reach into your unconscious mind and heal your fear and trauma.

You want to make sure your eyes aren't narrowed, but rather are open because when our eyes are slightly wider, you don't want to overdo it. Slightly wider shows interest in the other person, as you like the other person, then there's nodding and smiling. You don't need those four facial gestures all at once, but those are ways of signaling positive, openness, and connection.

What you want to do is test yourself. Ask your trusted colleague, what's my resting face like to your point? If it's an RBF phase, then you want to consciously work on making it more positive with any of those four things. In terms of your body language, very quickly when we think about where are hands are, on an horizontal axis. If I have my hands wide, they're open. As I bring my hands in front of my torso, then I'm closing down. This is self-protective.

What you see, what I videotape clients and give them feedback, I will say, “How did you feel?” They said, “I was open.” I'll say, “Let's look at the tape,” and 80% of the time, their hands are closing in front of their torso if they're speaking in a room publicly. That can be as few as six people or more. It feels like an actual presentation or you're on the spot to present. You feel self-conscious. It's a very natural thing to do to bring your hands in in front of your torso to self-protect because you feel like you’re on the spot.

The signal that sends to the audience of 6 or 600 is, “I am not open to you.” It's harder right from the start to connect. I train people to unconsciously get this habit down, which means you have to practice it in low stakes situations over and over again in order for it to become natural. When you walk into that high stakes situation, your unconscious mind is going to be saying, “Danger,” and the hands are going to come back in front of the torso to self-protect. It's hard to override. You need to practice it in low stake situation, as I say.

When you're at home, talking to loved ones, or to your family or with friends that you're comfortable with, force yourself. Practice doing keeping the hands open. First of all, you'll be surprised at the difference it makes if you're somebody who does a lot of self-protection. You'll find that you make warmer connections with people. Second, you'll gradually master this and become more comfortable with it. It's not natural.

Natural is to self-protect, but that cuts off the chance of connection between people. That's again, a simple way to begin thinking about it. My face has to signal open connection, a desire to connect with people. My body language has to signal a desire to connect with people. Those are the basics, so you need to monitor yourself to begin with, then you can look at other people that folks you're connecting with for similar signs.

If you're going in and you're open, smiling, and connecting and the other person has his arms tuck in. It this doesn't take a genius to say, “That person is still close to me. I need to figure out what's going on.” There are a number of strategies you can use to start to open that connection but you need to be aware of it. You need to be aware that the other person is closed off. Otherwise, you won't make the extra effort to try to connect. These are this beginning levels of understanding, but it's where you need to begin.

These are great for everybody reading. Folks, you can share that when you share the feedback on this episode. I'm just going to point back again, team, Power Cues: The Subtle Science of Leading Groups, Persuading Others, and Maximizing Your Personal Impact is loaded with these kinds of ideas. This is a must-read in my view, team. For anybody interacting with clients or prospects, or anybody interacting with other teammates, everybody should be reading this.

Addressing Imposter Syndrome In B2B Sales

One last question for Nick and then we'll wrap things up here. Nick, I had a final opportunity to do some improv training. We have a comedy group up called Second City. We love it. My niece and I went and did some improv training just to drop-in class, which was magnificent, frankly. One of the things they talked about in improv was this internal voice fighting all the time where you're trying to be perfect. As soon as you're in an improv, you're doing something. What you do is say something and your voice immediately defaults to, “That was the worst response anyone would have ever come up with.” In doing so, it shuts your brain down from coming up with the next one.

What they coach on is they started this mindset hack. People were good at improv. They train their minds where they are where they are. Whatever they've said is now the reality. To view it as an excellent contribution so that they can be prepared to build on the next one when they receive back from the partner. It's an interesting thing and the exercise proved it's so true. No matter what you say, you don't think it's very good.

You spoke a little bit in the book about that internal voice and how we help manage to that and how that confidence either comes across, or doesn't. Not to put you on the spot, but do you have any quick tips for some of the readers? It’s because this imposter syndrome is something that's pretty prevalent and B2B sales.

The issue is where that comes from is from an unconscious dialogue that started somewhere in your past. You can go to psychotherapy for years and find out where the original wound, the childhood trauma happened or you can deal with it as it is now and say, “This is not helping me.” I'm going to replace that unconscious thought pattern with a positive one. I recommend people giving themselves positive mantras.

I was an actor for years before I got real paid work. One of my great fears as an actor or many actors share, especially stage actors, is you're going to forget your lines. We call it going dry. Your great fear s you're going to go dry. If you replace that fear with a positive mantra that you chant over and over to yourself internally, then gradually what you do is you reach down into that unconscious mind. You heal whatever that trauma was or fear was and replace it with this positive thing.

It's good to keep them simple. My Mantra was, “I know my lines. I got this.” I would just say that over and over again to myself. Gradually over time, that replaced wherever that other fear came from. As I say, you have the choice. You can either do that positive work, or you can go to years of psychotherapy and hope that that untangles your psyche. I recommend both, but if you want to get there quickly, start using the mantras on yourself.

The other way you can do it is by doing something that actors called sense memory training, which is before you go into that meeting, the high stakes meeting, sit down for a couple of minutes and remember a time. It has to be a very powerful time, when you were happy, confident and things were going great. It was rocking for you. Get yourself into that state of mind through that memory as powerful as possible.

Think about what it looked like, sounded like, tasted like, smelled like and felt like or use all the five cents to put yourself in that state. While I was acting, I also did the offset. I had a tragic scene to play in one of my first professional stage plays. It was revival of something called the Heidi Chronicles. My character was about to die and I knew this. I was dying of AIDS, so I had to have this very sad scene. What I used was a memory of when a pet died.

I remembered that day very powerful. It was a very sad moment for me. I would put myself back into that moment, what it was like holding the dog in this case, in my arms, as he died and so on and so forth. I would walk out on stage full of all that sadness. You can do the same thing, only you want to create typically a positive, “I got this,” moment. That's one that's full of connection and positive feelings. That with practice, let me stress. The first time you try it, you won't feel a huge effect. It takes practice over time, but that's another way to access a positive unconscious attitude.

By the way, that theme of practice, no surgeon ever picked up a scalpel and then started operating on a patient. They picked up a scalpel in medical school. They operated on 5,000 grapes over five years and then did it. They keep training in getting better. No tool, no concept, and no idea knocks the ball out of the park the first time if there's value in it. You've got to work these things.

Episode Wrap-up And Closing Words

Nick, it's been a huge pleasure speaking with you. I was super excited about this. It was a red-letter day for us in the funnel because I'm such a fan of your work. We didn't even get to, Can You Hear Me?: How to Connect with People in a Virtual World, but that was the first book of yours that I read. It’s staggeringly good also. Nick, how else can people get in contact with you or learn more about how you can help them?

The simplest way is to go to our website PublicWords.com. That has, by the way, the treasure trove of articles, videos, and advice about how to do many of these things and a lot more besides omnivore when it comes to learning about communication. I track Neuroscience constantly, so I'm always putting updates in what we're learning about how the brain and the mind communications works. You can connect with us or use all the free resources there.

Thank you so much for joining, Nick.

It's a great pleasure, Mark. Thank you for having me on your show.

Team, thank you for joining the show. As everybody knows, we run this show to improve the performance in professionalism of B2B sales because we believe in doing so. We're improving the lives of anybody in professional sales. Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe to the show and tell your friends because that's how we get fantastic guests like Nick that matters to us. By the way, we're also growth oriented. If there's ways that we can make this show more valuable to you, please let us know.

You can reach me at MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email. We love constructive criticism. In fact, the things we do today came from many of the people who listen who gave us some great ideas. I'll respond to every tip or advice that gets sent in. Thanks for sending them. Keep them coming. Until the next episode.

Important Links

• Nick Morgan on LinkedIn

• Public Words Inc

• Power Cues: The Subtle Science of Leading Groups, Persuading Others, and Maximizing Your Personal Impact

• Can You Hear Me?: How to Connect with People in a Virtual World

• A Passage to India

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

About Dr. Nick Morgan

Dr. Nick Morgan is one of America’s top communication speakers, theorists and coaches. A passionate teacher, he is committed to helping people find clarity in their thinking and ideas – and then delivering them with panache. He has been commissioned by Fortune 50 companies to write for many CEOs and presidents. He has coached people to give Congressional testimony, to appear in the media, and to deliver unforgettable TED talks. He has worked widely with political and educational leaders. And he has spoken, led conferences, and moderated panels at venues around the world.  During the last election cycle, he provided expert commentary on the presidential debates for CNN.  Most recently, he designed and hosted TEDxWaldenPond in November 2023.

Nick’s methods, which are well-known for challenging conventional thinking, have been published worldwide. His acclaimed book on public speaking, Working the Room: How to Move People to Action through Audience-Centered Speaking, was published by Harvard in 2003 and reprinted in paperback in 2005 as Give Your Speech, Change the World: How to Move Your Audience to Action. His book on authentic communications, Trust Me, was published by Jossey-Bass in January 2009. His book on communications and brain science, Power Cues: The Subtle Science of Leading Groups, Persuading Others, and Maximizing Your Personal Impact, was published by Harvard in May 2014.  His latest book is Can You Hear Me?, on the perils of virtual communication, published by Harvard in 2018. His forthcoming book is The Embodied Voice, tentatively planned for 2025.

The Noble Purpose Of Sales With Lisa McLeod

Even though sales are mainly about driving revenue and putting up the right numbers, one element must not be forgotten: the needs and interests of the customers themselves. Executive coach Lisa McLeod is here to discuss why businesses should embrace the noble purpose of providing a positive impact to everyone. Sitting down with Mark Cox, she explains why they should never see their target market as mere statistics but aim to make a real difference in their lives. Lisa also explains how a client-first mindset requires taking intentional action and showcasing your authentic self.

---

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

The Noble Purpose Of Sales With Lisa McLeod

Is sales a noble profession? It’s a conversation we are going to have. We believe it is. We think it’s the most important business discipline there is out there. We are chatting with Lisa McLeod, and she’s the author of Selling With Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud. She co-authored this book with Elizabeth Lotardo originally back in 2012, and then they did a second edition in 2020.

It was an enormously popular book, hence the second edition. The core idea is that sales teams with a noble purpose bigger than money, whose aim is to improve the life of their customers and prospects, outsell transactional salespeople that are trying to get deals done. We all intuitively know in this day and age that’s the case. I love the way that these ladies package this message and information so that we can engage our sales teams with this noble purpose.

One of the data points that’s pretty powerful comes out. It says organizations with a purpose bigger than money outperform their competitors. A ten-year study of more than 50,000 brands around the world said that the firms that put improving people’s lives at the center of all they do outperform the market by huge margins. They say they have a 3X growth trajectory versus their competitors.

It’s pretty interesting. We talk about what that noble purpose selling is. We also talk about a couple of questions that you might want to think about reading this show to find your noble purpose as a salesperson or sales team. The first question, how do you make a difference to your customers? Connect emotionally with the stories of what you’ve done for your customers and how you’ve improved their lives, both at the corporate level for that customer and at the individual buyer level.

The second question, how do you differentiate? We spend a lot of time on this with our training. What is unique and different about you, given that customer’s other options in the marketplace? The third question to think about and then collaborate on is, on your best day, what do you love about your job? Thinking about that, a lot of this is a mindset shift that enables your market to believe that you want to help them, and that starts by wanting to help them to improve their lives. That’s going to make you feel better about what you do. We talk a little bit about the brain science associated with this, that there are two big human needs we all have. One is belonging, and the second is significance.

We know purpose helps with drive. We learned that from Daniel Pink’s great work and all of that good stuff. We have a deep conversation on this topic, Selling with Noble Purpose. Lisa has authored four other books, Leading with Noble Purpose, The Triangle of Truth, Forget Perfect, and Finding Grace. I enjoyed my conversation with Lisa. I hope you do, too. If you do, please, folks, like and subscribe to the show, and tell your friends. When you like and subscribe or leave a rating for us, that helps us get great guests like Lisa, so thanks for doing so. Folks. here’s Lisa McLeod.

Lisa, welcome to the show. It’s so great to meet you face to face.

It is great to be here, Mark.

I was excited for this, and as always, everybody who reads the show knows we pick authors. We read somebody’s book and then we love it, then we chase them down. I did that with you. I hounded you until we got you on the show, but I was wondering how it took me so long because you’ve got five great books out. We are talking about Selling With Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud, and you co-wrote that with Elizabeth Lotardo originally back in 2012. It was so popular and did so well, you did a reprinting, or second printing in 2020.

Introducing Lisa McLeod And The Concept of Noble Purpose

You’ve also written Selling With Noble Purpose, Leading with Noble Purpose, The Triangle of Truth, Forget Perfect, and Finding Grace. We’ll focus on Selling with Noble Purpose. Before we do, maybe a little bit of the short story. You’ve had a great background. You are a sales trainer with P&G, but tell the audience a little bit about your journey that got you to where we are.

Selling with Noble Purpose is my most popular book, and it represents my own journey. I was, as you said, an ex-sales trainer. I was a former VP of Sales. I ran a sales training company, and like a lot of people that run sales organizations, I had a lot of pressure to deliver numbers. Also, like a lot of people who have seen a lot of sales calls, I was always curious as to what was that magic thing that the top performers had.

How I landed on Selling with Noble Purpose was through my work as a consultant, where I did a study for a big biotech company to identify what differentiated the top performers. I’m a curious person. I’m curious about what makes people tick. It probably comes from unpacking my own dysfunctional background, and we can get into that. One of the things that I determined, and it was a team that I worked with, was that the differentiator between the good performers and the exceptional, the top of the top. The thing that the top of the top had that was different was they had a different internal compass.

Instead of focusing on closing the deal, their true north, their higher purpose, was improving life for customers, and the numbers were a trailing indicator. When I discovered that, it was like one of those scenes in a movie where the person realizes their spouse is having an affair, and they flash back to like one hundred different scenes and go, “There was that.”

It was a moment when one sales rep said to me. She was in biotech sales, and said, “She’s my higher purpose.” It was this grandmother, and she had this visual imagery of the end game for her sales, this patient. When she said that to me, I flashed back to a hundred other situations where I went, “That was the difference.” I also went to my own personal self and thought, “When was I at the top of my game?” It’s when I was that true believer.

It’s a pretty compelling story at the beginning of the book. Correct me if I’m wrong, at some point, you were at a board table with that same client. They had some data in front of them that you didn’t have, and they asked your opinion. After interviewing or spending time with the reps, you called out five people you thought were the top reps. That seemed to be client-first selling with purpose. They said, that’s an amazing trick because they are our top reps, and then they asked why. You explained why you had come to that conclusion.

The other thing is the timing. We are doing this in 2025. This was several years ago as this was coming up. There’s been such a movement to say, “Get away from this idea of closing the deal or getting the metric. In my conversation, I want to end up with one more qualified opportunity.” Get away from all of that and this idea of trying to help somebody is the means to the end, so get away from the outcome.

Companies that prioritize their clients saw their revenue grow and their deal size sold at a higher margin.

I like to think that I was one of the people both inspired by and propelling this conversation around moving the emotional center of sales. What’s interesting is that I have been doing this for a long time. I was a sales trainer when I was 24 years old. I was a field sales trainer for P&G. I was a sales manager for my college paper. I have been thinking, writing, and reading about sales for a long time.

There’s a nuanced difference I want to draw people’s attention to. I know a lot of sales leaders read your blog, as well as CEOs of companies. The nuanced difference I want to highlight is this, here’s what we know. That hunch I had back then has later been proven true, proven true by academically vetted research.

Here’s the truth and the nuance I want to draw your attention to. The truth is that salespeople with a purpose bigger than money, salespeople who truly want to improve the lives of their customers, outperform salespeople focused on the numbers. The nuance is this, we have been trying to get salespeople to be customer-focused for many years. We have said, “Focus on the customer.”

The nuanced difference is going beyond focusing on the customer and instead instilling within the seller a deep purpose. Your job is to improve this customer’s situation. That’s very different from than if I was with a student. It was focusing on the student, but instead, I went to the student and said, “You need to improve their abilities.” That’s a completely different situation. That’s what was missing in a lot of the previous conversations. It was just focus on the customer generally, rather than, how are you going to improve this customer’s condition?

It’s an interesting nuance to call out because a lot of the past may have been more tactical. Maybe there was good intent there, but it might have been a bit more tactical, where they go, “Focus on the customer so you can sell them something.” It’s quite different from having this relentless focus on making their situation better. Along that journey, good things are going to happen to you, but that also means, as you understand their world and have the business acumen and industry acumen to help them achieve a better future, it may or may not mean something for you immediately.

That’s what people worry about, but what if it’s not best to buy from me? I can tell you that the companies that have employed this methodology grew their revenues, grew their deal sizes, sold at a higher margin, and cemented long-term customer relationships. They were able to lift out of that transactional sale.

That’s the challenge. If you are a sales leader, you have to hit a number. That’s not some loosey-goosey. Maybe if it’s right for the customer, or maybe if it’s not. The challenge with coaching to the numbers is that it’s like a track coach trying to coach to times. I could sit there and say, “Mark, your time’s ten seconds. You’ve got to get it to nine.” I could shout at you all day, but that’s not coaching you. That’s not behavioral. It’s measuring the past. As a sales leader, I will give you an example.

We worked with a big consulting firm and did an exercise where we divided the room in two. We said, “This room needs to sell a $1 million deal. This room needs to deliver $10 million in value to clients. You have five minutes, go.” In five minutes, the people who were focused on trying to sell a $1 million deal were like, “We’d go here. We’d go there.” The people who were focused on trying to deliver $10 million to their clients were like, “What if we came up with this? What if we did that? What if we helped them with this?” At the end of the day, you ask, “Who’s going to be more successful?”

The other thing I loved about reading this was when you shared that exercise, the excitement with which one side of the room was engaged because you triggered that emotional reaction. There’s something far less emotionally engaging about thinking, what’s in it for me and how do I hit my number? For those reading out there, this is where you are going to hear things from your sales team. When you are managing and somebody comes in and says, “How’s it going? How’s the week been?” They go, “What a grind.”

If you are out there picking up the phone or knocking on doors or continuing to try and pull people along to a deal, there’s a lack of that sense of purpose, but if you are saying, “My role here is to improve the lives of the people I’m working with and try to help them run better businesses. I have this higher purpose. I feel better.”

Focusing On Improving Customers’ Lives

We used to articulate this a lot in our training, but I never captured it as well. I don’t know how I never came across your book, but I hadn’t captured it as well the way you’ve got this captured, and a data point that’s worthy of taking a listen-to-team. In the book, you write that, “Organizations with a purpose bigger than money outperform their competitors.”

A ten-year growth study of more than 50,000 brands around the world said that, “Firms that put improving people’s lives at the center of all they do outperform the market by a huge margin.” The study was done with Jim Stengel, former chief marketing officer for P&G, who said those clients who center their business on improving people’s lives have grown at triple the rate of their competitors.

The research is there, and I will translate it into a scenario everyone can relate to. Imagine you have one company or sales team in a room saying, “How can we grow? How can we make more money? Who can we call on? How can we close bigger deals?” There’s nothing wrong with that. I have led a sales team, but imagine you have another team, their competitor across town. They are saying, “How can we improve life for our customers? How can we find more customers that we can improve? How can we help them improve in bigger, bolder ways?”

That second team, even if the products are exactly the same, the second team, if they have some malleability, they are going to be more innovative. Even if the offerings are exactly the same. We work with a metals company. They are not going to invent a new metal. What happened is when we sat with them and said, “How can we improve our customer’s lives in better ways?” We could go to some other divisions. We could help them with this. We could help them with that.

This company exponentially grew their revenue and beat their competition because, instead of sitting in a room talking about themselves, they were sitting in a room talking about how to improve customers. That nuanced difference, you can tell in that grinded-out company, customers are talked about as an object, a thing to get from. You can tell by the language, the way they talk about the customers. In that noble purpose company, they talk about customers with specificity, “We helped so-and-so with this.” They are talked about as someone that they are having an impact on.

There are so many things to unpack there and so many things to call out. Anyone reading this, first of all, you have to be respectful to those who are absent. If you are in a sales meeting, not speaking about a client or a prospect with the utmost respect, that bleeds through. That’s a culture thing. That’s a value thing. If you are selling for a company doing that, find another job. There’s a whole lot of other detail behind that, but the short answer is you have to find another place to work.

The second thing to touch on there a little bit is, you talked about even if they have a similar product. We know the product almost doesn’t matter outside of a minimum threshold of capability. The research you’ve published at HBR, Harvard Business Review, another study in Harvard Business Review around the time you wrote this book in 2012, they published the research that Charlie did that said that 39% of the time, a B2B purchasing decision favors the company that sold better versus the company that had the best price for quality or service features. It doesn’t matter. What matters is, and my belief is always this, the company that I feel buyers will go forward with is the organization that they believe understands them best.

Yes, and it’s reflected in the way you sell.

Taking Action With Intent And Authentic Curiosity

This is why there’s such a powerful mindset. We are going to get to how we start to apply this mindset to our company with three key questions to ask ourselves, but this mindset, this client-first mindset, this noble approach, helping-people mindset, is so important. You probably know him, but I’m interviewing Dr. Nick Morgan, who’s written 9 or 10 books on mindset speaking. He teaches the folks at Harvard as well. It is a great book. It’s called Can You Hear Me? and Power Cues is another one.

What he speaks to is, there are conscious and unconscious triggers when we are communicating with somebody, and they are picking up on the conscious triggers and the unconscious triggers. We have this almost sixth sense of sensing somebody’s intent. That’s why this noble selling purpose is so important to me. You’ve nailed it here because you’ve had that experience. You meet somebody at a cocktail party, and you connect with them.

A company will exponentially grow its revenue and beat its competition if they are always talking about how to improve its customers.

It feels like this great connection. The same things happen, you’ve met somebody who are saying the right things, but there’s something about you that says, “I’m not into this person.” You are almost a little bit repulsed by them. Something’s happening with the subconscious. You are picking up on triggers that go, “Danger. I don’t know about this person.” This mental intent is so important.

It is, and it shows up in the language of the seller and in some little unconscious qualifiers that people do. I want to go back to something you said. When you said if you are working for a company that only thinks of the customer as a number. A lot of people in that situation reached out to me. What I would say is if you are working for a company where they say, “We care about a customer if they give us money and they are awful.” You need to go work somewhere else.

If you are working somewhere that’s more like your normal company, where the VP of sales is saying, “We got to hit these targets. Can you get this customer this month?” Don’t make assumptions. We had one situation that ended up being our absolute biggest global client, where one sales team read the book. They were in that meeting. The sales leader was in the meeting with all the other sales leaders, where the head of sales was saying, “We got to get these numbers in.”

They said, “We are going to get our numbers in, but one thing I always like to remind myself of is these are human beings, and every one of these numbers represents someone. Someone that has had a great experience because of us.” It was a travel company. They said that in the meeting, and the whole emotional center shifted. Everyone went, “That’s right.” No matter who your boss is, and if you are the boss, it’s going to be more powerful, but you have the power to look at those numbers and say every one of these represents someone whose life we improved.

When you talk about intent, I will give you an example. I taught spin selling for years, which everyone’s pretty much from Dr. Neil Rackham. I was a spin trainer. It’s part of the arsenal of experiences that I drew on, where I would watch people use the same question and go, “It sounds better coming from them,” and I realized it was intentional.

There’s that age-old sales question, “What keeps you up at night?” I can ask that question in that icky sales way, or I could say, “If I could show you a way to do it better, faster, and cheaper, would you do it?” I can ask that same question at the end of an intentional discovery, where I said, “It seems like this and this are your biggest challenges and you are dealing with this. As you look across the landscape of all those things, what are the ones that keep you up at night?”

That exact same question now feels different. If I ponder and go, “If I could show you a way to solve that map, would that be helpful to you?” You are reading. If you are watching this, you can see it better, but even if you are reading, you can know my intent because the question is in the service of improving your condition, and you can feel it. The thing about salespeople is they already know you are in sales. They already know you want to sell something. That’s already the framework for operating. You don’t need to be the one pushing it too early in the call.

It’s such a great example because we get engaged by a lot of folks, Lisa, which would be mid-sized organizations, significant-sized companies, but they are mid-size, where in many cases the biggest deals still need to be sold by the founder. They come to us because they go, “We still can’t somehow translate what the founder’s doing to the majority of the sales team.”

When you travel around, and you do a lot of this when you are traveling around with people in the field, and see what goes on, it’s that intent. That’s the difference. When the founder is in the room with the potential buyers or the other client, the prospect, and they are asking questions. They are truly authentic questions. The other side believes they are authentic because they are going, “The founder doesn’t need one more deal. The founder’s already fine. He’s interested.”

Whereas, the intent of the salesperson sometimes, that same question feels like manipulation, because it feels like you are getting drawn down this path. Whereas, if I say yes then suddenly, I’m going to get hit with something, instead of this authentic curiosity. Diane Hamilton is somebody you should probably know. Maybe you do, but a great thought leader on this topic of authentic curiosity with intent.

As a leader, you have to focus on driving the numbers and the sense of pride.

We have worked with a lot of founder-led companies that tried to scale. One of them, a very public example, is a Canadian company. I should also tell people I’m not a three-pack-a-day smoker. I’m recovering from COVID so my voice is raspy.

Thanks so much for coming. I appreciate you.

I feel better but my voice is raspy, but I will give an example. We worked with Hootsuite, who’s a Canadian-based. A Hoover-based company that became a unicorn, billion-dollar valuation, and they were a founder-led company. The founder has that deep belief because you don’t found a company because you were looking around going, “That’d be interesting.” Companies are founded because the founder saw a need in the market, and they went, “Someone should be doing that. It’s me.”

The founder has that deep understanding of how important the offering is and how the offering improves life for customers. It was based on their experience, research, and this need they saw. A lot of companies are founded based on a bad experience, like, “It shouldn’t be done that way. It should be done this way.” That founder has that deep belief. What’s hard is to scale it. What often gets muddied when you scale is that deep belief on how we make a difference uniquely. It’s nobody’s fault. It doesn’t happen by design. It happens by default.

I will give you an example. With Hootsuite, we wrote an HBR piece on How to Scale Your Sales Team Quickly. One of the techniques we used was customer impact stories. We took all these people who would say, “We are a bunch of hockey players.” They were working at their headquarters. That was their description, not mine. We turned them into storytellers because stories are what see and deep belief. Not stories of how we closed the big deal, but stories of how we made a difference to customers. Those stories spread the belief, and they are different from those antiseptic case studies that people put on their websites.

Turning Your Noble Purpose Into Practice

I’m Canadian, we are all hockey players. For anybody under twenty who didn’t grow up playing hockey, very rare. We also know Hootsuite very well. We know the sales leadership of that team very well, but it’s such a great segue into how we put this into practice. For everybody out there reading, this is an excellent read. That’s why we asked Lisa to join us.

Everybody should be picking up Selling with Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud with Lisa and Elizabeth Lotardo. Read the book because it’s a great book, but you led to the first one here. There are three key questions you suggest asking yourself as you try to create that noble purpose. The first one was, “How do you make a difference to your customers?”

How do you make a difference in quantitative and qualitative ways? That’s important. What I want to draw people’s attention to is the subtitle of the book, How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud. It’s those two things as a leader that you are always trying to drive the numbers and the sense of pride and meaning. Those two are directly related. The sense of pride and meaning drives the numbers.

When you ask your team, “How do we make a difference to customers?” Ask it of yourself and ask it of your team. The challenge is, the way most people initially answer it is this very antiseptic value prop. “We provide organization.” What you want to say is, “Give me an example.” We had one company that was an IT company, and they did IT for small businesses. Everybody knows small businesses.

A hundred thousand companies like that exist. There’s nothing more common than one of those companies.

Noble Purpose : A lot of companies are founded based on a bad experience.

Nothing is differentiated. They are not going to sell, “We are better IT people.” We said, “How do you make a difference?” They said, “We take away their IT headaches.” They all say that, too. I said, “Give me some examples,” and they started telling stories. This one customer said they didn’t get calls at 1:00 in the morning from their data center. Another customer said that they could finally focus on their business. It’s in that qualitative description that fuels the deep belief in the team. Not the concrete, “We improve efficiency by 5%.”

That’s the first thing that new hires should be taught. In the old world, what was the first thing they were taught? Products and features. That led us to ten years of pointing somebody to a demo and terrible conversion rates. You have no idea why somebody doesn’t buy after a demo. It’s because nobody cares about technology. They care about what it does for them.

Connected the dots. There are two ways you can connect the dots. The first way is what the company needs to do, which is deep intelligence about your customers. When you are rolling out a new piece of technology, you say, “Here’s our typical customer. Here’s what their day looks like. Here’s what their challenges are. Here’s what they spend time on that they hate. Here’s what they wish they could do. Here’s why we developed this piece of software, to help them with that.” It’s in the service of that. That’s what the company needs to do.

As an individual seller, when I’m making calls, I want to be saying, “A lot of people in your position are worried about this and this. How is that affecting you?” I want to get specific so that when I go back and present, instead of doing a demo, I say, “Here are the three things you told me were the most important. Let’s talk about how to handle those.” I can always tell, people send me their pitch decks, and I can always tell based on the order.” If it leads with the product, I say, “I bet you have a low conversion rate.” “Funny you should mention that. That’s why we called.”

The first one, how do you make a difference to your customers? It’s being able to articulate, understand, live that, and then communicate it. The second way of rolling this out, or thinking about it for your firm if you are reading, we do so much work with clients on this, how do you differentiate from your competitors? Remember, doing nothing is probably your biggest competitor.

Not taking any action. How do you do it differently? Again, the traditional reaction is, “Our product is 5% cheaper.” That’s great. You were the one that invented the iPhone. Good on you. You can show the product, do the scroll on a video, and we’ll all buy it but most people don’t have that. Most people work for a construction company or a metals company or a travel company where you could search the internet.

How you do it differently is both quantitative and qualitative. We were working with one company and I mentioned them to you. They were one of our early adopters. It was G Adventures based in Toronto. I remember the founder. We were there with the leadership team, and we were getting started. The founder was like, “Where does this live in terms of a lexicon and how we do it?”

I love them. They are a no-pretense company. One of the senior leaders said, “It lives effin’ in your heart.” One of the things I like about that is, how do we do it differently? One of the ways you do it differently could be, we are more curious. We care more. It could be some factual things. One company came up with, “We care more,” then we said, “if we care more, what are the small points during the sales and delivery process that could illustrate that?” It becomes very meaningful.

We are fond of saying, Lisa, that how you sell becomes part of that competitive differentiation.

The way they are experiencing it. If you say, “We care more,” what this company said is, “It’s because we care more, we do a lot of homework before we make our first sales call.”

Sales is the only profession defined by the people who do it badly.

It shows it’s not just talk. Team, as you start to think about applying noble selling purposes for your business, the third item that we talked about first is how do you make a difference to your customers and knowing that and how do you differentiate from your customers. The third one is what I love. On your best day, what do you love most about what you do? What a great question to ask and then have a group think about.

You said the operative word there, ask and have a think about. Too often, if a marketing team took these three questions, how do we make a difference to our customers? How do we do it differently? On the best day, what do most employees love about their job? They could probably come up with an answer, and it might be inspiring. They might do a deck or do a video or something like that. That’s great, but what I need for a top-performing team is I need it internalized within the team members.

Rather than telling them, how do we make a difference? Ask them. Rather than telling them, “How do we do it differently?” Ask them, and then that last one, on your best day, what do you love about your job? I want them to internalize that because too often the whole employee engagement conversation is around what can we do for them, versus how can we tee them up to where they have the tools and they understand. That question, on your best day, what do you love about your job? I’m not asking that so I can get a list and put it out and say, “Here’s what everybody loves about working here.” I want you to internalize that.

I’m sure it’s in Leading with Noble Purpose, which I’m going to look forward to reading. We are not asking questions so we then use it as evidence to manipulate you. It’s an authentic question. That’s an important thing for everybody reading this show to think about. Why are you in this profession? It’s too easy to get in, and the problem is once we are in, sometimes we might get addicted to things like a little bit of money, or we might be working for a cool company, but we don’t like this process of helping other people this way.

What Selling with Noble Purpose taps into is the two core human needs, belonging and significance. We want to be part of something bigger than ourselves, and we want to know that our contribution matters. Oftentimes, people will say, “Do you do work for the American Cancer Society or the nonprofits?” Sometimes, we do work with a concrete company because you might not think concrete is the sexiest product in the world, but it’s holding up half the world. I had one guy come up to me and say, “I get this noble purpose, but my wife is the one that has the noble purpose because she’s a kindergarten teacher.” I was like, “You lead 250 people. It’s the same.” If you have customers that are buying from you, you are helping them. Otherwise, they wouldn’t buy.

This is where you find somebody who’s in the right spot. I have had two great examples where you find somebody doing something in life where they know why they are doing it, they know why they love it, and they are so good at it becomes contagious. I mentioned we are based in Toronto. We got hammered with a little bit of snow. It’s all melting very quickly. We are having some flooding problems, and we thought that we need some quick replacement of some downspouts.

My lovely wife had somebody come over and said, “You need to tear these down.” This guy took a look and said, “No. This is what’s happening. There’s clogging because of your positioning.” He took them down, unclogged them, put them back up, and said, “This is no big deal at all. You don’t need anything new.” We said, “That’s wonderful. How much?” He said, “No. I’m in the area. This is no big deal. It took me fifteen minutes.” You thought to yourself, what a giving experience.

Who are you going to call whenever you have a gutter problem? We have an app in the US called Nextdoor, where neighbors connect. Who are you going to put? Best gutter guy ever. It’s a great story, and a sales exec or a CEO might think, “I can’t invite people running around all the time for free.” What I want to draw people’s attention to in your story is the intent. He could have said, “It’s a minimum $50 service charge,” and you would have happily paid it. It’s the intent, “I am here to help you.” When you give your team that I, they see things differently. They look differently. They are more curious. They ask better questions. They come up with better solutions. The customer reads the intent.

Episode Wrap-up And Closing Words

Lisa, this is a conversation we could have for a couple of hours. I have a feeling at some point we’ll figure out a way of getting you in front of some of our training workshops because I love this topic. I did want to say thank you specifically before we wrap for one thing. Our belief is that professional B2B selling is a profession. I have always said without even seeing your book, “It’s a noble profession.”

One of the things, there’s this move afoot out there to try and migrate away from the term sales. We work with a lot of folks who are in account management and say, “I could never be in sales,” almost with this 70-year-old stereotype that selling’s bad. This is the most important business discipline there is. Nothing starts until we get some revenue. It is noble. We can change this, but we need it with education and training, a client-first mentality, and a noble purpose. I believe someday there’s going to be formal certification. That’s an ongoing process in my lifetime. That’s why I love this, Selling With Noble Purpose. It resonated so much for me. This is where we take this whole business discipline. Thank you. What a great book.

It is interesting, and I’m very appreciative of that. That is my wish too, and I want to state the facts. Sales is the only profession that is defined by the people who do it badly because those pushy, grabby, lying salespeople, the research tells us they are not effective. Every profession has people that aren’t effective. There are bad teachers, bad doctors, and bad priests. We all know this, but we don’t allow it to define the profession. The research tells us that the salespeople that are at the top of their profession, performing, delivering the numbers, and making the wheels of commerce move, care very deeply about their customers.

Your book, you referenced Drive by Daniel Pink. Daniel’s been a guest on our show once, if not twice, and at the end of one of them, I asked him about sales or why he wrote To Sell Is Human. He almost said exactly what you said verbatim. He said he wrote To Sell Is Human because there was a gap between the stereotype of B2B sales and what his experience was with people who were very good at B2B sales. The gap was so big that he thought he had to investigate the topic.

The title is account manager and customer. All those matters, but there’s not a company alive that if you said, “Are sales important? Is revenue important?” They’d say no. That’s the act of producing it. It ought to be one of the top prestigious jobs in the company.

What a great place to leave it. What a pleasure meeting you and speaking with you again. Thank you so much for joining. How do readers learn more about you and what you do outside of buying Selling With Noble Purpose or Leading with Noble Purpose?

Google Noble Purpose and you’ll find me. You can go to our website and follow me on LinkedIn. I put a lot of content on LinkedIn for free. Whenever I write a piece for Harvard Business Review, I post it on LinkedIn.

Thanks again for joining, Lisa.

It’s such a pleasure.

---

Team, thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe to the show because that’s how we get great guests like Lisa McLeod when you do that. As well, we are growth-oriented. The reason we do this show is we want to improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales. In doing so, we believe we are improving the lives of everyone in sales.

This show is meant to help, but we know we can get better. If you’ve got some constructive criticism for us about this show or what you’d like to see to make this even more valuable to you, we’d love to hear from you. Please email me at MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That’s my personal email address. I answer every bit of constructive criticism we get, and I thank you for it. In the meantime, we’ll see you next time and thanks again for joining.

Important Links

• Selling With Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud

• Leading with Noble Purpose

• The Triangle of Truth

• Forget Perfect

• Finding Grace

• Lisa McLeod Website

• Lisa McLeod on LinkedIn

• Can You Hear Me?

• Power Cues

• Nextdoor

• Drive

• To Sell Is Human

• How to Scale Your Sales Team Quickly

• Email MarkCox

About Lisa McLeod

Lisa McLeod (pronounced Mc-Loud) is the global expert on purpose-driven business and the bestselling author of Selling with Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud. She works with clients like LinkedIn, Supportworks, Roche, and Splunk and is a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review.

Lisa McLeod is the global expert on purpose-driven business. She is the author of five books, including her bestseller: Selling with Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud.

Lisa has spent two decades helping leaders increase competitive differentiation and emotional engagement. She developed the Noble Purpose methodology after her research revealed, that salespeople who sell with Noble Purpose, outsell salespeople who focus on targets and quotas.

Lisa is a former Procter & Gamble Sales Leader who founded her own firm, McLeod & More, Inc. in 2001.  She helps leaders at organizations like Cisco, Roche, Volvo, and Dave & Busters drive exponential revenue growth.  Lisa has keynoted in 25 countries and authored over 2,000 articles.  She has made appearances on the Today Show and the NBC Nightly News, and her firm’s work has been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and NPR.

Lisa’s leadership book, Leading with Noble Purpose: How to Create a Tribe of True Believers is a breakthrough book that shows leaders how to win the hearts and minds of their teams and customers.

Build Trust, Connect With Clients, And Boost Your Sales With Jason Cooper, The Sales Relationship Coach

Ready to master sales training and elevate client conversations? In this episode, we explore how preparation, planning, and confidence drive successful sales with sales relationship coach  Jason Cooper. Learn to step outside your comfort zone, build instant rapport, and tap into the unconscious triggers shaping buyer perceptions. Discover how top sales leaders blend authenticity with strategy, using AI for quick client insights and deep selling tactics. We dive into mental rehearsal, body language, and thoughtful questions that move conversations — and prospects — forward. Join us to uncover strategies that turn first meetings into lasting relationships, helping you confidently guide clients through your sales funnel. Don’t miss this must-listen episode!

---

WATCH THE EPISODE HERE

Listen to the podcast here

Build Trust, Connect With Clients, And Boost Your Sales With Jason Cooper, The Sales Relationship Coach

Running Effective Sales Workshops

In this episode, we're chatting with Jason Cooper, the sales relationship coach from Dublin, Ireland. I love these conversations when I'm speaking with other sales training practitioners in the industry because we get into the heart of how to effectively run a sales workshop and back behavior that drives results for the organization. Jason trains both individuals and teams. We're talking about a couple of things.

We talk about the use of humor to humanize the whole selling process. We talk about building trust and resilience. We talk about a little bit of neuroscience as it pertains to buyers and sellers. Jason does a little bit of research and work in that category. Those of you following us closely know I guested on Jason's podcast, The Global Sales Leader Podcast, which was super fun. We’re looking forward to continuing the conversation on the show.

As always, when I'm speaking with other practitioners, there's always something for me to learn. I hope there’s lots for you to learn and take away from this episode. If you enjoyed this, please like and subscribe. As you know, that matters to us. That’s how we get great guests like Jason Cooper. Here he is, folks. Enjoy the episode. Jason Cooper, the sales relationship coach.

Jason, welcome to the show. I’m so happy to finish our home-and-home stand here. I was happy to be a guest on your podcast. It's great to have you on mine.

I appreciate that. I’m looking forward to it. Thank you so much.

My pleasure. As a starting point, Jason, why don’t you give us the short story of your professional journey? You and I, we do the same thing. We’re going to have a great conversation about sales training, coaching, and some of the things happening in B2B sales. I’m excited to speak with you. Give our audience the short story of how you got here.

Building Empathy And People Skills In Sales

I’m an Englishman. I live in Ireland. I moved over here many years ago and was transferred from one company to another. My wife is Irish, hence why I live in Dublin, Ireland. I’ve co-founded a couple of startups along the way with investments from a good EMEA company over here. Years ago, I went on my journey to learn about myself and also pivot what I can give back to the world. What I do now is teach others to believe in themselves, but also to be empathetic to the client and build up significant people skills. It’s all about people skills, everything we do in sales, regardless of what methodology we have. They’re all pretty much the same, to be honest with you.

It’s all about people skills. Everything we do in sales, regardless of the methodology we use — which are all pretty similar — comes down to connecting with people.

Jason, ours is much better, but we’ll get to that. You’re right. They’re very similar.

They are very similar, from slightly different approaches, whether you're an enterprise or speaking with smaller clients, but significantly the same. The conversations can be a little richer, the bigger the organization you speak to. I work with large and medium-sized businesses. I love the behavioral and psychological side of things. I love to understand how people work and operate using an eclectic array of different skillsets.

I love the approach. You can’t debate making connections with people and helping others, focusing on empathy and authentic curiosity. These are critical components to building trust and credibility. I know you’ve had deep experience and have been in front of hundreds, if not thousands, of folks training them. One of the tougher questions for both of us to kick around is that it doesn’t feel like human beings have changed that much in the last 100 years.

If we go back to Dale Carnegie and How to Win Friends and Influence People, it was always at the top of the nonfiction bestseller list from the New York Times. Even back in the ‘30s and ‘40s, the message was you can make more friends in two months by taking an interest in somebody else than you can in two years by trying to get them interested in you. With what you see, Jason, why is this a message we have to keep communicating to the professional sales community? Is there a reason we’re not getting this message?

Every generation has to start from scratch again. We’re reinstalling, so they might have left college or university, and that’s where they start. It’s time to flip the script a little bit and make them learn differently. I went through it, and I’m sure you did as well. Business communication skills are so important, and also having communication skills. It is not about you. Especially in business orientation, it’s all about the customer and their needs, wants, and desires.

If you can do that, that’s where the magic happens. If you can help them think, deep dive into their minds, and do whatever you need to do to help them feel at ease and resonate with what you have to say, that’s where the magic happens. I keep repeating. As you know, it’s how to teach people communication skills and people skills. On that basic level, how do you build better rapport with people, trust, and connection? We connected straight away. I know we’re on the same level. It’s all about that. It’s getting an interest in what you do

.

It is. Part of the joy of doing this show, and I’m pretty sure you’re doing the Global Sales Leader podcast, which is enormously popular, is that I’m interested to find out about you. The reason it resonates with some people reading the show is because of my authentic curiosity to continue to learn. I know I’m going to learn something in the next half an hour chatting with you. I want to learn something about Dublin. Authentic curiosity in this space is required from everyone out there.

Overcoming Sales Anxiety And Authentic Curiosity

One of the challenges for a lot of sales leaders is how you trigger that authentic curiosity. How do we evolve salespeople, particularly junior ones, from engaging with a buyer where they’re experiencing some anxiety? They'll default to scripts. It's pretty easy to end up pitching at somebody instead of giving them the confidence that they've earned the right to have a great conversation with someone and ask reasonable questions, stay engaged in the conversation instead of mentally going over to the filing cabinet to go, “What am I going to say next?”

That is the challenge a lot of people have. I was coaching someone who got stuck in a conversation and talked aimlessly about nothing. I even heard the other way saying, “I can hear you're busy in the background.” How do you know? You don't know that I’m busy. “I’m not going to take too much of your time,” but you are taking too much of their time. Get out of the way of making excuses while you're giving the call. That's where the anxiety comes from. You tend to waffle when you're nervous, but then you tend to waffle when you don't have a plan or an idea of where you need to go in the conversation. Build that immediate trust. You're calling them. Don't apologize, “I'm sorry to call you.” No, you don't. Why?

Confidence And Preparation For Sales Calls

“I'm happy or delighted I caught you. I've got some value and insight to provide. I can't wait to have a quick conversation with you here.” Without being too self-serving, a lot of these things come down to training or coaching. For anybody newly enrolled, this is a difficult thing. You're jumping outside a comfort zone. You've got to figure out a way to get to this point where you can feel calm but confident on an actual demand generation call or a first conversation with a client or prospect.

There are going to be some triggers in that conversation where they consciously sense your confidence, intent, likeability, and credibility, but probably 30 times more unconscious triggers where they sense whether this is going to be valuable or what your intent is. In our experience, and I'm certainly interested in your opinion, Jason, one of the challenges we see is that a lot of organizations where CEOs can sell for their company and the VP of sales can sell, but they can't train anybody else to do it.

When you start to break down exactly what happens in that engagement with a client or prospect, you get CEOs who aren't pitching anything. They're sitting down, having an authentic conversation, learning about business, and having a conversation about the individual's needs, wants, and desires in the future. That whole conversation translates into the buyer dropping their guard, dropping the wall, and feeding back information that's helpful to enable that CEO to determine, “Is there any way we can help you or not?”

It's all about deep selling, which is doing your due diligence in advance. Whether it takes a couple of minutes or twenty, depending on the size of the organization, find out a little bit about them. Go on LinkedIn and find out who they're connected to as an example, what the company is posting about, but also look at all the social feeds. Go on the website.

Nowadays, it's all about deep selling — doing your due diligence in advance. Whether it takes you a couple of minutes or 20, depending on the size of the organization, take the time to learn a little about them.

I use an AI tool called Perplexity. I type that in and find out everything I can about that person, even myself. I can go on and go, “How does Jason represent himself in the world? What type of buyer is Jason? What type of salesperson is Jason?” You can go with that quadrant of their red, blue, pink, orange, or whatever, and decide on that. You can use these tools.

In 5 minutes or 30 minutes before a call, list everything you need to know about that client so you can build that instant rapport. People like people like themselves. If you can find something to build up instant rapport, something is going on in the frontal lobe of our brain called mirror neurons. If you can connect with someone on their level and find out there's a synergy within that person, “You like rugby. I like rugby,” that's at the basic level. “I understand your company is doing such and such at the moment. How is that affecting you?” Do your due diligence. A bit of a cliché, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

Planning And Research Before Client Meetings

Let's double-click on that. It could take 5 minutes or 20 minutes, but this is not something that takes an hour and a half. With all of the tools available, no one should ever have a first meeting with anyone under any circumstances without doing that research. We're doing a show. You and I do a lot of these, and we're going to do them back to back. I know what your career history is. I have your LinkedIn profile. I've already thought about the ten questions for this episode. Who knows if we're going to get to them? That way, I can jump into a conversation like this and be in the conversation.

Having that plan or structure for the conversation is important. Consciously, we think, "I have a plan. I know what's going to happen if this call goes well. If not, I’m going to feel good." Subconsciously, something comes across, Jason, because I feel like I've earned the right for a conversation, and that comes across. If I've done the research and have a couple of points of interest, I feel better about that conversation. The recipient is going to feel better because of Cialdini's persuasion. It's a great book by Robert Cialdini.

There are 6 or 7, depending on the book you've read.

It’s the elements that influence behavior. One of them is the Theory of Reciprocity. If you do something for me, I'm almost compelled to do something good for you. It doesn't mean I'm going to buy from you, but I might grant you a few minutes for a conversation. If you differentiate on that call by finding out who I am, what we do, and all those good things, it's in your DNA.

You're right about what you said before. You want to get back into the planning part. What you've suggested is having those ten questions in advance of what you might say. You might not ever get to them, but at least you've planned them in advance. They're specific to them, not some generic random question you picked out on ChatGPT, though it might help. As long as you have ten questions you can go with, those are there in advance. I have loads of questions around me up there that I might always use if I'm in a conversation, which helps me know where I need to go to maybe get to level two on that touchpoint.

First of all, thank you for that. I know where I'm trying to go and where I want to go. Jason, we did an exercise with someone we were coaching. We called it the Truth Serum Exercise. We did role plays with the group where we said, "Let's assume my wife slipped some truth serum into my breakfast this morning. I'm a buyer. Any question you ask me, I'm going to give you a truthful answer. Think about the five questions you're going to ask as part of this call. I'm not going to be difficult. I'm going to give you full and complete answers.”

What you find is people have no plan. Even if I gave them full and complete answers to the questions they asked and told the full truth, it still doesn't lead them anywhere close to a next step, earn the right to proceed with the next meeting, or move forward into a discovery. This is where your planning has to come into place. Think about workshopping those amazing questions.

I think so. It's practice and rehearsal. A lot is going on in our brains all the time. You mentally rehearse, whether you speak it out or speak it to yourself, whether you keep your eyes open or closed. Sometimes, I will mentally rehearse and visualize in my head. I would see that. I'm a visual thinker, and that's how I am. Other people are analytical, so they have to talk it out.

I don't. I just go in. I can create pictures in my head. I can create the conversation. What I'd like to create is a positive conversation that goes well. Hopefully, the majority of the time it will, because I've already presupposed in my head that I've imagined it to go well. Our brains are so powerful. We think and create images in our heads all the time.

How can we create that image that the conversation will go, "We've done our planning. We feel confident about that?” We're standing. Our conviction and body language are in the right way, that is congruent to what's going to be coming out of our mouth. If things are not aligned with our body language, they're not going to happen out of our mouths. It goes back to the age-old saying, “When you stand up and if you walk around and you're making sales calls, you smile into the phone. They don't know whether you're smiling or not." It's very true.

Neuroscience And Sales Coaching

You stay current with a lot of neuroscience, which I want to touch on. These are fundamentals. As it turns out, you've done 130 podcasts. I've done 100 and change. You learn very quickly. It's better to do these podcasts standing up. Both of us are standing up, moving around a little bit. We're careful not to touch the mics, but we're certainly standing up. You've had a perma-smile on for this entire discussion. That energy and enthusiasm become contagious.

I start to smile because you're smiling. I loved it when I was doing the research, finding out part of what you do on the sales training, coaching front, you're into neuroscience. I love neuroscience and behavioral science. Tell us a little bit about some of the work you do there and some of the top trends that might be helpful for either sales leaders listening or salespeople, things for them to think about.

Mapping Sales Processes

One of the couple of things for people to consider is everyone has a process, but it's all in their heads. Something I love to do is workshop a strategy and a methodology with them. Something I love to do is mind map everything. How I start and how to get people in the right context is one of the natural steps for you to make yourself a cup of coffee. What do you do specifically? What's your strategy behind that? This is how I would workshop it, but it's not me walking over there and making myself a cup of coffee.

Everyone has a process, but it's all in their heads.

What happens? How many steps do I need to take, specifically? Are they large steps? Are they small steps? How far is it away from the counter? What do I have to do next? I'll have to put my arm up, but how far do I have to put my arm up? How far is it into the cupboard before I can reach into a mug? It might sound very annoying, but there's a reason behind that. It’s a strategy. Make people think in a strategic direction. We whiteboard and mind map it out. What's your strategy? What's your methodology from every single point?

Let's merge everything and pull out a main methodology that everyone is using. Everyone has an idea about something. Crunch it down into 9, 8, or whatever points that might be. We get a clear path of a complete overall strategy. I like to pull things out, start again, and then push them back in with a clear, precise process that everyone can use. Larger and smaller companies do it. They go off in all the different directions. The larger the organization, the more sporadic it can be because you get the likes of very big companies. There are so many people in the organization. They'll be up to 200,000, all doing different things.

It becomes a real issue. I've had this debate and discussion with a lot of guests where they say, “We don't like a sales process. We don't want to hold somebody so strictly to a sales process.” I take your approach. I do want to map out the steps to complete a sale for the business and be quite specific about them. That's quite different from sales strategy, which is our game plan to progress along those steps successfully. None of that prohibits somebody from bringing their unique skillset and abilities to the table to do it their way.

If they understand process and strategy, then they have this game plan you spoke of at the beginning. I like that way of thinking. Your example of even making a coffee is so good. What you probably find, and I certainly find in people tuning in to this, is that we have a lot of folks who are mature salespeople, potentially in traditional industries. They’re extraordinarily good. Client-first, empathetic, solution-based, value selling, if you will.

When you say, “What's your sales process,” that confuses them because they don't think of things as a process. When you audit what they do, you will find that they're extremely meticulous. They repeat the same things over and over. They're habit-driven, and they've been successful. Once you map it out as a process, then you look at ways of improving it by 5% or 7%. We don't have to change somebody's behavior by 40% to get an uplift. You get a flywheel effect of getting 3%, 4%, or 5% better every month. It starts to become unbelievable in terms of the impact.

It's having people from different points of view in the business as well. Get the marketing person because marketing and sales should be aligned. Also, get production or whatever the words are in their businesses. Get them into the mix. Someone works with sales, and someone works with marketing. Sales and marketing people design or map out how they perceive it. The high performers work with the low performers, understand that process, and dissect it. Overall, you're getting a good collective viewpoint. That's what I love. That excites me to see. That's when the magic happens. That's when people understand how to improve and go, “This is the overall methodology. What can we improve on here?”

You do one-on-one coaching as well. Tell me a little bit about that process. How do you operate? If I were a sales leader saying, “I need a little help or support,” what's your approach or methodology for helping somebody like me?

That's going to be a tough one, helping you.

Sorry, let's have an easier one. Let's pull somebody off the street that you'll have an easier time working with than me.

First of all, I would always have a twenty-minute conversation with them. I can use AI note-takers to dissect exactly what they want and their challenges. There's no difference. Their challenges are where they see where they're falling on their process and what's going on inside of their heads. I can pull out and think about a five-step strategy for them, mindset first.

I always send a pre-coaching form for them to fill out so they get themselves thinking on five different points. They sent that to me before. We choose to find out what's stopping them from moving forward in certain aspects. Coaching is the way I look at it. You use elements of the Pareto Principle. You do 20% questioning. They talk 80% of the time. We flipped it, and you do the listening. You ask them another question until you can find the juicy parts to make them think.

All you're doing is chipping away at it. Another call could be more like, “Let's have a look at what you're doing. Let's have a look at your process. Let's have a look at how and what you do in a call. Let's role-play that out. Let's dissect the call afterward and find out what's missing, what you're saying, and what you're not saying.” There are lots of different things we can go to, but you always have to pivot.

Internal Dialogue And Managing Stress In Sales

That comes with experience. Work with them and change. If they go in another direction, we have to go, “Why are you doing that?” It's to understand what's going on in their world. I can see in their body language if they're under pressure. They're frowning a lot, stroking their chin, or stroking their neck. They're under pressure, and you go, “What's going on there?” There's something not happening because I've noticed something going on there. Their tone or language starts to get a little shaky because they feel like they're under pressure.

What's going on in their heads? We can change the narrative on how they're speaking to themselves. We all speak to ourselves all the time. What do we need to do to change that narrative in our heads to make it a little bit more constructive and impact them in a slightly different way? Change aspects of them and make them think more positively. Our brain will go to that reptilian side and go into the fight, flight, or freeze mechanism. That's when we waffle. Some nervous people will waffle because they're under stress, out of their comfort zone, and not used to asking good questions and getting into the place where they need to build trust and rapport but move on to the next step.

Sales Relationships: We all talk to ourselves all the time. So, how can we change that narrative in our heads to make it more constructive?

I love this idea of the internal voice and the critique. It's such a powerful discussion point, Jason. Over in Dublin in the UK, do you have something called Second City? Have you heard of Second City?

No, what's that? I was curious about that. What do you mean?

Have you heard of the television show Saturday Night Live?

Yes, I have.

Improv For Overcoming Perfectionism And Staying Present

Second City is the North American leader in improv. They train comedians and do sketches. When you look at the cast of Saturday Night Live, a super successful show, half of those people came from the world of Second City and improv. Comedy and improvisation are such a huge idea that they have classes for the public where you can learn.

After a long wait, my niece and I went to an improv class. It was amazing. They're not getting you up and saying, "Do some standup comedy." They're talking to you about some of the core concepts of improvisation. I was thinking the whole time, as I was going through this 90-minute class, that there was so much relevance to what we do. That inner voice and the facilitator was such a gentle coach. It was a very good room for twenty people.

He said, “When you're doing improv, there's no time to feel bad about what you just did. It's going to be two people on a stage. One is going to give something. You're going to try yes-and and continue. Most of us are wired to review what we said and critique it. We're challenged by perfectionism. The reality of improvisation is that you have no time for that. You are where you are. Whatever you said, you said. The truth is it was probably better than you think, but you've got to be in the moment to receive the next thing back from your partner."

He took us through a bunch of exercises where you're trying to control that inner voice. When they say, "Come up with a fruit," and you come up with strawberries, instead of thinking, "I should have said bananas," you go, "Strawberries, what a great answer." That sets your brain up to figure out the next one and the next one. If you criticize yourself, it shuts you down. This is so relevant to everybody here. You're in a sales conversation. You're in the middle of a negotiation. That inner voice is criticizing what you do.

You might even be doing a presentation. Instead of stepping back, you’re going, “Wherever you are, that's where you are today,” however you got there in that moment. It's amazing. Let's build on it from there. He used a wonderful example where he was leading an evening at the improv with a packed house. There were 4 or 5 teams going on the play. As he walked up to the stage, he fell flat on his face.

Without even thinking about what he did, he started crawling to the mic like a worm. He didn't even think about it. He got up and continued with the introductions. As it turned out, every consecutive team that came out to the stage crawled to the mic. By the end of the night, this had become something. His failure had turned into something funny that everybody built on. The outcomes were much more positive than sitting in the moment, feeling terrible about yourself, losing confidence, and shutting your mind down.

That's so very true. It's a good skill to learn. As a salesperson, having that in a workshop style, or if you want to have that intrinsic motivation to be slightly different and better than others in your sales team, improv is going to be a good lesson. It's going to help you think differently from every other salesperson doing the same old stuff. Let's think about how we can change the narrative in our brain, how we can think quickly and change things around. I've done that. There's a thing over here called Toastmasters.

We have that over here, too.

I think it came from Ireland originally. I don't know. That's what the Irish tell me anyway.

The Irish say that.

It has to be true somewhere. I remember going to it years ago when I was on my learning curve. There were two groups together, about 50 to 60 people in the audience. The first person had to come up and talk about a banana. I went, "I'll do it." I stood up and talked about a banana. That's impromptu, using your creative brain. If you say you'll do it without thinking about it, you'll tend to go ahead and achieve it because you've already said it and instructed it to your brain.

Some of the most successful people I've encountered don't think about that stuff. All they think about is getting on with it, doing it, and using the language correctly in their heads. They go, "That didn't work. Let me try something different. Let me learn, pivot, change the narrative, and have that better conversation next time." It's so powerful.

As you were saying about improv, I think a bit of fairy dust is on humor. I use it in the Chowdhury. You probably say it differently to me, but influence is likability. We're not going to be stand-up comedians making these calls. If you're humorous or lighthearted with it, and I do this all the time, you probably notice my energy. I like to give off a bit of humor. It helps people feel more relaxed. The humor's on me, not on anyone else.

Humor And Human Connection In Sales and Negotiations

Yes, self-deprecating humor. You talked about it in a post, which I love. It lightens the discussion. When you start thinking about how you want to spend all day, every day, I want to be having fun. I want to do important things that help people and add to the community. We love developing the potential of salespeople and sales leaders. Sometimes that's hard work, and sometimes that’s difficult work, but you want to have a good time while going through the process.

We're not putting somebody on the moon here. We're not worried about a rocket launch with lives at stake. There are super important things in life. The next sales call isn't going to make or break your life. The reality is that on a sales call, nobody's going to take money out of your pocket. The potential is only to add money to it. If I have a bad sales call, nobody's going to go into my bank account and remove money.

The next sales call is not going to make or break your life. In fact, no one on a sales call is going to reach into your pocket and take money out. The only potential is to add money to it.

There are only good things that are going to happen. Focusing on the pleasant and the positive puts everyone in a frame of mind where they're a little more open. It's a very human thing. We had a guy named Jon Selig on the show. He talks a lot about comedy and sales. I shared that in the most intense negotiation of my life, we were negotiating a billion-dollar transaction to sell to a big bank. For deals of that size, they hire professional negotiators.

With all due respect, these aren't folks we would want to go out and party with. We would leverage comedy or a little bit of humor at the start of a very extended negotiation, six months of tough negotiation, to lighten the mood at the beginning of the day. It made everyone a little more human. We could have a human connection and then get to the work at hand.

That's so good. Again and again, it puts people at ease. I always incorporate it in everything I do, even when I have to pick up the phone or jump into a swimming pool. The first thing I do is make everything lighthearted before we get into it, which builds me into humor but also tracks what we do. I'm using a recording thing. I'll be asking them, and that's revolutionized what I'm doing. I'd like to look at the data behind things. It can tell me what I'm doing well and what I can improve on. I know I'm jumping around a bit, but that's how my brain works.

I'm a visual thinker. I think in things, but also it will tell me if I'm being too humorous or okay, but also telling me how much I'm listening and who's doing most of the talking. It's there to tell me that things are going well or not so well, what I need to review, and how I need to improve. I’m a little bit OCD in data when I'm reviewing it because I want to make sure from past failings and not realizing it, but now I can see it and go, “I can make a difference and change.” Making that change in me can make a change in other people as well.

You're methodical and precise about it, Jason. What are some of the sources of information for you in the outside world? How do you stay current with things like what's happening in sales, neuroscience, or behavioral science? I see a lot of Harvard publications behind you there. We love those, too. They're always referenced. Where do you go to stay current with what's going on?

A couple of things are that I have an eclectic array of insights. As you suggested, the Harvard Business Review. I don't necessarily just read sales books because I'm being narrow-minded if I am. There are other things around that touch on those touch points that can lead to selling, like business books and business communications. I've got a business writing book behind me, and that's essential.

I have something on getting into the flow state and also other things that might not necessarily be in sales. I get my source of information from reading something slightly outside. Also, audiobooks. I read all of the sales books but also like to touch on other different subjects. I learn from other people like yourself. I learn from you and everyone else I interact with. I constantly scan. I take a few moments to review and see what's going on around there, whether it's a seminar on exhibition or something like that. I have to learn.

The way I look at it is if I can take one thing away and apply it to myself, I can teach it forward. That's how I like to see it. I'm going to spin it back in as well. A lot of salespeople don't understand business and get this lovely basic salary. I am jumping around, but it is all context behind it because having a collective array of knowledge gives you an understanding of business and business processes and ideas.

As a salesperson, you are a commodity. You cost the business money, so you get a lovely basic salary, and then you get commission on top. You might get a phone, but then you have to cover overheads like marketing. You're nodding your head because you're a business owner yourself. You know what it's like. Does that help the salespeople to understand what that means and how they justify their existence?

They get all these lovely leads to come through, but how much is a lead worth? What do you need to do to justify your existence? It’s the practicalities of us as salespeople to understand our value, our worth, and how much we've been invested in. How much can the leaders help, inspire, and motivate us to give back to the business, and for them to reinvest back into the business?

It is going back to the box and how we learn and think. Some of the most successful salespeople out there understand the value of their business. Hopefully, at some stage, if they're extremely successful, they start their own business or do something else. These are the sort of things that I want to do. Help people think and change. It's about change. I'm not going to use the word growth as much as I used it. Change their narrative and thinking and be successful. That's everything that I do.

That's a nice wrap-up. Jason, first of all, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure meeting you. How do people learn more about Jason Cooper or engage you?

I'll always be happy to. LinkedIn is number one. That's my personal brand. I love you to connect with me on that. I always have a website called JasonCooper.io. I don't use Twitter anymore. I've gone off that. My Instagram is @JasonACooper. You can get me on the various other social media platforms, but LinkedIn is the number one source. That's where I'm at a lot of the time. That's how I give value to the world. I also love to get some good connections and get the conversation going.

Jason, it’s great to meet you. Thanks for joining.

‐‐‐

Team, thank you, as always, for joining us. The intent of this show is to help improve the performance and productivity of B2B sales. In doing so, what we believe is going to happen is that we're going to improve the lives of professional salespeople. That's why we do it. We know we can always improve these episodes, and you help us do that. Please keep your constructive criticism coming our way. We love hearing that feedback. I respond to each and every note that we get. Keep sending them to MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email. I respond to every bit of constructive criticism we get.

We love the direct feedback. Don't worry about dancing around things. We've made lots of changes to the show based on great suggestions we've received from people. If you like this episode, please like and subscribe to the show and tell your friends. That's how we get great guests like Jason Cooper because they want to know we've got an audience. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next time.

Important Links

• Jason Cooper

• The Global Sales Leader Podcast - Past episode featuring Mark Cox

• How to Win Friends and Influence People

• Comedy Writing For Revenue Teams: How To Engage, Connect, And Convert With Jon Selig - Past episode

• Jason Cooper on LinkedIn

• Jason Cooper on Instagram

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

About Jason Cooper

With over 25 years of global experience, Jason is a renowned coach and trainer specialising in high-performance bespoke sales training and coaching. He empowers individuals and companies to unlock their full potential by creating meaningful, lasting relationships that drive results.

Jason’s unique approach goes beyond traditional sales techniques, focusing solely on closing deals. Instead, he emphasises the importance of building trust and authentic connections as the foundation for sustainable business success. His customised programmes enhance self-motivation, develop personalised relationship strategies, and cultivate the resilience to thrive in competitive markets. Through high-performance coaching and tailored sales training, Jason equips sales teams with the skills to deeply understand their client’s needs, foster genuine engagement, and consistently exceed targets.

His methods drive revenue growth and long-term success by turning conversations into opportunities and prospects into loyal customers. Jason’s mission is clear: to help professionals transform their approach to sales by making relationships the ultimate competitive advantage.

Beyond Sales: How The Go-Giver Transforms Business Success With Bob Burg

If you're looking for a book that will truly transform your approach to success, then join Mark Cox as he sits down with Bob Burg, co-author of the transformative bestseller, The Go-Giver. They explore how shifting your focus from "receiving" to "giving" can revolutionize your life and career. Bob shares his journey from sports broadcasting to sales, revealing the pivotal moment he discovered the power of value and focusing on others' needs. Drawing on insights from The Go-Giver, co-authored with John David Mann, Bob illuminates the five laws of stratospheric success. Break free from the unconscious barriers holding you back and embrace a mindset where putting others first leads to genuine abundance.

---

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Beyond Sales: How The Go-Giver Transforms Business Success With Bob Burg

We've got a great conversation for you because we're talking to Bob Burg who's the Author of The Go-Giver, a little story about a powerful business idea. This book, along with his Co-author, John David Mann. They wrote this book and became enormously successful. It almost became a little cottage industry for them because there was this book, which did super well, then they wrote a book called The Go-Givers Sell More for sales. They wrote another book about leadership, which is The Go-Giver Leader, and then another book called The Go-Giver Influencer.

There are lots of different books. They are parable-based books, which are great. It's a very interesting story about the protagonist Joe who's a real go-getter. Through some work with a mentor named Pindar, also known as the Chairman, he learns to be a go-giver. The Five Laws of Stratospheric Success that are shared in the book are the law of value, compensation, influence, authenticity, and receptivity. Bob and I chat about all of these and some great backstories as part of the book.

You're going to enjoy this episode with one exception. I made a mistake in the episode. Bob references that Pindar, the Chairman, is based on an amazing business executive thought leader in Canada. His name was Bob Proctor. I confused Bob Proctor with a guy named Bob Rumball who is also an amazing business leader in Toronto who did charitable work, particularly with the deaf. We did a little work with him.

My mistake, my apologies, and my fault where I confused these two gentlemen in the show. If you can overlook that, you can enjoy the episode. By the way, this episode is shorter. It's a 30-minute episode. We've received some feedback from you that you'd like shorter episodes, so there'll be a few of these. Let me know what you think. Team, here's Bob Burg. We're going to talk about The Go-Giver.

Bob, welcome to the show. It's so great to meet you.

It's my pleasure. What an honor to be with you. Thank you for inviting me.

The Journey To Writing The Go-Giver: Bob Burg's Professional Career

I am pretty excited about this episode. When I originally read The Go-Giver, so much of this book is well-suited to a client-first sales executive. It leads itself beautifully into how to sell well. People on this show have heard this stuff lots of different times. This book became a cottage industry for you. You've done multiple different versions, including one for sales, leadership, and influencing because it's so enormously popular. First of all, amazing stuff. Tell us the short story of your professional career that led you to write this book with your teammate, John David Mann, originally.

I began as a broadcaster. First at a sports radio then was in television news for a little bit with a very small ABC affiliate in the Midwestern United States. It wasn't long before I graduated into sales, as I’d like to say. I floundered for the first few months because I had had no formal sales training, but fortunately, I came across a couple of books in the bookstore. One was by Tom Hopkins and one was by Zig Ziglar, two of our heroes in the sales space. They’re legends.

I took those books home and began studying them and spending hours learning. It opened up a whole new world for me. I had no idea there was a methodology system, if you will, to selling. I define a system as simply a process, and I know you talk a lot about processes. It is the process of predictably achieving a goal based on a logical and specific set of how-to principles, the key being predictability. If it's been proven that by doing A, you'll get the desired results of B, then all you need to do is A and continue to do A. Eventually, you'll get the desired results of B. That was inspiring to me.

From there, I ate up every book and, back then, a cassette tape program. I went to seminars about personal development and realized that it was a lot about building yourself on the inside. Success is an inside job. It manifests itself outwardly, but it begins in the head and the heart. I loved it. Eventually, years later, I worked my way up to sales manager of a company and started also showing others. As the old Seinfeld episode say, “Yada, yada, yada,” and here we are years later talking. It has been a very fun ride and like you, I love selling. I love the concept of it and so forth.

Folks, those few people reading, read the book. Based on the sales figures, I think most of you have but it’s The Go-Giver, a little story about a powerful business idea. One of the reasons it's such an amazingly popular book is it’s written in the parable-type format that made things like The Wealthy Barber enormously successful.

That is one of my favorite books.

David Chilton is fantastic. Another is The One Minute Manager back in the day with Ken Blanchard. These are small, short, but incredibly powerful books. In this one, the concept of The Go-Giver comes from our protagonist, Joe, who's a real go-getter, sweating at the end of a quarter as he is working for Clason-Hill Trust Company.

The greatest leaders, the top influencers, and the most consistently and sustainably successful money earners always look out for the interests of others.

A little nugget, Clason-Hill is after George Clason, author of the famous The Richest Man in Babylon, and Napoleon Hill and the different series of books that we did. What do they call them? Not chestnuts, but Easter eggs.

I love that. Bob, in our first book that we got out there, it’s all these old relative names. It was the nicknames of family members and relatives names that I love. Napoleon Hill, I didn't pick that up. What a great Easter egg. As Joe goes through his journey, feeling the pressure, wanting to be successful, and wanting to sell, he gets an opportunity to meet with the guru, Pindar, also known as Pindar the Chairman. He ends up being taught in a very giving way the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success. Without giving away the whole book, is it okay if we talk about these five laws and maybe share a little bit about each?

Yes. By the way, are you in Toronto?

I am in Toronto.

Pindar is loosely based on Toronto's own late Bob Proctor. I don’t know if you remember Bob, but a great guy. He was a very abundance-oriented, giving, and sharing person. He had this great voice. He was this handsome, gray-haired guy. We modeled Pindar off one of your fellow Torontonians.

Here's the amazingly small world to connect it. For those reading, this is the first time Bob and I have met. I went to school beside Bob's facility, which was the Center for the Deaf. Bob worked with the deaf in a very significant way. He was incredibly giving. About once or twice a year, I played high-end hockey for that school. Our hockey team would go over and play ball hockey with his group. Bob was so passionate. I remember a couple of speeches. He talked about being wise and unwise in terms of his motivational speaking, but what a personality and a leader. We go right across the way, bring our gear, go into their gym, and play ball hockey with them for a couple of hours. It was insanely fun.

What a great story.

What a great man. There are going to be more Easter eggs that come out in this book. This is fantastic. At some point in time, we'll get to the Easter eggs. You were a Golden Gloves Champion, by the way. Did I see that in my research right?

Yes. It was a long time ago.

The First Law Of Stratospheric Success: The Law Of Value

I'm still going to stay on my best behavior. I have a feeling, somehow, you'd get to me and it wouldn't end well for me. We'll start with the 1st of the 5 Laws of Stratospheric Success that Pindar ends up coaching Joe on and Joe starts to learn through the fable. The first one is the Law of Value. Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payments.

When you first hear counterintuitive or when you think about it, you’re like, “Give more in value than I take in payment, isn't that a recipe for bankruptcy?” We need to understand the difference between price and value. Price is a dollar figure. It's a dollar amount. It's finite. It is what it is. Value is the relative worth or desirability of something to the end-user or beholder. In other words, what is it about this thing, product, service, concept, idea, or what have you that brings so much worth or value to another human being that they will willingly exchange their money for it and be glad they did while you also make a very healthy profit?

A quick example would be the accountant you hire to do your taxes who charges $1,000. That's her fee or her price. Through her hard work, getting to know you, your needs, and your business, and learning, she's able to save you $5,000 in taxes. She gave you countless hours of time. She provides you and your family with the security and peace of mind of knowing it was done correctly.

She gave you well over $5,000 in value in exchange for a $1,000 price. She gave you more in value than you took in payment. You feel great about it. She also made a very healthy fee because it was worth it for her to exchange her time, energy, knowledge, wisdom, and help for that $1,000. You have more in value than you take in payment because value and price are not the same thing.

Bob, this is where this is so powerful. You said, “I'd feel good as the recipient of her work because I get a 5X, 10X, or 100X return.” The truth is as a business professional she feels better, too. This is one thing we see in professional sales where a lot of the folks new to B2B professional sales, our profession, don't always understand the impact that they're going to have on somebody else's business with the product or service they're providing. As a result, they feel like they have imposter syndrome or they feel like they're taking instead of understanding there's a real impact. They have to be able to understand that impact. They need business acumen and industry acumen, and then they need to be able to communicate that value.

You summed it up perfectly. There's nothing more I could ever even add to that.

The Second Law Of Stratospheric Success: The Law Of Compensation

Thanks for that, Bob. We'll go to the second one in the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success, which is the law of compensation. Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them. It is so fundamental.

Where law number one says, “Give more in value than you take or receive in payment.” Law number two tells us, “The more people whose lives you touch with the exceptional value you provide, the more money with which you'll be rewarded.” In that part of the book, Nicole Martin, the CEO, told Joe, the protege, “Law value represents your potential income, but it's not enough to serve one person no matter how well you're serving them.”

The law of compensation is about your actual income because it's how many lives you impact. That's why we're such big believers in referral-based business because you can touch more people's lives through referrals. Why? With referred prospects, it's easier to set an appointment. You're going in on borrowed influence. With a referred prospect, price is less of an issue.

Authenticity is not about having no boundaries. It’s about acting congruently with your values.

Based on influence and borrowed trust, you go in with gravitas. You're able to sell at a high value rather than a low price. With a referred prospect, it's easier to complete the sale because of borrowed trust or what we call vicarious experience. They've never done business with you personally but someone who they know, like, and trust has said, “This is the person you need to see. They'll take great care of you. Their company's fantastic. Their product and service is good,” and so forth.

One of the biggest benefits of a referral-based prospect is that they're already of the mindset that that's how you do business because that's how they met you. To use Bob Proctor's words, their paradigm is that you meet your prospects through referral. You sell on high value rather than low price. You complete the sale, and then as part of that process, you are referred to others.

It is so powerful when we get into the referrals and so underutilized. When I was doing a workshop with somebody, I had to do a deeper dive into referrals. We also want to call out another one of Bob's books, Endless Referrals. It is also a very strong expert in this space that you want to check out. One of the things that was interesting was the difference in terms of a sale or referral that if you remind the person you're working with that they came in through a referral.

The Third Law Of Stratospheric Success: The Law Of Influence

There was a massive sample size in this particular study. For half of them, they reached out to their existing base. In a professional way, they were asking for referrals. In another half, they went to them and said, “Remember, you came to us through a referral. Is there anyone you'd like to show that same consideration to and refer us to them to see if we can help them?” There was a 20% uptick in the second one reminding that person they originally came to you that way. It is very powerful. The third law is the law of influence. Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people's interests first.

This one not only sounds counterintuitive when you first hear it. It sounds counterproductive. It is downright Pollyanna-ish at worst. It’s like, “Place the other person's interests first?” If you think about it, the greatest leaders that you know, the top influencers, the most consistent, and sustainably successful money earners, this is simply how they run their lives and conduct their business. They're always looking out for that other person's interest.

Let me qualify that statement if I may. When we say to place the other person's interest first, we don't mean you should be anyone's doormat, a martyr, or self-sacrificial in any way. It's simply that Joe, the protege, learned from several mentors what we call the golden rule of selling or the golden rule of business. All things being equal, people will do business with and refer business to those people they know, like, and trust. There's no faster, more powerful, or more effective way of eliciting those feelings toward you or in others than by genuinely moving from that I focus or me focus to that other focus. Looking to Sam, one of the mentors, he advised Joe, “Make your win all about the other person's win.”

When people say, “Is that the real world?” It brings me back to something I used to say when I was on the road speaking. I'm in my 60s, so I don't get on airplanes anymore, but when I was, I used to speak at a lot of sales conferences. I know you do, too. One of the first things I would say to the audience is, “Nobody's going to buy from you because you have a quota to meet. They're not going to buy from you because you have a sales goal, you need the money, or even because you're a nice person, which I know you are. They're going to buy from you because they believe they will be better off by doing so than by not doing so.”

Doesn't it make sense that when you can take your focus off, you make it about them? What do they need? What do they want? What do they desire? What challenges are they having that you can help mitigate? What strengths do they maybe have that they don't even know about that you can help expand? When we do that and we focus on them and make it about them, not about us. We're creating much more of what we call a benevolent context for the sale to occur.

Bob, why is it so hard for us to get this? That concept was made famous originally by Dale Carnegie where you can make more friends in two months by taking an interest in somebody else than you can in two years by trying to get them interested in you. Why is it that almost every generation needs to hear this again and again?

The Go-Giver: A Little Story about a Powerful Business Idea

It goes against human nature. It’s so hard to believe it. Part of that is we know we have this great product or service. We know it would help them so we're going to talk about the product or service, which they don't care about. We've been in business for our company for many years, which they don't care about. None of that matters. I'd love another thought of Dale Carnegie's. Ultimately, people do things for their o wn reasons, not ours. We've got to tie that into what their reason is. It does fly in the face of human nature. We're not thinking that way. That's why there are people like you out there who are teaching us that's how you do it.

Thanks for that. The other thing that's been a bit of a challenge in the past couple of years in the world of technology, particularly SaaS, is sales organizations exploded with investment capital money. That money goes to new sales resources being hired. They're not always worried about the cost of sales but they're hiring huge numbers of salespeople.

Back in those days, those salespeople weren't properly trained. They didn't know to do anything except try and get on a call and either book a demo or pitch at somebody because it's easier than taking an authentic interest in somebody else or having the business acumen to understand how to lead that kind of conversation. This short-term thinking, to a certain extent, poisoned a little bit by the buying community because they're a bit tired of getting pitched at or being demoed at.

It's February 14th when we're recording this episode. It's Valentine's Day. There's one other thing about putting other people's interests first that I loved in the book. On page 78 of The Go-Giver, Pindar explains why his marriage has lasted so long and it has been wonderful because Joe was amazed by it. Pindar has been married longer than Joe has been alive.

Pindar said, “I believe there's one reason and only one reason that we've stayed together so long and are as happy together as we were 48 years ago, more so, in fact. That reason is this. I care more about my wife's happiness than I do about my own. All I've ever wanted to do since the day I met her is make her happy. Here's the truly remarkable thing. She seems to want to do the same thing for me.” We're not going to get on the relationship pedestal, but there's a nice tip for all of us on a very special day, Valentine's Day. There's a great tip from Pindar we're all going to apply.

That was the subplot in the story.

The Fourth Law Of Stratospheric Success: The Law Of Authenticity

There are always different layers of learning. Principle number four, the law of authenticity. The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself. That is another tough thing for salespeople. Certainly, for me, when I started, I had a veneer. I wanted to be Mr. Perfect and Mr. Uptight. Behind the scenes, I was partying and doing all these crazy things but I would never show that I was buttoned-up so tight I was going to burst. Let's talk a little bit about the law of authenticity.

Debra, who was the mentor in that part of the story, shared a very important lesson that she had learned. It is that all the skills in the world, the sales skills, technical skills, and people skills, as important as they are, and they are indeed very important. They are also all for naught if you don't come at it from your true authentic form.

When you do, when you show up as yourself day after day, week after week, or month after month, people not only feel good about you or great about you. They feel comfortable and safe with you. Why? Again, it is human nature. People want to be able to make sense of their world in a world that often doesn't make sense. They want to understand their world in a world that's often difficult to understand. They crave consistency in others, and this is a world that's often very inconsistent. When you are that person who shows up that same way, you inspire trust.

Let me share one thought if I may. I've noticed this since social media has become even more prolific. Authenticity has almost become equated with having no boundaries just as you say, do, or sell. Whatever you want because it's all authentic. It misses the point. It’s like the person who says, “I have anger issues and I yell at people a lot. If I were to act any differently, that wouldn't be authentic of me.” That's baloney. That's malarkey.

Giving and receiving are not opposite concepts. They're simply two sides of the very same coin, and they work in tandem.

It simply means this person has an inauthentic problem that they need to authentically work on in order to become a better, higher, authentic, more effective version of themselves. We never want people to take authenticity so as to not grow. It's to use that as an impetus to become the best highest version of yourself. I personally define authenticity very simply and that it it’s acting congruently with your values. If we do that, that's authentic.

What a great lesson for everybody reading. Sometimes, with a lot of salespeople, particularly those new to the industry, they are confused by what we do because they're confused by social media and the entertainment world or modern culture. Their view of selling is, “The salesperson is that person with the magic tongue that can talk me into anything.” You can't talk anyone into anything. It's impossible. People are repulsed if they feel like they're being manipulated in any way, but this is what we think.

Some junior folks that we've come across are almost proud to say they sold somebody something they didn't need because they're not getting the coaching. You go, “That's the exact opposite of what you want to do. How do you feel about that?” I love that idea of bringing your best self but your true self.

We've got somebody coming up on the show, a guy named Dr. Nick Morgan. I'm not sure if you know Nick. He's certainly at your level being an amazing author. He’s got a couple of books like Power Cues and one's called Can You Hear Me? We have the ability to sense the intent of another human being. There are conscious things we're looking for but subconsciously, there are millions of things we pick up on.

This is why sometimes you meet somebody and they're saying all the right things but for some reason, you don't feel comfortable with them. There are other people you meet at some point in time, particularly face-to-face, and you feel there's a connection. It's because subconsciously, you're picking up on all of these cues where their intent is on display subconsciously. You can pick up on these things.

His teaching sounds fascinating.

The Fifth Law Of Stratospheric Success: The Law Of Receptivity

Without getting into it too much, he had a brain trauma as a young person. For a couple of months, although he could hear and speak, he couldn't communicate well with anybody because the center of his brain that was picking up all these subconscious things had been damaged. Suddenly, it was turned on again and then this became his life’s work. It’s a very interesting story. We're on to the last one, the law of receptivity. The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving. In the book, Joe has some difficulty with this one. He has a little difficulty with all of them, but particularly the law of receptivity. Tell us about that one.

The law of receptivity is making the point that you breathe out but you also have to breathe in. It's not one or the other. It's both. You breathe out carbon dioxide and you breathe in oxygen. You breathe out, which is giving. You breathe in, which is receiving. Giving and receiving are not opposite concepts. They’re simply two sides of the very same coin and they work in tandem. Bob Proctor was so wonderful at teaching this. The challenge is that the world around us gives us very anti-prosperity messages or negative messages when it comes to money, business, and abundance.

Our belief systems are a combination of upbringing, environment, schooling, news media, television shows, and cultural mores. Everything. Plus, the personal experiences along the way that we've had caused us great harm in terms of not allowing ourselves to receive because so many messages that we get is, “If you're making a lot of money, you must do it on the backs of people or must have done it dishonestly.” How many messages do we get all the time with that? We certainly see it in television and movies all the time. That gets into the unconscious.

There's this fight between the conscious who understands on a logical level that the more value you provide to the more people, the more money you're going to receive. That's great, but then it's fighting with the unconscious that’s saying, “If I'm making money, I must have done something wrong or been dishonest.” That's why I'm a big believer in making a proactive study of prosperity. We cover it on a surface level in The Go-Giver, but to go deep.

It is to study the late Bob Proctor, David Neagle, Sharon Lechter, Ellen Rogin, Lisa Peterson, Randy Gage, and Ken Honda. These are people who write and speak on this whole thing. They're wonderful with it, and 99% of what they teach is simply how to get past those unconscious anti-prosperity blocks. It's magnificent stuff that they do. Focus on the value that you're providing and giving, and then allow yourself to receive.

Think of the joy you feel. If you know you have value to contribute, then all of those sales conversations are enjoyable. Unfortunately, in the world of B2B sales, 1 in 9 people in the US is in a B2B sales job, and a good portion of them are not particularly happy every day because they feel “it's a grind.” There's a difference between hard work and a grind. Hard work is hard work. A grind is painful hard work you don't want to be doing. That’s doing the gardening in the backyard for me, frankly.

Having a conversation with someone where I know I'm in a position to help them, I'm authentically curious, and I want to give love to receive is going to make me feel better about what I'm doing every day. It also gives me a little more professional persistence with rule number two to make sure I'm having enough of these conversations.

Why The Go-Giver Is A Must-Read For Leaders And Influencers

You've talked about some amazing authors and shared them. I hope everybody benefits from that. I'm going to take a note here again and say you are an amazing author. This is a spectacular book. I'm not the first to mention this. This is a cottage industry, this whole Go-Givers. Go-Givers Sell More is another book that we read before. There are Go-Givers for leadership and influencers. These are powerful messages applied in a very entertaining way.

This is a two-hour read. Picking up this book and reading this book cannot be a mistake. There are few things in life you can say, “This is the right thing to do.” I'm telling you, folks, this is the right thing for you to do. Inside the cover, many of our guests have provided sparkling testimonials to Bob and John David Mann about the book, whether it's Daniel Pink or Stephen M. R. Covey. They loved this book, and so did I.

John David Mann is a writer and storyteller. He is a brilliant guy. These never would've been anywhere near where they were without his brilliance.

What a great team. Bob, what a great pleasure meeting you. Thank you so much for joining the show. How do people find out more about you? What's the best way to learn more or connect in?

The best way is to go to Burg.com. Pretty much everything's there.

We'd like to thank our amazing guest, Bob Burg. What a great education. The joy of this show is we get to learn when we're reading these books before these amazing authors join us. Team, I'd like to thank you for joining. As you know, the intent of this show is to help improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales because we believe if we can do that, we improve the lives of professional salespeople.

Thanks for reading. Please let us know if there's anything we can do to make these episodes more valuable to you. We're growth-oriented. We love constructive criticism. You can send your suggestions to me, Mark Cox, at MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email. I check that personally and respond to every suggestion we get. In the meantime, thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.

Important Links

• Bob Burg

• Bob Burg on LinkedIn

• Bob Burg on Instagram

• Bob@Burg.com

• John David Mann

• The Go-Giver

• Go-Givers Sell More

• The Go-Giver Leader

• The Go-Giver Influencer

• The Wealthy Barber

• The One Minute Manager

• The Richest Man in Babylon

• Endless Referrals

• Power Cues

• Can You Hear Me?

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

• Saleswise Live™

About Bob Burg

For more than 30 years Bob Burg has helped companies, sales leaders, and their teams to more effectively communicate their value, sell at higher prices with less resistance, and grow their businesses based on Endless Referrals.

Bob has regularly addressed audiences ranging in size from 50 to 16,000 — sharing the platform with notables including today’s top thought leaders, broadcast personalities, Olympic athletes and political leaders including a former United States President.

Bob is coauthor (with John David Mann) of the International Bestselling business parable, "The Go-Giver" which has sold well over One Million Copies and been translated into 30 languages. His is Founder of The Go-Giver Academy, an online resource featuring "The Success Vault”.

He is an advocate, supporter and defender, of the Free Enterprise system, believing that the amount of money one makes is directly proportional to how many people they serve.

Unlocking The Secrets Of European Sales With Domenico Le Pera

Building trust, navigating cultural nuances, and mastering European sales requires more than just traditional strategies. Mark Cox is joined by Domenico Le Pera, a sales leader with years of experience across European markets, to discuss what it takes to master the unique dynamics of selling in Europe. Together, they dive into the differences between North American and European approaches, the importance of utilizing different communication styles, and how to create a collaborative and motivated team. Whether you are a seasoned sales professional or a newbie to the global markets, this conversation offers practical tips and actionable insights to help you find success in European sales.

---

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Unlocking The Secrets Of European Sales With Domenico Le Pera

We've got a really great show for you. I thought it was relevant in this increasingly global marketplace that we start to talk about how to sell outside of North America. We're focusing on Europe as a region. Now Europe's made up of so many different smaller countries and we get into that but our expert to help us here is a friend of mine named Domenico Le Pera. Domenico is a client executive and he brings great sales and client success and deep SaaS expertise to the table. He started his career in consulting with Accenture.

He was working all over Europe. He spent the last fourteen years of his career helping fintech startups and scale-ups in the financial service industry grow. He's got a great background and expertise in lots of different regions in Europe. In our conversation, we take on those topics you'd expect, like at a high level. What are the cultural nuances that we need to be aware of? I get into asking lots of questions about building trust, not just with clients and prospects, but how do we build trust with teammates when we're leading from North America, working with European teams?

That leads to collaboration. How do we best work together as teams? Really interesting insights that we get from Domenico with real-world examples, because at one point in time, Domenico was part of a team I was running. I was an interim CRO for a couple of years of a North American success story that acquired the business that Domenico was a part of. One of the great conversations we have is around forecasting.

As that CRO at that time, it was really interesting to me to figure out how do I balance the conservative forecasting approach from the teams in Europe versus the optimistic forecasting approach, of the North American teams. How do I put that into the pot, stirred around before I make my forecast up to the board? An interesting discussion from my friend Domenico Le Pera. I enjoyed all my conversations with Domenico. I'm sure you will too. When you do, please like and subscribe to The Seller Well Podcast. When you do, that actually enables us to get really great guests like Domenico. Here’s our conversation with Domenico Le Pera.

Domenico, welcome to the show.

Mark. I'm so excited to be there. Thank you for inviting me.

Listen, so excited to have you here. First of all, I think you're one of the librarians of our podcasts or historians of our podcast. You're maybe the two people that have heard every single podcast we've ever done. You and my wife. First of all, it's great to have you on the show. Full transparency, we've had some great experience working together a number of years ago but I'm really excited for our topic, Domenico. This concept of selling in Europe, because as you've heard with most of the podcasts, we've had European guests, we've had global thought leaders, but a lot of it is North American based.

Today, there are so many organizations that are looking to grow outside into new markets. One of the things that I certainly learned when we started working together four years ago, I guess now 3 or 4 years ago, I learned a lot about the social nuances, and cultural nuances of selling in Europe. I learned most of it the hard way and or through your education. I think it's a really relevant topic. Before we jump in, why don't we do our usual here and maybe get the short story? Tell us a little bit about you and your professional journey that led you here.

That will be great. Yeah, I'm Domenico, I'm Italian. I live in Switzerland. I've been living here in Switzerland for a while now. I started my career in consulting. Actually, my first big company was Accenture. I started my education with different cultures back then. Right out of university, and out of business school, I was super excited to join a big company like Accenture. It was an amazing school because the first thing they took us, they shipped us from Milan, which was the location I was living at the moment, at the time, they shipped us to St. Charles.

A small place where they used to have their training center in the US next to Boston, I believe not far away from Boston. We spent a couple of weeks there just learning about how a proper consultant should behave. From there, I spent the first almost eight years of my career in consulting different projects, always in financial services. I moved to the other side of the fence and joined a fintech company. It was a little bit of my passion at the time. I really wanted to not only consult and tell people how to do things but have the chance to actually implement them.

That's where I joined this little company. It was a little bit more than a startup. It was less than 50 people at the time I joined Quartal Financial Solutions based in Switzerland. We relocated with the family from Germany to Switzerland. We started that venture. I spent several years between Quartal and then at PureFacts, and so fintech companies covering different roles, going from implementation, professional services, and client success.

Finally about 3 to 4 years ago, when I got the chance to meet each other, I was getting closer and closer to the sales side of business because the senior you get, especially in a smaller, growing organization, you realize how important it is to actually sell. That's the way I got to selling and that's where we met each other.

No, that's me. FinTech consulting, and I love working with clients. I love helping them. I'm a little bit of a non-traditional sales guy. I like really to come from the projects and I love to have that experience about going through the motions and the implementation troubles, really understanding the challenge of the clients. Of course, they're really trying to help them to solve their problems. That's really what I do.

What a great background, by the way. Thanks for sharing that. Just to connect the dots. Quaral was acquired by a company called PureFacts Financial Solutions. The connection in PureFacts was our first client ever within the funnel. What feels like 150 years ago, but was probably twelve years ago, I was looking for my next CRO role and stumbled into consulting for a number of different small companies.

The first of which was PureFacts. It was through that exercise with PureFacts that actually determined I wasn't going to take another corporate job as a CRO, was actually going to try and build first a sales enablement consulting business, which we did. That morphed into the current sales training business. PureFacts always has a really warm spot in my heart, the leadership team there and the company there. It was great.

You brought back into help four years ago, I guess, when they'd acquired you at Quartal and we're looking to scale the organization. Of course, if you Google PureFacts now, amazing things have happened with that company. One of the things that was such a pleasure about that last piece of work with PureFacts was meeting the entire Quartal team, Domenico, and particularly yourself, and working together closely on the sales front. Although, as you said, with your journey, you'd been in consulting and then you jumped into a small organization and then you said, “Listen, I got onto the sales thing when we were working together.”

What was so obvious was you had sales DNA. When I had a chance to be an interim CRO and work with you a little bit, it was so obvious that with the European team, you had this real seal sales DNA. As we're fond of saying on this show, sales is just consulting. That background you had with Accenture of getting in and helping clients and figuring out what their issues were, you didn't really have a product to pitch with Accenture. You're just helping clients. That's all professional sales is today. It's consulting really. You were such a great natural fit to run sales for the European team over there.

I couldn't agree more. I can mention so many examples where, I mean, when you're doing a good job, you really managed to get something into this new account, and implement your product. You are helping them. The clients are happy because you've done your job properly. That's where I really get my satisfaction to really see that we made a difference, we made a small difference. Of course, it couldn't happen if somebody was not selling to that organization. I totally agree. Selling is the new consulting.

Selling is the new consulting. You need to quickly understand the client’s problem and see if you are the right fit for it.

You need to quickly understand the problems of the clients and see if you are the right fit to solve those problems with the product here that you have in your palette, but no, that's exactly how I see it. Also the more senior you get, I think, you need to get more exposure to sales because the success of any business depends from how quickly and how well you can sell. I think that's something that especially after my MBA that I did during COVID, I just got naturally attracted to that side of the business. If you really want to have an impact in your business, if you're talking about small businesses, medium businesses, or FinTech companies that want to grow, acquiring new clients is simply the number one priority.

Well said in a much more elegant way than I ever did. Beautifully well said. Let's jump into it a little bit, Domenico because the theme here is talking about those nuances, cultural nuances. I'll be honest, again, I learned many of these things the hard way, working, actually getting your coaching, and getting counsel from you. Let's talk a little bit about the differences between North America and Europe culturally that we need to consider when we're selling.

A little later on, we might even get more specific into different regions within Europe. I think you had a great experience with Accenture. When your business was acquired by PureFacts, you would have had this feeling of dealing with this North American company versus how we were running things with Quartal. Tell me a little bit about, from your perspective, the differences culturally from a business perspective between North America and Europe.

That's a great question. Honestly, it's something I've really been thinking a lot throughout my career. Just wanted to give you a little bit of background. I was born in the south of Italy. I quickly change culture environment when I went studying in the UK, in Sweden. I had the chance to work in the UK. I had the chance to work in Germany, and then finally settled in Switzerland. It's been always part of my development and I always found it extremely stimulating the possibility to really work with people with different backgrounds, with different cultures.

That's really something that means a lot to me. That's why when we got acquired by a Canadian company, from a Canadian company, from PureFacts, I was super excited to really have that experience because everybody knows that when you're talking about acquisition, the cultural fit plays an important role in the success. We did that acquisition during COVID. It wasn't easy. We couldn't travel at the beginning. Everything, we needed to connect and to understand each other through Zoom calls.

Obviously, we realized quite quickly the differences that were there, just the differences in conducting business. On the other side, I also want to be clear that still there are a lot of similarities, especially when you're talking about the B2B environment. Of course had a lot of things in common about the product, understanding the client's needs, and understanding the client's problems. I would like to start from the similarities first.

There are a lot of similarities, especially for selling, if you're working in the same area, working in financial services, selling for big banks, you will find a lot of similarities in a big bank in Canada, with a big bank in the UK or Germany for sure. Of course, there are not a lot of little cultural differences and nuances that I believe are super exciting and that you just have to be curious to learn that.

That's a little bit what I will say the main factor is about positioning yourself in any interaction with another culture as being humble and I'm being curious because you will never of course understand all the different little things that make up a culture. If you are willing to be transparent and open and share what you can bring about your culture. This fit will just happen and you will be much more open. This is just a little bit of the starting point.

The main factor in positioning yourself in any interaction with another culture is being humble.

Of course, there are a couple of things. Again, I can also mention just a little episode, I believe in one of our first town halls, we just joined. For a Swiss company, the punctuality was a big topic. It was something that was not even thought for us but we realized that after joining the town hall, all the 50 people that had just joined the virtual time all on time, there were all the European people. The Canadians started coming over just a few minutes late, nothing dramatic. It was nevertheless, for us Swiss people or for a Swiss company, it will never happen.

On time.

You have to be on time. That's obviously the difference between the time perceptions and different cultures. They will have a more linear understanding of the timelines, of the schedules. Other cultures might really have a more flexible approach to time management. That's something that of course is very well known. Nevertheless, of course, what we ended up doing when we put companies together is compromising. Finding the right equilibrium, but understanding it. If you're a manager and you are in these kinds of situations, of course, just try to be prepared yourself, and understand in which situation you're going to be so that you can avoid these little accidents that they will not promise.

Domenico, what a great thing to bring up. How important on a first impression? When you think of this, the company's been acquired. New leaders, when they step into a new role, companies when they get acquired. It's that first 90 days where people analyze everything you do with a microscope. This is something sales leaders, when they move around, they have to be very cognizant of this. During their first 90 days, almost every word out of their mouth is really analyzed by some because they're trying to assess what are they all about the team that they've taken over.

I think this is a good point. That first town hall where you're having with the new organization, even if there's some technical difficulties or five minutes late, that's a big deal because it's a first impression. It's like showing up for an interview a little bit late, that first impression, you're very difficult to come back from that. How interesting, it seems like a stereotype, but of course, Zurich, Switzerland, is the home of the best timepieces in the world. You've got to be on time if you're working with an organization in Zurich, Switzerland.

I'm happy that you mentioned the concept of stereotype because when you're working and thinking about different cultures, there's always this conflict. Should I believe what I read or is it just a stereotype? I believe that there's always a grain of truth in every stereotype, but it's all about how you go about it. It doesn't mean that if you're Swiss, you're going to be punctual. Nevertheless, if you're meeting a Swiss people, you have a highly likelihood that he's going to be punctual in that meeting simply because it's part of the general culture.

In the same way, going back to the difference and what it was really easy to pick up at the beginning when we started with the integration was the way the communication was flowing. The fact how the message was passed directly realized that all the negative messages were very cushing. The German-speaking cultures tend to be a bit more direct in the way they give feedback. After a couple of days, we realized that our Canadian colleagues were somehow always embellishing the situation a little bit and giving back a lot of positive elements before throwing in a negative nugget, a negative comment.

That's something that threw us a little bit away because if I say, “What is the main message that I want to get from that meeting? Is it that there's an area where we need to improve or that we're doing great?” Sometimes when you're giving this negative feedback and you cushion it a little bit too much, you have to be super careful to ensure that the message actually got in, mentioned that you want to be.

Let's hold on to that. What a great one. I definitely think certainly with small and medium businesses, particularly in North America, entrepreneurs have this optimistic view of the world for sure. They think of things in the future in a very positive way. How interesting, because in one sense, you're trying to always do that as an entrepreneur. I'm an entrepreneur trying to lift the spirits of the team and you zone in on things that went well rather than the negative but other cultures are a little more direct and fact-based.

That's very interesting to think about because if you ask somebody on a European team about the state of affairs, their direct response, which is very much fact-based in North American culture, you're right, it might be perceived as being negative. I think leaders have to take that filter off and say, “Listen, that's just a different way of communicating it.” It's not really even pessimistic, it's just fact-based. I found that a lot too, working with the team. They were very direct.

That's also something that I learned from being from the other point, the other perspective, that it's true. You want to ensure that the team is positive and motivated, especially in sales. You cannot afford just to get out of a meeting with this luggage, a negative, unclear message. Found it's actually, there are a lot of great elements in the Canadian and North American way of doing business which ensuring that there is a lot of focus on the positive elements because that's like it. You can always look at your cup as full of empty. Let's agree on the facts. Nevertheless, let's ensure that we are living that meeting with a positive attitude, and we are ready to knock the ball out of the park if you want to use a baseball analogy. Might be difficult to understand in Europe though.

The more you get to work with people from various cultures, the more you become curious to understand their background and ways of doing business.

I threw that one around a lot. Domenico, going on some of these nuances, so those are in team meetings. By the way, that was a key learning as a sales leader working with the team at the time. This came into play in terms of forecasting. Forecasting is a very interesting one with the sales organization because as a sales leader, you're trying to get the team to forecast performance. You don't want them to sandbag.

You want to make sure they're not sandbagging a little bit where they are under the forecast, but then slightly overachieve, but they're keeping things in their back pocket. To a certain extent, you do want a little optimism where they stretch the limits a little bit and they go, as we like to say, above their skis a little bit. Oftentimes, when they set a bit of a higher goal for themselves, people actually achieve it. It's amazing when you set that goal but this is one thing that I had a real time with or had to get used to I think the European team was very accurate at forecasting but they were conservative and accurate. Would you agree with that?

I will definitely agree with that. As you say, there's a little bit of a different approach. It was more like, let's start from the facts and then build our forecast based on the numbers that we have and the deals that are already qualified, and what you can reasonably close. On the other side, of course, there were North American colleagues. We were all driven by the numbers that we needed to make and what are we doing to actually get there.

Honestly, I think that was an amazing experience to actually have exposure to both ways of doing things. As a sales leader, what you need to do is you have to average out, and whatever is coming from the part of the team, but also leverage out. You need to know your team. Going back to the topic of preparation and understanding the people you're dealing with. The more you get to work with them, the more you are curious to understand which is their background, which is their way of doing business, you will naturally understand whether they have a more conservative or a less conservative approach.

The other thing that is also very helpful, Mark, and I think we've been building together to build those processes, is let's be clear. What is the purpose of that forecast? Is it something that we need to commit with some investors that are coming tomorrow and it's a number that they will hold us accountable and we cannot really miss it. Are we talking about our yearly targets and we want to be optimistic? I find that sometimes with sales forecasting, you need to ensure that the context is set properly so that you can get the right information.

Fantastic point. There has to be this clarity on the definition. This is one of the biggest challenges, frankly, Domenico, we face when we're working with all of our new clients. They come in and there's a lot of talk about pipeline. This happens a lot with the investor community too, because the investor community comes in and says, “Let me see your forecast. Let me see your pipeline.”

They have no definition of what a qualified opportunity is. From sales rep to sales rep, they are different qualifications. Of course, this is the lunchbox letdown of most investors when they invest in companies, they get in, and take a real look at the pipeline. Where we're getting into committing things in blood for a quarter, those things that were in the pipeline never come to fruition.

I think we've done a couple of podcasts and a couple of LinkedIn posts, I think we titled them something like, “Lies. My CRM system told me.” Something of that nature, but you touched on such an interesting one and certainly having lived through this, I love your take on it. You talked about meeting and learning about the team.

Any sales leader has to get in and really understand their team. Any CEO's got to understand their team, both personally and professionally. Tell me a little bit about culturally what's appropriate, not in terms of trying to build trust with a new team for the next CEO who's building out a European team. How do we get in and build culturally, build relationships, and build trust and credibility?

Tell me a little bit about that process, because I think it's relevant as you're leading a team in Europe. I think it's really relevant as you're actually trying to work with prospects and then customers to build relationships and trust and credibility. It always felt to me a little more formal in Europe than in some places in North America. It's quite formal in some places in North America, but Europe seemed just a little bit more formal to me.

Mark, I think the main thing that I will say is that Europe is not a thing. In reality, we just have different nations on the European continent. Some of them, they have huge differences. The language being the main one. Historically, you have the English-speaking part, which is based in the UK, even if nowadays, they're outside of the European Union. Nevertheless, they are one of the key economies in Europe. Also, the Nordic countries that are close to Sweden, the Netherlands, those guys, they just speak perfect English.

You can, no problem, do business in English as you do in the UK, also in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Sweden, and Norway because their language is just perfect. Of course, there is the German-speaking side which is of course Germany itself, but also the German-speaking Switzerland, and Austria. Those guys tend to have significant differences. We have France, which is a huge nation with great culture, great food, amazing places to visit, a historical heritage, you name it. You also have the southern European countries, Italy, where it came from, or Spain, and Portugal.

Those guys of course they share a lot of commonalities as well. For everyone, especially North American companies that are looking to sell in Europe, is really you need to go one level down. Which markets are really going to want to go after and which are the priorities? I tell you, language is a big barrier. The majority of people, especially in a B2B context, especially if you're talking about big organizations, banks, financial institutions, asset managers, most of the people you will be interacting with as a sales leader in your client organization do speak English, no problem.

Nevertheless, it might not have the same level of comfort as a negotiation, to really want to work with you. Maybe some of the older members of the team, they're not familiar, they're not willing to just have a new supplier who doesn't speak their own language. Sometimes the difference in sales is so minimal that you need to mark all the boxes. You need to be a gang. Language is definitely one of the things that doesn't have to be underestimated. My first suggestion would be to understand what do you mean by Europe.

Which are your target markets? You want to prioritize the UK, you want to prioritize Germany, you want to prioritize Switzerland or France, or the South European countries. You've done your homework and exactly where you want to go, then building this relationship and understanding the people you're working with is the next big thing. Once again, we can mention a stereotype, but one of the key differences between North America and the majority of European countries is a different approach to entrepreneurship.

American companies, they tend to be more entrepreneurial, while as Europeans, we have usually a lot of companies, bigger-sized companies, also small-sized companies. Most of the people have a bit more of the employee mindset, positive or negative. It's just a corporate mindset. They want to do a good job but within the limits or what is the mandate or what is assigned to them.

I think sometimes, especially an entrepreneur that is going directly to the value and I can help this guy, let's sort it out. You still need to understand how that specific organization works and the limitations that you might find because that's not the job of the person you're interacting with right now. You will need to interact with different departments but I think, Mark, if you have experience working with a big Canadian bank, you will know that very well.

It's so well said. What a great thing to bring up, Domenico. Big Canadian banks, by the way, slightly socialist economy. There's no point running from it but in a regulated industry, defaults to a socialist economy because it's an oligopoly. There's a different mindset in an oligopoly when big US banks cannot compete in Canada at a retail level.

The difference is they have a guaranteed customer base with a small number of players that have been entitled with a market. It leads to instead of being entrepreneurship, it leads to being risk averse. For example, if you're selling into a Canadian bank, which I spent 12 or 13 years of my career doing, what they're focused on is risk management is incredibly high on the radar because they have almost guaranteed market share and almost every product and service is exactly the same as a competitor.

I say that with love and respect because I also invest in Canadian banks and they do extremely well. We Canadians get benefits on both sides of the fence, but the same thing goes for a Canadian telco, regulative industry, bureaucratic, risk-averse. We noticed a difference in North America selling into US banks, they're commercial entities. When you're having that conversation, it's talking about growing market share and differentiating. They have an appetite for it and they make decisions more quickly because they're not nearly as risk-averse. Now, I should in fairness, a lot of testing has been done on me personally over the years.

One of the things my beautiful wife is fond of reminding me of is I'm highly risk-averse. Which is unique for an entrepreneur. I should show a little love to everybody out there. Understanding those cultural differences and from a selling perspective, Domenico, as you and I learned, I think it's very interesting because there's a process for some of these large banks in Europe and there's a bureaucracy and there's a precision to that process. Very hard to change that process and they're not fast. A lot of times these decisions don't get made quickly, but you've got to have that endurance in the sales cycle, particularly with a large financial institution.

Also, Mark, I think it's also important to adapt the way you're running your pipeline, right?

Yes.

The sales cycles. Everybody's saying the sales cycles are super long, they're not closing, but it's fine. You can work with it. Of course, you need to ensure that you have enough numbers in your pipeline that you can afford to play with this huge and it's very long time cycle. Always ensuring that you need to stay on top of the game throughout the several months that it will take to run an RFP, the RFI.

All the due diligence checks that the procurement department might throw at you. My thinking is always that sometimes you cannot run your American pipeline the same way that you're running the European one because the rhythms might be different. Let's be smart, leverage the data that you collect in your CRM, and then adapt it and try to optimize your pipeline for the peculiarity that you might have in that specific market.

All fantastic advice. By the way, I think we might even have a second and third podcast on this topic, Domenico, because it's so interesting. Talk to me a little bit about the team. When you start to think about, and again, understanding Europe is made up of at least 6, 7 different unique and different regions. Generally, if we were recruiting people out of the UK or we were recruiting people out of Italy or Germany, tell me a little bit about what CEOs and sales leaders today need to think about. How did they attract the next young Domenico who's leaving Accenture but thinking about coming to another organization? What's important to that particular employee?

That's a great question indeed. I will really start with ensuring that you are treating your potential employees with the respect that they deserve. You need to do a bit of research. If you're asking for somebody to join and you want to have a compelling offering, let's understand which is the taxation in that specific country, because countries like France, they will kill you. You cannot have an employee, the difference from the cost of the company and the salary, it's massive.

There are different ways. You want to propose to that employee to work as a contractor or as an employee. Be clear about the benefits you want to offer, and be clear about the money you want to spend. Of course, nowadays, everybody, if you want to attract smart talent, they will have the possibility to use different options. We tended to use a lot of flexibility in this regard. If you want to have that talent and that specific talent, of course, wanted to have an employee contract to have security, a small family, of course, you need to ensure that you are offering something in this direction.

Find the right talents by being clear about the benefits you want to offer and the money you want to spend.

On the other side if you find somebody who has more experience, has been running his business for a while, and doesn't mind being part of the real taking more risk, but also more reward. The variable component and you can structure your deal differently. The first thing I will say is that do a little bit of homework and not being too as fixated with the model that might work in a different country, because you need to be able to adapt it if you want to get the best talent in that region. Go for a concrete example.

In France, we ended up working a lot with contractors, simply because for us it was a more efficient way to ensure that those guys were not really paying huge amounts of taxes or they would optimize their taxes because there were a lot of travel costs that they could deduct. On the other side in the UK, when the employer laws and the possibility to hire staff, it's much simplified and closer to the US and North American systems.

We tended to have direct employees, but every country is slightly different so be prepared, be professional, I mean, not being too strict. Having the flexibility, but also grounding your offer on a little bit of research about the peculiarity and the standing of the specific country that person is going to operate into. There are also a lot, of course, legal requirements that have to be considered.

Having good HR partners who can advise you on those areas is a huge benefit, but if you don't have it, there are a lot of resources online that you can use. There are a lot of course consultants that can help you out. I believe that especially in nowadays market where even everybody's after the talents, you're doing that research upfront so that you come up with a good package for your VP or local contact executive.

It's such a great tip that again, a lot of organizations, particularly mid-size organizations, they don't have the depth and experience, or knowledge to understand that. I think a lot of times we've seen with our clients, they go through a process of the first couple of people, they just hire and then they have to go through this learning curve and they might find out because of the tax situation and so forth and keeping somebody whole, it's much more expensive than they anticipated.

It's also making sure that that individual stays. You guys, like with that experience with Quartal coming on board with PureFacts during COVID, I mean, the distance thing would have seemed even more significant because your team was spread out over Europe and just this lack of human connection starts to really play into the whole team building, the collaboration, all those kinds of good things.

Mark. I also wanted to go back to your previous question about the team. I believe also when it's about managing people and motivating people, it's again, another area where there are a lot of similarities everywhere in the world. If you want to have motivated people, you need to be clear about the expectations. You need to let them feel involved in the process. Of course, it's not only about the money, but of course, the compensation structure has to be clear. The way it's going to be evaluated is going to be clear.

The commitment is going to be renewed. Over-communicate, and repeat your message to ensure that everybody's online. We are all distracted. Of what you say, probably 80% of what I say, they might get lost in translation. It might get lost in the next couple of hours between other things that we're all doing. The way we're approaching, communication, especially in the sales world where we interact not only internally within the organization, but we interact with clients. I believe that's exactly how to keep people motivated you need to over-communicate.

Overcommunicate with your team and always repeat your message. 80% of what you say usually gets lost in the next couple of hours between the other things you are all doing.

You need to meet in person if you can, but if you cannot, of course, go on. I mean, repeat. Ensuring that we are using all the tools that we have available. Not only, I mean, repeating wishes, our valuable position, which is the good things that we are doing as a company. Why is it a great place to work? What are we listening also to is the feedback that we're getting from the people, over-communicating and ensuring that people who are in these locations, they feel part of the same company. One of the things that I believe is making the biggest difference.

Domenico, as you were saying that, I was thinking about something I'm reading right now, which is a book called, Can You Hear Me? by a fellow named Dr. Nick Morgan. The book came out in 2008, actually pre-COVID. We're ahead of the curve there, but what he talks about is in terms of making a connection with someone, there are conscious and unconscious triggers for any form of communication. Your unconscious mind is particularly good at picking up triggers when you meet somebody face to face.

Lots of different things, the way their eyes are moving, their mouths moving, how their body language is, all these unconscious triggers. It fills you with this understanding of what their intent is. One of the things that he positions beautifully in this book is in the virtual world, whether it's this, which you and I are on a Zoom conference right now, or whether it's just to teleconference, just the voice, people who are listening to this podcast, just the audio version, your unconscious mind cannot pick up on all those triggers because those things aren't there.

What it does, your unconscious mind is it makes assumptions that are generally wrong. Things like building trust, credibility, and relationships, it's all very fragile in the virtual world. We think that just because we can see each other, it's the same. It's not. I remember having my interactions even with you four years ago, and then we had a sales kickoff we ran and we were at this same dinner table.

Suddenly, it's completely different. That's where at first, I had the first opportunity to realize you are the world's most interesting man. We got a commercial in North America for a beer called Dos Equis, two X's, Dos Equis. It's a great commercial about the world's most interesting man who also drinks Dos Equis. You're a very young version of that man. This is where those connections come into place, the face-to-face. Wherever possible, I think getting in front of somebody, whether it's a client, a prospect, or even a candidate you're interviewing, it's just so important to make that effort.

It is. You mentioned also Mark, you mean the sales kickoff events, and they are so important. We went in different phases in the last couple of years, sometimes we could afford to have a sales kickoff. Sometimes it's just situation was so dynamic that we couldn't even do it. We couldn't really come all together. The value that you get in these interactions with the people, it's that everybody gets in terms of aligning the message, ensuring that the message is not only in one direction, but you get also this feedback.

As a company, you can grow by interacting with your sales guys because there's all conception that you can just say to the sales guys, you give them something, the Hoover and they go around, knock at doors, and sell. It doesn't work anymore. Those are the guys who get so much interactions with the clients that you need to ensure that your product officers and all the leaders in your organization, they listen to what the salespeople are saying. You need to ensure that you're adapting the way you're selling, the way you're building your product and the way you're demoing, the way you're presenting, the way you're pricing with the inputs that you get from the people on the ground. The sales kickoff tends to be a great occasion to actually do that.

That's where you really get to know somebody. For everybody reading out there, I know we all battle with the cost because I was highly aware of the cost at that time, I think we probably brought 30 people in those rooms when we were running those quarterly sales kickoffs. Goodness me, if I look back on my impression of the European team, your team was very formal.

A little bit formal, but polite, tough to get to know a little bit on these Zoom calls in these forecasting calls, and we were going through a transformation. When that same European team came to the sales kickoff, as great as you were in the meetings during the day, highly engaged, highly personable interaction, the evening events, the dinners, and maybe a few drinks afterward, it was almost a badge of honor.

It was the European team that was out partying in a professional way everybody else and having fun, being social, and staying out late with some of the team members, yet very early in the next morning. The European team was in the room, front, and center, ready to go. It was almost this badge of honor. Again, hence the world's most interesting team. It was this badge of honor of staying up late, but still being up in the morning, exercising, being fresh and ready to go. We had a totally different perspective of the team once we had done that quarterly kickoff.

The reason for this is that, especially if you are a North American organization that has a North American headquarters, the people who are not in North America, they will feel a little bit far away.

Disconnected.

That's why on these occasions, you actually have a chance to voice yourself, to get to know the people. You are part of the game. That's so important then to have these kinds of events and get together to ensure that everybody feels part of the same company. As I say, it's not rocket science, it's a simple thing, but obviously just executing on the simple thing. I think it makes a big difference in a lot of organizations. Do the things that do not work and sales kickoff meetings, they work, they bring the team together to ensure that everybody's going in the right direction. You can communicate more effectively and you can learn a lot from the people that you don't have a chance to interact with every day.

European Sales: Doing things that are not work-related brings the team together. It ensures everybody is going in the right direction.

That goes back, Domenico, to what you said at the beginning. There are so many similarities, as long as people are humble and curious. I think this idea of just being humble and curious generally in life is a good strategy. It really is. We're far less interested in working with know-it-alls. We're really interested in working with learn-it-alls. That whole idea of just being humble and curious, it's such a smart way of interacting in life, and really good things are going to come from it.

On that topic of being curious, and I also wanted to just reference a book by Erin Meyer. She's an amazing author. She also wrote the No Rules Rules. I don't know if you read it, but definitely suggest it. She's an amazing professor. Didn't say at one of the biggest European business schools, but the book I'm suggesting about cultural differences is called The Culture Map. She also created a number of nice tools to really visualize the differences between cultures. Of course, you need to be aware that as with everything, there are a lot of simplifications.

Not every Italian will be loving spaghetti, but most of them will though. There's a lot of value that you can get in doing your preparation and understanding if you're meeting people coming from a culture that you don't know well. Definitely suggest read it, look at the map itself and the differences, the virus dimensions that go from communication, evaluating, leading, deciding, trusting, and disagreeing. She's done an amazing job. I myself, I tend to use that tool whenever I'm meeting somebody from a culture that I don't know.

Fantastic. Team, that link will be in the podcast notes. That's Erin Meyer and it's The Culture Map. As you're contemplating growing it, by the way, the world's a global marketplace now with SaaS offerings, and any offerings are really what a great tool to forward, Domenico. One last question. First of all, I do want to say thank you. Thank you so much for joining here. It's always a pleasure having a conversation with you. We're going to have you back on the show, but you're one of the most well-read people I've come across. What are you reading these days? I'm always asking people where they're getting their information and what they're interested in. We've just got one there with The Culture Map. What else are you reading right now?

I'm reading a couple of books about artificial intelligence. I don't have them in front of me, but we can post that in the regular. Honestly, there's so much material on artificial intelligence that I appreciate tips and suggestions. I just finished an amazing book that is a totally different topic, which is The History of Food and the impact that food had on humankind. It's called the An Edible History of Humanity. That's amazing. It's really going back to being an Italian, the stereotypes that we love our food, but the importance that food has in the way the culture developed, it's usually understated and not really fully understood.

That was a good read a little bit outside of the box. I tend to also have a mix of books that I'm trying to read almost at the same time. I will have a couple of business-orientated books, but I love to have something about history as well. Maybe just a nice novel, like I love novels about robotics and anything to do with future forecasting. I'm a huge fan of that. I tried to mix it up a little bit, but right now, of course, there's so much literature on artificial intelligence that I'm really trying to understand and a little bit more about that.

Amazing. First of all, Domenico, thank you so much for joining. We'll have you back for sure, but it's always great to chat with you. I cannot believe we burned through the entire time that quickly but thanks for your insights. A lot of people listening might have some questions about selling in Europe. Would you be open to them actually reaching out to you on LinkedIn and maybe asking a question?

Please do. Yes, I'm reachable on LinkedIn. Domenico Le Pera is my profile. You will find me. I'm based here in Switzerland, but I say that I travel a lot between the other European countries, Germany, and the UK. Please do connect. If you have any questions, if I can be of any help, always happy to connect.

Feels to me like there might be a book about selling in Europe coming from you in the near future but we can talk about that. That could be out in the funnel publishing.

I'll take it seriously.

We could think about that. Thanks again, Domenico. It's great to see you as always.

---

Team, thank you for joining the show. As all of you know, the reason we do this is we're trying to improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales. In doing so, we think we're going to be able to improve the lives of anybody in professional B2B sales. We appreciate your reading. If you liked our episode, please do like and subscribe to the Selling Well podcast, because that's how we actually get amazing guests like Domenico to join us.

If there are things that we can do to make this even more valuable to you, we really want to know that as well. Please send emails out to me. My name's MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email. Let us know your constructive criticism. We love it, by the way, we get great tips from everybody. I personally respond to everybody who gives us a suggestion. Please keep those coming in. Thank you. In the meantime, keep adding value to the clients and prospects you're reaching out to, and we'll see you the next time on the Selling Well podcast.

Important Links

• Domenico Le Pera on LinkedIn

• Domenico Le Pera’s Email

• Quartal Financial Solutions

• Accenture

• PureFacts

• Can You Hear Me?

• No Rules Rules

• The Culture Map

• The History of Food

• An Edible History of Humanity

• Mark Cox’s email

About Domenico Le Pera

Domenico is a client centric executive bridging sales and client success with deep SaaS expertise and a consulting skillset. After starting his career in consulting, he spent the last 14 years helping FinTech start-ups and scale-ups in the Financial Services industry to grow by keeping the client at the centre of attention. 

Comedy Writing For Revenue Teams: How To Engage, Connect, And Convert With Jon Selig

Comedy writing can be a secret weapon for revenue teams who want to be more engaging. In this episode, Mark Cox welcomes stand-up comedian Jon Selig, who created Comedy Writing for Revenue Teams, to share his secrets to using humor effectively. Jon, a former enterprise tech salesperson turned comedian, reveals the surprising parallels between stand-up and sales and how laughter builds trust and drives revenue. Learn how comedy writing helps craft relevant messages that resonate with your audience, focusing on preparation, timing, and punchy delivery. Tune in and transform your sales and marketing with the power of laughter.

---

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Comedy Writing For Revenue Teams: How To Engage, Connect, And Convert With Jon Selig

Is there a place for comedy and professional sales? If you've listened to a few of these podcasts, you'd certainly understand that comedy has been a big part of my life professionally and personally. When I think back to some of the best relationships I've got, they started with this love of comedy where it's my older brother or friends that I went to university with. We were insane fans of Monty Python and SCTV. In later years at times, even something like Saturday Night Live, just love this idea of laughing.

I'm really excited for our conversation because we're talking about this alignment between comedy or stand-up comedy and professional sales. We found somebody who's got just such a unique niche in this space. It's Jon Selig. Jon is the founder and chief of staff in Comedy Writing for Revenue Teams. It's a sales training consultancy. Help go-to-market professionals leverage skills, processes, and methods of stand-up comedians to transform them into more consultative sellers and stronger communicators, help them use storytelling, and then arm them with impactful messaging for top-of-the-funnel efforts and beyond.

It's really interesting when we start to get into the alignment between comedy and sales. First of all, we start with the idea that they're both performance arts. When you start, it takes a lot of courage to get up there and do that. There's a way of creating connections. Comedy is a great way of creating connections and building authentic human relationships. Frankly, there are some tactical things in handling rejection and sometimes failure with humor. I do think there are these more strategic, positive things like in stand-up comedy, you really need to know your audience.

The Journey From Enterprise Sales Expert To Comedy And Sales

You've got to engage them quickly. You've got a personalized message. You've got to break down complex ideas into simple jokes. Think of all of those things I just said. Of course, they're all so applicable in B2B sales today, which is this niche that Jon teaches on, which is so smart in my view. This is just a great conversation. Obviously, it went in a flash for me having this conversation. Jon has a background as an enterprise sales rep with Oracle doing multiple different roles for many different years.

He really does understand that world. He jumped into this world of comedy as an adult. That talk about a creative sleep there. I think you're really going to enjoy the show. I did for sure. As always team, two things, please like and subscribe to the Selling Well podcast because that really matters to us. That's actually how we get really good guests like Jon. Also, share your constructive criticism.

If there are ways that we can make this show more effective for you, that's what we want to do. We're really trying to create an MBA in professional sales here with this body of work on the podcast. Drop me a note at MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com, or connect with me on LinkedIn and let me know your thoughts. We love constructive criticism and we respond to every note we get. Team, here's Jon Selig.

 Jon, welcome to the show. It's so great to have you.

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be in my own apartment.

Listen, I was really excited. This was a red-letter day for us for a couple of reasons. Like most people, I think I'm funny. At this stage of my life, by the way, I also inject just a ton of humor into almost every aspect of life, where it's appropriate and where it's not appropriate. This topic of comedy and sales, I've heard you on other people's podcasts, and I just think it's such an interesting topic. It's also really interesting to me for a lot of reasons, I think the bravest people in the world are stand-up comedians who get up in front of a mic and try and make a room full of strangers laughing, all those good things. First of all, welcome to the show. I'm super excited to have you.

I'm super excited to be here. Thank you for having me. I would not say that stand-up comedy takes bravery whatsoever. It just takes a lack of dignity.

There you go.

People say that, “You're so brave.” I'm like, “I don't know. I just have a little bit less shame than a lot of people.” I don't know if that constitutes bravery, but I'll let you believe that if that's what you want to believe.

Let's go with the bravery thing. I think it looks better for you. It's also better for the show notes. By the way, as I was rushing here to get onto the podcast, one of my favorite podcasts is Fly on the Wall. I don't know if you listen to that.

I do.

With David Spade and Dana Carvey talking about some of the experiences of Saturday Night Live, and it's just amazing to me. Again, the bravery, the courage, because many of the best performers, there's only been about 450 people ever who have been performers on Saturday Night Live. Like over the 50 years, it's really not that big a group. Many of them suffered just paralyzing stage fright, where they'd be having these breakdowns before the show, like some of the best ones.

Dana Carvey was one of them, by the way, for a long period of time. It's just really interesting to me this whole topic. Tell us the short story of your journey. I know you're an enterprise sales expert. How does somebody who's enterprise sales deep experience end up talking about this topic of comedy and sales?

Mainly because I didn't want to sell enterprise technology after doing it for about ten years, but that's a bit of an exaggeration actually. I was selling Oracle, enterprise, business applications like Oracle ERP and they're all the associated business software with that and selling professional services doing really full cycle sales for the better part of ten years, calling, running in deals from the inside and going to the outside where necessary to get deals done.

Whatever it takes, both for Oracle itself and then for an Oracle consulting partner. I hit a wall with everything and I started performing stand-up as a creative outlet, not even intentionally. I took what I thought was a comedy writing class. I had taken one in the past and it was all about scripts and sketches and sitcom pilot stuff. I thought that could be cool. You can meet some fun people and maybe we create some YouTube sketches or something like that.

I got to the class, I heard about it word of mouth. It was taught by a standup comedian I know. It was framed to me as comedy writing. It's a comedy writing class. I had no clue that it was actually a standup comedy class, even though it was being taught by a comedian. I got there and he said, after I paid him my money, he announced this to the entire group. “Everyone, welcome to my class. This is a standup comedy class.

Over the next ten weeks, you're going to learn how to craft five minutes of standup comedy. After the ten weeks, you were going to perform that five minutes for your friends and family.” My first reaction was I am not performing for my friends or my family. I'm not doing any of that. I'll just go through the class. I'll go through the process. Quite frankly, it was a pretty big class. There were about 40 people in there.

Not a lot of people were all that funny. There were a lot of senior citizens there and some much younger people. Here I am in my mid-30s, having watched a lot of, I wouldn't say stand-up comedy, but more comedy in my life. I liked going through the process and he would give us a little assignment every week and we'd have to get up in front of our peers and deliver it. I started to realize my stuff is so much better than most of these people's.

They were laughing and enough to the point where I said, after six weeks, I realized I'll do this final exam. I'm still not inviting my friends or family though. I don't need them showing up if this doesn't go well. I did it and I got laughs in front of a bunch of strangers at the “graduation show.” I was like, I want to do that again. I did do it again and I got even bigger laughs in front of a, let's just say a less friendly audience.

At no point did I think, “I have this figured out.” You just want to keep going as long as the feeling's good. The third time on stage or in the same venue was the second time. That was a disaster. I blanked, I bombed, I got heckled by a comedian on psychedelic drugs. The room was mainly comedians and it was very hard. I was up there probably ten minutes when I was supposed to only be up there for five, but it felt like a lifetime.

A lot of sane people would have never done it again. I said to myself, “I cannot let that be the last time I do this. Like that's the worst it's probably ever going to get.” It was when I said, “I want to keep going with this. It wasn't as bad as that third time. It wasn't as good as those first two times for quite a long period of time.” That's really where it started. That's how I got into all of this. I answered the question.

You answered a couple of questions, but where does it go today? Like, are you still doing open mics and stand up every once in a while? Did that continue for multiple years?

It continued for roughly twelve years. In my first six, I was actually on stage 3 to 5 times a week. I'd go to other cities. I'd go to Ottawa. I'm based in Montreal, so I'd go to Ottawa. I'd go to Toronto. I'd perform wherever I could, whenever I could. Now we're coming to the part of your question, I have been dabbling in a couple of comedy-related projects and the travel technology space. I won't get into all that.

In 2017, I thought to myself, “I could be a speaker. I wanted to speak on humor's impact on sales basically, and how anyone who speaks presents ourselves can use it as a weapon to earn attention, to build credibility and earn trust, to break the ice, to earn attention, all this good stuff, to be liked.” A lot of the things I still talk about to this day. What's one thing to be a keynote speaker of some kind? That's not really who I am. I'm not this speaker who comes on stage with a boisterous presence and is rehearsed for the day.

Everything's going to be perfect. This is what you do and all that.

I am not that guy. I'd like some comedians are a little flustered when they get on stage. That's always who I've been. Like you're trying to make sense of the audience, remember your material. That's who I am as a speaker. I said to myself, “This isn't even valuable enough, even if I was that polished speaker, it's nice, but I need something else.” When I was at Oracle, I had a pre-sales engineer who was dry, at least on the surface. He was actually funny when you got to know him. I was on a demo with him delivering the demo for a really boring financial consolidation product.

I teed off the demo for the vice president of finance and the controller. There's probably a manager of finance on the call and I tune out a little bit while he's doing the demo. At one point he makes some joke, some deep cut, insightful joke about the financial consolidation process and they laughed. I was like, “That was clever how he made that up off the top of his head.” Guess what? A month later, we're doing not to the same client, we're demoing the same stuff to a different prospect. He tells the same joke again and gets the same reaction.

At that point, I turned to my colleagues and said, “Have you ever done a financial consolidation demo with this guy?" They said, “Yeah.” I said, “Does he tell this one joke?” They're like, “He's been using that joke for years on prospect after prospect.” I realized at that moment that sales and stand-up have a lot of parallels. Even when I started doing stand-up, I was like coming at it from, everyone in the audience is, they're like a prospect or a customer. My job is to make them want to come back and either come back to this comedy club.

Follow me on social media because they find me funny. Like I have to get them to do something. I have to earn their trust really quickly by making them laugh fairly quickly upfront in short spurts before they go, “You know what? We're willing to give this guy some more of our time and attention.” I found there were all these parallels between go-to-market efforts, whether it's sales, whether it's marketing, and the process of being up on stage and being a stand of a comedian. That's how I started this business. Now I work with sales teams and we do two things. We go through a process of trying to craft a hyper-relevant piece of humor that shines a light on a problem that we as a vendor can solve for not even our ICP but for a specific target persona within the organization.

Comedy Writing: Sales and stand-up have a lot of parallels. Everyone in the audience is like a prospect or a customer. My job is to make them want to come back because they find me funny. I have to get them.

It could be level. It could be a low-level manager. They all have slightly different objectives and some are focused on tactical stuff and some are focused on big-picture strategic stuff. Our objective is to write some humor that can then be repurposed across 30 to 50 different touch points and channels. The list keeps growing of where you can use one good bit of humor. Even if they don't write a good joke, they do this all in breakout groups. It's meant to be a collaborative process. Even if they don't write a great joke, the big win is the process they go through because it forces them to think about who is my target persona and why should they care about us. What problems should we solve?

The Power Of Humor: Building Trust And Authentic Connections

Great. We do a lot of training on that. That's a great way of thinking about it. I love that idea of saying, “Let's understand them so well that we can craft this joke or something funny about the challenges or the issues or the environment.” The reason I was so excited to speak, Jon, I think there are so many things about this idea of just generally humor. Let's get away from the bravery of stand-up comedy, which by the way, I think you have to be shockingly brave.

All of us, by the way, have done well when we stood up at our brother's wedding and came up with a couple of jokes and had a great speech because everybody in that room wants us to do well. Very different when you're getting up and speaking in front of a group of people who paid money, they don't know you, and they're walking into a comedy club. They're actually not that keen on you doing well. Part of it was maybe like, they hope you do well, but you better do well because they paid to come in. It's a much more scrutinizing eye.

I don't think they don't want you to do well. I think they do because you're right, they paid and they're there for a good time. They're not there to, “I really hope that third one bombs.” We need to be reset because the first two made us laugh too hard. I think they do want to laugh at everybody. They want to laugh the whole night. You are right in that they did pay. If you relate to them and show them you understand who they are and what their challenges are and what their frustrations are on a day-to-day basis and be relatable to them, then they will not laugh.

With all these connections you're making, I see why you've got a business that aligns this with sales. Certainly, even with a workshop that we run, one of the things that's just so great about trying to inject some humor, not trying too hard, but finding that opportunity I find is it's so authentic. A laugh, somebody who's laughing and even near comes down fairly quickly. A lot of times in sales, you're trying to build some of that trust. You're trying to build some relationship. You're trying to get to an authentic conversation.

At times at the beginning, you come in from a place like Oracle or SAP or somebody of enterprise software, the buyer is rightly cautious. Maybe there's a little bit of a veneer or a wall. I think it's just such a human response to laugh that makes a very human connection. I think whether it's part of storytelling or whether it's just creating that connection, you cannot try too hard with it. I do think there's this great way of leveraging humor just to get everybody a little bit more relaxed.

Certainly in the early days in professional sales, when I was young, I would have said that because my personal life was so crazy in front of a young person living life, I thought I had to be so “professional” when I was at the office, there was this veneer. I probably came across as being uptight and very formal and I was trying to be perfect. Whereas I think in many cases, if anybody actually knew that I enjoyed a drink in those days, maybe stayed up a little bit too late, lived a rock and roll lifestyle. Probably would have liked me more because I was a bit more human, but I was always keeping that to me.

This idea of nowadays, by the way, I just am me everywhere. Whether it's we're running a workshop or something else, I'm just going to throw it in. I want to have a good time and humor has always been part of our family growing up, certainly part of my family now. All my friends are actually, I believe them to be very funny. A couple of them are extremely funny. This way of getting back together and laughing and using humor, just also, by the way, a good laugh, it just feels so therapeutic at times, just a good belly laugh, there's nothing better.

I agree. Yeah, absolutely.

Sales And Stand-Up Comedy: Resilience And Preparation For Success

By the way, but I do think back to yours standing up on stage, that idea of after you bomb, and by the way, listening to all these comedy podcasts I love, it seems like everybody bombs. By the way, anybody who's done anything material in sales, we've also bombed too. You've been in this business long enough, you've done this long enough. We've had big deals, we thought we should have won, they didn't win. Every once in a while it goes the other way. We've had great years, we've had some challenging years.

We've had fantastic bosses, we have terrible bosses. There's this resilience that I think that's required to make it through a career in professional B2B sales, managing those ups and downs. Part of it is you just keep going. Good things are going to happen, bad things are going to happen, but you just got to keep going and you kinda trust the process. It sounds like that's really what you did after show three before show four, two great ones and then one bomb, and then you go, “I got to get back up on this stage.”

I came up with this line when I started this business, which is whether you want to be an enterprise tech sales or you want to be in standup comedy, you don't need two business degrees like me. All these take our passion for failure. In the case of standup, that and a bus pass. You're right. Like, I really believe that resilience is important, but there's another step that both startups and salespeople really need to invest some time in.

That's preparation because like one of the topics I speak to sales teams about is what can salespeople learn from the worst open mic stand of comedians that I've had the misfortune of sharing the stage with in like twelve years of comedy because it was really interesting when I started. You're learning the local scene and some people are pros and like all you get to do is open mics even at the comedy, our local comedy club, the Comedy Nest.

You'd be on a mic on a Tuesday and there could be the biggest comedian in town. There could be some up-and-comers who are like, “I hope to get to their level.” They're not even big yet or any, or they're not even professionals, but they're funny. They're consistent. You see them on bills all around town. There were the people who are recent and starting and trying to make it. There was another group. There was a group of people who they do comedy maybe once a month.

They're doing it more than that, but they're never getting asked by a booker to be on a show where they get more than five minutes and maybe ten bucks. They're never getting a paid gig. They're never getting a proper spot, as we call it. They're just getting open mic spots. I watched them. Sometimes these are people who didn't understand how to relate to audiences. Sometimes, quite frankly, they were people a little bit later in life, were making dated pop culture references for a younger audience.

There was also the ones who they would get up there and like, it took them a long time to get to their first joke, to their first punchline. They would screw around with the audience a little bit. Whereas for me, I wanted to get my first joke off. My opening joke for years was that “I looked like Ross and Monica's dad from Friends.”

You do. Elliot Gould, by the way. There's a dated reference. Guys, Google Elliot Gould. Cool dude back in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Let's talk about dated references and why you don't relate. I did start off by saying, “Yes, I'm Elliot Gould.” I forget the way I phrased it when I started. No one knew who Elliot Gould was, even in 2011, and 2012, when I started doing stand-up. I changed it to Ross and Monica's dad because that's how people in the audience knew who that guy was. Yes.

That took a little bit of failure and iteration, let's call it. I knew that I needed, when I come on stage, from the moment they called my name and I stepped up to the microphone, I have no more than 10 to 15 seconds to get a laugh out of the audience. That earns me another 10 or 15 seconds of their attention. To nail that joke, you need to prep a little bit. You need to like to have this mindset. I'm coming out there. I'm not screwing around. I'm not saying, how are you doing? I'm not like I'm not asking a question to the audience.

I'm just getting to that one thing I want to say to them that'll get that reaction I want that allows me to collect myself mentally so I can get to that next joke I've prepared. Just get to that next joke I've prepared. It's also going to be short. If I get a laugh, then great. I have a third usually. I always used to structure my sets. I always used to try and to my own detriment, to be quite frank, memorize everything and build a flow. I watched a lot of comedians who didn't build that flow. There is something to be said for trying to figure it out for yourself. I watched too many who didn't prepare.

Let's come back. This is a sales training class. Everything you're talking about is just a sales training class. First of all, just go to Elliot Gould versus Ross and Monica's dad. Speak in plain English to the buyer, whoever you're reaching out to. Forget the acronyms and the techno mumbo jumbo that they don't understand or makes them feel silly or they cannot connect with. Just speak in plain English, first of all. The second thing, I love this idea of go, “I walk up, I know what I'm going to do in the first 10 or 15 seconds and I'm trying to earn the right to keep their attention for the next 10 or 15 seconds.”

Prospecting 101. If somebody picks up the phone and I'm surprised, they pick up the phone. I don't really know what I'm going to say because it's so common that they don't pick up the phone. I got some mumbo jumbo and they go, “Who are you, what do you do?” I started spewing some irrelevant stuff like, “We've been in business 15 years. By the way, you were working for an Oracle implementation partner.” There are 10,000 Oracle implementation partners. How would you differentiate?

When somebody goes, “We already use Oracle or we use Offshore, or we use one of the other 9,000 companies.” You need a good answer for this. We need an articulate value proposition, not a joke, a value proposition, to earn the right to get somebody's time to have a little bit of an authentic conversation. The way you actually, obviously, your workshops are excellent and your speaking engagements are excellent. The way you speak to this is almost exactly how we would train SDRs or BDRs.

Like in thinking about it this way, I love this analogy with the standup. Thinking about, “I've got this process.” You said, “Listen, I used to memorize how I might go through my act or the other four or five minutes.” Now, you said there were some people who didn't do that. I think in sales, a real huge issue is too many people think I'm great. By the way, I don't need a process. I don't need a structure because I'm the world's greatest ad-libber. I should be on a stage doing improvisation. When someone sends them a curve, they just get kerfuffle.

They're drowning and they're going all over the place. They start creating objections and take it. Whereas if you do what you did, which is, “I've got a plan, but if it turns out when I get up there, you're killing the audience and they take you down a path, but you feel safe and you've got some connections.” You can go down another path. You still know where the guiding light here is. I still got my roadmap if I need to go back to it. That doesn't mean you cannot veer off it. That doesn't mean you're too structured and uptight. That's how we do sales training. That's exactly what we train on. This is awesome.

Improv Vs. Structure In Sales: Finding The Right Balance

It's fascinating that you mentioned the whole concept of improv. Improv, when I started this and I told people that my business is comedy writing for revenue teams, people would say, “That's amazing, I love improv.” I'm like, “No, I am the 180-degree opposite of improv.” I'm all about understanding subject matter so you can craft a message that gets repeatable, predictable reactions. Whereas improv is unscripted and it's about creating unrecreatable moments. People think there is this notion that improv is great for salespeople and it has certain benefits.

I will say, I think it's really powerful for listening. I think that's the biggest thing that you've brought you to do. My take is, if you become a subject matter expert in your prospects, the problems you solve for who and how they're impacting your buyers and understand how to quantify that and what questions to ask, you don't need to follow the script but you're also not going to be improvising. You're going to be having a conversation that's consultative that helps you determine if you could help them solve the problem and how much it's worth to them.

If you become the subject matter expert in your prospect and understand how to quantify that and what questions to ask, you don’t need to follow the script. You’re going to be having a conversation.

Even with that, Jon, at the end of it, I mean, you say we're not following a script, but you're definitely following a structure. I'm saying I'm going to be having this conversation. I want an authentic conversation. I'm in it. I'm actively listening, but I'm probably going to keep an eye on the time to a certain extent to understand, I'm going to get this to a certain level before I then figure out how am I closing for the next step with Jon, if and when I've made some connections between some of the issues and the challenges Jon has and some of the ways we've helped other clients in the past.

There is this idea that I've got this roadmap I'm going to try and get to. I know at the end, I've got to wrap this thing up at some point in time. The same way you understand when you're on stage that you don't have the stage for an hour. I've got four or five minutes, but I'm still trying to make that connection. I'm trying to get engagement, trying to get attention and interest. Maybe after the fact, they do follow me on Instagram or they do want to come to my next show and so on and so forth.

Bridging Comedy And Sales: Insights From Workshops

You start to think all of the things you've talked about here, creating a connection. We haven't even got to things like the resilience of handling objections with a little bit of humor, knowing your audience, storytelling, and breaking down complex ideas so people understand them. These are some fundamentals of a great sales conversation and authentic conversation about helping somebody achieve a business outcome. All of these things are just so applicable. I had no idea it was going to go down this path. Tell me a little bit more about what happens in some of your workshops or some of the other connections you've made between comedy and sales.

What happens in my workshops is we assign a team to write a joke and we give them preselected topic. It's usually to shine a light on the problem that the vendor can solve for the target persona or help them think about or consider some outcomes associated with not addressing the problem. That's where things can get very specific and humor is rooted in specifics, but it's also rooted in truth and pain.

Humor is rooted in specifics, but it's also rooted in truth and pain.

Outside of the business, we get business solutions rooted in pain, solving a problem. Tell me about comedy being rooted in pain.

What are comedians talking about? They're talking about things that frustrate them, I hate riding on air. Like the old one is airplane food. People are talking about online dating and how painful that is quite a bit. It's the things that drive us nuts, the things that keep us up at night. A lot of comedians say, talk about how the media fear mongers. That's a common thing on all sides of the political spectrum. There's only one comedian who I've ever seen, Ron Funches is his name.

Ron Funches, okay.

I'm not somebody who consumes all stand-up comedy. I watch some, especially when I was performing, you're around it all the time. You had a little less patience for some of the better stuff out there, especially Netflix specials. I watched Ron Funches, because I'd seen him at Just For Laughs, and he started off his special by going, that most comedians want to talk about things that they hate or make them angry or they're scared of.

I want to talk about things I love. At the same time, it really was still rooted, as I recall, in his frustrations with those things, and the pain around them. I had never even thought of that till that point, that like, we're only talking about stuff that drives us nuts and that people can relate to as a result because why are people coming to comedy shows? They're coming to forget about their day and laugh at the frustrations.

That's a huge one. I would say that going through the process, I challenge like my teams I work with to go beyond like, let's say I'm helping a company that sells sales technology. Sales technology solves this problem. Your technology solves problem X. “What is going to happen if they choose to ignore this problem?” “They're not going to hit quota.” I'm like, “Yes, but can we dial it back a little bit?” Like maybe it means that the right leads won't get to the right reps or CRM notes won't get entered properly or maybe it's sales and marketing are going to have a blockage with each other.

Like there are all these specifics of things that go wrong in every business function, and those are the outcomes we need to shine a light on and show how those particular specific costs of action are things preventing our buyer from achieving their real objective. We have to understand that in the first place.

Peel the onion back. At the end of the day, it's one thing to say, “We're going to miss quota.” Quite another thing to think about. Missing quotas is an interesting thing. Missing quota is going to mean, the company is not going to hit some objectives. Missing quota might mean we're not really helping clients the way we could be helping them so their businesses are going to suffer. If I'm missing a quota, people on my team are going to leave my team.

Depending upon the age, maturity level, the experience that could have a devastating impact on a new business professional. There are a lot of these downstream implications where the simple way of explaining this in 1998 would have been to say it was identify a need and develop a need. The truth of it is when we understand some of the issues and challenges, there are real implications to these things.

Sometimes somebody articulating or saying these things out loud causes them to really think about them for the first time and go, “We do actually have to fix this. We're going to make sure we hit our goals. We don't hit our goals as a company. It's not just my sales team that's going to get cut. There are other roles in the company where people are going to get cut.” I always think there's this tie into this bigger picture in the why.

Really the path there is turning that right to this authentic conversation with a buyer and I need trust and credibility for them to do that. I'm trying to figure out what's my path to do. It's not easy to build trust and credibility quickly with the new buyer. This is why something like humanizing the conversation as quickly as possible with something like humor is huge. Again, if it's authentic if it's a natural thing for you.

Understanding Your Buyer’s Job: A Key To Effective Sales

Look, one of the things I realized when I was selling Oracle applications and I'd be speaking with like a vice president of applications, some large company, it's like, I don't really know anything about this person's job. Like I know the basics, but I don't really know what they live through. At one point I said on some other podcasts, “Most sales pros sell stuff they've never used to people whose jobs they've never had and industries they've never worked.” That's why salespeople are looked at with a jaundiced eye by buyers because you're just a salesperson.

What do about what I do? Again, whether it's the humor, I use the word joke a lot. I don't mean a rabbi, a priest, and a minister. I just mean a short one-liner. The humor is connecting tissue between buyer and seller because it shows if a salesperson, whether they came up with it or not, to deliver a bit of deep-cut humor that shows you really understand the inner workings of their challenges. The negative impacts of them. If they can get them to laugh, they're also going to go, “That's powerful.” They're going to remember that. The memorability to humor, it's educational. It's like, our good friends at Challenger, like how can we show a commercial insight in a way that they hadn't considered and get the go?

If a salesperson can deliver a bit of deep-cut humor that shows they truly understand the inner workings of their customers' challenges, they're likely to be remembered. Humor is highly memorable.

I never thought of that or we do deal with that. Again, I think the process is even more valuable in the humor itself because if you like just go through the process of trying to craft short-form humor that follows certain rules, you're going to need to unearth a lot of knowledge, insight, understanding, and perspective about these problems and how they impact our buyers. It will inform you to be, again, more consultative and be able to zone in on. If I'm talking to a prospect, are they really a prospect?

Knowledge, insight, and understanding. By the way, we love Challenger with the teach, tailor, take, and control. When Matt Dixon has been on the show multiple times, what really great guy, very interesting. They wrote the book without a background in sales. They were researchers, met Matt and Brent and teach Taylor take control. It teach knowledge, insight, and understanding. We get the understanding when the buyer actually shares with us, but it's always this journey to get that connection.

Overcoming Fear And Nerves: Lessons From The Stage And Sales

They say a return on the time they're going to spend to share with us. By the way, speaking of time, we've got to be cautious of your time, but let me just go down a slightly different path, Jon, because again, I'm sure it doesn't seem like a big deal to you, but I'm pretty sure it's a big deal to anybody listening to this podcast. It's scary to get on a stage to do anything the first time. It's scary to be in sales. It's scary to pick up the phone the first time. It's scary to run your first demo the first time, although we don't love demos.

Scary to be in front of a senior executive the first time, where somehow they granted you the meeting. Now you're meeting a VP or an SVP of applications. It's scary. Even today, there's got to be those dates and times when you're going to step on a stage or you're going to do a keynote somewhere where the butterflies are floating around the night before or maybe the morning of. Tell us how you work through your process to actually get on the stage instead of heading for Kamloops.

Look, I think we got to practice. I think we got to know our stuff inside out to the point where even if we falter, it's not going to come off. Like we know when we falter. The biggest mistake I made in comedy was I mentioned earlier, I tried to memorize things word for word as I scripted them because I really bought into this whole notion of things like word economy, really being short and joke craft as we call it. Like how can you get to the punchline the fastest possible? Like ‘80s style comedy was predicated on that.

You were saying you would prepare too much maybe, so preparation helps you get on the stage because even when you go left to center, they cannot tell, you can tell, but they cannot tell. There's maybe you're cautioning over preparation.

What I was going to say was, as I'd be on stage and delivering, I'd like realize as I was saying it, “You inverted those words.” You deliver the punch line and you're just busy thinking about how you screwed up the setup and get in your own head. The audience didn't notice. They don't know. We're being hard on ourselves as it's going on, but it doesn't matter. People are appreciating it or getting it.

That's when you need to be connected to the room versus yourself. To connect with the room a little better, you just need to really have a good handle on your subject matter. You got to prep, you got to work on the timing. For example, I have a presentation coming up at a cybersecurity marketing conference. Guess what? I'm not a marketer. I'm not a cybersecurity guy. I don't really know. I'm an outsider, but I was asked to speak because I'm teaching messaging.

I had to come up with hyper-relevant messaging that marketers could benefit from in addition to salespeople. I'm really working on my deck right now. I'm working on the timing and the reveals of animation pacing. I think that's the work. Again, coming back to comedians who fail, I could tell some of them just were winging it. They'd get up there, they'd have a rough idea of three jokes they wanted to deliver. Some people really are okay with that, and for others, it just showed. You're not prepared and you're not working at this. Look, we all get butterflies, but preparation eliminates the risk of failure.

Preparation eliminates the risk of failure.

Preparation and putting in the work. Again, all of this stuff is the same. Any performance art is the same. Frankly, I think in many ways, sales is a performance art. We're still only spending a third of our time, a quarter of our time in front of clients or prospects. Professional athletes practice four times as much as they play. Who knows? Think of that workshop you did to get five minutes of standup. It's a month-long workshop, with multiple different sessions to write five minutes. Like my intro to my next story on the show takes seven minutes.

It's such a short period of time. The preparation, when preparation meets opportunity, amazing things happen. I do think the preparation shows nine times out of ten and far less worried about being over-prepared than under-prepared. I feel naked. My confidence comes out of the bottom of my feet if I'm under-prepared. If I'm over-prepared, I can work through it or I'll try and loosen up, but it doesn't work the other way.

No, one thing I wanted to add is that another lesson, it's just tied to some of the things that are floating around the ether of this conversation. When you have five minutes on stage, in 2024, you need to make them laugh, I would say twice a minute because comedy has evolved a little bit. In the ‘80s, it was, you need to laugh every 20 seconds. That's three times a minute which means you need to get to that punchline really quickly, which means the longer you ramble, especially when you come out on stage and they don't know who you are just like a cold call. If you keep talking, they're going to be, what's this all about?

I like to say that our goal is to make their faces light up, but not because they've just gotten bored and started staring at their phones. We got to graph type messages that people can digest simple language that elicit emotional reactions. That adheres not just for sales, but for sales development, for marketing. Everything I talk about is we're talking in the vein of salespeople. Every go-to-market function, they all need to be subject matter experts. They need to know how to trigger emotions, touch on that pain, and be short and quick, and punchy.

Using Humor To Address Pain Points In Sales Messaging

Well said, by the way. At the beginning, we were talking about you helping some of these companies craft a message that's leveraging humor to shine a light on a pain point or two. Do you have an example of that?

Yeah. I worked with a client, and I just want to add though, before I tell this joke that he's now the CEO. He told me, “I don't care that you wrote some jokes or that we wrote some jokes.” We closed some revenue off a cold email, which they did. He says, “The real value is the process and how it helped his new hires who hadn't even started on the job rant quickly because I was able to get them to express what problems they solved for who in simple English before they even started on the job.”

Nice.

They're a company, they're called TrustArc and they're a software who helps marketers and privacy officers manage their global privacy compliance efforts.

Very specific, extremely specific.

Very niche. In simple language, we all get asked to accept cookies, and cookie consent, and every website we go to, and every jurisdiction on the planet has different laws around that. A challenge that marketers and privacy officers have is they know this is a problem. They know they have to keep up with the laws or else they're going to get fined but they'll go to the CEO and ask for some budget. They're just like, “I don't know what this is.” The joke I wrote for them is, CEOs remind me of my parents. The only thing they understand less than technology is privacy.

That is good. I'm judging the comedy in any way, but that is good. Short, crisp, punchy.

Look, the reality is I'm not professing that we're going to write. Netflix comedy special-style jokes that are so cutting and so biting. The bar in B2B is pretty low. Everyone's really dry, everyone's boring. You just got to make it a little more human, a little more fun. It doesn't have to crush and destroy. Doesn't matter if someone drops dead laughing. You just want them to crack a smile and go, that's cute, that's clever. That's insightful, I like that. That's all we're looking for. We're just looking to get a bit of a reaction.

It doesn't matter if someone drops dead laughing. You just want them to crack a smile.

Comedy Heroes: Inspiration Behind The Humor In Sales

Who were some of your comedy heroes or when you were getting interested in this, and who do you like today?

When I was sixteen, which is not yesterday, I should have said which was just last week, there was a guy here in Montreal, his name was Sean Keane. Have you ever heard of this guy?

Rings a bell, by the way. For the readers, rarity, but I'm actually interviewing another Canadian on the show. Both Jon and I are Canadian. He does ring a bell, and you and I are probably not crazy different ages.

No, so Sean Keane. We were sixteen, we were underage, we were going to a comedy club that had just opened, and we hear like that MC calls his name and a theme song in like a ‘40s style theme song like the Andrews sisters start singing. I'm really dating myself but it was like that ‘40s style tune. This guy emerges from the back with slick back hair, sunglasses and like a trench coat and a suit and he's looking at us and staring at us and he's chewing his gum.

He just goes, “Somebody left their gum in the urinal.” He lets out, and we're sixteen. We're like, this is the funniest thing we've ever seen. He had a bunch of dark jokes. He wasn't like hyper offensive, but they were a little dark. We all just adored this guy, but he was the master of like short, quick, dark humor. He was an original idol. Over the years, like guys. I like Bill Burr. My tastes evolve. I like Sam Morril's a really good joke writer.

He's big. Mark Normand. I like Nate Bargatze. He's super clean. I don't care if they're clean or offensive. Like I just like funny. I don't really care. There was someone here, Deanne Smith. She's now in New York or I don't know where she is but she was a scream. Steve Patterson is always pretty funny. He's not like an idol of mine. There's a guy locally, David Pride, who's quite brilliant. I'm all over the board with it all.

I know some of those names. For me growing up, there was nothing better than Monty Python. The concept of the uptight Brits, my parents are British, so the uptight Brits, and then the look of absolute dismay when they get embarrassed or it looks like they're being silly, is just incredibly funny. Life of Brian is one of the funniest movies I've ever seen still to this day. You can keep watching it. In real formative years, when I stumbled on SCTV and it was just amazing to me that they'd be making these jokes and references, just like my brother and I would do that. I just thought it was the funniest thing ever.

It's too short-lived for sure. It wasn't long enough, but it was just truly amazingly funny stuff. It wasn't a funny situation. SNL always, to me, seems like a funny situation. SCTV were truly funny characters. You would continue to laugh. You just go anywhere with Ed Grimley or Guy Caballero. Of course, John Candy, there's Johnny LaRue. It's just so funny.

We didn't really get a lot of them in Montreal, but in my teenage years, I watched a lot of SNL with like Sandler, McMire, there's Dana Carvey. When you asked me the question, I was going with standups, but there's no doubt about it. SNL and some of these like the naked gun dumb and dumber movies, are the real combat.

Dynamite. Animal House. Go back and watch. A lot of the folks reading to this may not have heard of a movie called Animal House. It's still funny. It's a bit dated, but it's just ridiculously funny.

I watched it recently for the first time. I will disagree.

You watched it. First of all, you look like Ivan Reitman. The director, if you look at him back in the day, he also looks a lot like you. Just love the movie. We'll resolve that another time, Jon. First of all, thank you, for joining us on the show.

Thanks for having me. This is a lot of fun.

It's a lot of fun. The people reading are going to want to hear more. This connection between comedy and how you use it to train the sales team. How do they find out more about you or connect with you?

Look, there are two real ways to get ahold of me. Number one is LinkedIn. Drop me a line. Let's connect. Jon, there’s no H, Selig. That's also my URL JonSelig.com. My business is comedy writing for revenue teams. Just draw me a line through my websites. You can even somehow get ahold of my email there, but LinkedIn's a great place to connect, and let's have a conversation there.

Folks, as we think about trying to do something unique for our sales organization, something like Jon's approach, I think it's fantastic. We've got clients, we're going to be thinking about this for two. Jon, thank you again for joining. What a great conversation. Team, thank you for joining the show.

---

We run this show because we have this mission of increasing the professionalism of B2B sales because we know if we do that, we'll actually improve the lives of professional salespeople. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please like and subscribe to the Selling Well podcast because that's actually how we get great guests like Jon when you do that. Now, the other thing is, team, we're growth-oriented.

A lot of the things we do in the podcast are because you gave us great suggestions. Please keep them coming. You can send your suggestions to us at MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email. I personally respond to every suggestion we get. We love constructive criticism. Keep it coming our way. In the meantime team, we'll see you next time on the show, and tell your friends about this podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Important Links

• Jon Selig

• Jon Selig on LinkedIn

• Comedy Writing for Revenue Teams

• Mark Cox's Email

• Mark Cox on LinkedIn

About Jon Selig

Jon received his BComm & MBA, and spent time in business process consulting, followed by a 12-year career selling ERP, business intelligence, and professional services (for both Oracle & an Oracle partner).

In 2011, his career took a sharp left-turn, and he started performing stand-up comedy in hopes of fulfilling his lifelong dream – of never selling technology again.

Jon found the parallels between sales and stand-up to be so striking, he felt sellers could benefit from the skills, methods, and processes that both practitioners share. As he says, his 12 years in sales was a well-paid internship for his career in stand-up comedy.

After years of performing at clubs, festivals, and forecast meetings, he created Comedy Writing for Revenue Team.

To date, he’s spoken to and worked with teams at Broadcom, TrustArc, PowerChord, Canon USA, Citrix, Zoho, Philips Healthcare, InfoBlox, Microsoft Canada, Fleetcor Technologies, and more. 

Harnessing Social Media For Sales Success: A Guide To Social Selling With Adam Gray

Social selling isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a game-changing approach to building trust, standing out, and creating meaningful relationships in today’s digital world. In this thought-provoking conversation, Mark Cox welcomes Adam Gray, a leading expert in social selling and co-author of two groundbreaking books on the topic. Together, they dive into what makes social media a powerful tool for connection, how authenticity sets you apart, and why gratitude is essential for personal and professional growth. Whether you’re new to LinkedIn or looking to refine your strategy, this episode offers actionable insights to help you network smarter and sell better.

---

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Harnessing Social Media For Sales Success: A Guide To Social Selling With Adam Gray

We have a great show for you today, talking about social selling and getting very specific about LinkedIn. Today's guest is a great guy. Adam Gray is the co-founder and the Head of Intellectual Property at DLA ignite. He's also the author of two great books. One is called Brilliant Social Media: How to Start, Refine, and Improve Your Social Media Business Strategy. The second is called Smarketing. He wrote that with his pal Tim Hughes. You'll remember Tim because he has been on the show talking about his book Social Selling.

Adam and Tim both work with DLA ignite. We've seen them in action. We brought them into a couple of our clients. They have great strategies for how to leverage LinkedIn properly by thinking about three things. What should your profile look like? How do you build out your network professionally, not spammy, the way many people do it? How do you create and then engage content? How to create your own content, what should you be doing, and then how you engage content with others.

What a great conversation with Adam. He's one of those calm confident people. He speaks quietly and is not a big shouter like me. He speaks quietly, which causes you to lean in and listen more. He has an incredibly interesting professional background. He's a very interesting guy with his hobbies and what he collects. We're both fans of music. He was a super high-end violinist at one point in time. I'm a super low-end drummer. We had a lot in common when we chatted.

What you're going to pull away is some great strategies for leveraging LinkedIn to stand out, which is what we're trying to do. It's pretty tough when there are a billion people on LinkedIn. If someone is looking for a sales trainer, there are thousands of sales trainers. What do you do to stand out? Let's have that conversation today. I enjoy my conversation with Adam. He's a great guy. You can enjoy it too. When you do, please like and subscribe to The Selling Well Podcast, and thanks for doing so. That's how we get great guests like Adam Gray. Here he is.

Hello, Adam.

How are you?

I'm great, thanks. How are you?

I can't believe there's no point in you complaining. Is there? No one listens.

I would listen. That's what this is about. More than anything, this show is about me counseling you in any way, shape, or form. You just laid out there, my friend.

Understanding The Power Of Gratitude In Daily Life

I'm all good. Thank you. I feel very fortunate that every morning I wake up. How lucky I am to have the life that I have. All things considered, that's pretty good. Isn't it?

What a great way, by the way, when we kick in and jump into the podcast. You give off that vibe, by the way.

Do I? That's harder then.

You have this calm confidence and almost a contentness. It's very engaging. We'll get into it in the show, but you give off that vibe.

Thank you.

I'm a huge one on gratitude. I do the same thing. I have a gratitude journal. I write things down.

I try to do that, but I'm not very disciplined about writing things down, making affirmations, and doing that stuff. I do invest a huge amount of time counseling other people. A lot of what we do is coaching people. Part of it showing people what they need to do and showing them how they need to do it. Part of it is what's stopping you from doing this. You know you want to do it and you know you’re better at it. I’m getting underneath that surface and helping people to realize how lucky they are.

That's the big thing, isn't it? To have been born at this moment in history when we have all of these privileges available to us and in the places that were born. You could have grown up in Gaza or something. You have no idea what it's like to be under pressure. None at all. You're not going to go to the President's Club this year. Big deal.

How Social Media Impacts Mindset And Contentment

It's so interesting by the way. I have this conversation a lot of times with my beautiful wife, Donna. Every once in a while, I'll make this comment that we won the DNA lottery. You wake up at some point in time and realize where you are, what's going on, and how privileged you are. I do think in this society, it's very easy to lose sight of that. It's a bit of the old statement that comparison is the thief of joy. In many ways, social media is a global way of comparing yourself against everybody else. It's a pretty easy way to end up feeling bad fairly quickly.

Have a catch-up on your feed Steven Bartlett?

No.

He does a podcast called The Diary of A CEO. I'm still on the jury about whether or not I find him incredibly insightful or incredibly annoying. I don't have my mind yet, but he has a lot of truly outstanding guests. One of whom he had on was Jimmy Carr, who was a British comedian.

I know Jimmy Carr. My parents are British. I know a little bit of that.

Jimmy Carr has said that at the moment we suffer from dysmorphia. Some people have gender dysmorphia or whatever, where they're not in the place that they think maybe they are. He said that in the developed world, we suffer from life difficulties. To put this in context, 50 years ago, people didn't have hot showers. Think of how lucky we are to live now. He's an incredibly insightful and very clever guy. He's incredibly insightful with some of the comments he makes, but often, it will pull you up short. What have I got to know then?

I'm completely aligned on this. For everybody listening, by the way, I’ll also admit that I have those periods of being in the gap. I have a friend named Dan Sullivan who runs something called Strategic Coach, which is a great coaching program for entrepreneurs. More than almost anybody I have come across, he has these mindset tools where he gets you and your best thinking. It's not a how-to program. It's a strategic program to help pull the best thinking out of you.

One of the ones that is so interesting is he's got one called the gap and the gain. Strategic Coach Dan Sullivan says, “All of us have this vision of the future, this place we want to be, this goal, this objective, and then there's where we are today. By default, if you're a sales or growth-oriented entrepreneur, where you want to be is always different from where you are today. You want to be somewhere in the future.

Most people focus on the gap between where they are today and where they want to be in the future, but by nature, if you're ambitious, they're never going to align because as soon as you start to make progress, you keep pushing that goal out further. “I want to make 100,000. I want to make 250. I want to make 500. I want to make seven figures.” No matter what you achieve, you keep pushing it out just by nature of having these amazing goals and objectives. That's the gap that he speaks of.

Applying The Gap And The Gain To Personal Growth

The gain is thinking about how far you've come. It doesn't change where you are in life. It just changes how you feel about it and perceive it. It's incredibly powerful. I almost defaulted to this as a survival mechanism when I first started In The Funnel 10 or 11 years ago because I come from a large corporate CRO job. I lived a bit of the life, which was pretty good, traveling, hotels, and all that great stuff, then in a 6 or 8-month period of time, I started this company.

There was no revenue coming in except what you create day. When you started every morning, it was a little bit of saying, “Let's take a pause and think about the great things that have happened here, why I'm so happy to be running this business, and why I chose to run this business. It was almost this default gratitude journal as a means of survival and keeping myself in the right mindset before I even what those things were.

That's incredibly powerful but the problem is, and you are right about social media being very guilty of this. What you do is you see some 22-year-old guy who has a huge yacht and a fleet of Lamborghinis. You look at yourself and you go, “I'm a failure because I haven't got those things.” The way to look at this stuff is that there's a finite amount of you to go around. You cannot be good at everything. I was fortunate that life had given me a load of different things that I've done. In the early days, I used to sell HiFi to people.

You're selling in an audio store.

That was interesting. I was working in a relatively high-end audio store. One of the people who came in was quite a successful businessman. He said to me and one of the other guys in there, “You guys, why don't we go and set up our own store?” He was passionate about this. He became an investor and myself and this other guy. We started our first store, which was directly opposite Howard in Knightsbridge.

We went from working in a little provincial town on the M25 to working in the highest retail space in the world outside of an airport. What we ended up doing was engaging with people that were multi-millionaires. This was 30 years ago. One of our clients was the Sultan of Brunei, who at the time was the richest man in the world.

He came into your audio store.

He didn't, but his assistant did. We went to a number of his houses to install systems. We visit all of these different houses. Whilst I never got to meet him as a person. I got to go to the wedding of his nephew, which was held at the Dorchester Hotel because we became friends with the guy who was his aide in the UK. We got to meet loads and loads of really rich people. To a man, almost every one of them was miserable. Rich, huge houses, limitless cash reserves, miserable.

Part of it was because they didn't ever do this, stopping and saying, “I have all of this stuff,” whether or not that’s money, physical things, or possessions, whether or not that's achievements, “I've got all of these done and I've worked hard to achieve them and I'm proud of myself. I can stop, take stock, and enjoy this,” but they can't. They're so driven that often as you said, you want 100, then you want 250, then you want 750, then you want seven figures.

There's wisdom like the next mountain to climb and I get that's part of being entrepreneurial, and I get that that's part of being driven, but think about the saying, “I'm here for a good time, not a long time.” We're here for a blink of an eye, aren't we? You have to grasp every moment. What we all know is that if we've been fortunate enough to travel, we go to very rural places in the Mediterranean or wherever. We meet people who have got nothing, yet they're incredibly generous with the time in the few things that they do have with you.

We're here for a blink of an eye. You've got to grasp every moment.

There's a degree of contentedness. I'm a carpenter. I work with wood. My father was a carpenter. His father was a carpenter. I do it for the joy of creating and working with materials and the sense of achievement that I get from constantly being on this lifelong learning. Nowadays, it's like people don't want to earn their fame. I want to be famous. What do you want to be famous for? I just want to be famous. I want to be an influencer.

That's putting the cart before the horse, isn't it? You need to say, “Here's what I want to do and I want to get joy from doing this,” because there will always be room for improvement, whether or not you're trading on the stock market, making $1 million a day or whether you're building wooden boxes. There's always a chance to make it better. Finding the joy in those simple things is incredibly pleasurable.

It's so well said. One of the reasons we run In The Funnel is we're on this mission. Sometimes people roll their eyes, but I'm highly educated, and nowhere along my journey did anyone teach me anything academically about B2B sales. Part of my journey is saying, “I want to elevate this to the profession it really is.” That's what we do in In The Funnel.

The why is I know that when we do this, we're going to improve the lives of professional salespeople because so many of them are not happy. They fell into a job that was an easy job maybe to get, but they feel like they're trying to execute something that they have no control over. They don't know what they're doing. You can only get enough courage to trigger a conversation with someone when you don't know what you're doing for so long before you have to put a veneer up and you’re sort of scripting and pitching.

I believe in drive and ambition, and I still have a lot of those things. I have hopes, dreams, and goals that drive me. The difference now with a little bit of maturity may be, as much maturity as I can ever have, is I do want to take those pauses every day and go, “I'm happy about today. I'm so pleased.” That doesn't mean I'm not going to do things that scare me because I still do things where I jump outside my comfort zone. It doesn't mean I'm not going to have the odd salesman's night sleep, which is waking up in the middle of the night and being concerned about running the business and all those kinds of things. I either call them professional sales sleep or entrepreneur sleep.

Those things are all going to happen, but when I'm going through the journey, I want to enjoy those things that are most important because, as you say, we're far luckier than I ever dreamed we would be. One of the things I'm so lucky about is I love what I do. It doesn't mean it's easy and it doesn't mean that there aren't some parts of it, but something like this, this is part of my job to get to chat with a cool guy like you, learn from what you, and your teammate, Tim Hughes have done with DLA ignite and Social Selling. It's super fun for me.

The Long-Term Impact Of Gratitude On Mindset And Success

I get a dopamine hit from learning. It's a good message for everybody listening today this idea of gratitude or being happy. Anthony Iannarino has been on the show multiple times. He's a very nice fellow. He has a very similar demeanor to yours, very calm, and almost zen-like. In his recent book called The Negativity Fast, he speaks to the power of gratitude with some research. It was amazing what gratitude does for physical benefits, like the shocking physical benefits if you keep yourself in this mindset. I do think you can control it. I'm going to ask about your journey from this audio store to how we're talking about social selling today, and maybe particularly LinkedIn. I love the guitars behind you. Tell me about your musical career and your passion for music.

I was going to be a violinist. I auditioned for all of the conservators in London. I got accepted into a couple and I selected the one that I was going to go to. That was my career. I was going to be a violinist. During my course, I developed a lump on my neck from constantly having it on the chin rest of the violin. It became infected and I went and had it dealt with in a hospital and then it came back and had to be dealt with again. It took about three months out.

During that three months, I thought, “You're crap.” This is a challenge for everybody who is a high achiever at something in an environment in which you are the big fish. For a period of my life, I was the best violinist that I knew. Therefore, I must be pretty good at this. You move up and leave. I go to music college and I'm the worst violinist there I know. It's a bit of a shock. This is a repeating pattern that we all face.

You go to the next level for sure. Imposter syndrome is all over the place.

Absolutely, but this was not imposter syndrome because this was not me believing that I was not as good as these people. This was me not being as good as these people. During these six months out or whatever it was that I had, I thought, “You need to move on. This is not the right industry for you.” I ended up working in a store and I met one of the guys that worked in this audio store. He said, “You're wasted here, why don't you come to work for me, ?” “Okay.” I've always been very lucky that during my life, things have fallen out of the sky into my lap. That's one of those occasions.

I went and worked there and they loved the fact that I was somebody who understood music because when you demonstrate stuff to people, having an opinion on stuff is often quite valuable. That was my first real taste of selling. Previously in the store, I was like a wine merchant. Previously, I had learned about customer service but not about selling. In this store, it's amazing. Along my journey, I picked up these breadcrumbs that I think were incredibly useful to me. I'm going to share that with other people now. In this store, they will give you the opportunity to go on a sales training course. I went on the sales training course.

Do you remember what it was?

No. It was specific to the audio industry.

The trainer said, “You get to this point and they're giving you the buying signals,” or whatever it was he described, “Then you ask for the deal.” I said to him, “How do you ask for the deal?” He said, “You just asked them.” I said, “No, you missing the point. What words do you say?” He said, “I say to people, ‘Should we go outside and sort out the paperwork?’” I thought that would do nicely.

I took that little gem and I went back to the audio store and I became the most successful retail HiFi salesman in the UK by just saying this to everyone. If they look like they were ready to buy, “If you're happy with this, let's go outside and sort out the paperwork.” People would say, “Okay.”

I realized at that point that everybody understands a concept. I went on from some point down the road to be in marketing. People understand the concept. You understand that you're friendly but professional. Everything can grasp that. You write me a friendly but professional email.

How do you do it? We know what to do, but we don't know how to exactly do it.

If you want people to take action and behave differently, part of the job is about building those bridges. This is about giving them examples and illustrations of what this looks like so they can project what they do into that. In the case of writing a professional but friendly email, you might provide someone with words to use. We use help, we don't use assist. We use love, we don't use like. We use care, we don't use passionate, or whatever those words are. I can then look at the two and I can go, “I'm slipping into this area when I'm writing stuff.”

Social Selling: If you want people to take action and behave differently, part of the job is about building those bridges.

One of the things that's interesting about these is that at all points in our lives, whether we’re just beginning or we're more experienced, there are people who have come to the same roadblocks that we're coming to. Asking them. “Mark, how did you learn to close a sale?” It might be that you say, “It was easy for me because I did blah, blah, blah.” I can't relate to that, but it could be that you're exactly the same person that I am.

It could be that I say to you, “How did you overcome this?” You say, “What I did was this,” and then for me, the light bulb comes on. I go. “Right, so that's what I need to do.” When we work with clients, so much of this is about showing them what's the thing that I do. I like to try to be an example of best practice in the things that I'm teaching you to do. There's no credibility in standing there and saying, “What you need to do is this,” if I'm not doing it.

Yeah, if you don't do it.

It’s like the fat fitness coach in the gym. If you can't eat healthy and get yourself in shape, how are you going to help me to do it? We need to model the behavior. Often, a starting point for you and your journey is for me to say to you, “This is what I say, this is what I do, this is how I use these tools.” If you give me a script and I use the script, that's better than starting with a clean sheet of paper but it's not as good as if I take your script and then I refine your script. It sounds like it's me saying it rather than it sounds like you saying it.

Often, people need a leg up and they need a bit of help to get them from where they are to where they want to be. Oftentimes, we spend time with organizations helping them understand what are the things that they can say. A great example of what you need to do if you want to be successful on social is to connect to lots of people in your target areas. We had a client some years ago now. They were sending lots of connection requests to a particular target account. They were getting a very low acceptance rate despite the fact that they had a good profile. They were lovely. They were attractive, engaging, and switched-on smart people, but nobody was responding.

The connection request said, “Hi, Mark. I'm the account manager at such and such. I’d like to connect to more people in your company.” I said to this person, “The problem is what they're reading is, “Hi, Mark. I'm compensated for selling you things. Can I connect with you so I can sell you some things?” “But that's not what I said.” “It isn't what you said, but it is what they heard. Change that up into something, which is much less aggressive.”

One of my mentors said you have to assume that everybody, except you, in the world is stupid. It doesn't mean these people are idiots, but it does mean that they haven't got the same frame of reference that you have. You assumed that this person understands this. If you go, “This is what it is,” you can't make that jump but they can't necessarily make them. You have to handle the process and part of that is in all of these micro changes that we need to make.

When I say, “I'd like to connect to you,” because it's happened so many times in the past, you know you're going to get a list of my products and services and prices as soon as you say yes, so you'll say no unless I say, “I'm not going to follow this up immediately by sending you one of those,” in which case you might go, “Okay.” So much of this is about understanding the difference between what should happen in an interaction and what actually happens in an interaction. Often the two are not the same thing. If I say this, this is what you should do. If I say this, you don't do that. You do something else. Why is that?

Let's talk about that for a second. I love this this. I'd like to get to this example of what that reach-out should be. I've seen you in DLA ignite in action. I'm a big fan of your partner Timothy Hughes and his book Social Selling: Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers. I’m a huge fan of this, We've had Tim on the show. One of the things that you guys do so well is you have this different paradigm of what social media is.

Why Building Trust Is The Foundation Of Sales

I heard you say before, Adam, that social media is about being social. How would we behave if we were at a cocktail party talking to somebody? As soon as we were introduced to them, we're not going to pull a price list out of our pocket and give it to them for whatever it is we do. Tell us a little bit about how we should first start. Maybe we focus on LinkedIn for today because people will extract amazing insights. How should we be thinking about that platform? Today, with LinkedIn, there are a lot of people that look the same on LinkedIn. Different picture but, pretty similar.

There's a massive number of pitfalls that people can fall into. I know you, like you, and trust you. Therefore, when you say something, I'm likely to believe what you say because I know that you like me and therefore, you have my best interests at heart. The problem is that if I'm saying something true and helpful to you and you don't know me, there's no reason for you to believe that.

We've all got examples of this. You get outreach from an independent financial adviser and they say, “Hi, Mark. We're all middle-aged now. I wonder if you'd like to get some insights into what you can do. If you can give me some information about your investments, how I can make those work harder for you,” your response is, “No, I'm not going to tell you anything personal to me because I never know who you are.”

The first thing is we have to build that trust. The first step in building trust is standing out from everyone else. You have 5,000 followers on LinkedIn of whom you know 200, and the rest of them are people that you vaguely know. That means they're not front of mind. Given that you're a great metaphor for everybody on LinkedIn, whether they have 500 or 50,000 followers, the fact is that you know a tiny little sliver of those people.

How do I make myself one of the people that you recognize or that you know when I'm coming up in your newsfeed? The first thing is I have to look different. Anybody can simply search on LinkedIn for a marketing director and there are 27 million responses. There are 27 million people who identify as marketing directors. The fact that you are a marketing director at a company of possibly never heard of is not memorable or compelling.

If you’re a tall handsome guy who plays the drums, that's likely to arrest me when I'm scrolling through a list of marketing directors. A tall handsome guy who plays the drums and a marketing director is different. That first standout that we have and how we first present ourselves encourage people to read on.

A good example of this is how a well-constructed newspaper works. It has an arresting headline. The headline is like this, “Tall guy plays drums.” People go, “That's interesting.” Underneath it says, “Mark Cox, renowned sales expert and plays drums in a band on the weekends.” “Okay,” and then I read on and it says, “Yesterday, Mark was playing it at this particular gig and doing the following things.” It sucked me in from that top level to a middle level to a more granular level. We need to construct how we go to market in a similar way.

If all I remember about you is a tall guy who plays the drums, that's better than remembering nothing about you. It's very easy for me to absorb that and stand out. The next level down is that vignette of who you are and why I should care. A mistake that lots of people make with their About section on LinkedIn is their why about what they do. There's room for that in your job. You're not defined by what you do. What are you going to write in the About section? What are you going to say? It’s like a good autobiography that turns into a page-turner. I want to learn more about you.

Creating A Unique And Humanized LinkedIn Profile

You need to talk about what your dreams are. How did you end up here? If you won the lottery tomorrow, what would you be doing? All of those things. I get an insight into who you are. As you said about the cocktail party, I go to the cocktail party. I don't care that you're a sales coach and you developed a methodology. Not yet. What I care about is the fact that you're an interesting chap, you play the drums, and what music you like. We have that conversation but also recognize that to build a relationship, there needs to be a degree of dialogue.

You’re not defined by what you do. Your story, dreams, and passions make you memorable and help build real connections.

Think back to your last first date. If it went well it's probably because the person asked questions rather than spoke. There's that old story about an arrogant man who's talking to this girl that he's going to dinner with, “I've been here and I've done this. I've run this company, I have this car, and I have a boat here. Anyway, that's enough about me. Let's talk about you. What do you think of me?” It's all about him. When you move from here's my profile to having an interaction with someone, there's nothing more attractive than demonstrating that you're listening and hearing what's being said, “Great post, Mark. Thank you for that.”

It’s the same way when you get on a call with somebody. You're desperate to sell your stuff. In the wider context of selling to people, the problem is that if I present my product and service to you, and if I try to close you and you're not ready to buy, you will never take a call from me again. It will be hard to close you. Whereas if we have a chat and I position what I do in such a way that you asked me, that's interesting, “We have no need for that at the moment.” “That's fine. I wasn't expecting you to buy it. We're having an exchange of ideas.”

The nice thing about that is because I've asked lots of questions and you've told me about your dreams and your company and your challenges and what you do at the weekend and all this stuff, if I say to you, “Let's touch base in six months and see how things are. It’d be great to catch up again,” you're likely to say yes. In six months who knows maybe you will be ready to buy them.

The concept of qualifying out, particularly today, is a very dangerous thing. We should not qualify in route. We should qualify now or later because if I have the right product and you're the right target for me, it's a good fit. Why are you not going to buy it? Because you have no money, because you're under contract to someone else, because you're not in the procurement process for that, or because you're busy procuring other things. That's not out. That's just not quite now.

The concept of qualifying out particularly today is a very, very dangerous thing. We should not qualify in a route. We should qualify now or later.

The beauty of the social thing is that it enables me to stay in touch and stay in front of mind, not by saying, “Here's our product. These are our three USPs.” I'll tell you that. I'll tell you that again tomorrow. I'll tell you that the day after tomorrow. I’ll tell you that the day after that. It comes to a point when you block because you know what I'm going to say.

It's so relevant. By the way, I believe this in a couple of iterations over the last ten years with LinkedIn. The reason I'm so excited to have you back Adam or to have DLA ignite back is because I believe everything you're saying. Once a week or twice a week, I get a financial plan for reaching out. As soon as they connect, they go, “Are you happy with your investments and how they're doing?” If they followed up and said, “Mark, it looks like you're doing cool things over In The Funnel.” By the way, I love that post you did about supporting the Michael Garron Hospital. My daughter was born at the Michael Garron Hospital.

They could say, “I love to chat over coffee in person or via Zoom at some point and learn more about you. It looks like we're in the same neighborhood.” I might be open to that because I like meeting interesting people. I know the value of networking and we'll see you expand my network. I might look at that and say, “This guy has done some cool things.” Maybe there are some interesting synergies here. If somebody comes back and pitches right at me, I feel like you're polluting this environment.

The other thing that I hope everybody takes away and you guys are so good at articulating this. In The Funnel is unique, different, and one of a kind. I can go through all of these reasons why we're so unique and different and better and all the rest of it. I closed a $1 billion deal one time. I don't know that many people have done that. To the rest of the world, we look like every other sales training company out there. There's nothing we can put on LinkedIn that says we're unique or we're different that anybody cares about.

That's the point, isn't it? People often misinterpret this. Whatever field you're in, for you, sales training for me, it’s creating software solutions, whatever it is. We think the thing that people are buying is that little veneer of brilliance that we offer over and above everybody else, that special button, that special connector, or whatever it is that we do. Most of our clients are not sophisticated in this way.

I remember the story of the furniture retailer who used to actively demonstrate scratch-guarding as an upsell on their furniture.

When they pour a cup of coffee on it or something.

They sprayed the furniture and then they poured the coffee. They go, “This is what you need to do.” Everybody would buy it, and then scratch-guarding became the norm. Every piece of material came with a scratch-guard. They stopped demonstrating it because it wasn't an upsell. Its sales started to fall off. Part of the reason that they did that is because there was none of that interaction anymore. Yes, it's scratch-guarded but the customer didn't know it was scratch-guarded even though everyone in the industry knew it was scratch-guarded.

They started to demonstrate it, “This is scratch-guarded. Look at this,” and poured coffee. They go, “That's fantastic. I'll get that sofa,” and so it went back up again. The parallel here is that people are buying these very simple things. You think you're unique. We're unique because we offer incredible insights to all the customers who entered into the CRM system, as does every CRM vendor. Why you? The reality is, “Mark, why you?” It’s because it's you. You're the guy I know. You're the guy I like. You're the guy I want to do business with. You're the guy that if we're stuck and locked in a boardroom for 24 hours to flush out the minutiae of the deal, it'll be a fun 24 hours, rather than a dull 24 hours.

These are the reasons that people buy. They buy in on something they can understand. This is the point, isn't it? If you are a specialist at your thing, injection molding, software, training, or whatever it is, you understand every single facet of the element of this particular vertical. The customer doesn't. You think that you're selling these unique things and they don't hear what you're saying. If you give them something they do understand which is, “I like you. I don't mind you making a profit on me because you're a nice guy. We get well and we share the same love of hockey, cars, fine dining, or whatever it is.” We've had a bit of banter and chatter around that. You're somebody that I'm happy to do business with. That's the key.

Trust and credibility. You have to start somewhere. In the coffee analogy, people aren't buying scratch guardin. They're buying a comfortable place to sit to make their living room look beautiful so that when their friends come over, they can all have a good time. Forget what we do, it's what we do for them. It's why they want this. What is it going to get them? It's all about that.

These days, with our stolen focus, I steal the name from Johann Hari and his book, Stolen Focus, it's hard to get somebody's attention. You guys are so great with your social selling training where you think of things. You say, “Let's first take a look at our profile. Let's let's think about how we build connections.” You and I had the same number of connections today. 17,000-ish, and then, “What do I do with my posts or other people's posts?”

There are some clever insights there. I'm with you. I do think people want social interaction. You have a couple of tactics that I applied and they work extremely well. Before I talk about my experience with them, maybe share. We've talked a little bit about the profile and trying to humanize it in this digital world. Your profile says collector of many things. You get these three cool model cars on your profile. I'm looking at your home right now. You have four guitars on your wall that look beautiful. Just an interesting guy.

You went from violin to guitar. I cannot believe how many of my clients are musicians or prospects and have been in a band. One in two people in the world wants to be a rockstar and they are in a band and it's common. When I post that I'm sitting behind a drum, mocking around, trying to do my best, but having the time of my life.

People love it, don't they?

I've never had responses like that on anything. For those listening, the stuff I post about businesses is genius. I’m joking. I post my lousy drum-playing.

It’s not lousy. It's fantastic. Stewart Copeland but better dressed. That's the point, isn't it? From the seller's perspective, we think everyone else lies, but when I say these words, they're they're true. The problem is from a biased perspective, everybody has access to the same words. Everybody is passionate and customer-focused and top quartile performance and all of this stuff. We've all got the same lexicon of words. We try to big ask ourselves up and we trip over the things that we say. There's always an implicit agenda in what it is that we're saying.

If I message you saying, “I love the drum solo yesterday, Mark,” that's it. No implicit sales pitching there. One would be cynical and could say, “It means I've lowered your guard a little bit so I then follow it up with something.” If you want to be successful in this space, it's a bit like dating. I walk into a bar, I see a beautiful girl across the bar. I walk up to her and say, “May I buy you a drink please and will you marry me?” She slaps me and leaves. Yeah.

Why did that happen? If I said, “May I buy your drink,” and then when we finish, “May I buy you another drink?” and then, “Do you fancy a bite to eat?” and then, “It's been a lovely evening. Can I see you again next week?” and I court her. Maybe at some point, I ask the question and maybe she'll say yes. It's inappropriate to say that at the beginning. It’s the same with sales. You have to court somebody.

The beauty of these social networks is LinkedIn, to use your analogy of the cocktail party, there are a billion people at this cocktail party. Every single person from a business context that you would ever want to speak to is there. You can't sell to all of them today. What you're not looking to do is to sell to all of them today. What you're looking to do is to identify the low-hanging fruit. Here are the people that I'm looking to talk to. I'll see which ones want to talk to me. I'll see which ones are excited by this, then those are the people that I focus my effort on, knowing that the ones that I've accepted my connection request and have potentially seen my content, I'm going to farm them over a period of time.

Maybe they're not ready to buy for six months or six years, but if I keep posting stuff, you keep seeing me in your news feed. Hopefully, you'll keep consuming some of that content. At some point, down the road, when you are ready to buy, you might think, “It's that Mark Cox guy. He's the guy I need to talk to. Perfect.” Often, we're trying to hammer a round peg into a round hole. You have a budget at the moment. How can we get the budget allocated to this? You can't.

How do you do that today? Without giving the secret sauce for everything.

I give the secret sauce away because nobody does this until they have a structure around it.

You've done posts on this. You've been very clear about things. If I know my buyers, which I do, and I know they don't make snap decisions on major training initiatives to train their team. They're not going to change their mind about January or at the end of November the prior year. I want to start to introduce a relationship so they may have interest. How do you do that?

There are a billion people on LinkedIn. You can't connect to all of them. The first thing you need to do is you need to build a network. For people who are starting out, let's assume you have 2.000 people in your network. For most people, 90% of those people are connected in the wrong place. They're places where they used to work, cars they used to have, or industries they used to be in. A very small number of those are people that they want to talk to today.

Strategies For Effective Networking And Relationship Building

You make conscious decisions about the fact that you're going to connect to people that you want to talk to. If you want to sell to company X and I’m connected to two people in company X, that means I'm invisible to company X. If I’m connected to 200 people in company X, I would be visible to company X. The first thing we can do in the easiest thing we can do is we can pull that lever. We can say, “I'm going to connect to as many people sensibly as I can within that organization.”

People being people, we have to recognize that I'm trying to talk to the head of procurement. I'm desperate to talk to the head of procurement. The head of procurement is desperate not to talk to me because they don't like me. Maybe they do look at me and they go, “This is not somebody that I want to associate with because he likes folk and blues, and I like heavy metal. He’s not someone I'm going to have any sort of relationship with.”

What I need to do is I need to get multiple touchpoints into the organization. Simply targeting that one person is like asking for a marriage proposal on your first date. It is inappropriate and ineffective. What I need to do is I need to surround that person with love and connect to lots of people around that person, people who are their direct reports, their managers, and people who are at a similar level in other verticals within the organization.

I know that you don't want to talk to me, but John who sits at the next desk and your opposite number in a different field within the business has become a friend of mine over time. I'm hoping that ultimately, I can ask John to introduce me to Mark in a nice way. If I build a relationship properly with John, he will say yes. We need to connect with these people. What we then need to do is we need to parallel with that. We need to make sure that we are engaging with any content that these people share.

Firstly though, how do I get them to connect? As you say, I'm going to reach out to somebody who's surrounding this head of procurement. What's your strategy or even a tactic that says, “How do I get somebody to connect?” A lot of people today don't accept connection requests.

It’s always a personal note. A personal note needs to be generic enough that I can quickly apply this to lots of people. Spending twenty minutes reading your profile and creating a beautifully crafted connection request that guarantees 100% acceptance is not effective because that's 3 in an hour. If however, I produce a generic friendly connection request that I can then send to everybody, just changing the name, I might be able to send 100 of those now. If I only get a 50% strike rate or success rate, I’ll have 50 connections in an hour rather than 3, which is better.

There's always an element of numbers in this. My connection request would say something along the lines of, “I found you.” How I find you? “You were mentioned in this post or LinkedIn suggested you, or I'm connected to those people that you're connected to, or whatever that is. I looked at your profile. I'm always looking to add good people to my network. Is it okay if we connect? PS. I promise. I'm not going to try and sell you anything.”

“I'm not selling or buying at the moment, but who knows what the future may hold.” Something that is friendly and will hopefully pique their interest. Like all of the listeners, I've invested a huge amount of time in creating a compelling profile. I want, if possible, to get you to look at my profile. The beauty of that is if you think I’m a cool guy, you're going to remember me. If you think I’m an idiot, you're still going to remember me. I've broken through the noise by getting you to look at my profile because it is unique and polarizes people.

Once I have you in my network, I've built a digital bridge between you and me. What people often do is I can follow Mark and I can see his content. I'm not interested in seeing your content. I'm interested in you seeing my content. I need to connect to you and if Mark doesn't accept my connection request, John, Dave, Janet, Frederico, or whoever will. That's fine. I'm looking for coverage within an account, then I'm going to share a variety of stuff.

We need to take our whole selves to the platform. Part of that will be my best thinking, “If I'm going to give one piece of advice to you today, it would be this.” Part of it will be, “Here is something that every organization needs to do. You need to have a strategy around this because you won't get to your destination by chance.” Out of it will be like, “I've worked up this morning and I was feeling sleepy. The first thing I needed to do was go for a walk.” I took one photo of me on a walk.

The Role Of Personal Stories In Professional Branding

I think that’s what people are going to have the most challenges with. I'm going to be honest. Before I started talking to you guys, I would have never posted a picture of me playing drums on LinkedIn. It was all corporate, value, and insight. We talked and you said, “Just try it once.” I posted this thing and had 12,000 impressions. I'm getting comments from people who would not return a call when I reached out to them three years ago, but they're going, “You look fantastic on that drum set.”

There were two reasons why this works. The first of them is that if you do a post that says, “We have a seat open for a sales training program coming up next week. Drop me a line if you are interested in being on it,” and I liked that post, you're going to be straight on the phone, trying to sell me something, so I'm not going to like.

If you hear I'm playing in my band, I'm proud of what I've achieved here because this is a difficult piece and I drop a like on it, there's no back route in there to try to sell me something. That's you saying, “I'm wearing my heart on my sleeve.” Here's me saying, “I love it, man. That's fantastic.” That's a bit of human interaction, which is good. With all of these things, what we're looking for is cutthroat yet another company selling whatever product or service. To me, it's not cutthroat.

You’re walking down the street and saying, “Look at this, a 1958 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa parked on the street. It would have been better in black but red is still good enough for me.” You post that in your newsfeed. I scrolled past it and I was like, “What's that?” I scroll back and I go, “What a great car. I love that.” It stopped me in my tracks. In the same way that it stopped you in your tracks walking down the street, it stopped me in my tracks scrolling through all of this noise.

What's interesting for people who say, “None of my buyers would behave that way. I know that because I don't behave that way. I don't engage with personal posts.” I would call that out as BS. If you look at even the people who say that and they genuinely believe that, when you look at their activity, the stuff they have dropped a like on is, “Mark is celebrating eleven years at In The Funnel. Mark going away for his wedding anniversary. Mark has treated himself with a new car.” That's the stuff they're liking.

Even if it's, “It's Mark’s birthday today,” they drop him a like. Those are the things that they're engaging with. They're not engaging with that business content. Don't get me wrong. The joke that I often tell is that if you want the maximum engagement, you share a video of a kitten playing with a ball of wool. You share videos of kids. People think you run a pet shop, which is not right. You have to blend these two things together.

You have to say, “Here's the interesting stuff that makes me. Here's the stuff that makes me an expert.” You dovetail the two and a 50/50 split is perfect, “I’ll only share personal stuff at the weekend.” Great, but during the week, you are not going to achieve a standout if everyone else is sharing the same dull nonsense, and then you share something like, “Here's me. New shoes. What do you reckon folks?” People go, “I like them both. No, I don't buy brown shoes for myself,” or whatever the comment is. The fact is you’re getting that interaction.

The key thing is that for most people, whether or not they are using the telephone, email, or LinkedIn messages, what normally happens is I send you a message and you don't even respond. That’s what normally happens. If you say, I just bought a new pair of shoes. I think they're fantastic and I drop you a message saying, “You should have bought the red ones, Mark,” you are going to respond to the message and now I have you in a conversation.

Standing Out By Sharing Authentic And Engaging Content

All of this is about making sure that you do not look like the rest of the clones out there behaving a certain way. It's standing out. I like the authenticity and I like this idea today of humanizing B2B sales because marketing automation killed this for a while. This is why you can't stay current with the spam filters for email. This is why certain jurisdictions had to start to regulate what we're emailing people because the marketing automation platforms are blasting people 320 billion emails back and forth every day.

It's shocking. Even bigger than social, I think that sales scheduling tools sales teched all the bane of a salesperson's life. You take this thing and it says, “Monday, you send an email, Tuesday, you send a connection request, Wednesday you follow him up, and Thursday, you email them.” That's the best practice in quotes. What invariably happens as people always do with a process that's as complex as sales is they fix the bit they understand, which is not necessarily the bit that's broken.

With the sales tech, it says, “At this point, you need to send. This is your third email to someone, so you need to say something along the lines of, ‘I'm circling back to bump this to the top of your inbox, checking that you read my email.’ You need to write something like that.” You, being pressed for time, don't write something like that. You say, “That will do,” and you send that. That's a set script within product X.

Everybody gets those today, “Bumping this to the top of your inbox.”

Twenty different people at ten different companies are all sending you exactly the same words. As you said, it's removing the humanity and the human connection from this. That's the problem. The problem is if it said, “You are a miserable sword. Why aren't you responding to my emails?” You're much more likely to respond and say yes. If you caught me on a bad day and then you sent one of these pseudo-personalized nonsense emails, “Just circling background to do this, just bumping this to the top of your inbox,” go away. You have not even been bothered to write me a personalized script.

The key thing here is saying to people that in a commoditized world of products and services, the only USP is who you are. If you major in that, it gives you a massive competitive advantage. Does it mean everyone is going to want to buy from me? No, because some people will say, “I don't like bald people,” in which case, we're both in trouble.

How dare they, by the way.

You can't legislate for that. I often think to myself that the beauty of this is that if you understand who I am and what I am, you know what you're buying. The danger otherwise is that we schedule a call without having any interaction. We scheduled a meeting without any interaction. I drive for an hour to come to your office, to spend an hour with you, and to drive an hour home for you to say, “I'm not going to work with you, Adam, because I don't like you.”

Social Selling: The beauty of this is that if you understand who I am and what I am, you know what you're buying.

It’s much better that when I first reach out to you, you look at my profile and say, “I'm not going to engage you in a conversation because I don't like you.” It saved me three hours to get the same result. Much of this is about saying there are a billion people on LinkedIn. You don't want to talk to all of them. What you want to talk to are the ones who love you because they can't buy that anywhere else.

This is such a great conversation. It's evolving, so it's always changing. One key message I love for all the young people starting in professional sales is this concept of being the best version of you. We were joking when you said you're a nasty side. Be the best version of you, but be you. What happens a lot in professional sales and it certainly happened for me in the beginning. I was living this party lifestyle. I thought I was a mess, out late nights and drinking and doing all this crazy stuff as a young person.

I put on my suit. Back in those days, you wore a suit more frequently and I had this veneer. The veneer was, “I'm not letting you into that craziness, but I'm going to act perfectly and that I'm pleasant and positive and all those kinds of things. It was my authentic self. They can sense it. There's no real close connection. People say, “You're formal.” They would say that to me. If you follow anything I do now, you know I have the maturity level of a 12-year-old. I'm pretty good at sales training but I'm not formal. It's just this way.

People have developed beyond expecting a certain color and a suit. It's interesting the whole authenticity thing. I genuinely believe that turning the things that you perceive as negative into positive is an important behavior to have. When I'm coaching a young person, the challenge that they have is that it may be their first proper sales role. They've been in this day cold calling or whatever, and they moved into proper sales roles.

Turning the things that you perceive as a negative into a positive is a really important behavior to have.

They're going and meeting customers. They’re young. They're in their early to mid-20s. They're facing off against someone who is in their 50s. I'm not credible because I'm young. They make up all of this stuff about how they don’t have experience of this. You haven't. It's like when a 20-year-old says to you, “In my experience, Mark, you should do such and such.” You say, “What experience? You're a kid.”

I often think that you should turn it on its head because for somebody like you, if a 20-year-old says, “To be frank, you will be my first major win. As my first client, I will go above and beyond the call of duty to make sure that you're happy.” How attractive and beguiling is that to hear? You can't hide the fact you're young. What you can do is you can say, “I have boundless energy.” You are not one of a thousand. You're one of one at the moment. I'm going to make sure that you become my case study for success. I know that that person is going to go the extra yard to make me a success than this person who's too interested in going on President's Club night.

Will leave it there for today. We could be talking for hours about this and we will. What a great conversation today and clearly the first time we've ever used the word beguiling on The Selling Well podcast. We've taken it up a level in terms of class and dignity. This is the British coming through. Thank you for that. First of all, thank you so much for joining The Selling Well podcast.

Thank you very much.

 How do people learn more about Adam or DLA ignite?

They can connect to me on LinkedIn. You can search for Adam Gray on social media or something like that, or if you want to type it in, LinkedIn.com/in/adamgray. That's my URL and or you could buy a copy of one of my books. Tim wrote that book. I wrote this. It was the first globally published book on social selling, probably a little bit old hat now. It’s great for wobbly tables.

I wrote this book with Tim. Those outline the thinking that we have as an organization and the challenges that we help other organizations overcome. I would stress for anyone to connect to me on LinkedIn preferably. If not, follow me and subscribe to my newsletter where I'm serializing a lot of thinking.

We have a partner in Singapore. His headline used to say on his LinkedIn profile and this is one of the best lines ever. He said, “Knowing but not doing is folly.” That's particularly pertinent because the irony is that all of the staff that we talk about is not a moon landing for anybody. Everybody knows they need to do this. Everybody knows how to do this. Anyone who's been able to have any relationship with another human being understands how to network and build rapport and relationships.

What they don't do is they don't do it. They are looking for shortcuts. That's where they fall over. Recognizing that social as a platform to enable you to scale the intimacy of those one-to-one conversations is where the wind blows.

Recognizing that the social media platform enables you to scale the intimacy of those one-to-one conversations is where the wind lies.

Amazing counsel. What a great conversation, Adam. Thank you.

Thank you. It’s lovely to see you.

It's great to see you.

‐‐‐

You going to want to have a conversation with Adam just like I did today. I'm going to tell everybody, I've read these books. I'm applying the strategies provided by DLA ignite. I've learned a lot. This is why I love the podcast so much and it works. I have these great conversations with people in networking chats, and they're all amazing. Sometimes they turn into an opportunity and sometimes they don't. The reality is that what we do is let’s say a Chief Revenue Officer, it may not be today that they need us. It might be 6 months from now or 12 months from now, but eventually, they’ll need us. We're front of mind when we have that personal connection.

I'd like to thank Adam so much for joining us today and giving us some great insights. As always, I like to thank you for listening to The Selling Well podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast as much as I did. If you did, please like and subscribe to The Selling Well podcast because that's exactly how we get great guests like Adam to join us. Thank you for doing so.

We're also growth-oriented over here as you know. If you have some ideas as to how we can make this podcast more effective for you so that you can apply the strategies and the ideas to what you do every day, please let us know. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn or even email me at my personal email, MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email that comes to me. I respond to every bit of constructive criticism we get and we love constructive criticism. Keep your ideas coming and thank you for that. We'll see everybody next time on The Selling Well podcast.

Important Links

• Adam Gray on LinkedIn

• DLA ignite - website

• Brilliant Social Media: How to Start, Refine, and Improve Your Social Media Business Strategy on Amazon

• Smarketing on Amazon

• How To Influence Buyers And Changemakers Through Social Selling With Timothy Hughes

• Social Selling: Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers on Amazon

• The Diary of A CEO on Apple Podcasts

• Strategic Coach

• The Negativity Fast

• Stolen Focus

The Four Channels Of Confidence: Transforming Self-Doubt Into Self-Assurance With Margo McClimans

Unleash your inner confidence with Mark Cox and Margo McClimans, founder of Coaching Without Borders and author of The Four Channels of Confidence, as Margo shares powerful ways to help us overcome self-doubt and embrace our true potential. Margo breaks down the four channels and offers practical tips and insights on mastering each. Don't let self-doubt hold you back any longer! Start living your most empowered life today.

---

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

The Four Channels Of Confidence: Transforming Self-Doubt Into Self-Assurance With Margo McClimans

Team, have you ever had those days where sometimes you're super confident? You feel like you can take on the world and you're in a great zone, and then other days, you're in a certain situation or a circumstance and your confidence leaves you. We've all been there, by the way, and that's why I'm so excited to speak with my guest. My guest is Margo McClimans, and she's the Founder of a company called Coaching Without Borders. She's been a Certified Executive Coach for well over two decades, and she's also written an amazing book called The Four Channels of Confidence: How to Cultivate and Radiate Self-Assurance.

I had a chance to read this book a couple of weeks before we did the episode. Fantastic book. Simple, straightforward, powerful, and a great example of the Mark Twain quote where he said, “I wrote you a long letter. If I had taken more time, I could have written you a short letter.” Margo's written us a powerful short letter. She's taken the time to do that editing. In this episode, we talk about those four channels of confidence. After defining really what confidence is, we get into the four channels of confidence.

The channels are the breath channel, the attitude channel, the voice channel, and the body channel. These are things that we can all think about intentionally to ensure we're in our best self to be as confident as we can be. She then talks about multiplying your confidence through relationships and developing an action plan for moving forward.

It's really a great conversation and frankly, at the beginning of the book, Margo speaks to writing the book for women. The reality of it is I think this book is universal. We all have these challenges and her coaching programs are for everybody. I think everybody's going to get value from this conversation and book. If you do get value out of this, folks, please like and subscribe to the show because that really matters to us. That's in fact how we get really good guests like Margo. Thanks for doing so, by the way. Enjoy this episode. Here's Margo McClimans.

Margo, welcome to the show. It's great to see you here. We've met before, but it's great to see you on this show.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

I'm excited to chat because certainly I really love The Four Channels of Confidence, How to Cultivate and Radiate Self-Assurance. Two things dawned on me when I was reading this book. I think, first of all, it's a great example of the Mark Twain quote that says, “I wrote you a long letter. If I had more time, I would've written you a short letter.” I love these books where people actually take that time to do the hard editing. It's not easy, but it's really tough. It's all absolute gold in here. As you mentioned in the book, it's a great weekend read.

That's the idea. I'm imagining people getting on an airplane ride, a domestic or European flight. You should be able to finish it.

From Stone Business To Coaching: A Journey Of Self-Discovery

The Four Channels of Confidence: How to Cultivate and Radiate Self-assurance

Although the book is directed towards women, one of the things that dawned on me is how much I would've benefited from this book with the exact content very early in my career because again, I think confidence is a challenge there, or Imposter Syndrome's a real challenge early in your career, depending upon what you've done. We've got lots of stuff to unpack in this amazing book here. Just to start, for the readers, maybe you share the short story of your professional journey that got you here.

Sure, absolutely. Let's see. I started actually in the marble and granite import and export business. As an entrepreneur, that was my first company. It was called International Stone Consultancy. I got into that industry because I was hired as a buyer for a stone company in California, because I speak Italian. My main qualification was to speak Italian so I could reach out to the suppliers in Italy and import their stone to suppliers all over the world, but mostly Italy.

I realized at a certain point, I remember sitting on my back porch in Palo Alto, California and thinking, “I really want to be my own boss.” When I was that buyer for that company, I want to be my own boss. I want to have my own business, and I love the stone business, but I also have lived in all these different countries.

When I’ve had intercultural training, it was so important to me and made my experience so much better. I thought, “How can I walk down the street to Hewlett Packard and knock on the door and say, ‘I’d like to help train your leaders to work internationally.’” Why would they hire me? I thought, “I have some work to do.” I went and got my MBA in Italy and while I was there, I realized, I actually have a good thing going with the stone business. I actually started with International Stone Consultancy there, always with the dream in the back of my mind that one day, I want to be an intercultural trainer.

A couple of years after I finished my MBA, I was working at a local software company, ironically, working in California Silicon Valley. I moved to Italy where it's famous for stone to work for a software company. A little backwards, but nevertheless, I was working there. The MBA director approached me. This is 2005. He said, “I want to start a leadership training for the MBA students, and I want to have certified coaches, and I think you would be a great coach.” I said, “What's a coach?”

It wasn't like nowadays when there's so many coaches. As he explained it to me, I connected to my dream about intercultural training, and I saw the connection, and that's really how I got my start. This person believed in me. I got very lucky. I was in the right place at the right time. He was right. I found coaching is really my thing. I really found my thing with that. That's a little clip of the story, and I’ve been coaching ever since.

How interesting, when you think back to 2005, in those days, I was still in the corporate world running large sales organizations, and I remember there was almost a stigma to coaching back then. It was almost like if you were an executive and you had an outside coach, it was because there was a problem. It wasn't the way it is now where everybody invests in their future and we understand the importance of coaching. It was a little different than when they said, “You need some professional development.”

Even thinking of it those ways, it was very much a fixed mindset saying, “You need to go get better. It means you're not good enough now.” In one sense, it was positive in the corporate world because they were investing in you. In the other sense, it's a bit of a problem because if you need some outside help, there's a bit of a problem here.

I wish I could say it's completely different now. In some industries, it's still the case where there's a bit of a stigma. I do have some clients who wear coaching like a badge of honor. “I have a coach.” Other clients who say, “I'd rather not be given a testimonial with my name,” or whatever it is. It's true that in some organizations more than others, they are investing in their top talent and giving them coaching. Some industries, I still get requests where they say, “We have this problematic person. We're about to fire them.” You either fix them or at least if you can't, we can say, “We tried everything and we even sent them to a coach. Now we can get rid of them.” I don't accept that work. I really say, “No, thank you.” I don't feel okay taking money in a situation like that. They need to invest in the people that they want to keep around.

Great approach and good for you. By the way, for the readers, we met in a coaching program. We met in Strategic Coach. That's why we're here. Tell the readers where you are now.

I'm based here in Zurich, Switzerland. I’ve been living here since 2010, but as you can tell from my accent, I'm American and I'm from Columbus, Ohio. I’m actually a Midwesterner. I have a lot of affinity also with Canadians, this whole great lake region, I think, where there's a lot of affinity between us, more so than even for some of my countrymen a little bit further away.

I’ve always felt that.

We know how to play euchre.

You know how to play euchre and you also know how to play hockey.

Floor hockey. Where I grew up, floor hockey is my favorite sport.

Floor hockey is actually one of my favorite sports in life. I'm a hockey fanatic because as a kid growing up in Canada, the only thing we had to do was play ball hockey outside. I had the 10,000 hours.

I loved it. It was my favorite sport in gym class. Nowadays, I'm a tennis player. I also started playing when I was a kid. I keep up the lessons once a week. Speaking of getting coaching, I still get tennis coaching every week.

The Importance Of Coaching In Personal Development

That's this interesting thing. I'd like to just touch on coaching for a second here. I look at what we do, what I do. I’ve got a fitness coach, so I think I'm in okay shape, but I still want to learn the best techniques and approaches. I perform better when somebody's watching me. You're doing your 8 reps, 9 reps, you tank out at 7. If you're on your own, somebody's watching, you squeeze it out.

I'm a drummer in a bar band just for fun. The number of times, Margo, and we have these videos and all this stuff, and people come to show when I’ll tell people I take drum lessons and they go, “Why?” It’s like, “If you good enough to play in a bar band, why would you take drum lessons?” For me, the question is so foreign because the answer to me is so obvious. I want to get better. I want to get better at everything.

Especially the things that you love. Why not?

You're a Certified Coach. Tell me how you would define coaching.

I'm glad you bring it up because when we do a coaching for managers program, because we also do trainings, we bring a group of managers in the room and we start to tell them, “Coaching might be a good tool in your toolkit as a manager.” We invest a fair amount of time in explaining what is coaching because what I do is very different than what my tennis coach does. There's a lot of overlap between like, coaching and mentoring. There's also some overlap into therapy. That's also a delicate topic, too. People say, “I don't want therapy,” or, “I do want therapy,” or, “What's the difference?”

I probably need a fair amount of that. What we're going to have to do another episode for that, and it's going to be thirteen hours long. Let's hold off on the therapy for now, but I get the point.

There's overlap in all of those. What's the difference? Coaching, consulting, mentoring. Let's just start with that. Basically, in every one of those cases, you have a person who cares about you, who wants to understand your challenges, who wants to help you find answers, who wants you to walk out in a better situation than you started in. That’s the case for all three. Coaching, mentoring, consulting.

The difference between, for example, coaching, mentoring and consulting is the coach does not need to have any overlap in background. Technical background is not needed because a certified coach through the International Coaching Federation or there's other certifying bodies, it's about helping people find their own answers through questions through great listening. Of course, if I understand more about your industry, that's great because you can connect with people, you can relate to people and you want to feel like you understand their challenges. That's the most important thing.

Coaching is about helping people find their answers through questions. Great listening is key.

It's great if you have that information, but I don't have to. Whereas a mentor or a consultant has to have an overlap in their background or expertise in that area in order to provide the advice that the person is looking for. I could coach an astronaut, but I could never mentor an astronaut. I don't know what that big red button does. That would be dangerous. That's one really important distinction that we make.

The one between coaching and therapy is also part of our certification process. One of the reasons why I think it's important to work with a certified coach is that we learn what is the line? When do we need to start suggesting maybe this is a topic for therapy, because coaching is about the whole person and their whole life. It's not just their professional life.

My clients are welcome to bring in personal topics. We can even talk about their past. If that's relevant for now, if it's affecting them now, then that's relevant and that’s perfectly fine. What I'm not going to do is make a diagnosis. I'm not going to give them a label of a syndrome of something of that kind. If I sense that there's any depression or dangerous tendencies toward themselves or somebody else, that's absolutely not the territory of a coach. That absolutely should be referred to a therapist.

Without going too far down this tangent, but just thinking about it, when we think of most managers out there, or we could use other examples, but most business managers who are leaders are doing some form of inspection, some form of motivation, and some form of coaching. That's really what it takes to lead a team. By the way, one of those key things you shared is they actually need to care about the team and understand the team to be helpful at coaching.

That's an issue at some point in time because some managers just think of members of the team as tools for them to achieve their goals instead of understanding it's all about the player, not the coach. When we start to think of those things, or even in the sports world where my fitness trainer's coach is doing a little bit of coaching and a little bit of training, but she does know more about the space.

There's some consulting in there.

Defining Confidence: Why The Four Channels Of Confidence Book Targets Women

It's a little bit of both. It’s an interesting set of definitions there for us to process. If we circle back now, so we've talked about coaching and the book you've written, by the way, congratulations. It was originally from 2014. We've got a second printing now, I guess. The Four Channels of Confidence, How to Cultivate and Radiate Self-Assurance. Before we talk about the stages of confidence, maybe let's do that. Let's define confidence and then secondly, let's explain why you targeted this book at women specifically.

For me, it's really important that we distinguish confidence from arrogance or feeling like you're better than somebody else. Confidence is purely about being comfortable in your own skin, about not needing to prove yourself. It's not about never being afraid, either. You've heard the expression, feel the fear and do it anyway. I think confidence is really a choice. I think I shared that a story the book. Maybe I had on a super elegant dress or something that I felt a little bit insecure about.

I said, “I'm going to decide to be confident and put my shoulders back and walk into that room as if I look good. I'm going to decide I look good. I'm going to feel confident.” Sometimes that's what it takes. It's a choice to be confident and it's scary. It's not about not being afraid. I really believe that we're born with confidence. I think that every single one of us was born confident. None of us doubted ourselves when it came time to learn how to walk.

We kept trying. You don't doubt yourself as a toddler. I think we learn to not be confident at some point. The book is all about helping people rediscover their own innate confidence. Another assumption people make is, “I don't want to get too confident because I’ll come across as arrogant.” Another assumption they make is, “I'm an introvert. I don't want to become an extrovert.” You don't have to be an extrovert. In fact, the most confident people are usually some of the quietest people. They don't feel the need to talk or to speak louder or talk over others. They're just totally chill. Nothing about introversion or extroversion. Nothing about arrogance. It's really just cool, calm, collected.

You sense those people. Sometimes we call them comfortable in their own skin. They don't have to fill the room and they don't have to fill the air. They're not filling the air. It's not all about them. It seems to me some of the most confident people I’ve ever come across are the ones where when you're interacting with them, they actually make you feel like the smartest person in the room. They're not trying to convince you that they're the smartest person in the room.

They don’t one up you or anything else.

In the beginning of the book, you share very alarming stat. I don't know if this stat got updated, Margo, with the later versions. The stat was that globally, it's only 29% of leadership positions are filled by women versus men.

That was updated.

That's a current stat. The reference to government positions and so forth, the stats are even worse. Actually, to me, this is an issue actually in B2B professional sales as well, particularly mature B2B professional sales people. The gender diversity is not there at all. This is an alarming stat. It's so early in the book but is that one of the driving factors that said, “I'm writing this. This book's a book by a woman for women?”

That was absolutely one of the driving factors, if that is even a factor, because who am I to say that the figures have to do with those women's confidence? Not necessarily. I actually find it a really fascinating topic about those statistics and how many different factors play into that. It's not at all about fixing the women. It's not their fault. It’s a systemic thing. I think, nevertheless, it makes it harder to be confident when you're the only woman in the room. That’s for sure. Not just the only woman. When you're the only fill in the blank in the room. It makes it harder to maintain your confidence. That's what I had in mind when I was writing it. I was thinking, “I want to help especially women, but definitely also men, really feel comfortable in their own skin, even when they're the only blank in the room.”

It makes it harder to be confident when you're the only woman in the room, and not just the only woman, when you're the only fill in the blank.

Also, quite frankly, I believe that women are much more likely to go out and buy a book about confidence than a man. I’ll be honest, that was also part of it. I am a woman. That's my perspective. That's also a good reason to talk to women as I'm writing it. Also, I think that although confidence issues hit men and women probably equally, I think that women are much more likely to say, “I'm going to go out and read something about this. I want to get some help from the outside here.”

Thanks for sharing that. Thanks for your honesty and transparency about the marketing component of this, part of it actually matters. It is funny. One of the things you bring up in the book, and again, these are a little dated, but I think I went through the first gender diversity training ever, for me anyway, the first portion, was around 2005 when you were starting to get into this. It was pretty basic stuff. There were a few exercises that were shocking about these preconceived notions and these biases that we have.

Daniel Kahneman and Oleg with Thinking Fast and Slow, there's 135 different mental shortcuts we all take, the biases. It's amazing. I have every one of them. When I read that book, it’s shocking that I’ve done this,. One of the things that jumped out was oftentimes, in a meeting, and I could see this in the corporate world, you'd walk into a meeting, and I think you referenced in the book, the men walk in going, “I'm going to show these people what I know. I really deserve to be here. I might be the smartest person in this room.” Whereas women are walking in going, “I don't know if I deserve to be here.”

I hope I wasn't quite that black and white in the book because, like I said, I do think that men and women equally have these doubts in their confidence. That being said, I have personally met many more men who would be like, “What's the big deal? Why are you doubting yourself like that?” I think that those unconscious biases do impact women more. As you said, we all suffer from these unconscious biases, whether we're a man or a woman. If you've taken the Implicit Association Test from the Harvard group, have you heard about this?

No.

It's really fascinating. Anybody can go, it's free of charge. Implicit Association Test, IAT. You can go in and test your own bias and you can test your gender bias, racial bias ability, disability bias, and all sorts of categories. I think there's like twelve different categories or more. The way that they measure it is they show you two things on the screen. When something is matching what they say, you hit a certain key. When it's not matching what they say, you hit another key.

For example, they have women and children and or men and children. You have to answer and they judge the time it takes your brain to say, “No, it can be a man and a child.” That takes your brain longer than if it's a woman and a child. It's microsecond difference. They have all the bias in there. I run this with a lot of the groups that I work with, especially on female leadership programs. Ninety percent of the people in the room said, “Yes, I got the bias.”

It’s all there. Actually, again, back to the Women in Sales Conference, which is why I was so interested, we've had Lori Richardson. There are a couple of folks there. There's an organization called Women's Sales Pros, and because of the lack of gender diversity and professional B2B sales, which is changing, a lot of the younger teams I'm working with have much better gender diversity.

There's a group called Women Sales Pros, and they're all amazing. I think I’ve had about 6 or 7 of these women on the show, super successful in B2B sales. Many of them are authors. I think it's led by Lori Richardson, who's been on the show. It really interesting to unpack some of these topics. If we go back to this confidence, because as you say, Margo, as I was reading this, many of these things absolutely apply to me. I think it's universal in terms of these elements of, how do we help protect our confidence. That's a big theme, by the way, of the coaching program you and I were in are in where we met each other.

That is one of the reasons why I love it.

Strategic Coach. That was the first place I ever heard this idea of protecting your confidence. Up to that, even with sports and all these other things and the business and everything, I always thought that I had to earn the right. If it was a bad client or something of that nature that was stealing confidence or a bad leader I had, it's my fault and I’ve got to earn it. Instead, they go, “No. You’ve got to protect your confidence. You got to be around people.”

It's an asset.

The First Channel Of Confidence: The Breath Channel

It's a mindset too, as you say. In the book, you do a really deep dive on four channels that help in this regard. The breath channel, the attitude channel, the voice channel, and the body channel. I think the advice is so crisp, clear and simple. Let's unpack each of those and talk a little bit starting with the breath channel, and I'm going to call out right off the top. I don't know if you've read this book.

I have. It's a great book.

It's just such a wild book.

I taped my mouth while I was sleeping. I did it.

Did you really? Were you able to sleep?

Yeah. I put the tape in the middle. One of the big things in the book, if you haven't read it, is the importance of nose breathing and not mouth breathing. If you put a little bit of medical tape that's not too sticky in the middle of your mouth, you can still breathe if you have to from the sides, but it trains you to sleep with your mouth closed. Now I wake up in the morning with a closed mouth and it was fun.

Team, we're talking about the book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor, just an unbelievably interesting book about the importance of breathing. James is 1 of 5 people I can't get on my show. I'm going to do it. There's only been about five people I’ve ever gone after that didn't join the show, and I haven’t found a path to James, but I’ll get them. Let's talk about what you do is provide some very simple tips on the breath side of things and the important side of things. Let's talk a little bit about the importance of breath. Maybe the cooling breath and then the rapid clearing breath is just two examples and why we do it.

I'd be happy to. I'd like to add before we dive in there why I chose the word channels because I could have said the four elements or the four corners, or the four points. I chose channels because I really feel like these are four ways that both we can in increase our sense of confidence, but also that we've projected. It's a two-way street. It's a channel of confidence. It's true if you think about it, especially when you're listening to somebody speak on stage. Let's just pause on the breath one. You notice when people are nervous because they're out of breath. You're like, “They can't catch their breath.”

At the same time, if you just take a deep breath right now, especially if you make the exhale longer than the inhale, what you're doing is slowing down your heart rate. That calms you down. When you calm your brain down, you're able to access more of your creativity, more of your intelligence, which, of course, makes us feel more confident. When we feel like under pressure, shocked by a question, or we get a scary question or scary situation, we can't even access all of the wisdom, knowledge and creativity that we have because our brain is under threat. It's thinking fight or flight right now. That's where these breathing techniques come in.

That fight or flight's is such a good example, Margo, and we've all lived this. You might have been in an emotional argument with somebody and then it ends and you're driving home and you think of three other data points you forgot to bring up that would've totally won you the argument.

“I should have said that.”

There's a physiological reason why, because of the fight or flight. As humans, that evolution, as soon as we're in that panic or that emotional state, the blood is not in our brain. It's literally in our extremities because we think we might have to take off.

The brain is doing us a favor. It actually blocks the functioning of the prefrontal cortex. Things like the adrenaline do that on purpose because it says, “This is no time to make a strategic plan. Just get the hell out of there. Don't think, just do.” That was a survival thing when we had saber-toothed tigers coming after us. If you're standing in front of a boardroom, it’s not very convenient to not be able to think.

Personally, I'm always amazed at the impact of breathing on me because I do meditate. It's just Peloton meditation. I haven't gone through a transcendental meditation before. The impact of ten minutes of focused breathing, I’ll walk into meditation like that and then feel like, “I’ve got to hit list. I have so much work to do.” I come out of that meditation going, “I'm going to have a great day. I get to do this work.” What a jewel to actually be on a show like this. Total mindset shift. Even to the extent, my wife, Donna, has noticed. It can really just change your state. It's so powerful. I love the tips of trying to do that in the moment. That's really hard. You're in the boardroom.

That's when that's when it counts. You're in the boardroom. You mentioned the cooling breath. I think we've all experienced how emotions can be contagious. If somebody starts losing their temper and raising their voice, your own heart starts racing. You can be sure that that person who's yelling and screaming also has blood pressure through the roof. The cooling breath, and this is something that I learned from Sharon Melnick's book about success under pressure. I can also recommend that one. She talks about a cooling breath.

Emotions are contagious. If you stay calm, you can be a neutral or calming source, even amid others' anger.

What's the title?

Success Under Pressure by Sharon Melnick. She talks about if you breathe in through your mouth, especially if you have a small opening, like you're drinking out of a straw, just try that. Breathe in through your mouth. You can feel the air passing over your tongue is a little bit cool. Do you notice that?

I do notice that.

It actually has an effect. It’s a very different feeling than breathing through your nose or just relaxed mouth breathing. It's really something that cools you down and instantly calms down anger. It's specifically helpful in a situation where there's anger, whether it's somebody else's anger or your own anger. This cooling breath slows you down, calms you down, and cools you down. There's the expression when somebody's angry, they're hotheaded. There's this association between anger and heat. That's why this cooling breath is part of calming down.

Emotions are contagious, so if you're able to cool yourself down in these moments, you might not make them calm down fully, but at least you're not exacerbating. You're not throwing fuel on the fire because that's exactly what can happen. When somebody starts losing their temper, we get triggered and we lose our temper. It just escalates. At least you're a neutral source, if not a calming source for the person that's angry. That's the cooling breath.

Just this impact of taking some deep breaths. You talk about how even doing it for a couple of minutes actually makes a difference, which it does. Wherever you're nervous or something, walking into a meeting or a presentation, even a minute or two of box breathing from the book where just breathe in, one nostril, hold it, breathe out the other nostril, hold the pause. You pause when you're empty. It's like a box. I pause when I breathe in.

In, hold, out.

Big difference. An immediate difference before you're walking into one of those tense situations. You also mentioned that also, and you brought it up here, the power of silence and just helping you get emotionally stabilized is huge. This power of taking a pause. I feel this all the time. You bring up how if you take a pause on stage or when you're doing a workshop, seven seconds feels like a lifetime. I'm notorious for this. I’ll ask a question and I'm expecting an answer in a second.

Give them a chance.

Not everybody's there and so you've got to give them a chance to catch up.

You get their attention back, too, because if all of a sudden you stop speaking, if somebody has zoned out and you stop speaking, they'll look up and say, “Is it over?” You get their attention back.

I’ll be honest. I face that a lot when I'm having this conversation, and it sounds like everything that I'm saying is super interesting to me. I’ll ask a question and somebody will literally go, “Did you just ask a question?” You talk about 88 keys on the piano and with inflection, we're not using all of the different inflection, tones and pitches available to us that make conversation interesting. Suddenly, I’ll sneak a question and then they go, “Did you ask a question?” They couldn't even follow it.

It's what I say in the voice channel of the book. It's about taking responsibility for being heard. It's making yourself not only understandable enough, but dynamic enough that people are not used to focusing for a long time. We're in a society where things are always changing, flashing, moving and scrolling. That means we have to be ready to change things up to get people's attention back.

It’s so hard now. The attention spans are so short. There’s a fantastic book called Stolen Focus by Johann Hari about the lost attention and the attention spans on people right now. It's just shocking. It's just incredible. He tried to go on a social media fast and a technology fast for a few months, and it was unbelievable what happened to him and what he recognized.

Just the fact that given what goes on with all social media and the technology companies, their whole model is based on trying to keep our eyes to the device. It's not to try and be helpful. It's the longer we have eyes to the device, the more money they make with advertising. They've really built these models that trigger things in our brain to keep us there. By the way, it works beautifully.

You have to appreciate the science when you don't have to. I can appreciate the science behind it, but I also know that I need to take responsibility for my own health and wellbeing. There's any number of things out there that are not good for me. We can't go around and controlling the people to not offer tempting things that aren't good for us in life.

We have to have the confidence to say, “I noticed that I'm not feeling as good.” Speaking of confidence after I’ve been scrolling for a while, have you asked yourself how do you feel after that compared to how you felt before? Do you have more confidence or less? If the answer is less, why do you keep going back? Only you can decide. Our mutual friend, Dan Sullivan, wrote a book, Your Attention: Your Property.

The Second Channel Of Confidence: The Attitude Channel

He's got so many good books. Let's keep continuing on with the four channels. The second channel is the attitude channel. Lots of writing on this. The inner voice. Trying to sabotage ourselves with our inner voice. Let's unpack that a little bit.

I think that's the most important one. My colleagues and I, my fellow coaches, we talk about how you can do as many things on the outside or on the surface as you want to not sabotage yourself, but if you don't do the inner work, then you can't master that inner voice. The Four Channels book is really meant to be from the inside out and the outside in. It's like, let's throw everything we've got at this because it's such an important topic. Let's not only dig down on the inside and ask ourselves, “Why do I beat myself up? Why do I tell myself that I can't do things that I'm not good enough or torment myself with these ruminations?”

It's also sometimes doing what they call the process of the warrior. That's not process. One of my colleagues can help me remember. It's about not only doing the inner work, but also talking the walk in a way, like doing these things where you're taking deep breaths, you're putting your shoulders back. That's the body. You're speaking with a louder voice and faking it until you make it in a way. You're saying, “I'm going to tell my body,” because we're always talking to ourselves. Our brain is talking to our body. Our body's talking to our brain all the time. I'm going to do everything I can from the outside to instill confidence in myself, but that's not enough. We also have to deal with the attitude. That's the inner part, the inner critic. The biggest message that I hope people take away is befriending it.

Really saying, “I have this voice, and it can be a real asset sometimes. It's only there to protect me.” Our inner critic loves the status quo, and it starts talking as soon as we want to step out of our comfort zone or try something new, or do something different. That's usually when it gets the loudest. It wants to keep us safe. Whatever you've done up until now hasn't killed you. Let's just keep doing that. God forbid you make changes. If we recognize that and say, “Thanks a lot inner critic, and I don't need you this time. Bye-bye.” Recognizing it. Noticing it. That's the first step.

Our inner critic loves the status quo, and it starts talking as soon as we want to step out of our comfort zone or try something new.

The thing about jumping outside a comfort zone, and even something like Peloton has been good, at least for me, coaching me on this is if you want to improve, you absolutely have to jump outside a comfort zone. You're going to be uncomfortable. No matter what level of fitness you get to, if you want to improve while you're working out, there is a very uncomfortable part of that workout that you want to start, stop. What they try and help you with is there's this concept of getting a little more comfortable with being uncomfortable.

It's a good way of thinking of it. One trick I used to try and help myself with a long time ago was in the early days when all of our friends were getting married, I was actually asked to be the MC at a bunch of bunch of different weddings, like almost every wedding I went to for 2 or 3 years, and everybody gets married at the same time. I take it seriously because I don't want to ruin their wedding. You're good at stepping up and in some cases, 200 people, 250 people, you get a little nervous. You’ve got to prepare for it. After a couple, I started thinking to myself, “Why am I doing this to myself? Why do I want to go to this wedding?”

In those days, I drank a lot. I would've partied up with everybody else instead of having to be zoned in until I was done. The way I rationalized being comfortable being uncomfortable was it made me be in the wedding even more because I had to interview the bridesmaids. I had to interview the groomsmen. I had to learn stories about everybody, the family. I said, “This is uncomfortable,” but I'm getting comfortable with it because there's a benefit.

I'm going to know everybody more. I'm going to be more in the wedding and all that stuff. I learn from different people. I think this idea is helpful for people reading. There's going to be that presentation, there's going to be that keynote speech, maybe somebody's speaking at a wedding. You rationalize why you're doing it. Instead of feeling nervous, you feel like your butterflies are flying in formation.

Building on your strengths, too. I think I can imagine you're a fantastic. I know exactly why those people asked you toe their wedding. I'm sure you'd be amazing with that. Anyone who's been in a room with you, Mark, especially in a room with lots of people, will know that you have an ability to have a laser-like focus, to bring a calm to the room, to acknowledge what's going on, to ask the good questions. I’m not at all surprised. What I hear you saying is you took it not only as an opportunity to step outside your comfort zone and get better, but also you took it as an opportunity to connect with these people, which is clearly something that's important to you and something that you're good at.

Also, I don't think I mentioned that explicitly in the book, or if I did, probably not enough, find out what you love about any situation that makes you nervous or what you're already good at that makes you nervous. I just did that this morning. I was in a call with my team and we were doing a retro of a project that we led that was very stressful, a lot of work. There's so many last-minute changes. At a certain point, I was like, “Why am I doing this?” I had to take responsibility because why were there so many changes? It’s because I didn't say no. I just kept bending over backward. That's my strength. I have this Ranger strength in the Gallup Strength, which just like every strength when taken to an extreme, becomes a fault.

Rather than just focus on dialing back my strength, like just don't be so much of a Ranger, I thought maybe there's another strength that I have that I can put into play here that makes it easier to say no because I find that so hard. That's about quality. That's a big value of mine. Also, the relationship piece, like build on the strength that I have to build relationships to make it easier to say no. I think that could be a good rule of thumb for anybody who has to face a difficult situation and feels nervous.

The Third Channel Of Confidence: The Voice Channel

Focusing on the strengths, and acknowledging your strengths, I think that’s always very helpful for confidence. We're going to talk about one thing that isn't in the book at the end here, but let's finish a quick discussion on the four channels. Now we're on channel three. We started with breath. We went to attitude. Now we're on number three. Voice. We touched on it briefly. Voice being a very powerful aid in terms of confidence.

It's really one of those where it’s a lot about how you project yourself. As I said before, take responsibility for being heard. It’s a channel that can sabotage you. It needs to be there for people to get the whole picture of you as confident, which builds your confidence. When people listen to you, when people say, “That was a great idea. Let's do what Mark said, or let's do what Joanne said.” It's like it's building your confidence. When do they do that? They only do that when they can hear you. They only do that when they can understand you.

Learning how to make your voice not only the right volume, and I don't mean louder because sometimes people are too loud and people stop listening, the correct appropriate volume. A dynamic volume but also concise enough. If you talk to people, they are not capable of listening for that long. You need to be concise as well. That's what builds the confidence. It’s actually the feedback that you get when you start to master that channel.

By the way, I love that, Margo. We should take responsibility for being heard because that's an innate need in all of us. Outside of food and water, being heard is one of the most important needs out there. I think a lot of times when we're growing up and maybe early in our business careers, we don't have that confidence to take a room and to share our opinion and to step in or to disagree. Some of us are people pleasers. “I don't want to have the straight talk. I don't want to give the fundamental truth. I don't want to give feedback.”

Especially if that makes you the only person in the room with that opinion.

It does take some of that inner fortitude, but taking responsibility for being heard is a great life lesson.

Sometimes, it's as simple as waiting until people stop talking before you speak, waiting until they ask you a question or saying, “I have a question,” or, “I have an opinion here.” Before you just blurt out your golden question or your golden opinion, make sure that people are looking at you and they're not talking themselves. I know that sounds basic, but you'd be shocked at how rare that is. When you witness a meeting or when you watch debates, for example.

It's literally painful. I’ve certainly been in those corporate environments for many a year where it was painful to see how a discussion would take place. There was always this feeling that everybody had such a need to be heard that they couldn't hear anyone else because they're dying to figure out when they can jump in and share their thought.

Why would somebody listen to you if you don't listen to them? That's part of taking responsibility.

I always like this idea of whatever you want in life, give it away. If I want somebody to hear me, listen to somebody else. If I want somebody to treat me with respect, give someone else respect. If I want somebody to acknowledge that I'm good at what I do professionally, acknowledge and believe they're good at what they do professionally.

Start there. Make your own karma.

I used to be running very large corporate meetings with lots of people with heavy personalities. One of the things we do, as a matter of course, was say, “At the end of the meeting, no matter what, we're going to do a round table and everybody gets the floor for 60 seconds. You can pass, but there's no debate or rebuttal.” What people start to do is we're in a discussion, we're trying to keep things on track, and they didn't get their point in, but they veer away from going, “Let me go back to something we were talking about five minutes ago.”

The Fourth Channel Of Confidence: The Body Channel

They just jot it down. At the end of the meeting, we go around the room and somebody would say, “Mark, you really wear terrible-looking jackets. I don't want to see another one of those.” I can't debate and jump in and go, “The salesman said you've never seen this jacket look better on anybody.” I can't jump in. They get the floor with no rebuttal. I think that's just an easy tip, folks. When you run your next internal meeting this way, see what happens. Now we're moving on to, and I think it's the Wonder Woman, the Superman pose. Amy Cuddy. The fourth channel is the body channel. Let's talk and share a couple of tips there, Margo.

It was Amy Cuddy, and I understand a lot of her colleagues as well. I think she gets all the credit, which great. She certainly deserves it. I think that there's a whole group of people who are doing some fantastic work. Now that's a bit of a sidebar, but it's one of those things where in later years, people tried to redo the experiment and it didn't work quite right, so they wanted to throw the whole thing at the garbage.

It pains me, and this is the sidebar, how often it's the case when people start to get notoriety, status, power, money or anything else, we just lose all the empathy for them when we start just cutting holes and criticizing. I just want to say I think it’s a great work, and I understand there's a critique and some people say, “In the second edition, you're going to take that out now, right?”

No, absolutely not. I think it's fantastic. How do I know it works? It’s because I’ve tried it and it works on me. End of one. I'm sharing what works for me. I'm not saying this is the only way, but I'm sharing in the book what works for me. I think it's fantastic work. It's very logical, anyway, if you think about it, because, as we were saying before, the body and the brain are always in communication. The brain is always on the lookout for threats or rewards.

Much more focused on the threats, of course, because especially in caveman times, the threats are more important. You need to at least stay alive. The rewards, while they're nice, but we better stay alive first. That’s also why when you get feedback, you have 99 pieces of good feedback and a bad one, and you focus on the bad one. Our brain is shaped like that. Let's accept that and embrace it because it's gotten us to where it has.

The body and the brain are always in communication. Our brain is always on the lookout for threats or rewards but much more focused on threats.

A lot of it is really logical. She was saying taking up space. If you think about animals in the animal kingdom, what do they do when they have to go take over territory or fighters? They make themselves large. What you're telling your brain when you do that is you're strong. You're powerful. You don't need to hide. You're going to be okay if you're seen. The opposite is when you make yourself small and what do you do if, God forbid, you are in a place where there was gunfire happening, you would make yourself as small as humanly possible.

That tells your brain threats. Making myself small. One of the points she makes in the TED Talk that got so famous is unfortunately, we do this all the time without realizing it. We're huddled over our phones, sitting on the train. We're making ourselves small. Without even realizing it, we're sending a message to our brain that don't you're not strong and you're not confident. There's a threat. There's danger. We're not at our best.

It doesn't mean that you have to be big, even the Wonder Woman. It's about being neutral. Especially if you're in one of those difficult meetings where you feel nervous, where you don't have all your confident confidence, are your feet flat on the floor? Are you sitting up straight? You know? Especially if you're standing on stage, I can't tell you how often I see this, and this is definitely more women than men standing on stage. You can't see now, but I have my feet crossed.

Leaning on a podium or something.

Just freestanding. For some reason, they feel the need to put their feet opposite. You do this. What happens when you do that? Maybe not so much, but you see people stand like this. One foot across. The problem with that is if you get pushed, it’s a lot easier to fall over. If you push me the same way when I have both feet on the floor, I don't move. I know you're not going to actually probably get physically pushed when you're on stage.

Some of our meetings In The Funnel, that'll happen. We're trying to cut that out.

We're trying to make a law against that. Still, I believe, psychologically, there's something you just feel stronger if you plant both feet flat on the floor, planted on the ground. Just do everything you can to not feel off balance. You might as well. Just standing up straight, both feet flat on the floor. By the way, that makes it easier to breathe. The channels help each other. Speaking slowly, taking a deep breath between sentences. I don't need to talk in a continuous flow. I can really pause like I'm doing now and have a little breath here and there in between my sentences. It's not disturbing, but I'm able to keep the oxygen flowing. Unfortunately, in the Amy Cuddy video, I think she hadn't got The Four Channels book yet because. She's a little bit out of breath, but that's okay. I think it's still really great work.

Also, that was early days of TED Talks, so that's when you knew gazillions of people. It's different now because there's different levels.

It’s super polished, also.

First of all, The Four Channels of Confidence, How to Cultivate and Radiate Self-Assurance is a great book. As, as everybody knows, we put people on the show because I’ve read their book and I liked it. This is a really great book. Those four channels, breath, attitude, voice, body, they're all interdependent and connected. Of course, many of these things play over. These are things where we can intentionally help and protect our confidence, which is so critical in business and in life. I'm pretty sure after this episode, Margo, lots more people are going to going to look to learn more about you and your coaching business. How do they find out more about you?

I think the best way is LinkedIn. That's the social media channel. For my confidence, I decided I don't want to be on a million different social media channels. I'm going to choose one. I’ve chosen LinkedIn. Of course, our website as well, CoachingWithoutBorders.com. The book is available on Amazon. Hopefully you will find it right away when you type Four Channels, but if not, Four Channels of Confidence is definitely going to get you there.

That's again on LinkedIn, Margo McClimans. Margo, thank you so much for joining us on the show. It’s just great to meet you. It’s great to read the book. I'm so glad we have this conversation.

Thanks, Mark. I have to tell you, every time I talk to you, it's just such a joy. You are so generous. I can tell the world that we had a conversation also with one of my colleagues, and you were just immediately sharing all sorts of great tips and wisdom and insight. It was just a bit of a get to know. You're just a walking treasure trove of wisdom and generosity. Thank you for that.

Thank you so much. What a lovely thing to say. Thank you again, Margo. It’s great to connect with you. We're going to be speaking lots more, I'm sure. Team, thank you for joining our show. If you'd like this episode, please like and subscribe because that really matters to us. That's actually how we get great guests like Margo McClimans.

Also, if there are things we can be doing in this show to make it even more valuable to you, I really want to know what that is. You can send your ideas to MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's actually my personal email for the company. I respond to every email we get where people suggest ideas for the show, and we love constructive criticism. Please keep those ideas coming. We've applied some of those things that you've been gracious enough to share, but please keep it coming. Thanks again for joining, everybody, and we'll see you next time.

Important Links

• Coaching Without Borders

• The Four Channels of Confidence: How to Cultivate and Radiate Self-Assurance

• Thinking Fast and Slow

• Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

• Success Under Pressure

• Stolen Focus

• Your Attention: Your Property

• Margo McClimans - LinkedIn

• Mark Cox's Email

Skillful Asking: Unlock Hidden Wisdom From The People Around You With Jeff Wetzler

Skillful asking is more than just posing questions; it's a powerful approach to unlock deeper insights and foster genuine connections. Jeff Wetzler, author of Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of the People Around You, joins Mark Cox to explore the art and science of asking the right questions. Jeff shares his five-step "Ask" framework, drawing on his extensive experience in management consulting and education reform. He reveals why people often hold back valuable information and provides practical strategies to create psychological safety and cultivate authentic curiosity. Tune in to discover how skillful asking can transform your leadership, improve communication, and drive breakthrough results.

---

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Skillful Asking: Unlock Hidden Wisdom From The People Around You With Jeff Wetzler

Team, we've got a great show for you. We're talking about a magnificent new book called Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs in Leadership and Life. This is by Jeff Wetzler. The book talks to us about how a lot of the knowledge that we need, whether it's in business or in life, is in the people around us but they're hesitant to share it. We need definitive strategies and a significant approach to extract that information from them and have those conversations where we get that information.

One amazing stat that was shared in the book is that about 80% of people know something that's wrong with their organization or a key issue but they won't share it with their boss and 75% of those people share it with colleagues and peers. They're all talking about it but they never share it with the boss.  There are things that you can do, whether it's your relationships with peers, friends, family members, direct reports, customers, and prospects. In the book, we talk about this five-step Ask approach. 1) Choose curiosity, 2) Make it safe, 3) Pose quality questions, 4) Listen to learn, and 5) Reflect and reconnect. Looking at the topic of this book and the things we're going to discuss here, this is so highly relevant for everybody in professional sales.

Jeff's got a magnificent background and the book is so well-written. It's clear and concise. The frameworks make sense and it's all research-based. It’s a big bibliography, like an MBA class. It's no surprise. Jeff spent ten years with Monitor and then he was the EVP of Strategy and Innovation with Teach for America. He's the Cofounder of Transcend Labs. They're a nonprofit that leads innovation in school design. Think of that as trying to change the way the education environment works.

Jeff's a great guy. This is a terrific conversation and really interesting. I continue to learn from these interviews and I hope you do too. If you enjoy this episode, please like and subscribe to the show. That matters to us. That's how we get fantastic guests like Jeff. If there are ways we can improve this show, don't hesitate to let me, Mark Cox, know. I hope all of you are connected with us on LinkedIn. Here's Jeff Wetzler. We're talking about Ask.

Jeff, welcome to the show. I was super excited to chat with you.

Thanks. It's great to be with you.

A Unique Career Path: From Consulting To Education Reform

We're going to get into the book. Once I read Ask, I realized, “Anybody who's going to quote Daniel Kahneman from Thinking, Fast and Slow and Rick Rubin, the music producer, in the same chapter, that guy's got to be on the show.” We're going to get into this in a second, but first of all, welcome. For the sake of the audience, give us the short story of your professional career.

My career has toggled back and forth between the worlds of business and the world of education. It started at a very special management consulting company called Monitor Group, which is now a part of Deloitte. It's called Monitor Deloitte. I was drawn to Monitor first by their recruitment slogan at the time, which was, “A place for optimists to change the world.” As a bright-eyed college graduate, that spoke to me.

I was also drawn in by someone at Monitor named Chris Argyris who was a Harvard Business School professor and known as one of the pioneers of the field of organizational learning. He studied this question of how it is that sometimes the smartest, most successful people are the worst at learning from one another. He dug into that question. He wasn't one to just admire a problem. He wanted to solve the problem as well. He developed a set of tools and methods to help professionals get far better at learning from the people around them.

I was very fortunate to be able to apprentice to him and some of his disciples. I began to ultimately start teaching these tools and methods to Monitor consultants and our clients around the world. I had the experience that every time I would bring out these tools and we would do days together, people would say, “This is the best professional learning I've ever had.” People would say, “Most of these times were a waste of time, but this changed my life, not just at work but with my wife, friends, or the data I haven't talked to in a while.” I realized I was onto something. I didn't invent it, but I had the great fortune of inheriting it and being able to deliver it.

I spent almost a decade at Monitor. One of my clients, a woman named Wendy Kopp who started an organization called Teach for America, which is a global organization, asked me to come help run part of her organization. She had been my client for five years. I was so impressed by what they were doing. They were more hard-charging, more ambitious, and better-run than most of my corporate clients. I said, “Let me take a leave of absence from Monitor.” Monitor was kind enough to give me two years.

I ended up becoming the Chief Learning Officer of Teach for America. Those 2 years turned into 10 years because I was having so much fun. We were scaling the organization. We were trying to improve quality while we were growing incredibly quickly. It was an incredible journey. I did that for about a decade. Did you want to jump in?

No, you go ahead. Please finish off.

In 2015, I left Teach for America and started an innovation organization called Transcend with a co-CEO named Aylon Samouha. Transcend works with communities all across the United States and more broadly who are looking to reimagine what education can be. We're trying to help them break out of this 100-year-old industrial factory model of schooling that most kids and teachers are still trapped in. We use design thinking, questions, curiosity, and learning science to develop modern 21st-century ways of doing education. We have been building and scaling that organization for the last couple of years.

I stepped down as co-CEO. I'm working on something called Transcend Labs, which is thinking around the corner. It also gave me time to launch this book called Ask, which is a culmination of all of my experiences built off the foundation of what I learned from Chris Argyris but weaving in ideas and tools from other great leaders like Amy Edmondson on psychological safety and many others. I wrote the book to deal with a problem that I both observed but also experienced as a leader and to try to pay forward so much of the incredible mentorship, teaching, and insight I was fortunate to gain in my own career.

Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs In Leadership and Life

Two things. First of all, my team should record exactly the way you introduced yourself there because I have to improve the way I do it. That was spectacular. Second of all, what a career and a journey. For the regular audience, Monitor Group is a super high-end strategic consulting. It is one of the top players in that field.

We've had Roger Martin who is one of the very early leaders of that organization join the show. We always use his clip because one of the things he said in the interview was, “Looking back now, one of the challenges at Monitor was you'd get somebody to a senior manager level but if they wanted to move up to a director level, they needed sales skills. Back in the day, they didn't think of hiring companies like ours to come in and train them.” He said if he did it, they see value in that professional skillset and capability to get to that next level. It ties into the full title of the book. The full title of the book is Ask: Tap into the Hidden Wisdom of the People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs in Leadership and Life. That's your tie-in with, “This helped me in my personal relationships.”

I am a comic nerd. I have thousands of comics. Unfortunately, my wife and I have figured out what to do with them. At the beginning, you referenced that pollsters asked Americans if they could have any superpower in the world, what would they pick? The answer came back, number one, reading other people's minds. Number two, time travel.

Mine would be, in vulnerability for those reading, I want to be Superman but I don't want to be hurt anymore. I play hockey and I'm tired of being hurt. What an interesting thing that everybody wants to understand what's going on in somebody else's mind. This whole approach and methodology that you come up with the Ask approach is a way of pulling what's in somebody else's mind out.

It's true. We have a natural desire to understand what the people around us are knowing, thinking, and feeling. We know that they're not fully telling us. That's why we wish we could read their minds. We know it's hard as well.

They have an innate need to be heard and understood.

That's exactly right. If we could put those two things together, we would be better off if we could tap into that, and that's really the impetus for the book.

It's so smart. Another stat you threw that's helpful for us to think about was something to the effect that about 85% of people out there have shared that there's an issue or a challenge that they did not share with their boss in organizations. In fact, 75% of those people said they'd talked to other colleagues about it. They’re like, “I'm not going to share with my boss but me and my friends are talking about this because it's this known issue.” This caught you a little bit at Teach for America, which might have been one of the main impetuses of the book. You got caught in a pretty tough situation there. Tell us a little bit about that.

I was relatively new. I  spent almost a decade at Monitor in many ways, teaching and leading this very work. It was my first major operating role. We were putting together institutes to train teachers. We had thousands of teachers, so every institute would be training 500 or so teachers. These are new teachers going into some of the toughest contexts or most underserved contexts. The stakes are really high both for the teachers and for the students that they're teaching.

We had teams for every single institute that spent the entire year planning the institute, developing the curriculum, getting the space, and organizing the transportation, food, faculty, and all those different things. We had multiple of these things going at any point in time. I discovered almost at the very last second that 1 out of our 5 institutes right before it was about to launch was about to implode. We had 500 teachers descending on the city when there was not going to be something to support them and they only had the summer to get ready to teach.

All year long, I had been saying to the team of this particular institute, “How's it going? Are there any issues? What can I do?” They were like, “It's going well. We got it. There are a couple of bumps,” and all that kind of thing. I was doing my job. I didn't have all the right questions to ask but I was thinking, “We're good.” All of a sudden, one thing crumbles after the next. We don't have the buses lined up and there's no summer school for them to have a practicum to teach. Half the faculty aren't ready to be teaching and all that kind of thing.

Thankfully, I had a colleague who was credible who swooped in, saved the day, and whatever else, but it got me thinking, “How come they didn't tell me?” It turns out that in hindsight, they were panicking. There were all kinds of issues. If they had told me, I would've rolled up my sleeves. We would've gotten in it, we would've solved it, and it would've been fine but they felt like they had to say to me, “We're on track.” They thought to themselves, “Hopefully, we'll figure this thing out,” but they weren't figuring it out. I thought, “Why is it that people in organizations aren't saying, in this case, to their managers the real thing?” That became an obsession for me to figure out what are the biggest barriers.

Unveiling Hidden Barriers: Why People Hold Back Information At Work

Let's talk about some of them. What's the answer to that? We run a small business here called In the Funnel. We work with lots of medium-sized enterprises. We work with lots of large sales organizations. A lot of the time, we're interviewing the salespeople that will end up training or we're doing some due diligence to do that. I'm amazed at sometimes what they'll share with us but they don't share with their leadership. I don't know what it is about, a casual conversation with me or what have you. What prevents people from sharing?

It's not just that they withhold from their boss. This withholding happens in every direction. Bosses withhold it from the people that they manage. Colleagues withhold it from each other. Customers withhold it from the people who sell to them. Clients withhold it from their providers. Investors withhold it. Board members withhold it. This is a 360-degree withholding that's happening all around us. It's astounding. It’s the same barriers that stop people in whatever direction this is happening.

The number one barrier is fear of the impact of saying what they have to say. Maybe they will get judged. Maybe they'll hurt the other person. Maybe it will poison their relationship. Maybe it will put tension into their relationship. All of those are under the category of fear of the impact. That's not the only barrier. A second barrier is that people don't always have the words to say it. As it occurs to them inside, they know that if they say it that way, it's going to make things worse.

There are whole industries around helping people find better ways to share feedback and all that kind of thing but that doesn't mean people have the words. Sometimes, people have the words but they don't have the time to say it. I discovered this other stat that the human mind can think at 900 words a minute but at best can get out about 150 words a minute.

Our minds can think at 900 words a minute, but we can only speak at about 150 words a minute. Be patient and listen

Oscar Trimboli. I love that.

If you think about that, you're talking to someone. At best, you might be hearing 15% of what's going on in their head at that moment in time, not because they're maliciously withholding from you but because the math doesn't work. The straw is not big enough to get all the words out of their mouth. That's another barrier as well. They don't have the words or the time to say the words.

A third barrier is people are exhausted. Everyone is rushing and grinding fast. People think, “It'll be faster if I don't say it. If I say it, then we're going to have to have a conversation about it. It'll take time. I want to get home.” They're too busy. The biggest barrier and the one that I think is most fascinating is that people don't tell us things because they don't realize we really want to know. They don't think that what they have to say would be truly valued by us. That's the most fascinating one because it's the most actionable one to deal with as well.

You can control it. We've had Oscar on the show too for a couple of times from How to Listen. This will come into the Ask approach. Listen with intent. Actively listen. You shared the 900-125. How many words can you process when somebody else is speaking? The number is 425. If you're speaking to me at 125, it's almost impossible for me not to be slightly distracted because my brain's already connecting patterns and all of these things. I can't wait to jump in and tell you what I've learned.

I love that research.

It's so powerful. We've had a couple of great conversations on that. This last one led into it beautifully. They think we're not truly interested. A[1] ny leader out there tuning into this has been in a situation where they’re having a conversation, maybe with a direct reporter or somebody of that nature. You ask a question but you're not really authentically curious about the answer. You've already got your biases about this person or the situation. We're going to talk about the ladder of understanding in a second here. When we talk about the five-step approach, the Ask approach, the first step is that curiosity is a choice. You have to want to know what the answer is and show it.

The Ask approach is what I'm putting forward as a solution to this problem, the problem that we don't find out what people around us think, feel, and know. It's five steps. They're grounded all in research. They're all tested out and pressure-tested in practice. Step one is choosing curiosity. I'm positing curiosity not as a trait that some people have and other people lack and not as a state of mind like, “I'm not feeling curious today,” or, “I'm feeling curious,” but truly as a choice. That means that it's a decision that's always available to us.

When we choose curiosity, we're putting ourselves in a mindset or bringing an intention of, “What can I learn from this person?” When I center that question, it pushes away other questions like, “Why are they such a jerk?” or, “Why are they so stupid?” or, “How do I get them to say yes right now?” It's truly, “What can I learn from this person?” That opens up lots of other questions that start to flow into our minds like, “What do they know that I don't know? What are they up against? What are they struggling with? What do they see? What's their life experience? How am I impacting them?” There are all kinds of things we can learn.

Often, people say to me, “Do you really want to learn from everyone? Can you learn from everyone?” I'm like, “Just because you learn from them doesn't mean you have to agree with them and it doesn't mean you have to do what they want you to do, but you can still learn from them. Even if you vehemently disagree, at minimum, you can learn, “Why do they feel the way that they feel?” or, “What moves are they going to make there?” I truly believe there's something we can learn from every single person. Choosing curiosity is tapping into that.

Well said. I'll be a little bit honest here. When we started the show years ago, first of all, we went after sales leaders and people who've written sales books. Considering the early days of what went on, I promised that I would read everybody's book before they joined this show. Maybe as a little over-confident, I did some big deals as a salesperson. I led some large organizations.

I'll be honest with you. I was very judgmental in the early days of reading someone's book going, “There's nothing new here. I've heard this before,” and so on and so forth. Getting somebody on live conversation and talking to them, you realize, “They brought 2 or 3 other things to the table that I hadn't thought of. I really like the approach and what they've done here.” It triggers that dopamine where you go, “I'd like to learn more.” We all love dopamine. To some extent, this is still good marketing for us.

The driving factor for a lot of these interviews is we put people or guests on where I've read the book and I go, “I can't wait to talk to this person.” If you are open-minded, everybody's got something to teach you or there's something to learn in everything, but as we'll get to, there are barriers within me where I'm going to make that judgment fairly quickly and say, “They were never really top-level salespeople.” My emotions come into play. In milliseconds, I determine, “Do I like this person or not?” That can put up a wall or a barrier.

We're going to stay on curiosity, but while we're on it, the Ask approach is this five-step approach. Number one, choose curiosity. Number two, make it safe. Number three, pose quality questions. Number four, listen to learn. We talked about Oscar. Number five, reflect and reconnect. The book, I've got to call it out. I read a lot of books and I've written a book. This book is a beautifully written book.

Thank you.

It is well-designed and simple but powerful. I love the fact you've got a powerful bibliography. They’re not opinions. These are fact-based comments. We're referencing great research and great books. The hardest book I've ever read is Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. I have every one of the 135 biases. It’s so painful to see all of these things. My brain tricks me. Let's stay on curiosity. For those out there who are walking into that next meeting, whether it's with a customer, a prospect, a peer, or a direct report, what are some of the things that we can do in our tool bag to try and generate that authentic curiosity? What might be some tips to make me a little better in that next meeting?

The Ladder Of Understanding: How Our Minds Quickly Jump To Conclusions

Maybe this is a time to talk about the ladder of understanding because this is a tool to help us understand where our curiosity goes to die and how curiosity shuts down. I believe that one of the best ways to choose curiosity is to understand a little bit about how our mind works so that we can become more aware of when our curiosity is shutting down.

This is a tool that is adapted from work by Chris Agryiris. It helps us understand how it is that we walk into a situation, size it up, and tell ourselves a story about what's going on all in milliseconds and all outside of our conscious awareness. It starts by anytime we walk into a situation, we are awash in data points. There is information everywhere.

Even as I stare at you, I'm looking at your background, your facial expressions, what you're wearing, and your microphone. I'm listening to all you've said. If I tried to stop and pay attention to every single one of those hundreds or thousands of pieces of information that surround me or I tried to pay attention to all of them, I would be paralyzed. If you ever walk down the street with a three-year-old, they stop and pay attention to everything. They’re like, “Look at that bird. Look at that worm. Look at that leaf. Look at that crack on the sidewalk.” Everything is interesting to them. It is adorable but they don't get anywhere. It takes you two hours to walk a block.

 In order to move forward in life, we can't just pay attention to everything. We have to select the tiniest fraction of that information to zero in on. We ignore everything else. The dangerous part is we forget that we've done that. We assume that whatever that tiny fraction of information that we've zeroed in on is the totality of reality in the whole thing.

Since we're human beings, we're not content to sit with that piece of information. We instantly make meaning of it. We go up the next rung of the ladder, and that is to say what this means. We’re like, “He's nodding that way. That must mean he's placating me,” or, “That must mean he's interested,” or whatever it is. We make an inference of what it means. Quickly, we jump to the top of the ladder, which is ultimately, we draw conclusions. We’re like, “He's that kind of person,” or, “She's trying to do this. This is what's really going on here.” Those conclusions become our story. The story has major consequences because the story shapes what steps we take next.

That is how the ladder works. We're washing this data, quickly zip up to the top of the ladder, construct the story, and we don't even realize that we're doing it. The kicker is that the choices that we make at every step along the way, what information to select, how to interpret, and what story to spin are not random choices. You referenced Kahneman. They're shaped by our prior beliefs, worldviews, assumptions, ways of being, and ways of knowing which I call our stuff. Our stuff shapes our story, but then we have a story that we get to which then reconfirms our stuff. We're like, “There we go again. They're always like that. Here's how the world is.”

We get trapped in this thing that I call the certainty loop. It's the loop between our stuff, which shapes our story, which reconfirms our stuff. The more we get stuck in that loop, the more our curiosity dies. To choose curiosity, we have to interrupt the certainty loop that we all fall into. The way we can do that is by using what I call curiosity questions. These questions are mapped to different points of the ladder of understanding.

At the very bottom is selecting the information. The question is,  “What information might I have overlooked? What else might be going on here? What might I be missing?” The next thing is assigning meaning to it. It is, “How else might someone process this information? What's a different way to interpret this?” The next is drawing conclusions. It is, “What's an alternate conclusion that someone might have? What's a different story that one could tell?” The uber curiosity question is, “What can I learn from this person?”

If we can start to inject those questions almost like injecting question marks into our otherwise certain story, we begin to loosen its grip on us. It doesn't mean it's wrong. It doesn't mean we have to throw it away or abandon it. We make room for some other ways of looking at the situation to come in. Sometimes, it's hard to do that because we're so stuck in our own story. It can be helpful to invite a friend, a coach, or a mentor to pose these questions and sit with these questions with you.

I have also found, and I read about this in the book, that AI can be that friend as well. You can put in your whole rant into AI like, “I can't believe this political figure, this business decision,” or whatever. Put a question in like, “What might I be missing?” What comes back is fascinating. It's humbling, curiosity-producing, and in the privacy of your own phone, computer, desk, laptop, or wherever you are. You don't even have to admit that there might be another way of looking at it but you can still get that help.

When you're reading the book, first of all, there are great chapter summaries on everything. There are all of these key points that you go into. There are great examples of these AI prompts. What would you put in? You were using an example there. The example in the book that showcased the curiosity and the ladder of understanding was this reference point in a Caribbean country where tourism was being impacted and the hotel management versus the unions of the labor working in these hotels were trying to figure out, “How do we get to this point where we can stop losing the dollars from our number one industry for the entire place?”

In Thinking, Fast and Slow, it's shocking when you learn about the mental shortcuts we all take and the biases we have. I have them all. You catch yourself. One of the themes you put in the book is we have to be our best selves to do these things. It’s like, “How many times have I been in a client meeting? How many times have I been in a meeting with a direct report where I ran from another meeting? I'm overworked and overtired. I've got to get to the gym tonight somehow. I got five hours of sleep.” Everything's about me.

In order to be authentically curious, pause, and listen to learn or listen to understand, it takes enormous energy. You have to protect some white space for yourself in your day and your energy so that you can do that. We cram so much into a day. Everybody's got so little free time. All of this stuff becomes exponentially more difficult if you're wiped out.

It can take a lot but there are also small things to do. I know you had a guest, Diane Hamilton, on the show. She and I are collaborating on an article together with someone else named Natalie Nixon about how you can put little speed bps in your day so that you can get that pause. Even if you have five hours of sleep or even if you're running, you don't have to become a perfect monk and everything in tune or whatever. You have to put a little speed bump in and say, “Let me think. Here's a question. Let me pause for a second and take a breath.” There are little things that we can do to cue our curiosity.

Another person you may want to think about collaborating with is Juliet Funt. She has a book called A Minute to Think. She was a guest on the show a few months ago. She talks about the same problem. She makes a great reference that it's a little bit like a fire. When she was an inexperienced camper, she'd tried to cram all the wood together to light a fire outside. It doesn't work. To build a fire, you've got to allow some space for oxygen to get through to let the flame breathe.

She talks about the need, importance, and impact of putting some white space in your day and your time. You think instead of doing everything all the time. She'd be somebody who may be great for this discussion too. When we talk about the 5-step Ask approach, the 2nd step of the approach is to make it safe. Learning for me,  earlier in my career, is to make it safe. We talk about a safety cycle, creating a connection, opening up, and radiating resilience. Let's talk about those briefly.

Creating Psychological Safety: Making It Safe For Others To Share Their Truth

This is a recognition that even if I'm curious to learn from you and you don't feel safe telling me your truth, especially if it's a hard truth, it doesn't matter how curious I am. I'm not going to learn from you. This was the core problem I faced in the story I told you earlier about my team. I was curious to know how it was going but they didn't feel safe telling me the answer.

You're new. They don't know you. You came from a big-league consulting firm. It's a bit scary, right?

Exactly. There's a power differential. I could hire them or fire them. We were also operating across lines of difference, race, gender, and other things as well like geography. All kinds of barriers were reducing the safety that they felt. If we want to learn from other people, it's on us to create that safety. A little bit about each of the three pieces of the safety cycle you talked about, creating a connection may be obvious.

There are two most important insights I got from researching the book. One is when do you do it? You have to do it before you have an important conversation. You are digging your well before you're thirsty. If you're trying to create a connection at the same time you're trying to create safety, it's much harder. If you can build that connection well in advance, it's much easier. The second thing is the time, place, and space of the connection. For the book, I interviewed CEOs.

They were big-league CEOs too.

They were from big companies like Kraft and Medtronic. They are notorious for not getting the truth from people. People don't tell CEOs the truth. They lie to them because they want to look good in the eyes of the CEOs. I said to these iconic CEOs, people like Bill George or Irene Rosenfeld, “How did you get the truth out of people?” One of the biggest things they said is, “It's when and where I have the conversation. I'll never bring someone into my office, make them sit across the big, intimidating CEO desk from me, and assume that's where they're going to feel safe. I'm going to go to them. We're going to do a ride-along. We're going to have lunch. We're going to take a walk. We're going to sit on the sofa,” or whatever it is.

There was no single answer but the answer simply was wherever they are going to feel most comfortable and at ease is when and where we should have that conversation. It applies in business and in life too. It applies to my sixteen-year-old daughter who never wants to tell me anything when she comes home from school or at the dinner table. If I want to find out what her life is really like, I have to do it when she's comfortable, which is 11:00 PM when she's done talking to her friends, she's done with her homework, and I'm ready to go to sleep. That's when she wants to talk. If I want to know what's going on in my daughter's life, that's when I got to do it. The same thing holds true in work situations. That's creating a connection.

Wherever people are going to feel most comfortable and at ease is when and where we should have that conversation.

We've all had discussions with leaders throughout the course of our career where we felt this and we've had leaders that we reported to based on what we’ve done where we did not feel this.

People can viscerally feel how safe they are.

That's where the stats at the beginning, the 80% of having no problems but won't share them and then 75% share with each other came from. I've lived in that situation where you walk into a meeting saying, “This person does not care at all about me, my life, and my situation. I'm a tool for them to achieve a goal.” You then make this decision to go, “Am I still getting something from this whole thing?” I’ve lived like that for a few years in a role like that because there was still value and learning to me but I would not have thought for a second this person cared about me whatsoever.

They're not going to have your back when you know when you need it.

Asking Quality Questions: A Taxonomy For Deeper Conversations

Continuing along, posing these quality questions. We've got to be curious in terms of the Ask approach. We’ve got to make it safe. On making it safe when we're working with a lot of sales leaders, when this leader takes a look at the team and might have 1 or 2 folks where there's an issue or 2, I often ask this question of them. I say, “Why does Jeff do this?” People think the answer to that question is self-evident but it's not.

Why is Jeff continuing to enjoy his work with Teach for America, if it was a few years ago? The answer to that question came from Jeff specifically. It's not your opinion as to what you think. What did Jeff say when you asked him, “You could work anywhere you want. You came from Monitor. Why do you do this? Tell me more.”  One way to make it safe is that people will care about what you know when they know that you care. It has to be authentic.

That's why curiosity comes before making it safe. If you're genuinely curious, it's so much easier to make it safe. If you're not curious, people can tell. There's not much you can do to make it safe if you haven't first chosen curiosity.

Are they in sequential order? When we think about the Ask approach, is this sequential?

It is intended to be sequential. You could pick any step. The more you do it, the better off you'll be, but there is a flow. It starts with curiosity and then it's making it safe. From there, you're ready to ask questions. That takes us to number three, posing quality questions.

Let's talk a little bit about that.

I define a quality question very simply as a question that helps us learn something important from someone else. That may sound simple but many of the questions that we pose or many of the things that come out of our mouths that have a question mark at the end do not truly allow us to learn something important from the other person. I call those crummy questions.

Quality questions are simply questions that help us learn something important from someone else.

We got quality questions and crummy questions. Crummy questions can be things that are clumsy. If you ask four questions in a row, no way someone's going to remember all those questions to answer. Another clumsy question is if someone says, “This is what I think. Wouldn't you agree?,” or, “Isn't that right?” or, “Right?” Those are all things that someone might want to know, but it's very hard to answer when someone says, “Right?” for you to say, “That's not right.” Someone might do it but few people will do that.

There are clumsy questions. There are what I call sneaky questions. That's what a lawyer will do to try to get someone to admit that they're guilty. There are attack questions. All of those are in the category of crummy questions. As it relates to quality questions, one of the things that I'm fascinated by is that so many of us, for a living, have conversations. That means we're asking questions and giving answers. It's the same thing in reverse. Yet, none of us has been taught what is the taxonomy of good-quality questions to ask.

I think about it the same way that a surgeon might have their scalpel and then they've got this tool and all the different tools. Depending on what they're trying to do, they've got something to go with. They've been trained and they know what to use. Yet, we who ask who talk for a living have never been taught what are the different kinds of questions.

In this chapter of the book, I introduce a taxonomy of about a dozen different questions. It's not like there are hundreds. You can learn this. Each one of them helps us get to something different. I'll give you one example. One of the strategies in the taxonomy is called request reactions. Request reactions are simple. I tell you something, explain something to you, make a request, or give you some feedback. In the end, I simply pause and say, “What's your reaction to that?” or, “How does that sit with you?” or, “How does that strike you?” or, “What does that make you think?” or, “What's wrong about what I said?” or, “What might I be missing?”

Any of those things radically increases the chances that I will access your thinking about my thinking. If you disagree with my thinking, I will find out. If there's a hole in my thinking that I might not have seen, I'm much more likely to find that hole if you can see what it is. It's very rare that we'll stop and invite reactions. If we do, sometimes we'll do it in a crummy way, which might be something like, “Does that make sense?” or something like that. It’s hard for someone to honestly answer that question. If we request reactions in any of the different ways I illustrated, we're much more likely to get disconfirming data or information that might surprise us. Especially in a sales situation, you're much more likely to surface barriers if you really understand how what you say lands with someone.

This entire conversation applies directly to sales. I wasn't going to pull everything right back there, but I have a couple of thoughts. First of all, this approach to asking these questions with an intent to learn is much different than asking questions with an intent to manipulate, which is what they used to do in sales many years ago. Human beings resist any form of manipulation whatsoever. They're repulsed by it. Sometimes, when you're talking to an unsophisticated salesperson, this list of questions means, “You've got to move forward. It's time to buy the condo in Florida.”

“How does this strike you?” is a great open-ended question. It's back to Oscar Trimboli. Allow the pregnant pause, which seems like it's way too long. The 900 words in their head need time to get out. It's either Michael Bungay Stanier or Oscar. Once they answer, sit for a while and go, “What else?” They'll fill it. All this comes back to, “Do as I say, not as I do.” I have a tough time also like everybody else. I'm an extrovert, so I want to fill the air. It’s so powerful. Preparation and thinking about these questions.

One of the things that I picked up in the book, and I'm sure it was intentional but I didn't see it written down specifically, is that a lot of the Ask approach is this intent where I do want to know. I’m a believer. There are some stats by Dr. Nick Morgan from Harvard in a book called Can You Hear Me? where people can sense your intent in milliseconds. We're always saying this on the sales front, which is our intent is not to sell them something. Our intent is to figure out if we can help them somehow.

You put your finger on the full ethos of the book, which is the intent to learn something from someone. That's why I started with curiosity because we've got to have that curious intention for the rest of it to even make sense.

The Power Of Reflection And Reconnection: Turning Insights Into Action

Posing quality questions led to listen to learn, and then it led to reflect and reconnect. Given your time, this one is one to touch on before we wrap up. How often do we have this situation where we're having this conversation where somebody shares and whatever they share goes into the ether? Nobody knows whatever happened. They’re like, “I really was exposing myself. I was throwing myself out there saying, “These are the three things the company needs to do.”

I love the fact that at some point in time, you've got to say, “Thank you for the feedback and input.” It doesn't mean I have to agree with it but I do have to acknowledge it and say, “I'm either going to do something about it,” or, “I'm going to decide we're going to do something about it in the future,” or, “We're never going to do something about it.” I heard you and I've considered it and I appreciate the thought.

To me, this is my favorite step of all five of the Ask approach because I am a junkie for learning. Reflection is how we learn. It's how we convert our experience into insight and our insight into action. A lot of people feel like, “I don't have time to reflect. I would have to go on some meditation retreat to reflect,” or whatever but reflection can be very practical and simple.

Reflection is how we learn. It's how we convert our experience into insight and our insight into action.

I talked about a method in the book called Sift It and Turn It. Sifting it is saying, “Of all the things I heard, what are the 2 or 3 most important things?” I then turn it over in my head in a very structured way to say, “How does it shift my story? How can it shift the steps that I take? How does it give me insight into my deeper stuff?”

To your point, reconnect is to say, “This is not extractive for me.” This is about going back to the other person and saying, “This is what I heard and this is what made me think. Here's what I'm going to do about it. Out of curiosity, is that what you were hoping I would learn, or is there something different you were hoping I would learn? Thank you because it probably took some time and it may have taken a risk. I'm grateful for it.”

I did that act not long ago when one of my colleagues at work gave me some feedback. At that moment, I was like, “I'll think about that.” Two hours later, I was like, “She had some really good points.” I sent her a message and said, “Here's what you have me thinking about. Here's what I'll be reflecting on. Thank you.” She told me how much it meant to her that I had closed that loop and let her know that because she knew that she didn't waste her time. She knew that I was valuing her. It will greatly increase the chances that she will give me more feedback in the future as well.

Embedding "Ask" Into Organizational Culture

There's a little bit of trust back and forth. I'm like that too. A lot of times, I might get the feedback, and as much as I like to think I'm highly evolved, that wall of defensiveness for me might pop up every once in a while. I'll go away, let it sink, think about it, and say, “There were some good learning points there.” As you talk about in the book, sometimes our ability to see things that way gets impeded by the amygdala or emotion. I've got lots of emotion floating around.

It’s because you're human. We all do.

More or less. The people you know who tune in to this show are natural learners too. They're growth-oriented. They always want to learn or else they wouldn't tune in. First of all, how would somebody learn more about you?

First, I love to connect with people on LinkedIn. You can find me and connect with me at Jeff Wetzler on LinkedIn. There's a website for the book, which is www.AskApproach.com. On that website, you can find lots of resources and articles. There's an assessment that will help you know which of these five steps you're strong in and which ones you might need to work on. There are videos and all kinds of things. I would recommend going to the website. You can get the book anywhere books are sold.

Thank you. What are you learning? What are you reading? What are you excited about? There are 3 or 4 questions in a row there. We'll take one at a time.

I am reading a novel at the very moment called Kaaterskill Falls, which is a fascinating novel. You mentioned the bibliography, I was so focused on nonfiction and research. I'm giving my brain a break by reading some fiction. I believe that fiction is one of the best ways to gain empathy and curiosity. As much as I can, I'm trying to balance my nonfiction with my fiction.

On the business side or the impact work side, I'm really obsessed with the question, “How can I convert the ideas of Ask into enduring behavior change?” There is training, and that's a really important piece because there's skill building, but there's more to it than that. There are the structures and organizations that we sit within. There's even the technology that we use as well.

I'm really trying to push myself to get creative about what are the various ways that we can weave this into the workflow and into the systems, structures, processes, and cultures of organizations. I'm developing a bunch of different offerings and experimenting with different ones to try to help embed Ask into everything we do.

That’s amazing. First of all, thank you. What a pleasure meeting you. I really enjoyed the book. I was so pleased to get you on as a guest. I'm sure everybody's going to get massive value from this episode. Thank you so much for joining the show.

Thank you for reading the book, for having me, and for your great questions in this conversation. I really enjoyed it.

Thank you very much for joining. We run the show because we're looking to improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales. In doing so, we believe we're improving the lives of everybody in professional sales. Thank you for tuning in. If you like this episode, please like and subscribe to the show because that's how we get great guests like Jeff to join us.

If there are other ways that we can provide value through the show, we're super growth-oriented. We love constructive criticism. Please send your ideas to me. My personal email is MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. If there's a guest you think we should have or there's an idea for the podcast where you can get more value from this, let us know. That's my personal email. I respond personally to every idea that's sent in, so thanks for doing that. In the meantime, we'll see everybody next time on the show.

Important Links

• Transcend Labs

• Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs in Leadership and Life

• Jeff Wetzler on LinkedIn

• In the Funnel Sales Coaching on LinkedIn

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

• A New Way To Think with Roger Martin

• How A Minute To Think Can Transform Your Life With Juliet Funt

• Thinking, Fast and Slow

• How to Listen

• Can You Hear Me?

• Kaaterskill Falls

• A Minute to Think

About jeff wetzler

Dr. Jeff Wetzler is an expert on adult learning and leadership and development. He brings 25 years of experience as a successful entrepreneur, operating executive, and advisor to top corporate and NGO leaders around the world.

Blending a unique set of leadership experiences in the fields of business and education, he's pursued this quest as a management consultant to the world's top corporations, as a learning facilitator for leaders around the world, as Chief Learning Officer at Teach For America, and most recently, as co-CEO of Transcend, a nationally recognized education innovation organization.

Jeff's career is dedicated to unlocking human potential by helping people learn more deeply and transform their mindsets to realize bold new possibilities for themselves, their oorganizations and communities.

Jeff earned a Doctorate in Adult Learning and Leadership from Columbia University and a Bachelor's in Psychology from Brown University. He is a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network and is an Edmund Hillary Fellow.

Quickly Scaling A BDR Team With Camilo Silva

Scaling a BDR team comes with a long list of challenges, but Camilo Silva pulled off something unexpected – he scaled his own team from zero to more than 50 people after getting back to the game in just 15 months. In this conversation with Mark Cox, the Vice President of Sales & Business Development of Info-Tech Research Group shares his secrets in hiring individuals with curiosity, coachability, and competitiveness. He highlights the importance of crafting an effective onboarding plan, providing continuous feedback, and offering constant support to the entire team. Camilo also explains why taking a sabbatical from your career is vital in avoiding burnout and unlocking a much deeper growth experience.

---

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Quickly Scaling A BDR Team With Camilo Silva

We've got a great episode for you. You're going to see a couple of episodes over the next little while, where we have discussions and interviews with leaders or folks who are practitioners running sales organizations. Our guest in this episode is Camilo Silva. He's with the Info-Tech Research Group. You're going to love this conversation because of what Camilo has done. He built a BDR team from 0 to 55. He's got 6 or 7 managers and then he's got 55 BDRs. What we're going to talk about are some concepts about how you would recruit, interview, hire, and onboard successfully that big a team in that short period.

We talked a little bit about the things they interview for at Info-Tech Research Group. He talked about the three Cs, Curiosity, Coachability, and Competitiveness. I like that. Camilo also talked a lot about collaborating with the rest of the organization to make sure HR, training and development, sales enablement, and revenue operations are all aligned in the process. Another super interesting thing about Camilo is you'll find that he's got a real growth orientation. He's got an amazing calmness and balance for somebody running an organization that big.

Camilo took a six-month sabbatical before he started this assignment. After having an enormously successful career in technology and sales and he kept getting promoted, he took a pause in the middle of all that. It is incredible to talk to him about why he did it and what he got from it. You'll enjoy that discussion. As he's come back, he's got that clarity on why. It’s a great conversation with Camilo. I enjoyed chatting with Camilo. I'm sure you're going to enjoy this episode. When you do, please like and subscribe to the show. Thank you for doing so. Here's Camilo Silva.

Camilo, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here.

Mark, thank you for having me.

Introducing Camilo Silva

One of the reasons as we heard in the intro I was so excited to chat with you is there aren't that many people leading and managing building massive SDR-BDR teams the same way you are at Info-Tech Research Group. We're going to get into a lot of that conversation and a little bit about recruiting, interviewing, hiring, onboarding, and those kinds of good things. Everybody's always interested in the journey of someone like you, Camilo. First of all, welcome to the show. Would you share maybe the short story of your professional journey that got you to this point of being the Vice President of Business Development?

Like 99% of people, I fell into sales. I graduated from university like, “What do I want to do with this diploma?” I had a brother-in-law who introduced me and said, “You should try out sales.” Once graduated, I started as a sales rep at Info-Tech Research Group. I was introduced to it through a career fair. I did about four years in terms of selling the role. The first year was overwhelming. I was trying to get my feet on the ground. “How do I do prospecting? What's a discovery call? How do I manage my pipeline?” I did that for about four years.

In 2020, I got tapped on the shoulder to start leading a team of AEs. I got introduced to management, as well as remote management very early on. I did that for about 2 to 3 years. I was successful and won multiple President's Clubs here at Info-Tech. In late 2022, I decided to take a career break. I decided to go back to Columbia. I wanted to take six months off, see my family, and spend quality time with them.

I got tapped on the shoulder to come back to Info-Tech and start leading our BDR function, which we were having some challenges in terms of top-of-funnel and having the right amount of meetings. We wanted to scale that out. We've grown the BDR function from 0 to 55 BDRs. We've scaled fast. We had success and fun while doing it. I’m excited to talk a little bit more about that in detail but that's a little bit of my professional career.

Taking A Sabbatical

What an amazing journey and so are we. You threw it out there like it's an average stat. You said, “We grew from 0 to 55 people on the SDR-BDR team.” That's a flabbergasting number. There's going to be a lot of people out here having tough times building teams of 5, 10, or 15 but you build that many people in that short period. One of the things that is amazing about your journey was taking that sabbatical. They do this in academia.

As a professor, for X number of years, you got to take a full year off. It's this idea of recharging the batteries, regrouping, enjoying life, and getting your perspective. It's such a smart idea. Some of the best thought leaders in the entrepreneurial space, which I tend to play in as an entrepreneur, are always talking about the importance of recharging, recalibrating, and getting away. In a nutshell, how did you change in that period? When you came back into the game after six months, what differences did you notice? How important was it for you to take that break?

I want to share quite a bit here but first of all, taking the break was a very hard decision.

I bet it was right because you're on a roll. You kept getting promoted.

Coming from immigrant parents and always wanting to be successful and give back to them, my why has always been to give back to my parents and tell them, “I'm going to take a step away.” It was difficult in my mind. Part of the reason why I took the six-month break is to get represent to my why. I then was like, “I'm getting a little bit older. What is that next why? What do I get enjoyment of? What do I get fulfillment from?” I read a ton and did a bunch of research, “What are the benefits? What's going on?”

The way that I rationalize that is, “If I'm working for the next 30 years, 6 months is the 60th of my professional career. I'm in this Goldilocks zone where I'm in a financial position where I can do it. Let's do it.” What did I learn about myself though? It was very interesting because I began in December and went back to Columbia where I'm from. Family and everything was going on. There was a lot of fun. January hit and everybody went back into their routines. I was like, “Now what?”

You must have been so anxious or restless.

I'm used to being on the phone and grinding in the office. I was running at 100 miles an hour. I had to sit down with my thoughts and say, “What do I like to do? Where do I get fulfillment? How do I want to invest my time having all the time in the world?” Initially, it's like, “Let's travel and go out to the best restaurants. Let's do X and Y.”

What I learned about myself after two months is when fun is always fun, it is not that fun. When there is no grind, there's no challenge. A nice dinner doesn't feel as good. I do enjoy working with others, developing, and learning. That realization allowed me to come back into the workforce six months later with an energy that I don't know if I would have been able to pick up without it.

When fun is always fun, it is not that fun.

It's so wise, insightful, and mature to be able to do that but the constant day-to-day pressure is you're from a big city here. You're working in Toronto, Canada. There's a lot of chasing. Don't miss the six months. You might have been in a position for another promotion. It's so hard to take that pause but in the long-term, it's so important for all of us.

When you come back and you've connected to that why, the grind starts to become a lot more enjoyable. It stops becoming a grind. It's like, “There is a why. This is why I'm doing this.” BDR-SDR work is one of the more difficult things in B2B sales. Getting attention, interest, and engagement are extremely difficult things to do. If our leaders see it as a grind, the team starts to see it as a grind. If our leader sees it as one of the most strategically important things in B2B sales, that's how the team starts to see their function and much more involved.

For those reading, we love your thoughts and comments on how you recharge, go back, and find your why. This idea does connect in a little bit. Camilo, we both know each other. We've done some work together. You've always come across to me as somebody very calm and confident. There's a balance and a calmness to your approach in an industry where that's lacking sometimes at a leadership level. That does translate down to the team.

A steady hand and calm leadership. People want to follow not somebody who’s running around like their head has been chopped off and that they're like a chicken with no head with so much stress. That's a bit of a guiding light in some ways to your management team that reports to you and then to the SDRs and BDRs.

Recruiting For A BDR Team

We switch over to the day-to-day and then think, “We're going to build BDR function for the organization. It's going to be significant in size.” It seems like a huge task. All of us are always looking for talent in this area. You guys had amazing numbers in terms of ramping up 55 people in 15 months. Let's start with the basics. First of all, how did you do it? What are some of the attributes you're looking for in an individual that you might consider for the team?

How did we do it? I got to give a big kudos to our talent acquisition team who became my primary stakeholder when I first came back. It’s important to ensure that your TA team is aligned with the traits and what you are looking for in a new hire. I worked very closely with them. I read a lot of books too like Who. It taught me about scorecards and ensuring that we can measure how we are running these interviews. That allowed us to get a lot of alignment, not just from a TA perspective but the first and second rounds of interviews that were not being done by me. I was typically in the final round of interviews.

In terms of what I am looking for, my team knows about the three Cs. I've added a few Cs along the way, especially when hiring for BDR. A lot of time, it's their first or second role coming out of school. They don't know what they don't know. They're trying out sales for the first time. They fell into sales and they don't know what they don't know. You're looking at traits more so than experience. There's some experience that could be helpful and relevant but when we boil it down and try to simplify it, the number one C is Curiosity.

That's a word that I try to repeat as much as possible. “What questions are they asking? How many questions are they asking? Are they genuinely interested in this role?” The level of questioning is directly correlated with how fast you ramp up as a BDR. The second C is Coachability. “Are you going to take feedback? How do you take feedback, put it into action, and deliberately practice?”

The third C is Competitive. “Do you love to win? Do you hate to lose? How much do you want to win?” Over the course of the year, we've added consistency and communication. A bunch of words that started with C started to come out. When we look, they're curious, coachable, and competitive. That combination is an early indicator of a successful BDR and AE as they go through their trajectory.

Having curious, coachable, and competitive people is an early indicator of a successful BDR team.

First of all, I love the simplicity of it. We've always talked about intelligence, drive, and humility. I like your three Cs better. It's the same thing, frankly but the three Cs are easier for everybody in the organization to understand and remember. Camilo referenced Who, which is an amazing book on interviewing people. It’s by Randy Street and Jeff Smart.

The fun thing about the Smart family is Jeff Smart is a second generation. His dad, Smart Senior, invented the top-grading interview. The son got into the family business of being an expert in terms of interviewing. Those are great books. You're going through these candidates. You know what you were looking for. How would it work within the organization? We don't have to get into detail so much about anything proprietary at Info-Tech Research Group.

The research and advisory space has a huge success story team. One of the things that's always a challenge is this idea of consensus or having multiple people weigh in on an interview process. How do we get Camilo, the head of HR, and maybe somebody else who's involved aligned? Are there any suggestions for the groups out here in terms of making sure that we have some way of managing through the consensus required without delaying things?

I love that you shouted out that book. It helped tremendously. It’s about a scorecard, aligning on a scorecard, and being collaborative, not just building it out on an island. It's like, “What have we seen work in the past? What would you like to see?” I also want to give a quick shout-out to The Sales Development Playbook by Trish Bertuzzi. It’s another beautiful read for anybody starting a new VR function, as well as The Sales Acceleration Formula by Mark Roberge. Those were my top three reads coming back into this role.

It's very important to have collaboration with these departments and ensure that you agree on who is making the final call. The final call will be based on design principles or the scorecard that we all aligned to. On my end, it was working with my boss, as well as the head of TA. We came together early on and aligned on what we were looking for, how we were going to measure it, and how the decision was going to be made. We had the green light from there. There’s nothing more to add on that front.

It’s a couple of other fantastic books like The Sales Development Playbook by Trish Bertuzzi. If you're looking for data, insight, and research on the SDR-BDR function, one of the best sources we've found is The Bridge Group. They're great. I love that book. Mark Roberge has HubSpot and The Sales Acceleration Formula. The background of HubSpot is also magnificent. One of the things that I was so excited about in terms of chatting with you was I met the first 30, more or less, of your team. They're great people.

One of the things I keep coming back to when we're doing our recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and all those kinds of things is if you want a great salesperson, you do have to start with a great person. Those of us who were athletes and all of those things growing up, we knew there were people in our leagues who were fantastically talented players but weren't team players. You can have either personal stats or team stats. Meeting your team, there's a competitive element for sure. They’re great teammates.

One of the things I forgot to mention is one of the things that we did in the final round of interviews was in person. Everything else was virtual but once they got to me, it was a final round interview. I knew what the scorecard was. Dp you what was another question I asked myself, Mark? “Would I want to go next door and have a beer with this person? Are they somebody that I genuinely want to invest in? They seem like a good person.” I call it the vibe check, internally. That played a pivotal role in selecting that in-person. Ninety percent of communication is nonverbal. We're looking at each other by a 2X2 screen. You don't know what I'm doing with my hands but I could tell you a lot of what's going on. I talk with my hands a lot. That was also a big source of success, those two factors and the human element to hiring.

90% of communication is nonverbal.

Fantastic thoughts. This idea has been there for a while, “Would I want to go and spend some time with this person?” That's going to come across too. “Are they interested and interesting?” Certainly, in professional sales, that's one of the things we have to think about being interested, the curiosity and interesting. On the curiosity front team, that was the first of the four Cs. Most people in the world are highly intellectually curious but there's someone who's zoned in on this whole theme in terms of the connection between curiosity and actual success. Her name is Diane Hamilton. She's been on the show a couple of times.

She has written two great books but also ran a syndicated radio show, where she interviewed the most successful people in the world, every big name you can think of. Presidents and top executives at every company all were on the show. To a person, that's where this curiosity came from. There's this constant theme when she was having these interviews that they were all so intellectually curious. She talked about how you can cultivate it and then also talked about, “In some organizations if barriers exist, what do you do to get through it so you can continue to encourage that curiosity?”

Building An Onboarding Plan

Camilo, as we're ramping up, you're building this team and then you've got this task that for many leaders would seem overwhelming. How do I on-board these people so that within a reasonable period, they've got a shot at making a contribution? Unfortunately, we may also find out that sales aren't for them. No recruiting process is perfect. Can you speak to, from your perspective, some of the thoughts and considerations about building that onboarding plan? You would have been recalibrating it and starting that again.

We had an existing onboarding for sales reps. It's 4 or 5 weeks.

Account executives?

We have an enablement team. How do we condense it to make sure that it's the right size for the BDRs? I speak on collaboration quite a bit because it's very important in a bigger organization to make sure that we are aligned with the other areas of the business that have already put a ton of work into these before so we don't have to start from scratch. With that being said, I said, “I want to be part of this first onboarding class.”

I'm going to sit in onboarding with them. I want to experience what it's like, hear how the training is being delivered, see the engagement from the BDRs, and be there as a resource. Another reason for this is that the organization in 2020, we went fully remote. The BDR team was the first team that was going to be back in office four times a week. I made sure I sat in with them. I took notes and sent them to the enablement team afterward.

There's a difference between training and certification. You can do all the best training but if there's no reinforcement, recalling, and type of certification, if I asked that BDR about the training a month later, the forgetting curve is going to do the work for us and they won't be able to recall anything. From that end, I ensured that I wanted to submerse myself in the existing condensed onboarding.

You can do all the training you want, but if there is no reinforcement or recall of what you have learned, you can never be certified.

Every single time, we had a feedback loop. What did we like? What did we not like? Where can we condense areas? How can we make it more practical? We've had multiple hiring classes since. Every single time, I'm always asking, “Where did you get the most value? What could be changed? What can we do?” We make small adjustments from training class to training class.

Look at the four Cs that you have. This is this idea, whereas we leaders, are we walking the walk or talking the talk? You're coachable. You're saying, “We've got this onboarding plan. We want to hear from you, those going through it. While it's still fresh, we want to hear what's working, what isn't working, and how we continually improve for the next group. Even if we get 5% better, it starts to compound over time.

The other thing that's amazing to me is we'll call it a canary in a coal mine of a healthy organization. I ran from some training to this episode recording. We were doing training and jumped onto this episode. One of the things that's a great sign for me is if we're training a group of BDRs, for example, the account executives or the BDR leader is in the training, living it, and actively participating.

This idea of when you said, “I want to go through this and be in the program with them,” is a critical success component because we need to continue to reinforce some of the core concepts. One-time training doesn't work. Our old pal Hermann Ebbinghaus said, “Forgetting curve is alive and well unless you do something to block it.”

One of the things is having the leader go through the training so they can start to reinforce some of these core concepts so that they resonate. That's a dynamite idea. Were there things when you went through the training that you thought resonated with the team, whether it be role plays, homework assignments, presentations, and so forth? What were some of the things that kept the team engaged but were also effective?

Two things come to mind. One, role plays. You have to put it into action, get the feedback, get stuck, get nervous, and get those butterflies going when you're next up in the round-robin. That's how we learn. We got to be outside of our comfort zone. Those butterflies and that nervousness mean that you're stepping outside of your comfort zone and learning a new skill. The role plays were one of them. The second one that we've done over the last 5 to 6 onboarding classes that have gotten a lot of great feedback is a mindset session on the very last day of onboarding.

Tell us about that.

The structure here is it's a workshop. What's everybody's definition of mindset? Why is it important in sales? Sales is a roller coaster with a lot of perseverance and XYZ. The average performing BDR, if they get 10 pickups, they'll convert 15% of them. The top performer will convert 25%. If I say that in another way, Mark, the average performer is hearing no 85% of the time and the top performer is hearing no 75% of the time.

I don't know about you but I don't like hearing no. No can be connected with rejection. If you're hearing rejection 85% of the time, what type of impact can that have on your mindset? That can bring doubt, anxiety, and fear. That internal talk starts to impact behaviors. “I'm not good enough. I'm going to get a no. This phone weighs 100 pounds and my confidence going into the phone is a little shaky. Therefore, I'm making fewer calls, doing fewer conversions, and feeding into the mindset of ‘I'm not good enough.’” It becomes a vicious cycle.

Being able to talk about that proactively and tell them, “Rejection is a fact. It is coming and going to happen.” All of these things that we're talking about are going to happen. I'm a firm believer that you can take control of that narrative. This rejection is one step closer to a win or being able to acknowledge that, “I'm in this state.” I asked them, “What are ways that we can get out of that state?” They come up with answers. Some of them meditate, go out for a walk, use humor, or play video games. Everybody has their own mechanisms to get out of this.

BDR Team: Rejection is just one step closer to a win.

I believe in talking about this early on. I also emphasize that you all fell into sales. You don't know if this is what you want. You're trying this out and you're about to hear a no for the first three months. You've been a top performer in school or you're a great varsity athlete. You're going to get beaten down because the sales development role is the hardest. You're actively choosing to call people who are not expecting your call. This is all outbound.

Being able to talk and have a very real conversation about the mental battle that's going to happen and creating an environment where they do not have to withhold. As humans, we like to look good or we want to avoid looking bad. When you're hearing a no, guess what you want to do? You don't want to tell anybody. You want to keep that to yourself. That is no bueno. There's coaching that can be done. We can role-play that objection again so you're better prepared for next time.

With that concept of not withholding, speak up when you get a rejection and when you're not feeling well. Leaning in on your teammate also has had a major impact on the BDRs, becoming friends within the organization and coming up together. It's one of my favorite sessions as well because it goes into the mindset piece. That is one of the most important things that any person can invest in as it drives behaviors and everything else quality of life.

I'm jotting down notes, furiously. It's funny, Camilo. We've never talked about this at this level of detail, even though we know each other. As part of our training, we have a mindset component. We don't get into absorbing and dealing with the rejection. We skirt over it frankly a bit and talk about how it's not personal and how you recharge but it’s this idea of don't withhold. It's okay. This is what we're going to experience. Frankly, I love this idea of being transparent saying, “None of you in this room walked off the ice when you were playing hockey in grade seven and said, ‘My lifelong dream is not to be a hockey goalie. It's to be in professional sales.’ That's not what happened. You want to be a goalie and an outplayer.” Everybody loves being a goalie more.

It's okay for us to have this conversation. Even knowing that puts a little more wind in my sails because it feels like the organization embraces the fact, “This is a tough thing to do. We have to be cognizant of it. It doesn't mean it's impossible.” As human beings, we're hardwired to avoid rejection and vulnerability because it's scary. Like anything in life, once you start throwing yourself out there and jumping outside your comfort zone, your comfort zone increases and you try harder things.

The underlying theme for the younger folks out there in the BDRs and SDRs is the Imposter syndrome, which is alive and well. Regardless of bravado, even for me at this point in my career, much older than probably anybody reading this, every once in a while after a couple of rough goes in a row, I might hit a trough and go, “Do we know what we're doing here? What's going on? What am I doing wrong?”

It’s this idea that there's a little bit of Imposter syndrome in everybody and that's okay. It doesn't stop us from doing what we need to do but it’s having that team, the collaboration, and the other thing I love back to the office. This is so much easier if I've got a team of 9 or 10 other people working down a line doing the same thing. The power of the Peloton or the power of the group is a real thing. I've seen the energy of your cool offices in Toronto. They used to be a musical concert hall. I've seen the energy of being there. It puts wind in your sails to walk into a place where the energy is already cooking.

When I was taking my six-month break and was looking to come back, I had five bullet points of what I was looking for. One of them was remote work. That's hard to believe. I'm glad that I decided to scratch that off because I cannot emphasize it, especially for somebody new to sales within their first 3 to 4 years. Once you know what you're doing, by all means, you want to have that balance and see your kids. I get all of that.

I joked about it with my boss. Some of these new sales reps that we were hiring are hearing no 75% to 85% of the time. They're surrounded by four walls. There's nobody to talk about it with. You want to avoid looking bad so you're not going to share it with anybody. Where's the development? In the office culture to your point, you learn through osmosis. There are others on the other side and he's objection handling. They get the final no and then you laugh it off like, “Listen to my rejection here.”

One of the successes of how we were able to scale fast is the concept of creating teams and teamwork. Not everything has to go through me or my managers. It's how the first generation of BDRs that were hired transfer knowledge to the second generation of BDRs and create a mentorship system and specific blocks where they shadow each other, work together, and collaborate.

It's very different and in person. “Let's go next door for a beer or a drink of your choice if you don't drink.” That goes a very long way in terms of retention, engagement, and mindset. Having people pick you up when you're not feeling good and people who care about you goes a very long way, especially when you're dealing with the no after no.

People who care about you goes a very long way when dealing with rejections.

How can this idea of teamwork and support be wrong? One of the things I always find that's amazing is if you've got a teammate who's having a bit of a tough time and you take a few minutes to sit down with them, have a chat, listen to them, give a little coaching, and put a little wind in the sails, you feel better. Forget them but by giving a little bit of that positivity in the universe and lifting somebody else, you feel better.

Sometimes as you're reinforcing some of these things, you're saying things out loud like, “Nothing's changed in terms of your ability. You've just had 5 or 6 tough calls. When you booked three appointments, nothing has changed. Nobody stole your talent.” You're telling yourself that. It's a virtuous cycle if we've got a team and people contribute. When they land a hand to somebody new coming on board, that individual, once they've onboarded, will remember it. The culture is to lend a hand to the next person coming in. It’s a virtuous circle of everything moving up positively.

One of the things that we get a look at sometimes with the clients who engage us and maybe we try and help and support is our reasonable ramp-up period. Sometimes for organizations, some of the pressure felt by the SDR-BDR team, particularly for outbound, is they don't get enough of a ramp-up period. In addition to everything we've talked about, making it so difficult, they also feel this cadence like, “By month two, if I'm not hitting my numbers, I'm going to be out and all these other things.” I know you're very well-read on all these things. What are your thoughts in terms of a reasonable ramp-up period for somebody who's doing this?

It's interesting you mentioned The Bridge Group before. They do benchmarking on this particular topic. What they and I found was three months. The first month is a 3 to 4-week onboarding. We want them completely immersed in that. In the second month, we're ensuring that we're coaching on the behaviors that will drive the result. Are you adding X amount of contacts into a sequence? Are you completing your sequences by the end of the day? Are you curious? Are you controlling the controllables? It is another line that my BDRs make fun of me for.

I'm all about behaviors. Results are backward-looking. I want to make sure that you're exhibiting the right behavior. That second month is behaviors. They have a zero meeting expectation in month one. They're 50% to their ramp in month two. Come month three, they're going to be at 100% of their meeting quota. We provide all the structures, infrastructures, role plays, one-on-ones, and playbooks. “If you're struggling with a connect rate, a phone conversion rate, or a show rate, here's a playbook.” It outlines all the behaviors that drive that result.

This is something new that we've started documenting after taking Kevin Dorsey's Sales Acceleration course. A manager is coaching a BDR on show rate. I have five managers. Let's say there are fifteen different things that you can do for a show rate. They may bring up 2 or 3. The other manager brings up five and then the other one brings up something else.

Why? It’s because all of this information is living in here and it hasn't been documented somewhere like, “Here's a step-by-step.” One of the things that we've been doing is, “Let's write it down and study what great looks like. If A BDR is doing it, let's have them write it down.” We’re essentially creating this compilation of playbooks written by the BDRs. Guess who the BDRs want to learn from? Not this guy. I already talked enough.

I'll debate you on that one. They do get more. I'm sure they do want to learn from you but they also want to get more from their teammates who are doing this and being successful. The idea is so smart. “Write it down.” Do we ever have enough time for this? Nope. Is it something where we capture best practices and experience? This is the value of having a larger organization. We have so much insight because we're making so many calls, having so many meetings, and closing so many deals.

All these things are super important to us. Taking the time to document these things is critically important. At some point in time, Camilo, we'll come back. We're going to talk about leadership and management but we're on this critically important topic of BDRs and SDRs. The truth is for any organization or leader out there, the number one thing people want in sales is quality conversations with the right buyer and more opportunities.

Most organizations think they're pretty good at taking an opportunity and converting it into a deal but when you start to look at the metrics, they're always coming back and saying, “We can't get attention and interest. We can't get a meeting.” There's a lot of good logical reasons they can't, given what takes place. This is that function that's so super important.

Staying Current And Professional

Two other questions would be super helpful. You referenced about five books over the course of this episode. You talked about you taking a break. You've got this self-awareness and emotional intelligence. Let's talk first about sources of information for you. How do you stay current and professional in sales? What do you do to continue to learn? What are the things you like doing to continue to learn?

The first thing that comes to mind is a company called Pavilion. Their CEO is Sam Jacobs, who I believe has been on this show as well.

He's a great guy.

What he's built is a community of sales leaders and sales managers. He allowed them the opportunity to share best practices and ask questions. Within that community or membership subscription, there are also a lot of courses. There's CRO school, revenue architecture, go-to-market strategy, and bridging the gap from BDR to AE, which I'm taking. I love to learn in many different ways. I love reading and taking online courses but the magic is when this happens.

It’s when you can talk about it, bring it into your day-to-day, and I can introduce it to my managers and begin brainstorming as to how we operationalize this within our organizations, not just be theory that I talk about. From that perspective, it's extremely important to continue to flex that curiosity muscle. Pavilion is a resource that I work there. On LinkedIn, I follow some great, amazing people who are posting fantastic content. There are mentors and people who I reached out to whom I have weeklies and monthlies with and I'm continuously asking questions.

Magic happens when you can bring your learnings into your day-to-day and change how your team actually operates.

There’s my CRO, my current boss, and the people that I've known in the past. Also, you. You've come and done some work with the BDR. I say, “Mark, can I pick your brain a little bit?” I’m always flexing that curiosity muscle. When I do, guess what I'm doing after? I'm making notes. Am I writing a two-page essay after a conversation? No, but I'm going to write down my key takeaways so that I can come back to them over and over again in the future.

Evolving Perception Of Sales

Here’s the last question as we wrap up here. What are you most excited about in terms of this business discipline in professional sales? Every time I chat with you, whether we are training your teams or having one-on-ones, I leave more energized when I'm chatting with you about this business discipline. If you have inherent intellectual curiosity and positivity toward what we do, what are you most excited about in the future of B2B sales?

I'll share it like this. When I was thinking about coming back, my boss said, “We're building out this BDR function.” I was like, “I want to be where the revenue is. I want to be closing. I want to be where the money is at.” With that said, when I thought about it more in detail and we've talked about this in the past, this first year in sales or second year, you're trying something out for the first time. You don't know if you're going to like it or not.

It’s the difference between going into an organization that has a great product market fit, great training, great culture, and great vibe versus one that doesn't. We've already established that the barrier to entry in sales has no certification or anything. The difference between joining A or B could be the difference between somebody saying, “I want to dedicate my career to this,” or, “I never want to make a cold call ever again. Let me take a look at something else,” which is completely fine if that's what you learn throughout the process.

What intrigues me personally is how the perception of sales is evolving. We've talked about in the ‘80s and ‘90s, you mentioned to somebody, “I want to start in sales,” and there's this car salesperson, Wolf of Wall Street, and this mad man like what's been shown through Hollywood. It's very different now. It's a consultative type sale. You have to be curious, have an executive presence, and work on your craft like you would if you were a doctor or a lawyer. You have to put in the work, be curious, and practice it.

That first iteration of BDRs is being promoted to AEs. “Here are some gaps that we identified. How can we mitigate that for the future so that when they do come in, they're ready to rock and roll or at least that ramp isn't as big?” It's that evolvement of how sales is perceived and the career that it can be, how fulfilling, and the impact that you're making on others. That’s something that excites me. A big part of my why is helping others find their muse and what brings them fulfillment. We're going to see that a little bit more over the next few years.

Episode Wrap-Up

I completely agree with you but we'll have another conversation on that. There's a day coming where we have a formal certification for B2B sales. As we wrap up, first of all, I want to say thank you so much for joining, Camilo. What a great conversation. It's been such a pleasure having you on the show.

Mark, thank you so much for having me. I loved and always love conversations with you.

Right back at you. Tell us a little bit about Info-Tech so we understand what Info-Tech does. If somebody reading this and wants to connect with you, what's the best way to learn a little more and connect?

We are an IT research and advisory firm. We are working with IT professionals. We're right in the middle of the tech ecosystem. What we do is we're providing these IT leaders with actionable insights. We advise to help them execute their key priorities. In other words, we help IT leaders get done. How can people connect with me? On LinkedIn, it’s Camilo Silva. You can send me a request and we can go from there.

Thanks, Camilo. As always with the show, we're trying to elevate the performance and professionalism of B2B sales. Our belief is that if we help you do that, we're improving the lives of professional salespeople but we're also growth-oriented. I know I'm not perfect at this. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe to the show. That does matter to us. That's how we get great guests like Camilo.

If there are a couple of things that we can do to make this even more effective for you, we love constructive criticism. You can send your suggestions to me, MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email. I personally respond to every bit of constructive criticism that we receive. We appreciate it. Team, thank you so much for reading. We'll see you next time.

Important Links

• Info-Tech Research Group

• Who

• The Sales Development Playbook

• The Sales Acceleration Formula

• The Bridge Group

• HubSpot

• Diane Hamilton - Past episode

• Pavilion

• Sam Jacobs - Past episode

• Camilo Silva - LinkedIn

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

About Camilo Silva

With over eight years in sales, including six Presidents Club awards, Camilo Silva is a sales leader who has transitioned from a top-performing rep to building and scaling high-performing teams.

After a six-month career break to reflect and recharge, he took on the challenge of building a BDR function from the ground up at Info-Tech Research Group.

Over the past 18 months, Camilo has grown the team to 60, driving transformative results in pipeline generation. Dedicated to shaping the next generation of sales talent, Camilo focuses on creating environments where individuals can thrive and achieve their full potential.

The $100M Journey: Turning Setbacks Into Triumphs With John St. Pierre

The $100M journey is a testament to the power of persistence and vision in achieving extraordinary success. Join Mark Cox as he sits down with John St. Pierre, author of The $100M Journey. John shares his inspiring journey from college student to successful entrepreneur in this insightful conversation. Discover the secrets behind his success, including valuable lessons on building and scaling businesses, overcoming setbacks, and achieving massive goals. Learn how John turned adversity into opportunity, navigated the challenges of rapid growth, and ultimately realized his $100M dream. Don't miss this inspiring story of entrepreneurial triumph!

---

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

The $100M Journey: Turning Setbacks Into Triumphs With John St. Pierre

John, welcome to the show. It's so great to meet you.

Thanks for having me, Mark.

We got a bit of a shared history, certainly with your College Pro experience. I was so excited to speak to you, John. First of all, I loved the book The $100 Million Journey. I love the transparency of the book in terms of the successes and failures. One of the things I haven't ever seen before was that I loved it when you were referencing another book. It's not just a footnote, but you actually do a blurb on the book and a summary of the book. It is just so interesting.

The Journey Of Building And Growing A Business

I was super excited to talk to you because I’ve always seen that connection between entrepreneurs and selling, it is very important for any entrepreneurial organization, and the behaviors and the approach are very similar to the two groups of people. Maybe just for context to get things properly started, tell us a little bit maybe the short story of your journey to get you here.

Mark, I think we have a lot in common. I'm from Montreal. I played hockey growing up. My kids still play hockey. I started my entrepreneurial roots in the college painting business. There's probably a lot more that we have similar. Excited to jump into this conversation. I think, for me, the journey of an entrepreneur, and you mentioned it very well, a lot of entrepreneurs first start by learning to sell.

If you go really right back to that first job out of college, I had a really interesting twist, Mark, which was, I was a Canadian going to school in the United States Who had a student visa, but I didn't have a work visa, so I couldn't go bartend like my roommates were in the summertime. My first summer, I went back and planted trees in Northern Ontario as my summer job. I vowed I was never going to do that again.

I found this loophole, which was that you can own an LLC, a limited liability company in the United States, without being on a work visa. I was like, “That's interesting. I don't have to go on payroll. I can actually own a company.” With that, I became a franchisee for College Pro Painters as a junior in college and going back to sales. It's like, “Let us teach you how to paint and now go convince homeowners to pay you $3,000 to $5,000 per paint job and you don't even have any painters yet.”

Being thrown into the sales realm was really interesting. I can remember walking away from my first estimate and getting that first deposit check, $500 or so, and I just sold these homeowners on trusting me in painting their home and the responsibility that came with that sale and then going, “I can do this. Let me go get the next one and the next one.”

Here we are 30-some years later and taking all the learnings from those experiences, and they were plentiful, to where I am now, which is now, I'm the chairperson of a holding company. We have five small union-sized businesses the largest being a $100 million national facilities, maintenance and construction company down here in the US. We also provide services in Canada as well. Taking all that learning over that journey has just been quite the ride.

I lived that same world of the student painters. I worked for the main competitor to College Pro, which was called Student Works. I can still remember that first estimate with my general manager, when I was in front of a homeowner and starting the sales process of trying to give them an estimate on painting their home. By the way, I’ve sold a billion-dollar deal. I’ve sold large corporate deals. It is pretty difficult to extract $5,000 from a homeowner, much different than the corporate world because this is money out of their wallet.

John, you'll appreciate this. We painted interiors during my first year in the painting company. Now we're in somebody's house, we're painting their dining room, we're spilling paint on their dining room table or expensive rug. There were some difficult times, but there was some great learning there, for sure. Your journey was just incredible.

How John Helps Entrepreneurs Today

After starting multiple businesses that surpassed the $50 million in revenue point, and then eventually the $100 million in revenue point. The ups and downs of those journeys where you had ownership in some cases, not as much ownership in some cases, and had some hard lessons learned. Given what you do and how do you help entrepreneurs, John? You do a lot of this type of thing and coach a lot of entrepreneurs as well.

I think, Mark, through that story of being an entrepreneur and growing, I learned a lot about what I help entrepreneurs through my failure. Not that I had one failure, I had many failures, but my biggest failure was I cofounded a company. We grew it for over fifteen years to $55 million in global revenues. I was the CEO of the business, and we were a humming. We wanted to take the next step to grow up from $55 million to North of $100 million. We brought on $20 million of private equity funding. Seven months later, I was fired.

I was fired from the very company that I not only founded, but I poured fifteen years of heart and soul into, and everything that I had, and I had the logo tattooed on my forehead. My kids had nothing but that company's apparel. It was in the industry. I wanted to spend the rest of my life. It was devastating. I woke up in the aftermath of that and go, “Where did I go wrong? What were some of the keys introspectively that I contributed to this situation?” It's not what somebody did to me. It was what did I do? Where did I miss? It's in those learnings that I came up with seven principles of entrepreneurial success that I now work with entrepreneurs.

I actually took those principles that I had learned. I applied them to my other business that I had, and we successfully grew that from around $15 million of revenues to North of $100 million the right way. What I really work with entrepreneurs now, Mark, is how do you grow your lifestyle-size business? I call lifestyle a $5 million to $20 million business, not the startup phase.

As someone who's built a nice lifestyle business, how do you grow that to become a high performing business where you, as the owner, can build something of significance that you don't have to run every day and be there managing every day? In that journey from lifestyle to high performance, there are cliffs and pitfalls there. There are tons of opportunities for you to fail just like I did. I help entrepreneurs overcome that growth paradox or that messy middle stage of growth.

By the way, the other reason I was so excited, John, because I'm in that boat. Of course, In The Funnel is my entrepreneurial venture. We're a sales training company, and we are in that stage of lifestyle from the, as you said, the $500,000 to $4 million, $5 million we're in that stage now and so we're this lifestyle business trying to get to the next level. One of the things I found very comforting, at least for me as I was reading the book, whether it's you or Verne from Gazelle's and the Growth Institute talking about, everybody thinks that as you grow, things get easier and easier. You're sitting back and it's quite the opposite. You have to have your true North or this conscious decision that says, “I'm trying to get to the next level and here's why, but I’ve got to embrace the fact that everything's going to get harder.”

There's no doubt. Growth is painful. Growth is costly. Growth takes cash. Growth can be strenuous. I think the biggest problem I’ve found, Mark, is this concept of you want to grow so fast. We all, as entrepreneurs, want to grow so fast. We want to get our business to a certain destination so quickly that we lack the patient ambition to make the right decisions.

To really go at it in a calculated and strategic manner that can preserve your equity that you have in the business that can help your company and the team within your business grow along with you at the right pace. That's a lot of the things that I see with entrepreneurs is just that lack of patient ambition to grow their businesses the right way versus just grow it as quickly as they can. When you do that, you can run it right off the cliff like I did.

John, certainly in the world nowadays, there have been years of SaaS growth models where with the exponential returns that against revenue or multiples against revenue or EBITDA, but mostly it was against revenue and venture capital pound pushing money into those firms. It was really this growth at whatever cost model. There were two groups of people, I think, that were most affected by that.

First, the clients and the prospects. I think as we exploded sales teams in SaaS businesses trying to scale rapidly, we had massive farms of sales development reps and business development reps reaching out to clients and prospects, but they didn't know what they were doing. They hadn't received the same training you'd received with College Pro. Then the second thing that really gets impacted are those salespeople themselves because so many of them fail or they don't stay. There's a third of every professional sales organization turns over every year.

What I think people don't realize is the impact on a young person, if they start a new job, they're so proud to come out of college or university, they got that first sales job, maybe with a known brand in some capacity. Seven months later, if they're no longer working for that firm, or they were fired because it wasn't proper training, there weren't proper patient growth expectations, I think it has this major impact on a young person. That kind of failure stings. I could feel the sting of all of your ups and downs in the book as I was reading it. It's really well written, but it's so authentic and transparent.

It's very true. Back to that growth, what happens when people growth for growth’s sake or growth at all costs, what ends up happening is your business starts taking on customers you don't even want. They don't even fit your port portfolio. They start taking you in different directions. Now you start diversifying in all these different verticals your business wasn't intended to go in, and then you start consuming cash. The problem starts amplifying.

Having that focus on how you're trying to grow exactly, where you're trying to grow and being super targeted, like the riches are in the niches, like go after specifically what you do and do best speaks a little bit to that growth for growth's sake. When you growth for growth's sake, you just take everything that comes on. You say yes to everything. It never works.

The Most Important Sales Skills For Entrepreneurs

It's a quick path to burnout. Your clients aren't as happy. You're not as happy and it's a quick path to burnout. When we look at all of your experience and all of the teams that you had, you had these businesses scaling so rapidly. What are the most important sales skills for these entrepreneurs that you're working with? When you start to think about them and their businesses, what do you think are the most important sales skills for them to cultivate?

This may not be a sales skill, but I want to double down on what I just said, which is the shiny object syndrome. As an entrepreneur, you most likely were the top salesperson in your company before you hired your first salesperson. You knew how to do it. You knew how to sell the paint job, or you knew how to sell the product or the software, and then you built people around it to help you sell it going forward.

What ends up happening is you get bored and you're like, “They're selling that product now or that service, so why don't we start this new line or why don't we do these new things?” You start diversifying yourself all over the place without really getting what you have to its max capability. You start burning a lot of time, energy investment and all these different side things that don't play to the core of what your business is.

I think that focus to double down on what your company does and does well, until which point you've achieved a high performing company. Your company's making $1 million in net operating cashflow a year. That company can go on without you, and you want to start a new venture. Go for it. It gets that real core focus to not deviate from the plan.

Focus on doubling down on what your company does and does well until you’ve achieved a high-performing company.

I think to put it maybe a little bit differently as well, I remember my first sales training and they were talking about the vacuum salesperson who comes in and puts some dirt on the floor, vacuums it up and says, “Do you want to buy a vacuum?” They say, “Sure,” then they buy one. They train somebody that exact same way, and a year later, the person does not make any sales because he's trying to oversell the vacuum cleaner. How do you focus in on your core business and in the sales realm is really most important trait that I think entrepreneurs lack.

Just that ideal client profile and sticking to the knitting. I think it's almost in the nature of an entrepreneur, I think amazing entrepreneurs generally are about adding value into the universe. The challenge is they're always on the lookout for other ways that they can be helping clients and prospects. It seems so obvious. “We're going to do this and we're going to do this.”

One of the things is, it's not always sexy, but it's like exercise. Part of it is just the core discipline of showing up and doing the same thing, just staying with it and just staying focused because we're all curious and we're all intellectually challenged. Sometimes, we're always zipping all over the place. Frankly, we have that problem a lot here at In The Funnel. I think if our team was running this show and I wasn't on it they'd say, “Every once in a while, Mark comes in on a Tuesday and has this vision of something to do. Three weeks from now, it doesn't seem like such a great idea.”

That's the concept of patient ambition as well. It comes back full circle, which is to continue to go down the road. Go more aggressive, maybe down the same road, but not deviate. When I did find myself deviating as an entrepreneur, for example, we were in the sporting industry. We were running sporting events, hockey events, lacrosse events and all these different events. We're like, “We're running these events. These people need to wear jerseys. Let's make some jerseys. Let's open a manufacturing facility to make jerseys.”

The next thing you know, we're trying to sell a new product we knew nothing about and gassing millions of dollars a year to try and provide jerseys to our customers because we thought it was just a natural idea as opposed to just grow your core business, grow your core product or service. That lack of patient ambition plays into the sales component. Mark, that brings it me to other elements, which is what is the strategic plan of the business. The core strategic business plan that you're following, so when John or Mark walk in on a Tuesday and say, “We're going to paint the walls yellow,” everybody's like, “Where's that in the strategic plan?” They can hold you accountable to a plan as well.

Building A Sales Team For Entrepreneurs

In the early days, John, we had an informal advisory group, and it was a little bit helpful for that just forcing me to come up with the plan and then on a quarterly basis, go back to the plan. It just added a little discipline, but still more work to do on our side, for sure. You talked about those early-stage entrepreneurs and some of those really important sales skills and staying focused.

You aptly point out we've had the same experience with our clients. We see entrepreneurs. They are very good at selling the vision and the outcomes from the offering. At what point do you typically try and counsel your clients to actually try and build a sales team where other people can actually sell? It's quite interesting. We're in a lot of mid-size organizations. Let's call it a $25 million to $50 million SaaS organization selling into an enterprise client where the founder or 1 or 2 people are still doing the vast majority of the new client acquisition. How and when do you counsel your clients to start trying to build the sales organization? How do they actually ramp it up so other people outside the visionary can sell?

In the seven principles of entrepreneurial success I talk about in the book, principle seven is how do you move from CEO to chairperson? Your number one job as an entrepreneur CEO is to replace yourself in every single role you fulfill in that business. That is your job. Otherwise, you just bought yourself a job. You are the job. That's the key role. My answer to that question is as soon as possible. That's where I typically lean.

What I’ve learned is that a lot of entrepreneurs that initially start their business because they're the best sales rep are not necessarily the best sales manager because they look at their team go, “I could do that better. I could do this better.” They don't know how to effectively manage their sales team effectively. They have a lack of control in their minds if they give up the sales management.

There's a very interesting transition where I see a lot of entrepreneurs will want to hire their first salesperson and they'll become the sales manager, but then they suck at being a sales manager. They're too distracted. There’s not enough focus. They've never been a sales manager before. They lack in those skillsets that are the next frontier is how do you replace yourself as the sales manager to bring in a professional sales manager can manage your sales team based on KPIs and metrics and focus on the numbers and the growth of the salespeople and leadership of the salespeople and development of the salespeople accordingly?

I think it's that stairstep. How do you replace yourself as soon as possible? From a sales perspective, then you become the sales manager. How do you replace yourself as soon as possible from a sales management perspective so you can be the visionary and not necessarily the integrator of the sales processes in the business? Your vision should still be present and just be trained on, but just because you're the best sales rep doesn't make you the best sales manager. You have to replace yourself for your business to grow.

Just because you're the best sales rep doesn't make you the best sales manager, and you have to replace yourself for your business to grow.

That principle, John, is so true, not just in the entrepreneurial world. It's true in the corporate world. You ran an amateur sports business. It's true in athletics. The best person on our hockey team was not someone who was the best leader on the hockey team. The best players, Gretzky's a good example, he always said he couldn't coach. They often do it. Wayne Rooney, British soccer, we get a lot of British folks reading, your best fantastic player, but can't move into that role. Those are different roles.

I’ll go back to those painting route every once in a while. I was amazed at the amount of personal development that I experienced in a 4 or 6-month period of time going from being a university student who drank way too much for somebody 140 pounds and then suddenly getting focused in on running the business. When I look back, the general manager who worked with me for that business, I still see that person as a major coach or leader in my world. In fact, in my case, that individual still running the painting company, they're called Student Works Painting. His name is Chris Thompson. He's still out there. He was named by Deloitte as one of the top entrepreneurs in Canada.

That's fantastic.

It really is. The essence of what I thought was so interesting about coaching was that it is such a critical challenge in B2B sales. The coaching in those days was very interesting because the franchisee understood they were running their own business. They were in control. They weren't being told what to do, but they had someone coaching them on trying to make them better. Who had a vested interest in trying to make them better? Franchisee was the hero of the story.

Somehow, in B2B sales, it's changed to the point where the sales leader is now the hero of the story. In many cases, seeing the sales team is just tools for them to achieve their goal or objective. Nobody wants to be the tool. Everybody wants to be the hero of their story. Whether it's small, medium enterprise, or even a large enterprise, we're seeing the same thing across the board where this coaching or management is the X factor of B2B sales nowadays. Are you seeing that as well?

I’ll tell you what I'm seeing that brings the parallel as you were saying that and same as you. The pure coaching and mentorship that I had in my first role with College Pro led me to read more. It led me to be a sponge for how do I do this better, evaluating how I did stuff and giving me feedback so I could perform at a higher level. I think as we've gotten away from that period of time, I even look at young entrepreneurs now and they don't have the mentorship and coaching I had in that environment. They just don't. One of the things I like to look at is, are you a manager, a leader, or a mentor? I look at that spectrum.

I think what you're saying a lot too is that what you're finding is a lot of the sales management are becoming managers to try and get these people to execute the kpis that I need to hit for my goal so I can go up to my boss and say, “I'm the hero. Look what I just did,” as opposed to mentoring their team. I think that's a little bit of a Corporate America issue where when you get to the boardroom, you want to show all your wins and what you did so you can get the promotion. There's a lack of that. In the small, medium-sized business world, Mark, I don't see that as much. I don't play a lot in the corporate boardrooms, but I do know that there's a lot of problems there regarding backstabbing and, “I did this and I did this,” because they want to be seen on that front line.

Whereas in the small, medium-sized business, if you don't develop a team of intrapreneurs, I call them a team, of people that act like entrepreneurs within your business, from the salespeople to the sales management, to the ops people, to find everybody. If you don't build this culture of entrepreneurship where you're mentoring and developing them, still holding them accountable to the goals and responsibilities, and providing them leadership so they can grow, you will never get out of your business. You'll never be able to enjoy the fruits of your business because you'll just turn and churn through people as they come in and out of your business seeking mentorship and seeking a place they love to get, be developed and grow. To me, that plays to the sales group as much as any other group. As a leader, if you are not mentoring your people, you're on a dangerous path.

If you don't develop a team of entrepreneurs within your business, you will never get out of your business.

Managing Ups And Downs In The Entrepreneurial Journey

John, I’ve always seen this alignment between entrepreneurs and salespeople. At the highest level, I guess, it's just the simplicity of any day, week, or month, you've actually got to go out into the universe and make something happen to create attention and interest and then demand and close a deal to bring revenue into the business. As salespeople, they're feeling that ongoing cadence because they're worried about success and hitting their goals and keeping a job.

With entrepreneurs, they're worried about keeping the lights on. The same thing happens, but it's a very unique world where the outside world is going to define our success in some ways because we've got to get that money coming in. A lot of the other roles, frankly, are backstage for companies, whether it's finance or HR and some of these other things.

One of the topics that come up a lot on this show in professional sales is just mental health and being in the right mindset as you're traveling this journey and maybe managing those ups and downs where we're not going euphoric happy, we're not going into the valleys too much. We try and maintain an even keel. Tell me a little bit about what you see in the entrepreneurial world where that same cadence to perform is so vital. Are you noticing some challenges or opportunities there as well? How do you coach entrepreneurs on managing those ups and downs?

I believe that's my mission and probably yours as well.

In many ways it is.

Mental health is a big problem. It's a big problem. It's been amplified by COVID. It's been amplified by different things going on in the world. As an entrepreneur, and sometimes much like a sales rep, you're in business sometimes by yourself, trying to run your business. You can't necessarily bring your problems home every night to the family because that doesn't help that situation. You don't really want to bring it to your team when you're scared and something's going on.

The same thing happens to a sales rep. You may not be having a good quarter, and your sales manager's expecting this from you, so you have to try to present that face there, and you want to look good in front of your colleagues. You don't want to go home and say, “I'm going to miss my big bonuses,” or whatever the situation may be.

That pressure that just keeps accumulating, where is the valve? Where is the release valve to be able to have a conversation with a mentor, with a coach to help guide you along the right path and reinforce some of your maybe beliefs or do away with your limiting beliefs of, “I can't do this,” or whatever you're saying to yourself as you go through this path. I look at it as a transition curve as well of life. From uninformed optimism to crisis of meaning to back to informed optimism, that is the life of ups and downs. When you have the right mentorship, whether that be the leader in your organization or the entrepreneur running your business, or a coach on the side, it doesn't really matter. That coach can minimize ups and downs.

Yes, you do have successes, and yes, you don't win deal once in a while, but you know how to manage it. You know how to manage your emotions, you know how to manage your subconscious mindset and how you're talking to yourself and how you're performing each and every day. That is a major component of sales, entrepreneurship and everything. It's basically a life code in general for everybody now. Are you seeking the right guidance, whether it be books you're reading, the videos you're watching, the people you're talking to? Are you surrounding yourself with the right information to guide you in the right way?

On the side, one of my hobbies is I'm in a bar band that I jumped back into after twenty years of not doing it. I jumped back in a few years ago, and we play in Toronto with a bunch of executives and core who are on boards, and we do charity gigs for different associations. One year, we donated all the money to CAMH, which is the Center for Addiction and Mental Health. It was a real wake-up call for me. This was post-COVID, but in advance of the gigs, our lead singer who is on the board of CAMH, which share stats on mental health and issues, and it was flabbergasting. One of the things that's interesting, the way they look at it is there's this spectrum.

In the past, you might have looked at it and said, if you cross this aspect, you've got a mental health issue. There are a lot of steps along the path to that where you're just not yourself or you're just not feeling good. One of the things we've constantly coached on this program is trying to focus on those things that you can control. There are a lot of things that are outside of our control. If I am short on revenue as an entrepreneur, if I'm short on qualified deals as a salesperson, that's not going to change overnight. Over the next 2 or 3 days, I can certainly trigger some live conversations that are eventually going to lead me in the right direction. Zoning in on those things that we can control most.

Just as a reminder for our readers, just while we're on this topic, one book I picked up, which I thought was very interesting in the professional sales realm was Anthony Iannarino’s The Negativity Fast. This would be somebody who's one of the top ten thought leaders in B2B sales globally. After everything he's published and everything he is done, his second most recent book came back and said, “I'm going to talk about mindset and The Negativity Fast.”

One of the things that struck me so much was he's got research in there on the power of gratitude and the idea of actually being grateful for what you have, your family, your loved ones, your health, the wealth. Many of us look at ourselves and say, “I'm not as rich as the Joneses. My business is not as big as so and so's.” Anthony reminds us that 96% of the entire global population lives on less than $35,000 a year. I think in the past, we could take these things for granted. Now, I think you have to have an intentional plan, almost like a strategic plan, to keep yourself in the right mental and physical framework so that you can be successful.

I love that, Mark. I'm going to look up that book. I love negativity fast. I’ll tell you this failure that I had, which was a few years ago. It wasn't that long ago. It was in 2018. This is pre-COVID and pre-everything. Fifteen years of building this business, going all out. Long weeks, long years, you name it. To lose it all in a second, not a second, but a few months felt like a second. I remember sitting down after that feeling sorry for myself. The biggest thing that helped me was the power of gratitude. I looked at it a little bit differently at first. I wouldn't have called it the power of gratitude. What I called it was perspective.

I said, “I got a great wife, a great family. We're healthy. Two great boys. I have a home. I have a car. Yes, this sucks. Yes, this is going to hurt a lot of people. Yes, I could have done better, but in the grand scheme of things, there's a lot of people in life that don't have what I have right now, and I'm feeling sorry for myself. Slap yourself across the head, pick yourself back up. Figure out what you did wrong, figure out what you could have done better and get to work.” It's that perspective view of things that led me to this power of gratitude area which was, “This is really bad but not insurmountable.”

You get to the other side of it and you're like, “In the grand scheme of things, that was a blip on the radar.” I needed that to help me get to this area. You have a whole different positivity perspective on this big failure. I would've never celebrated failure before. Now I'm like, “Yeah, this is great.” I learned a lot from that opportunity experience. I don't want to fail again, don't get me wrong, but I know how to overcome that with the power of gratitude. I appreciate you sharing that. That's great.

Moving On After A Business Setback

John, how long did that take for you? I apologize. I'm sure you talked about it in the book, but how long did it take for you to let it sink in and maybe give a little bit of a mourning period to this business that you'd given your whole life to and all your energy and then say, “Okay, now I’ve got to pull up my socks here. Let's get going?”

I took a year's sabbatical from operating any business. I did have another business venture that I was partnered in and to focused a little bit on that. I took a year and said, “I'm not going to take any other role or operating job or do anything. I just really need this time to figure this out.” I was thankfully able to do that. I'd say it probably took me a good six months to be like, “Even though I'm still on this thing, I'm antsy. I'm ready to get going again.” I did take that time, like just a lot of self-reflection. What that self-reflection was like, I think it's relevant, and this applies again to salespeople and entrepreneurs, the same.

I was running so fast in building this business, and the business was growing so fast that at the end of it, when I lost it all, I asked myself, “What was I doing that for?” I’ve always been a very goal-oriented person. I had goals as an individual and goals as a business person, but they weren't aligned. My goals were short-term goals. One of the biggest things I came in that moment of perspective and gratitude is I said, “I'm going to design a 30-year life plan. What's the one thing I want to achieve in my life? What is the one thing? Thirty years from now, where do I want to be? How old am I going to be? What do I want my life to look like? That's a long time from now. Let me back backtrack. Where do I want to be in fifteen years? Where do I want to be in five years? Where do I want to be next year?” Got it. Now, I got a life plan. Now let me go do in business that will align to my life plan.

Why did I want to grow a company so fast and bring on equity and then lose my equity and then lose control of business? It was because I was chasing something. What was I chasing? It had nothing to do with my life plan. Now everything I do aligns to what I'm trying to achieve in my life, and I find a lot more symmetry. I find myself in the zone of doing things I'm passionate about, I know I can be the best in the world at, and it drives my economic engine. That is that hedgehog concept from Jim Collins, which is like, that's where you need to be. That intersection of the area. To me, if you're a salesperson, it's the same thing. Make sure you know what you're trying to achieve, and it's not just the commission check at the end of the month. What are ultimately trying to achieve in life, and then align your sales objectives to match that.

Tying back to the why, so helpful. Nice for you to bring out, by the way, the Venn diagrams I haven't seen since the finite math days at university, so it was nice to get scared by those again. Pulling those back out and saying, “Let's connect why we're doing this,” because now when I'm jumping outside my comfort zone on a regular basis, I actually understand why. By definition, it's never going to feel great jumping outside a comfort zone because you're outside your comfort zone. It's almost like the gang from Peloton are so good at coaching you on, you start to get slightly more comfortable being uncomfortable.

“I know this is not going to kill me. My heart rate's up, I'm breathing heavy, but I'm going to be okay.” I think it's such an important thing, and you talk about the true North concept in the book, but just aligning. The other thing I just love is that I forgot who you referenced in the quote in the book, but it said, “People overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in ten.” That quote stuck with me from your book, and I think it's just such a good thing to see sometimes that big picture is very helpful to get us through some of those challenges along the way, like having that big picture.

I love the comment on that one. That was Bill Gates that made that quote. I found it to be so true. We live in this microcosm of, “What is my goal this year? How much am I trying to earn this year? What am I trying to do this year in my building?” Whatever it may be. Mark, I started thinking about it, and with the advances in AI and technology and everything else, you're either going to have a hardware or software problem in your body, and both of them are probably going to be able to be fixed.

You start looking out on the horizon and you're like, “In 30 years from now? That seems like forever from now.” When you have a long-term view horizon, you can actually start being a little more strategic on what you're doing, how you're doing it, and you can view some of these, “I didn't get the sale yesterday,” as not that big of a deal. You're still heading in the same direction.

That real long-term perspective and view on things meant a lot. I like to ask entrepreneurs all the time, “Do you have a life plan?” End of story. The answer is, 9 out of 10 times, no. Most people do not have a life plan, and when they start thinking about it, they start thinking about the next couple of years. I go, “No. Let's start with the end in mind. What are you ultimately trying to do long-term?” It's such a visionary thing for an individual to do to look long-term what they're trying to do, and then start marching towards there in their careers.

All of these things, by the way, team, this is why John's book is so valuable, The $100 Million Journey. I should have picked this book up years ago when we started In The Funnel. That would've been very helpful at that point in time. It's been a super helpful read now. We're at that stage of trying to get out of the lifestyle business, but frankly, John and team, we've got to do more thinking about that life plan and why because it is a pretty good lifestyle business and we enjoy this.

The $100M Journey: Your Guide to Growing the Business of Your Dreams without Going off the Cliff

You start to think about, “Am I trying to get to that next level just because I want a better answer when somebody says, ‘How many employees do you have and I want an impressive answer of 75 or am I trying to get to that next stage because it does something for me, Donna, our family, everybody we love and the sales community?’”

Maintaining Focus On Helping Clients And Achieving Success

One of the things that's a joy for us now is the contribution back into professional salespeople. That's why we run this show. We're actually trying to improve the lives of professional salespeople, and if they know what to do, things get a lot easier and their lives improve. John, I'm going to be very cautious of your time, but one more question before we wrap up here a little bit. Our topic, the customer, the client, we've talked a lot about what we do for us and our businesses, and whether it's salespeople or entrepreneurs, but everything starts with that focus on helping somebody else achieve this better outcome in the future, whatever that might be. Share with us a few thoughts about, whether we're entrepreneurs or salespeople, what we do to just maintain and clarify that intense focus on helping someone else and how that plays into our success model.

I think as an entrepreneur, and it plays as we've talking about this whole conversation as sales as well, is what does success look like for you? If you're hiring somebody, what does success look like for you in coming to work here for our business? If you're talking to a customer, what does success look like for you? If you're talking to a vendor, what does success look like for you, being a supplier, and working with us? To me, that one question never gets asked. For example, if a sales manager's talking to a sales representative, “What is the one thing I can do to be a better leader or mentor to you? They never ask that question. They just say, “Where are your numbers? What's going on?”

What does success look like? To me, it is not just something you ask and you never revisit. It's you ask, you document, and you celebrate the achievement of it. To me, that builds customers for life, that builds team members for life, that builds relationships for life because at the end of the day, the core to relationships are experiences over time. The more positive those relationships are over time, the delivery of what the success looks like over and over again. That's how you build long-term sustainable customers, employees, team members of the likes. To me, that one question isn't asked enough, it's not brought up enough, it's not celebrated enough, I think that is the key to long-term customer relationships.

It's so important. A friend of ours, Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach, has something called R Factor question he Loves, which is, and I’ll paraphrase it, but if we're going to have this conversation a year from now on November 8th, 2025, what needs to happen, John, for you to be blissfully happy, personally and professionally with where you're at? It is just such a well-thought-out question. It's all about them. Back to Dale Carnegie. You can make more friends in 2 months by being interested in somebody else than you can in 2 years by trying to get them interested in you. People haven't changed in this period of time. By the way, it's more fun, the whole, “Who wants to pitch and talk about me?” I want to learn about you. That's why something like this show is so much fun.

John, this has been amazing. Team, by the way, the book we've been discussing is The $100 Million Journey: Your Guide to Growing the Business of Your Dreams Without Going Off A Cliff. By the way, it's a gorgeous book. One of the things that I picked up a couple of books, including The ONE Thing, there's many books in here you reference I haven't read. I’ve already ordered The ONE Thing on Amazon, so thank you for that. How do people learn more about you, John? After reading this, they're going to want to engage with you. What's the best way to do that?

Yeah, I think LinkedIn. John St. Pierre on LinkedIn. You connect me there. My website is 100mjourney.com. You connect me there as well. Certainly, I would love to talk to anybody and give free consultation calls to any business owner, entrepreneur, or sales rep for that matter to help them on their journey.

Thank you, John. Thank you so much for joining. What a pleasure meeting you. Team, thank you so much for joining the show. If you like this discussion, please like and subscribe to the show because that's actually how we get great guests like John, when you like and subscribe. One other favor, we know we're not perfect at running a show, and your feedback really matters to us. Please share your constructive criticism and great ideas for the show with me, MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email, team, and I check and respond to every piece of feedback we get. Let us know what to do, and we love constructive criticism. Don't pull your punches, and thank you for doing so. John, thanks again. Team, we're going to see you next time.

Important Links

• The $100 Million Journey

• The $100 Million Journey on Amazon

• The Negativity Fast

• The ONE Thing

• John St. Pierre on LinkedIn

• Mark Cox's Email

About John St. Pierre

John St. Pierre is an entrepreneurial strategist, business growth advisor, and co-host of the Entrepreneurs United Podcast with over 25 years of experience in co-founding and growing successful businesses across various industries.

He’s also the author of "The $100M Journey: Your Guide To Growing The Business Of Your Dreams Without Going Off The Cliff!", a book that shares his proven strategies and insights on how to scale a business while avoiding costly pitfalls.

John’s  passion is to help ambitious entrepreneurs achieve their dreams and create lasting value. By providing guidance on protecting and growing their equity, reinvesting strategically, fostering a culture of intrapreneurship, or moving from CEO to Chairperson.

John is currently the majority owner and chairperson of Rhombus Group, a private holding company formed in 2003 comprising several small businesses.

The Future Of Selling Is Human (Even In 2025) With Mark Hunter

Join host Mark Cox and sales expert Mark Hunter as they dive deep into the future of selling in 2025! This dynamic episode explores how to create business, build trust, and leverage AI for stronger customer relationships. Hunter emphasizes the importance of outbound prospecting, deepening the discovery process, and becoming a trusted advisor to your clients. He shares actionable strategies to de-educate customers, uncover their true needs, and ultimately help them achieve what they didn't think was possible. Plus, discover why AI is a powerful tool for salespeople and how continuous learning is crucial for staying ahead in the ever-evolving world of sales.

---

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

The Future Of Selling Is Human (Even In 2025) With Mark Hunter

Team, we've got a great show for you. My guest is Mark Hunter. He's also known as The Sales Hunter. Mark's the author of three books. The last time we had him on, we were talking about A Mind for Sales. He's also the author of High-Profit Selling and High-Profit Prospecting. Clearly, he's a deep thought leader in our space. In fact, so much so, he'll be on the stage at the Outbound Conference the week after we actually recorded this episode where he's doing a keynote along with his teammates there. Anthony Iannarino, Jeb Blount, Brynne Tillman, a lot of great thought leaders who've been on the show because they know this space. In this conversation, we cover a lot of things, but almost anything that comes out of Mark's mouth about B2B sales is something that you can take and apply.

The way he explains things is very simply so that they resonate. Clearly, somebody who's been doing this a while and has a good way of communicating something clearly because he understands it so well. We have a fun chat about why we're both so excited for B2B sales and how the fundamentals don't change about successful salespeople are always trying to level up or improve themselves even by a little bit by reading a show like this one because they're always looking for that ongoing, lifelong learning.

The ballots of our conversations about how do we engage in effective discovery, get an authentic conversation going with a prospect where we've earned the right for them to share what's going on with their business. We talked about building that trust and credibility, as is the case with every one of these podcasts. I learned something from Mark. You will, too. If you like this episode, please like and subscribe to the show. Thanks for doing so. When you do that, by the way, that's what enables us to get these great guests like Mark. Here's Mark Hunter, The Sales Hunter.

Mark, welcome back to the show. It's great to see you again.

It is great to be back on with you because we're going to talk sales. We're going to talk that thing that we love to do.

The Importance Of Outbound Sales

I was going to talk about hockey, but if you'd like to talk about sales, let's go with sales. The name of the show is The Selling Well. I'm sure hockey's going to find its way in here somehow, Mark, but let's start with sales. It's an exciting couple of weeks for you. You've got Outbound with you. A couple of other great guests of our show, by the way, run Outbound. Maybe you can tell the audience a little bit about that. By the time they read this, Outbound will be over. It's a pretty exciting event.

It is a pretty exciting event. Outbound is just that. Outbound selling, you can do that. It's prospecting, pipeline and productivity. If you think about it, so many salespeople sit around and wait for the phone to ring, wait for the email to, “I got business.” We're all about how do you create business. Why be a rain barrel when you can be a rainmaker? That's what Outbound is all about. Nice. You talk about putting 400 or 500 people into a room who are excited, the energy is over the top because everybody's focused on outbound selling. That's what selling is all about. If you're just dealing with inbound, that'd be the customer service show. This is the selling show.

If you were to believe some of the internet platitudes, folks saying outbound is dead, it's just so completely wrong. This is part of the challenge, I think, in professional sales nowadays. There's a lot of these platitudes, or catchphrase on various different parts of social media. Those of us who have dedicated a good portion of our career to this or turned around multiple different sales organizations, this is what you have to do to grow pipeline. You've got to reach out into the universe and create demand. Whether it's you, Jeb, Anthony Iannorino, or all of the folks at Outbound, pretty much everybody's been on our show, and you all believe the same thing. I'm right there with you.

What Keeps Mark Motivated After Many Years In The Field

Even when we just start this, I always get the energy and enthusiasm talking to you, Mark. Also, reading your books. Briefly, what initially drew you into the excitement of professional B2B sales and after this tenure, you and I have kind of the same tenure here, how do you keep that energy and enthusiasm going forward?

The enthusiasm is very easy because I don't sell. I help people. Selling is just the medium I’ve chosen to help people. That's what enthuses me every day. I love closing the sale. In fact, no, I don't like closing the sale because I'd rather open the relationship, but that's a separate deal. Here's the situation. Selling is purely about helping people. If that doesn't excite you when you wake up in the morning, you need to go find a different job or maybe go find a different planet because, again, my definition of sales is the same definition I have for leadership. It's helping others see and achieve what they didn't think was possible. Think about that. That's what it is. We just help others see and achieve what they didn't think was possible. That's pretty cool.

It’s such an important mindset. I think, for so long, that mindset of getting away from pitching or trying to cajole or all of that silliness and just helping somebody achieve this desired business outcome, this tends to be the nature of sales. We had Daniel Pink on the show a little while back, and at the end I said, “What do you see happening with sales?” He said, “Mark, your audience know this, but today, B2B sales is management consulting. For 30 or 40 years, management consultants have walked into offices to talk to the most senior executives at the largest companies in the world. They have no product to pitch. Have conversations about the outcomes that those organizations want, and then they figure out how to get those outcomes and how to take them to that better future.”

Maintaining A Resilient Mindset In Sales

What a great definition you've got. When we think about this mindset shift, I know you do a lot of work in this space, this very competitive nature of B2B sales for all of us now, it is competitive. How do you recommend that salespeople maintain that resilient mindset? We've been through a few things here over the last few years, but what is some of the suggestions you make when you're working with all of the teams that you work with, Mark, about maintaining that competitive resilient mindset?

I want to pick up on what Daniel Pink shared in terms of what we are in B2B because I firmly believe in that. My goal in B2B sales, and actually in B2C, is to be in the customer's R&D department. What do you mean about R&D? Research and development department. In other words, it's my duty; it's my job to bring to you ideas that you had not been thinking about and that weren't even on your radar screen. To allow me to do that, I’ve got to understand who your customers are.

All we have to do is help our customers create a solution for a problem they may not even know existed.

One of the challenges in B2B sales is that we have to understand the upstream and the downstream. The upstream. What are all those supply chain issues that are impacting and supply chain issues? It might be just employee retention. It might be just keeping employees there. It could be all those things that maybe you provide. Why? It’s because the customer ultimately has another customer. They're going downstream.

Who are their customers? When I can understand their customers as well or better than they understand their customers, wow. Here's the whole thing. I picked this up on a podcast I was listening to. I can't remember what it was, but it says, “Create a solution, you create profit.” Think about that for a moment. All we have to do is help our customers create a solution for a problem that they may not even know existed. It goes back to my definition of sales.

When you think of so clear and so powerful, create a solution, you create profit. I’ve always thought, Mark, that when you win deals, the sales team or the organization that wins the deals, I think it's when the client believe they understand that sales team understands them better than somebody else. All of us need to be heard and understood and all of those good things, but there's almost no limit on the level of customer intimacy that we can all try and get to that we want to get to.

Timeless Challenges In B2B Sales

The more we understand that individual we're reaching out to, the issues, the challenges, the goals, the objectives, their professional needs and wants, their personal needs and wants, the better off we're going to be. Even saying that aloud, a lot of that came a long time ago when I had a beautiful long head of hair with Miller Hyman in the late ‘80s. Thinking of the personal professional needs, consensus buying, all of that kind of stuff, it was so very good. If I think back to 1990, why is it that we're still talking about these same things in professional B2B sales? Every once in a while, I have this thing that says, “Why is it taking us so long to get it??

I think it’s taking us so long to get it because we get confused by the shiny object. The shiny object right now is AI. AI can do everything for us. My feeling is this. AI is the ying. We have to be the yang. It's the yin yang thing. Everybody's so focused on what can AI do and can AI expedite this part of the process and do this and this. I think in so doing, it's craving the need for that intimate relationship that you mentioned earlier.

This is what's so valuable. People want to be heard, so they want to be understood. The problem is AI throws all this stuff at you. Great. Nothing wrong with it. By the way, nobody will be replaced by AI. They will be replaced by somebody who is using AI. We get all this AI stuff, but we don't know how to do it. The role of the salesperson is not only is it that consultant, as Daniel Pink was talking about, but I think we are becoming the de person. We have to educate the customer.

Stop and think about what this means. What this means is very simply is the customer is engaging the salesperson further and further downstream in terms of where they are in the sales process. Every study has shown that. That's nothing new. What's happening is the customer is developing all these opinions, they're developing all these views, and as a result, feel that they know what their issue is. The problem is they don't really know. We, the salesperson, has to come in and de-educate the customer. That's not telling them they're stupid, but that's allowing them to see a different light, a different perspective, a different view. We don't do this by breaching at them. We don't do this by developing a presentation and showing it to them. We get it by asking them questions.

Talking to them.

This goes back what Daniel Pink was talking about, the consultants. I remember when I was in Corporate America, there were two consulting groups that we worked with a lot. They would come in and all they did was come in with questions. It seems like every time they left my office, they left my office with another seven-digit deal. Amazing. We have to become better at asking questions to de-educate the customer and to allow them to be open and receptive to new questions we're going to ask that are going to get them believing and perceiving. Here's the whole thing. It doesn't matter what we believe is right for the customer. Totally irrelevant. It's what the customer perceives. Remember, I didn't say believe it's what they perceive because I may believe something, but I don't perceive it. I just can't see how this actually happens. That's where we have to get to with customers.

On the first point, de-educate, I'm a good example of this. I think people can be more informed, but that doesn't mean they're better informed. I'm a good example of this with my health. Something will happen to me, get a little spot on my face, I’ll go on the internet. I'm more informed. I’ve got lots of pages telling me that spot on my face is disaster coming. Until I get in, have a conversation with my doctor who says, “That's called basal cancer.” I said, “Cancer.” He said, “It's meaningless, it's nothing. You'll just take it off with a small scalpel.”

This difference, I think a lot of stuff online scared a lot of people easy, one everybody can relate to medical information. You're more informed, but you're not better informed because you need somebody with experience and expertise to take all that data and say, how does it actually apply to you?

Asking The Right Questions In Sales

This de-educate, I love. The questions to get there, I absolutely love as well. I think that's this critical opportunity for all of us out there in terms of those of us in professional sales, just continually, almost relentlessly figuring out how we help the folks we're working with. It all comes down to questions. When you're working with sales teams, by the way, how do you help them craft those questions? I know you do lots of sales training and you've worked with thousands of salespeople. How is it you help them craft, let's call it those discovery questions that have most impact?

Here's the whole thing, and I'm glad you brought up the term discovery because so many salespeople, what they do is they want to race through the discovery part of sales call to get to the close. I go, “Slow down.” If we would deepen and lengthen the discovery process, we would shorten the close. You know the reason so many salespeople can't close deals. It’s because they didn't do a good enough job in discovery phase.

The discovery phase, what I love doing is this, and this works in B2B. I'm going to first begin with a question relative to the industry. I'm not going to come in and try to get very specific, hone in on them. I want to talk about the industry. Why? It’s because I'm doing two things. One, I want them to feel and understand that I know something about their industry. This isn't my first rodeo.

Two, by getting them talking about the industry, it begins to get them a little more comfortable and a little more relaxed. If I were to come to you and say, “Your baby's ugly,” you're going to get pretty defensive. If I come to you first and start talking about babies in general, then I can begin to get you to realize I'm not saying your baby's ugly, but you get the point. What I'm doing is I'm starting off with the industry. Here's the key thing, and this is where the magic begins to happen. This is where so many discovery processes, discovery meetings break down. People come in with this predetermined list of questions that they want to get through 1 through 12. “We're going to get through all twelve. When we have all twelve answered, we're done.”

I go, “Forget it.” I couldn't care less. I never want to leave a meeting with all my questions answered. What did the salesperson just say? The salesperson just said, “I never want to leave a meeting with all my questions answered.” Why? I want to get to that first 1 or 2 questions and we wind up spending our entire time right there because there's a whole thing. This is what makes a discovery call worthwhile. I ask you a question, and you share a response with me, and I just ask you a follow-up question on that.

Here's something you can take to the bank. Short questions will get you long answers, long questions will get you short answers. How many times have you been talking to somebody and they drone on and on, and somewhere in the middle, there's a question that they're asking, but you have no clue what they were really asking.

Short questions will get you long answers. Long questions will get you short answers.

If I ask you a question, you shared me something and I say, “Can you explain more? Could you give me an example?” That's a short question that gets you a long answer. What I'm doing is this. I'm getting you to believe that I'm listening. That's something unique for salespeople. If I can listen, then I'm hearing things and I'm hearing things. Two, I'm asking you a question, so I'm inviting you to go deeper. When you go deeper, this is when you really begin to uncover. There's a simple number. It's the number seven. Remember the seven degrees of separation? It has gone away because the internet is now one degree of separation. I believe if I can go seven layers deep, it's amazing how much I'm going to know about your business because you're just going to share it with me.

Can I go seven layers deep on that first question? No, but I can go 1 or 2. I may ask another question, then I may come back. It's a little bit like peeling an onion. If I have an onion and I don't eat the whole onion, I peel off all that skin to get down to, I don't know what they call the part that you actually eat. I don't like onions. It’s that part that you actually eat. That's what we're doing. Too many salespeople don't want to peel the onion. They just want to try to get through to the close. My whole idea of you as a salesperson in preparing is you simply ask. You have 1 or 2 questions ready about the industry, and then you begin to drill down from there, “How does that pertain to you? How are you responding to that?”

They will automatically begin taking you to their individual needs and their individual organization. What I'm listening for is this. I'm listening for a key response. The key response is this: When you, the customer, begin sharing proprietary information with me, what's proprietary information? That's information not known publicly. When you begin sharing with me information that's not known publicly, you now trust me. You have a level of confidence in me. That's huge because in the discovery phase, I cannot move out of the discovery phase until I have created a level of trust and confidence with you. Otherwise, the deal is never going to close.

There are a couple of great things to unpack there. One, just on that discovery phase, when we're coaching these days on sales process, Mark, we actually have a discovery phase. The way we teach it is it's every stage of the process. I think that investigation and learning are not. “I started, and I'm done.” That type of discovery is what happens to me when I go to the dentist and the receptionist goes through a checklist to make sure I'm not allergic to penicillin. They've got a checklist and then they're done. She doesn’t know, and she doesn't care. There's no authentic curiosity. I like this alignment at the seven layers down on the onion.

A while back, we had a great guy on the show, somebody you should put on your podcast as well, a guy named Oscar Trimboli, How to Listen. In the episode, Oscar shared that we can think at 900 words a minute, but we can only speak at 125. The average person, we think at 900 words a minute and speak at 125, which almost perfectly aligns with your seven layers because we only get one seventh of the stuff in our head out. When we do something like you suggested, a multiplier question, tell me more. Can you give me an example? What else?

People have more to share. They never get it all out. If you can build that trust so that when you're in discovery asking great questions, you get authentic answers, I think you're in this beautiful position. I do think, though, and you coach a lot of these people, so do I, young people doing prospecting have difficulty building that trust. I'm willing to open up. If you called me, wanted to know what's going on with my business from an entrepreneurial perspective and ask questions, I can open the kimono and tell you everything. If somebody calls me and I can tell they're young, they're uneducated, they don't understand my business, they're kind of pitching, you've got to build that trust to get authentic answers to any form of questions, particularly discovery questions. How do you coach your students on that?

Several different things you got to realize. First of all, it's only a conversation. What happens so many times is young salespeople, not just young, we all do, way too much emphasis on every call. This has got to be the perfect call. Michael Jordan, I still believe he's the greatest NBA player. He made a comment. He said, “I lost more games than I’ve won.” Now think about that. You’ve got to put that in perspective. It's just a conversation. Dial it down. When you come across human, it is amazing at how much more receptive people are. Two, allow them to bring out their personality. Back when we were pre-COVID, that almost sounds like eighteen lifetimes ago.

It feels that way.

We always wanted to make sure that if we were going to do a call, I don't know if Zoom even existed back then, video call, we had to make sure everything was just perfect. It's amazing. I get on calls now. We don't have a dog anymore but when our dog used to bark, I used to go, “Super sales dog. He just closed another sale.” If somebody else's dog bark, totally okay. Just relax. When you relax, it's amazing how the other person begins to come across. Here's a key thing. On every call, you’ve got to remember BAMFAM.

Book A Meeting From A Meeting. With every call, I'm on the phone with you. I have to create a CTA, a call to action. Do you know what's funny? Too many salespeople don't do that. I just go, “BAMFAM.” Book A Meeting From A Meeting. You just simply book the next step. That next step is just going to be to follow up on one thing that you shared with me. That's it.

Here's where young salespeople go off the rails. Many times, it's because their compensation programs. Their compensation program is to get to the demo, and then we'll use the tech company. They're going to have the engineer. That is a big mistake because all engineers want to do is prove to everyone how smart they are. Not good.

My whole goal is I don't want to race to the demo. Here's why. When I race to the demo, I don't know what it is that you're looking for. New salespeople don't sit there and say, “If we get to the demo, we're going to show them, then they'll be able to tell us what they want.” No. A confused buyer does not buy. You never go to the demo until you know exactly what it is their challenge is. In the demo, you only show them that small little piece that is going to help them with that problem that they have. That's it. Don't show them. You don't open up the kimono because here's the deal. My whole goal in sales is to simplify things. When I simplify it, everybody gets along a lot better.

A confused buyer does not buy.

I'm smiling ear to ear. What percentage of Excel do you think we actually use?

One percent.

Way back in MBA school, I couldn't believe what that thing can do. It's a relational database. Everybody uses somewhere between 1% and 3% of it. Imagine if we tried to demo Excel and showed Solver and all of it, people would just go, “Oh my goodness.” What do people use it for? “I want to do a personal budget. I want to do a P&L. I want to do basic math equation.” I love this idea. Just have a conversation. Be you. Be the best version of you. Don't be the grumpy and tired and hungry Mark Cox. Let's try and be the well caffeinated, well-fed Mark Cox. There you go. We've got product placement there for Starbucks. I absolutely love that idea. Take confidence that you're well prepared for a call so you know who you're reaching out to.

You know the business they're in and the industry they're in. Psychologically, I think those things give us a little more confidence, particularly when we're new to sales. We've maybe earned the right. I always like trying to add a little bit of a point of data into a question. Do I have some industry research on their industry? Do I have a couple of data points that might be helpful? Can I identify the top three trends going on in their industry so that I could say, “Are these things affecting your business or how are they impacting your business?”

At least it cut a little bit of the Cialdini. There's a little reciprocity in place because I’ve done some work for the call and they'll acknowledge it in some way. They're not going to give me a sale or guarantee the call to action, but they might give me a couple of minutes more on the call or have a more authentic call.

It’s so key what you shared there because that's what AI can do for us. I can use AI. What are the challenges the industry's facing and so forth. This is what's beautiful. The tighter our ICP, our ideal customer profile, and the tighter the lane with which we prospect, the more information we're going to know about the industry, and the better off we are going to be. That's the beauty of AI. Any salesperson who goes into a sales call unprepared nowadays is stupid. It's all right there. Just with a couple keystrokes, I can get the answers I'm looking for.

Mark, I did it, a sales call with a new executive, new CRO with an existing client of ours. I was meeting the individual for the first time, and I know the questions that I'd like to ask. I’ve written them out and then I just went through the exercise over a nice cup of coffee and had the right prompts for AI. We use a customized ChatGPT. They know us, they know the book, they know our show. The questions it spat back out in two minutes were better than mine.

Mark's Keynote Presentation At Outbound

I took it and just added to it. There were a couple of real nuggets there, and it was effortless. Everybody reading, please jump into your tools with AI. Mark, we're going to be, this will go live about three weeks after your keynote presentation at Outbound. You're one of handful of sales thought leaders in the entire world invited to participate with Jeb Blount and Anthony Iannorino. Brynne Tillman is at that one, I think, some great people. They've all been on the show. Jeb's scheduled on the show. We've had some scheduling issues. Do you want to share a little bit about the theme of what you are going to be speaking to? I guess you'll all have your own kind of specific topics and themes, any nuggets you want to share, knowing it's already out in the public domain by the time this goes out.

Yeah. Here's what I'm talking about. It resonates with anybody and everybody. First of all, if we have the ability to help someone, we owe it to them to reach out to them. That's what prospecting's all about. If I have the ability, and I love to set this up by saying, if I have problems, and trust me, ask my kids, they will tell you, “Dad has a lot of problems,” and I knew that you, Mark, could help me, I would want you to reach out to me. If I found out later that you did not reach out to me, you could have helped me, I'd be disappointed.

We have the ability to help someone. We owe it to them to reach out. That's what prospecting is all about.

What we're doing is we're doing our prospects, our lead, our customers a service by reaching out. That, to me, takes all hesitation away. It's no longer a cold call. What I'm going to be talking about is how you really determine your ICP. How do you get very tight? I have a series of nine criteria. If a lead comes into me, if they don't check off at least six of those after that first call, that first inquiry, I don't go any further with them.

In fact, I typically look for 7 or 8. Some of the things are, are they in an industry that I'm familiar with? Are they in an industry that I work with? Do they appear to have challenges that I’ve helped people with before? In other words, they may be in an industry, but they're coming to me with an HR problem. I don't do HR. Three, is the level of person that is talking to me, are they very similar in nature to other people I have talked to and have completed deals with? There are nine criteria that I go through. What's very interesting is I'm a strange duck. I'm a little bit weird in that I’ll still take the phone call, I’ll still set up a phone call with you even if I think you may only get to 4 or 5.

What I'm doing is I'm doing it for one reason. I'm going to refer you to somebody else. This is the beautiful thing. When I refer you to somebody else, I’ve made two sales because you, the customer, you, the lead didn't work out, so I referred you to somebody else. I still made you happy. Guess what? My whole goal is to help people. Impact and influence people. I was able to influence you. Two, the person I referred loves me. I’ve now got two people that are singing my praises out there. Not a bad gig. That's great. Don't scare away from those. Take it, but refer it. By the way, the more people you refer, the more referrals you're going to wind up getting yourself.

It's a good approach. You're true to your values. Your values are, “I'm in this because I want to have impact and help people.” We would've had a conversation like that years ago with the business, and then it would come back. Suddenly, somebody comes back to you and now they're running something material. Now they are your ICP. First of all, I think it's just good karma out there, but I think it's just a great idea.

Staying Current And Informed In Sales

When we're running a show like this, of course, we're going to point to all the resources. Mark, for you, High-Profit Selling, High-Profit Prospecting, A Mind For Sales. That's what we talked about in our last episode. We just read the book. Where does The Sales Hunter go for thought leadership, insight, knowledge? Obviously, you stay current with everything going on out there. You run your own podcast, you listen to other podcasts. For people out there that have that growth orientation, outside of reading your books and all that kind of good stuff, how do you stay current with what's going on? How do you keep that level of business acumen knowledge for our discipline up to snuff? What do you do?

First of all, sales is not a solo activity. Sales is a team sport. I want to surround myself with as many brilliant people. We become the sum of the five people we associate with. That line first was said years ago, but it absolutely applies. Here's the deal. I am a voracious reader currently. I just happen to have this book. I listen to podcasts. I spend time on LinkedIn. I follow the thought leaders on LinkedIn. I'm just constantly curating ideas in my head. Here's something magical. Top performers. Top performers never go into any situation without a sense of, “I'm going to learn something here.” When you go into any conversation, podcast, anything that you listen to, anything that you part with the attitude, “I'm going to learn something,” it is amazing what you learn. I'm binging on a podcast called Acquired.

Selling: Sales is not a solo activity. It's a team sport, so I want to surround myself with as many brilliant people as possible because we become the sum of the five people we associate with.

It's by two tech guys, one out of Seattle, one out of San Francisco, and they do 3, 4, 5-hour podcasts on various companies. Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, venture capitalists, PE firms. It's mind blowing. I love it because it just challenges my thinking. Some of them are pretty deep, very deep thinking, but I love that. I go into it with the idea that I'm going to learn something. Same thing with books. Average people will sit there and say, “I don't want to read this book. I don't want to do this because there's nothing to learn here.” That's why they're average people.

I got to tell one short story. He has since passed away. Charlie Munger. Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet's sidekick. He just passed away at the age of 99. Years ago, I was watching an interview of him, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates by Becky Quick. Becky Quick of CNBC was asking the three of them, “What books are you reading right now?” I couldn't remember what Warren Buffett and Bill Gates said, but Charlie Munger, probably at the age of 90 or 91 at the time, made a comment and says, “I'm reading a couple of books on electrical engineering.”

Becky Quick stopped and said, “Excuse me?” He said, “Yes, electrical engineering.” She said, “Why?” He says, “I don't feel I’ve ever learned enough about electrical engineering, so I figured I'd better learn now.” This is a gentleman who's 91 years of age and worth billions. He'd have every reason to say, “Screw it, I'm done reading.” That was a wake-up call.

When I caught that interview years ago, it was a wake-up call. That was something I learned. Everything you participate in, if you're a top performer, you will learn something. It’s like this show. You read The Selling Well podcast, you come away with it. What's the idea? It may not be a direct idea. It may be an indirect idea. In other words, something you say, something you say or one of your guests says, and you go, “I'm going to apply that this way.” The yin and yang.

Everything you participate in as if you're a top performer, you will learn something.

I’ve never run one of these where I didn't learn something. The truth of it is the joy of this show, you know this, is you and I book time. I know we've got to do this. I’ve got to read what you've written. Now I got this time limit, I got to get through it. I’ll be honest with you, years ago, I remember the first few guests. I'd read some books and I was a little judgmental of books. I had a little bit of that sort of attitude about me to a certain extent. I talked to this person on an episode and go, “They have so much wisdom to share.” That judgment dissipated. Now I love reading everyone's book because there's something in there for everyone.

If you want to find the learning, there's amazing learning. There are textbooks. Frank Cespedes from Harvard's written nine of them, Aligning Strategy and Sales. That's a textbook and it's dynamite. There are other ones that are much simpler. Very short books, but have great nuggets of insight and knowledge in there. By the way, if you're a professional athlete or something, you're always trying to glean that 1%, that 0.5%. How do I shoot slightly different? How do I tape my stick? Okay, what am I going to do when the guy comes around the neck? All of these things. Just this 1%, it does compound.

We knew we would get to hockey night in Canada somehow.

We had to.

Probably the best sales book, Atomic Habits by James Clear. Isn't Atomic Habits by James Clear so awesome? It's about that 1%. It's about those little things that you just repeat. It's amazing at how success comes from doing the little things repeatedly.

James Clear, Atomic Habits. British racing team had never won a Tour de France, never even placed, and they go in and say nine different things. “We're going to just try and improve literally 0.5%.” The cleanliness of the bike, the hygiene of the riders while they're training. Tiny things. It doesn't mean you have to work out five times as much. Suddenly, they start to get world champions. James Clear, if you're reading, you're one of a handful of people I couldn't get on this show. Almost everybody else has said yes. James Clear, we've named your book. Please, do us a favor, join the show.

Before you go on The Selling Well Podcast, you got to come on The Sales Hunter Podcast because I brought your name up first.

It's a team effort here. We're sending them right over, Mark. Team, we've talked about some great things. We have links to Mark's fantastic books, which I’ve read. Mind for Sales, High-Profit Selling, High-Profit Prospecting, on which Mark is an expert. Those of you who are joining them at Outbound, have a fantastic time. Those of you aren't, Mark, how do folks get in touch with you to learn more about you?

The best way is TheSalesHunter.com. That's where the website is. Everything starts there. People always ask me, “You’re known as The Sales Hunter. What was your name before you changed it?” That's my last name my entire life. There's a podcast by the same name. I'm out there on LinkedIn, just type in Mark Hunter, The Sales Hunter. I have another podcast called Sales Logic. If you can't find me, something's wrong. I'm out there.

If you can't find him, you shouldn't be in sales. You can find him. He is everywhere. We'd like to thank Mark. Mark, thank you so much for joining. Team, we'd like to thank you for reading. We run this show to kind of be the mini MBA for B2B professional sales. We think if we can help improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales, we can actually improve the lives of professional salespeople. That's what we want to do.

If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe to it because that's how we get great guests like Mark. Also, please know we love constructive criticism. We know we can get better at doing this and make it even more valuable to you. If you have an idea or two, please send it to MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email that I check and we respond to every idea we get. We love constructive criticism. Thanks for sending your advice. We'd like to wish everybody a great couple of weeks and we're going to see you next time.

Important Links

• Mark Hunter

• A Mind for Sales

• High-Profit Selling

• High-Profit Prospecting

• Anthony Iannarino – Past Episode

• Brynne Tillman – Past Episode

• Daniel Pink – Past Episode

• How to Listen – Past Episode

• Aligning Strategy and Sales

• Atomic Habits

• The Sales Hunter Podcast

• LinkedIn – Mark Hunter

• Sales Logic

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

About Mark Hunter

With over 30 years of sales leadership experience, Mark is passionate about helping companies and salespeople find and retain better prospects they can close at full price.

Mark delivers engaging keynote speeches, training workshops, and consulting services, based on his three best-selling books: A Mind for Sales, High-Profit Prospecting, and High-Profit Selling. He challenges sales myths and empowers sales teams to adopt new strategies and practices that increase their top-line sales and bottom-line profits.

Mark is recognized as a Top 50 Most Influential Sales and Marketing Leader, and travels globally almost 230 days a year, working with diverse industries and clients. His mission is to inspire salespeople to see and achieve what they didn't think was possible.

Going Along The Customer’s Buying Journey With Matt Heinz

Many businesses are doomed to fail because they focus too much on developing a strong brand but blatantly ignore the customers’ buying journey. Without understanding their behaviors, needs, and interests, there will be a huge disconnect that could lead to huge losses. Mark Cox sits down with Matt Heinz, President and Founder of Heinz Marketing, to discuss the right way to build trust and credibility with your target market. Matt explains how to leverage today’s technological innovations, particularly AI, to swiftly adjust business strategies to the ever-evolving world. He also stresses the importance of proper collaboration and teamwork between sales and marketing teams to perfectly capture the attention and interest of the public towards their businesses.

---

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Going Along The Customer’s Buying Journey With Matt Heinz

Matt Heinz, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Introducing Matt Heinz

It's a pleasure to finally meet you. I think our past should have crossed sometime sooner than this. It's always helpful for our gang to maybe give us a little bit of that short story of your professional journey. It's interesting to hear how a Journalism major ended up doing marketing for Microsoft and the Seattle Mariners and then running Heinz Marketing. How did you get here?

It's been a giant mistake, Mark. Imagine when you started with a Political Science and Journalism degree, I started my career doing exactly that. I was a state government beat reporter for a suburban newspaper outside of Seattle. I made my way to a PR firm, went to Microsoft, marketing for a couple of startups in Seattle, and developed a fondness over time for the complexity of the B2B go-to-market.

I realized very quickly that you can't just send an email like a lot of consumers' transactional performance marketing tactics. Those don't apply to complex sales situations. I decided sixteen years ago to try it on my own. Over time, we've built a team. We have clients all around the world, helping companies with complex sales situations to create more predictable repeatable pipelines. It's been a lot of fun along the way.

You're right. It's spectacular fun doing this. When you go in and help companies, are you going in as a consultant? Are you going in as trainers? What would a typical engagement look like? How would a company identify if they need your help?

We're project-based consultants. I think there are a lot of companies that do ongoing retainer and agency work from the tactical campaign side. Most of our clients have great product market fit but don't have a repeatable scalable engine to drive growth. We have developed over the years a methodology around building a predictable pipeline. We bring that methodology to clients. We customize it to their unique go-to-market motions, their industry, and their culture.

We create and install the systems that are going to drive that predictable pipeline, and then we teach them how to run it. A big part of our focus is to drive client independence. Our clients want to do this on their own. They want predictable pipelines to be part of their DNA moving forward as a core competitive advantage in their business.

We get calls from companies that don't have that engine that have grown maybe organically because of that strong product market fit, but have reached a ceiling and are not growing because they don't have the systems to drive that. We have companies that have outgrown their current marketing functions and are not reflecting the complexity of how go-to-market works today.

We also have clients that as they grow, their outbound marketing efforts are strong, but their ability to orchestrate that work internally starts to fall apart. Gartner calls that collaboration drag. It is a real thing. As companies get to 2025-plus employees on the marketing side, agility speed to market starts to deteriorate unless you put a real focus on how that gets done. Over the last few years, we've developed a real focus and expertise around helping companies better orchestrate the very act of doing marketing and go-to-market work, to be more agile, to increase speed to market to get more of the right work done.

There are so many great things to unpack there. As you were speaking, it dawned on me that with the hundred or so episodes we've had, we've had sales thought leaders, coaching thought leaders, mindset thought leaders, and all those kinds of good things. Some folks talked about mental health. I don't think we've had somebody who grew up with this core marketing expertise. We haven't had enough marketing thought leaders. In a little while, you and I might end up chatting about this collaboration and integration between sales and marketing. Maybe that's why. Maybe I've been ignoring marketing.

Role Of Marketing In Mid-Sized Organization

You touched on organizations that have not stayed current with what's taking place in marketing. Frankly, when you start to think of big data, automation, AI, social selling, quantum computing, and all these things that have continued to evolve over the last hundred years, it's tough to stay current. If we took it from base principles today, this might be an overly simplified question, but what is the role of marketing in the typical mid-sized organization? A SaaS company has $25 million in ARR, and they have a marketing team of 15 people.

It's a good question. A lot of people would say it's to drive demand, which manifests the leads, but I think that's too narrow. Even in a small growing organization, marketing's function is to manage the product market fit, to manage how well, if you're developing product strategy, meets and matches what the market needs. A great marketing leader needs to know more about the customer than anybody in the organization and develop a go-to-market plan that reflects that.

A great marketing leader needs to know more about the customer than anybody else in the organization to develop a go-to-market plan.

Sales teams say they want leads and they do need leads, but what the sales team needs is a market that needs what they're selling. They need a market that's receptive to their message, that knows who your company is, but more importantly, understands why they need the conversation. They understand the problem, they understand what's wrong with their current situation, and they are seeking solutions to make that better to achieve a better outcome, and that is fluid. As your product evolves, as the market evolves, and as capabilities evolve, that's fluid. That's why I think a marketing leader's job to manage product market fit and drive market demand and all the manifestations of what that looks like is key to success in the short term and long term.

What an interesting approach by the way because a lot of times, you see these silos between we have product over here, we have marketing. Usually, there's pretty good integration between marketing and sales, but you'll hear a lot of sell what you have on the truck instead of having that closed loop. We're saying sales is in front of clients, marketing is in front of clients, who understand what the client needs, and what's the process for feeding it back into the product group so we help with that core value proposition to the market.

Turning Lead Into Sales

If some of the folks listening today, by the way, that's a real big one on this product market. If CEOs are tuning in to this and they start to think about their marketing efforts, what's a basic framework that they can think of outside of product market fit? What should I be doing to try and help create and turn a lead into an opportunity or turn an opportunity into a sale? How do we think about how marketing supports that effort?

I would start with a very simple two by two matrix. On one side, it says brand on demand. The other side says short-term and long-term. There are short-term and long-term things you can do to build a strong brand and build and drive repeatable predictable demand. I bring that up for a couple of reasons. One, I think a lot of companies that are thinking short-term prioritize demand over brand. I get it. You need leads and they're like, “Brands are expensive.” Not necessarily.

You and I are doing this podcast. I know we're recording one on the sales pipeline on your podcast. Except for a couple of streaming services and our time, this is free. It used to be you had to get a publisher to publish your book. Now, you can do it through Lulu. Building a brand is more about your ability to be creative and be proactive at doing it. I don't know any strong, predictable, sustainable demand programs that operate with efficiency that aren't supported by a strong brand behind them.

They have to go together, but your short-term and long-term strategies may differ. You have to invest now in the things you want to impact your business long term, but you also have to invest in prioritizing now the things that are going to drive the pipeline this quarter. Brand demand, short and long-term, and have an approach and a strategy for each of those. Revisit it on a regular basis. This is a quarterly conversation to decide what's working, what's not working, what's having an impact, and what are we ready for next.

Ideal Marketing Executives

When you start to think of that, it feels to me that the marketing professional today has to be part data scientist, part visionary, and part creative designer. What are some of the skills and attributes even of the members of your team, when you're looking at somebody and say, “They're the right fit for our team,” will part values for a second, so who they are. What do you look for when you're looking for marketing executives today? What skills and capabilities?

I don't want to say researcher because that feels too narrow, but I think fundamentally, all of this begins when a deep and ongoing understanding of who your customer is. Let me define that in a couple of different ways. One, part of product market fit is you need to understand the subset of the subset of the market that you're selling to. Saying you are selling them in market healthcare is way too broad.

Part of product market fit is understanding the subset of the market you are selling to.

By narrowing your focus, you are not excluding those other companies from buying from you, but you'll still take their money. What you're doing is emphasizing and prioritizing a subset of the market that based on a variety of attributes is most likely to buy, and is most likely to have the need for what you're selling because buildings don't write checks. We got to talk about the people in the building. You probably read the book Selling to VITO. It's back here somewhere.

Back in the day, I did. Yeah.

Very Important Top Officers are still important, but not sufficient. There's this concept of the buying committee. Very rarely if ever would they describe themselves as the buying committee, but there's a group of people in every company that have a vested interest in the outcome that worked together to build consensus. Sometimes formally, sometimes organically. Our job as sellers is to get that buying committee to commit to change and commit to that, to the point where they choose and implement a solution. That's it.

That's hard. Let's imagine there are five members of the buying committee. Four of them have said yes, but one is a soft no. The deal is dead. Our ability to orchestrate consensus and movement inside that buying committee is the core of the job for sales and marketing teams. Back to your question, the better I understand motivations, the better I understand needs, the better I understand not just intent but needs and evidence of needs, and how those correlate to a message I should get in front of someone to help them better understand, to unlock, to challenge and reframe a status quo, that's it. That manifests itself in messages, campaigns, sales playbooks, and trade shows, but it all comes from that buying journey understanding.

Mapping The Buyer Journey

I like that idea. I've heard you on other podcasts while I was prepping for today. You talked about mapping the buyer journey out and making sure that you're adding value, insight, and knowledge through collaterals or a point of view or third-party research to somebody at every stage along that buyer's journey, which I think is magnificent.

The stuff on the consensus, a friend of the show is Alice Heiman. Miller Heiman from back in the day when probably both of us had beautiful heads of hair. It still hasn't changed. There were groups of people buying back in 1987 or ‘89, whenever it was. They had personal needs and professional needs. You had to make sure how you navigated that. I still love that framework.

They've sold the company twice. It's now Korn Ferry. I think the brand is disappearing, unfortunately, but I love that framework for doing so. Understanding the buyer, how can that be a mistake? Having the business acumen, the industry acumen, and having that point of view in terms of a better future for them, how can you help them? How can that be a mistake?

Yes, and. A lot of companies talk about themselves and don't talk about their customers’ needs. A lot of founders out there say, “I don't need to research the customer. I founded this company based on my understanding so I know what they need to hear.” There are a lot of companies that are so enamored with their product and assume that the buyer is going to do the value translation on their own.

They were just going to throw a bunch of features and product conversations to people and trust that they're going to understand what that means. There is no build and they will come. Even if you have a great product market fit, you still have to think about that narrative. You still have to connect the dots or the customer to be not only more efficient but more predictable and scalable.

Even if you have a great product market fit, you still have to connect the dots with the customer to be more efficient, predictable, and scalable.

I've heard you on a podcast. You're a super positive guy. I'm a super positive person too, but I have to ask this question. That concept you shared about making it about them is nothing new. Dale Carnegie in 1939 said, “You can make more friends in two months by taking an interest in them than you can in two years by trying to get them interested in you.” Why are we still struggling with this in professional B2B sales and marketing in 2024? It doesn't make any sense to me why we still have to go through this.

I think it comes down to at the end of the day, we don't want to take the time. You look at examples of what happens out there today. Let's take the proverbial white paper. Let's say you create a white paper that is written with some insights for the customer that helps them address and understand a need and a problem. You get someone that downloads that white paper. What we typically do is have a 23-year-old, call them, and say, “Thanks for downloading the white paper, Can I schedule you into a demo?”

I'm not even being facetious. This happens all the time every day. We assume that because they have asked for the white paper, let alone read it, they're ready for a demo. What do we want from our sellers? We want meetings. What do we want to do in those meetings? We want to talk about our product. We want to show them all these great things we can do. Once they see it, give me fifteen minutes, sir, and I will show you how I'm going to do it.

Instead of saying, “Would you like to demo?” What If you said, “Thanks for downloading the white paper, of course, you have not read it yet. Why did you do that? What's going on in your business right now? Why was that topic of that white paper pressing to you right now?” Maybe they have an answer for that. Maybe they don't. If they do, great. You go down that line if that helps you.

Otherwise, say, “I don’t get a chance to talk to people in your seat all day long, and when I ask them about what is frustrating them in their business right now, I hear the same three things.” List those three things quickly and then say, “Which of those made you a little sweaty thinking about it,” because that is something you're dealing with right now, or maybe even better, “What's one of the things on that list that you weren't thinking about that all of your peers are losing sleep on? Would you like to know why?”

There's an insight there and you can teach a 23-year-old how to have this conversation. You don't have to be a sales rep. You don't have to be a deep product expert but to know how to ask questions and get the prospect thinking and aligning the time with something that they showed interest in, then the next step you are not doing a demo, but your chances of earning the demo after that conversation go up dramatically. Sometimes three steps are faster than one. Back to your original question, a lot of sellers in a lot of companies don't have the patience and discipline to do that.

It's such a great point. It's harder to teach somebody business acumen and industry acumen and effective discovery than it is to say, “Let our product do the talking for itself.” To me or you, frankly, that's a nightmare scenario. Can you imagine as a salesperson, I'm going to jump on a call because we scheduled a demo? Everybody out there faces this.

The person who scheduled the demo is not the person on the other end of the Zoom call. There are six people. They're all staring at you bold-faced. I have no idea who they are. I don't know why they're on the call. Three of them have no reason to be on the call and are not going to influence the decision in any way. Somewhere, they go, “Dance like a monkey.”

For those listening, the best thing you can do is say, “Great to meet everybody here. Today, we'll take it through a demonstration if that’s what you like at the end of this thing, but first, can I start, can you go around the room? Let me know who you are. What are you doing here?

“Why are you here? Don’t you have something better to do? Why did you choose to come here instead of the thousand other things you can do? What were you hoping to hear? What were you hoping to learn? What did you want to get out of this conversation that you thought, going in, might be the reason why you're here as opposed to something else? Let's have that conversation first.”

Even if you forget the demo, forget those presentations. If you can confirm and deepen the need and understanding of the need with that audience, they will blow through the end of the meeting and stick around. They will enthusiastically take the next meeting to see how you understand them so well, what could you possibly have built based on that understanding that’s now going to fulfill promises made, and promises kept.

Getting Attention And Interest

Great stuff. We switch gears. At this point in time of the sales getting an opportunity, we think on this podcast, we've had lots of great conversations. We probably have some frameworks and thoughts that are helpful. If we go a little bit upstream in this day and age, let's say we do understand our buyer and the problem, our solution solves for, or what's going on in their business and their industry. We have this point of view and some value. How do we get attention and interest in this day and age where 45% of what's in my inbox today is spam?

It is not easy. It isn't done quickly. You are not starting from zero. You're starting from a negative position because of what everyone else is doing to disrupt, ignore, and disrespect the time of your prospects. Our efforts to get someone's attention, our sales and marketing, outbounds, our blog posts, our podcasts, our sales emails. This is driving by your prospect's house at 35 miles an hour, trying to get something in the mailbox. You're going to miss a lot.

 When you do get something in there, I don't know about you, but literally like the other day, my wife and I were sitting out on the porch. We asked our youngest son, “Will you go down and get the mail?” He brought the mail to my wife. She sat there and without even opening anything, took 80% of it, and gave it right back to him. Without a word, he put it in the recycle bin. It was just sales. That was irrelevant, not something I don't spend time with. It didn't even make it in the house.

Know that if you have a great message that is relevant to that audience, you're probably going to end up in the recycle bin initially. Following my mailbox analogy a little further, eventually, maybe they look at something like that. That was interesting That didn't waste my time. They didn't spend a lot of time on it, but that didn't waste my time. The next time they see something from you, that sparks interest as well.

Even if you have a great message relevant to your audience, it will probably end up in the recycle bin initially.

Eventually, they start recognizing that car that drives by their house, throwing something in the mailbox, “I should check what that is.” I don't mean that in a stalker way but I'm trying to say that you are competing with a massive amount of information from everybody else, and over time, by being consistently valuable, you earn the right for someone to say, “I'm going to keep this piece of mail,” or “I don't have time right now to read it, but I know there's usually value here. I'm going to put it on my list and get to it eventually.”

That is a process. It is not a single email. I see people all the time. I bought a list, I sent them an email, I got no response, and apparently, the email is dead. No. Your prospects are just inundated. They don't know you and they don't trust you. That is a process. I run a business. I got to close deals. I wish I could call CMOs and close consulting projects more quickly. It doesn't work that way. Again, back to my matrix of the brand on demand, short term, long term, there are tactics, and there are priorities you can put in place. If you want your prospect to read all of your mail, you have to prove that your mail is worth reading.

We’ve learned a lot of this the hard way. The same thing for us. Matt, you've been in business longer. I think you started in 2006 or 2007, right?

2008. It’s coming to 16 years.

2008. Nice timing.

Thank you. It was November 2008. The market had just crashed. My wife is finally pregnant with her first child. I quit my job. You don't need benefits when your wife is pregnant. Now it sounds worse than it was. My wife is a teacher. Her benefits are way better than mine. I had a couple of clients lined up. It wasn't as bad as it sounds, but it was a time.

That's a great conversation for another podcast about entrepreneurship. We both lived through that. Going back to this getting this time and attention. We lived through a period of time when I outsourced our content on LinkedIn, Facebook, or social posts. In the early days of our business 10 or 12 years ago, we had marketing interns. Every once in a while, I'd read something and go, “I would never say that.” They were trying to interpret it. We gave them an impossible task.

The truth of it is now we write it. We have GPT and AI tool that helps us and starts to get to know us a little bit, It starts to get better and better and better, but I'm completely with you, anything that has our name or brand on it has to be adding value because the number of people who come to us and say, “I've been following you for two years on LinkedIn.” I go, “It worked. It was slow but it worked.” Make sure you're consistent with the brand.

Improving Practices And Collaboration

I've heard you talk about this and you read about this a little bit. Tell me a little bit about some of the best practices for the sales leaders out there, we have far more sales leaders listening today than we do have marketing leaders. What can they do to improve the collaboration or bring some best practices to the table by working with their marketing teammates?

That’s a great question. I think first is to know and appreciate that it is a team sport. You can't do this if you don't do it together. There is no successful marketing without sales. There are no successful sales without marketing. Full stop. Also recognize that the old way of thinking about the pipeline, where marketing owns the top and sales owns the bottom, is insufficient in most modern B2B selling environments.

Setting the funnel horizontally, We need to split it vertically, maybe with a diagonal band, where marketing has most of the jobs at the top, and sales may have most of the jobs at the bottom. I am thinking more about jobs to be done. One of the best examples of this is the BDR, the business development function where lead management takes the leads, turns them, and qualifies them. Is it in sales or marketing? I don't care. What is the job to be done?

In some cases, it's better if it's in sales because your BDR is the future AEs because they feel like they're part of the sales culture, but in some cases, that means they get that “Thanks for downloading white paper, would you like to see a demo?” Sometimes it's better if they're in marketing. Marketing is responsible not for leads, but the opportunity of creation. If you think about it in marketing, all of a sudden you’re saying, “I got a group of people that are on the phone.” The phone is another channel, just like LinkedIn, email, podcasts, or trade shows.

What's the conversation I want someone to have when I can get them on the phone that further qualifies and drives interest with the right person at the right company, and now it's worth spending time on? It's the same process and I don't care who does it. I think the lines have been appropriately blurred between sales and marketing and that sort of messy middle. If you can take ego aside, you can know that some of the mattresses we look at are leading indicators and or ingredients to the end results.

Also, I’ve been thinking a lot about when a deal gets closed and someone makes their quota and someone goes to the president's club. Increasingly, I have clients talking about who gets to go to the president's club. Is the AE that closed the deal? What about the BDRs that did the follow-up for months? What about the marketing team that builds the product market fit and makes them interested? What about the copy who wrote such compelling copy based on a deep understanding of that audience?

I think it's it's increasingly becoming insufficient to have AE that closed the deal to go to the president's club. That's a whole nother podcast as well. We have an entrepreneurship podcast and a president’s club podcast. The healthiest most successful programs to drive demand and sales are when sales and marketing work closely together. They check egos at the door. They have an integrated scorecard. They know that everybody wins or everybody loses. The metrics that matter are the numbers that you can buy a beer with, period.

Buying Journey: Sales and marketing teams must work closely together. They should check egos at the door and keep integrated scorecards to know when everybody wins or loses.

Money in the door, money in the door. When you start to think of it as this team sport, I think it's critically important today because you probably know matrix as well but the tenure of these sales leaders is so short. Frankly, the tenure of anybody in sales is insanely short, but a sales leader is like eighteen months these days. BDR, SDR same thing, about eighteen months, a little bit less.

This idea of saying if I'm a CRO as I've been in the past if I'm going to jump into somebody's organization today, I'm looking to build as many people closely in the team and link arms with the team because I believe in collaboration. I believe in the power of the team. By the way, it's also a survival mechanism. If we don't have a team around us, we're going to have a short stint of eighteen months is insane.

Exciting Things In The Future

Let's look at positive things. If we turn the table a little bit and say a lot of challenges out there getting attention and awareness, but I don't think we've ever been at this stage of the world where we're so well enabled, big data, quantum computing, AI, automation, technology, the ability to get more productive and effective.

I love those tools that help do a little research for me so that before I'm going to speak to Matt Heinz, I can get a DISC profile on Matt Heinz pretty quickly. What kind of person is he? How does that compare with me? Analyzing your digital footprint out there so that we can have a more engaging conversation. What are you excited about now when you start to think of the next couple of years in marketing?

What I'm excited about is flipping that, where instead of using all the tools to research you before I make the call, I used the data to figure out who to call first. Based on my understanding of the target audience, understanding of the ideal customer profile account, and understanding of the individual you need to be speaking to, that's a model that can be that inherently include an understanding and prioritization of data.

The level of data we now have access to through a variety of means is incredible. It's like the Library of Congress. Every book ever produced, but they're all on the floor. Where do you find the books you need? I think the better you understand your audience, the better you can prioritize the data you need and use that data to decide, “Who do I call next? What do I talk about?”

You hear the phrase intent signals a lot these days, a lot of the big data companies, a lot of the database vendors, a lot of them are producing what they're broadly calling intent signals. I'd break it down even further. I think intent signal means you have someone who is indicating interest in your product or showing evidence that they're seeking a solution, phenomenal. This is a later-stage buyer that hopefully you build some brands and some credibility with, so you're not a commodity at the last part. You don’t call them further doing the deal, but that's great.

Behind intent signals are need signals. It's prospects and customers that are researching or exhibiting needs that you know relate to your solution. You're still not going to offer in a fifteen-minute demo but you can respond to that need by giving them educational content, by teaching them what other people like them are doing with that need. The need before needs is evidence signals. Evidence of need that your prospect hasn't translated into a need.

They are on this journey maybe for the first time. You've seen the movie countless times, but you know that oftentimes evidence of need Is a way to accelerate that path from evidence to need to commitment to change. If you are the trusted advisor who helps them on that path, you're the incumbent in the deal now. That evidence signals and needs are early in the buying process. These are not sales-qualified leads yet. These are not people that should be in your immediate pipeline.

Your ability as a marketing organization, as a selling organization to identify and engage with prospects at that stage with the right channels, to make sure that it's not a bunch of people on the phone. The economics of that has to be right, but knowing you can break up the data into those three areas and respond accordingly is helping a lot of companies' brand and demand with that long-term play.

In simplest terms, I completely love this by the way. I think everybody out there is using Zoom for intent data or cheap and cheerful versions of Zoom for intent data. Lots of different technologies, but there's a certain sign of, for example, a software company. How long have they been in existence? Who's on their executive team? What's the solution? Who are they selling to? I could tell you with certainty, just getting those attributes, 80% of the time, they're growing less than 10%.

Staying Current

They came out of the gate and so they need what we would sell, which would be sales training and development for their team to elevate performance. I love this idea of getting smart in this space. In that area because this world is so broad. I know you get a chance with your podcasts and your blogs and your writing and your guests on everybody else's podcast. How do you stay current in this very confusing world these days? It feels like that sales leader or marketing person got this chameleon-type role where it's so hard to stay current with everything. What are the sources that you go to or how do you stay abreast of what's going on?

Episode Wrap-up

A couple of things. The easiest answer is you have to prioritize constant learning. You have to be a constant student of things you know you need to know and things you're just interested in, where your brain will make correlations. Some of my best insights into how we could be a better business, and how we can better serve clients have come from other Industries and random other situations where I'm like what happened there could happen with us too. What happened there could be part of our sales process.

You have to prioritize constant learning. You need to be a constant student of things.

I buy too many books. I don't see every one of these cover to cover, but I'm reading way more because I make it a priority. Honestly, as a marketing person for most of my career, the marketing stuff I get, I read a lot more sales books than marketing books because it's an area that I did not grow up with. When I started this business, I didn't carry a bag. I hadn't been a seller, but so I think to be hungry, to be interested, to make it a habit, and there are so many different formats.

If you don't like reading, watch videos. If you don't like videos, download a bunch of podcasts and listen to them in the car, listen to them when you go for a run. Put them in the background when you're doing something else easy. “Matt, I'm not actively listening to it.” At that point, you have information that you are consuming subconsciously even If you're working on some other tactical easy thing. I do think there's no simple answer other than you have to put in the time and make it a habit.

You almost sled there too by the way. Thank you for that. You sled to Lencioni's humble, hungry, smart thing in terms of what you're looking for, in terms of top people, and great thought leaders. In all 100 podcasts, we asked this question frequently. It does come back to being a lifelong learner instead of a know-it-all, be a learn-it-all. The most successful people in the world have driven that appetite to keep learning, be prepared, and be ready to go. The best athletes in the world are always looking to tweak 2% or 3% to get a tiny bit better because it has a massive impact.

Given your time, I'm going to maybe wrap up a couple of things here by saying thank you. Thank you for joining me today. I'm sure so many of the folks listening to this podcast are going to get enormous value from what we've heard today, but this will be the start of the process of them getting to know you. Where should they go to learn more? Where should they go to learn more about you?

HeinzMarketing.com is our company's website. You can learn about what we do. Click on the resource section and its sixteen years of blog posts, and best practice guides. We do a ton of research in go-to-market motions and a lot of that is up there as well. It's all free. Most of it doesn't have a form. It's take it and use it and benefit from it. You're going to be a guest shortly on our podcast as well, Sales Pipeline Radio. We named it that years ago on purpose. We are marketing consultants but the output of this is a sales pipeline. That's what that is about. Check that out.

I write a lot on LinkedIn these days. I used to write every day on our blog and now our company blog is written by our consultant and it's so much better. I can brag about it because I have nothing to do with it, but I spent a lot more time on our podcast and LinkedIn. You can check me out on LinkedIn as well, or if you don't find what you want, or want a shortcut to the library, it’s Matt@HeinzMarketing.com and I welcome anybody curious and has any questions.

We didn't get into curiosity today, but that's such a great topic. First of all, thanks, Matt. Thanks again for joining the team. I'll tell everybody that in preparation for today, I did go and check out the white papers, and the resource section. There are a ton of extremely well-written white papers. They're clear, they're good-looking, core messages you can pull from. I took a look at a CMOS guide to marketing orchestration, and from data to deals. Before we got in, I downloaded it and read two of them. I learned things. Teams, you will too. Please jump on to the website and download those things.

Thank you, Matt, so much for today. Team. I want to say thank you to you for listening. As everybody knows, we run this podcast because, at a high level, we want to improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales. In doing so, we think we improved the lives of professional salespeople. Thanks for listening today. We're growth-oriented and we know we're not perfect at doing this. If you have some constructive criticism or some thoughts as to how we can make the show more valuable to you, I want to know about them.

I'm MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. Some of the things we do on the podcast came as a result of the great feedback you gave us. Keep it coming. That's my personal email. I respond to your notes and we respond to everybody who gives us an idea. Thanks for listening, team. If you enjoyed today, please tell your friends and like and subscribe to The Selling Well podcast because that's how we get great guests like Matt Heinz. We'll see you next time on The Selling Well.

Important Links

• Matt Heinz - LinkedIn

• Heinz Marketing

• Sales Pipeline Radio

How A Minute To Think Can Transform Your Life With Juliet Funt

Feeling overwhelmed by the relentless pace of modern life? A Minute to Think by Juliet Funt offers a refreshing antidote, providing practical strategies to reclaim your time, reduce stress, and boost productivity. In this episode, Mark Cox welcomes Juliet to discuss the pervasive culture of busyness in the corporate world and the importance of creating space for reflection and intentional planning. Discover how mindful pauses can transform your work-life balance and unlock your full potential.

---

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

How A Minute To Think Can Transform Your Life With Juliet Funt

Juliet’s Professional Journey

Juliet, welcome to the show. It's so great to meet you.

I'm so happy to be here.

A couple of thoughts. The book resonated with me so much, Juliet. Folks, of course, we're talking about A Minute to Think: Reclaim Creativity, Conquer Busyness, and Do Your Best Work. For a very good portion of my life, I would have been one of those people maybe defined as a workaholic, and always working and pushing and feeling that busyness or sense of urgency that we create. Your book resonated with me when I was on a trip to Rome with my wife, and I got up crazy early in the morning. I was actually reading the book in the morning. When you're talking about, I think it's Martone, Italy, a town of 25.

Martone, yes.

Martone. Thank you. Martone, Italy, where you were talking in the book about this town of 25 people up this crazy, steep mountain. The main person helping you at this town of 25 people, you and your family, is talking about how busy they are. You start to think, how busy can you be in a town of 25 people?

I think it was 21, and then when we got there, it was 26. Tiny. The gentleman was a farmer. They made their homemade pestos and raised geese in the kitchen, but he had the same insane metronome inside of him that you would have if you were watching someone rush down Market Street in San Francisco on the way to a job at Salesforce. It's just so funny how it can be everywhere.

It's so pervasive. By the way, when I was reading it, even though I was on vacation, I was just loving it so much. Of course, I'm not the only one. Folks, when you pick up this book and read it, which you will, and of course, the link is in the show notes, folks like Seth Godin and Pat Lencioni provided wonderful testimonials on the back of the book.

One of our favorites, Daniel Pink, did the same thing. He's been on the show. We love Daniel. The idea of this topic being so important. Finding this opportunity to get away from the busyness, get away from quantity of work, and move to quality of work. Tell us a little bit about your professional journey. What led you to this specific topic?

They always say that you're solving your own problems. You and I could probably go to the same Workaholics Anonymous meeting if we wanted to go together. I would probably then leave you, have a coffee, and go to the Technology Anonymous meeting, where I would talk about how addicted I am to my laptop and my phones. When you start from this hardwiring of always wanting to move and go and be connected and get the next thing, I spent my entire professional career seeking solutions to my own problems that became very flexible solutions to share with others.

I sometimes feel if I don't have my own book in my purse, I would just disappear in a wave of busyness because it's a chronic condition that needs a repetitive and almost meditative return again and again, again, to remembering the benefits of slowing down, doing less, having it all be enough, which is so difficult when they say success is a mountain that gets higher as you climb it. I love that. I always have to take my own medicine. My journey was interesting.

Success is a mountain that gets higher as you climb it.

I started in professional speaking many years ago in youth and education. My first forum was colleges, high schools, and I talked to children and teenagers who were too busy. They became stressed, and the program was called Overcommitted, Overwhelmed, and Over It. As I sat in these mixed audiences talking about collegiate overwhelm and teenage overwhelm and the stress of busyness, the parents would be sitting in, saying, "Excuse me, I work in a firm that has the same problem."

I would be helping these college students and high school students with their collegiate stress and high school stress. Meanwhile, there were parents in the audience that were thinking, well, I have a firm and we have the same problems, which was the transition for me from youth and education to corporate and association, and then led into a twenty-year career, helping people solve their busyness and figure out not only how to find time to think, which is very important in the title of the book, but also to curb the volume and quantity of all of the rest of the workday.

A lot of our work in teams, when we're in companies, is really tactical efficiency work. I think I started to tell you about some of the things we're doing with the Air Force, the military, and special operations because everyone in the world has too much to do and too little time, and they all have more tasks in the day than they can manage.

Everyone in the world has too much to do and too little time, and they all have more tasks in the day than they can manage.

Culture Of Busyness

You touched on a couple of things that are so interesting there. This thing about the corporate world. I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been one for ten years. I grew up in the corporate world running large sales organizations and massive companies. This culture of busyness, and we'll talk about this, is the use of email, which was ridiculous in the CC, and the further up the chain you went, the more email became the unhappiest place in the world.

It's overwhelming all the time, the average executive getting 275 a day and all of this thing. I think one of the things that I found so interesting at the beginning, when we talk about this challenge that I experienced in the corporate world, I certainly wasn't alone. In the book, you call out a couple of key corporate stats. Gallup tells us 23% of workers feel burnout more often than not. Deloitte found that two-thirds of employees feel overwhelmed. An astounding 80% of men would like to work fewer hours.

Those were four years ago. It's worse. Definitely worse.

It's definitely worse. When I think of some of the environments I was in, there was this real culture of almost the more you work, the less you sleep, the more coffee you're drinking. It was this badge of honor. The reality, frankly, is that as an entrepreneur, the coaching programs I'm involved in as an entrepreneur are actually the opposite. The most successful entrepreneurs know they have to take days off, want to work less, and want self-managing companies. They're not doing everything, but it's completely reversed in this corporate world. Is the problem getting better or worse in your view?

We had a few gains from COVID. We had that little bit of extra balance that I think will retain itself in hybrid work. I'm going to give you my honest answer. I'll preface it by saying I'm very concerned that I sound negative about our horizon ahead. I'm trying so hard to be mindful of my choices and perspectives, but I feel very worried about people. I feel like something has happened in the last four years where executives and executive teams have seemingly demonstrated less and less care, especially in larger companies, huge companies, and that care is demonstrated by the resources that they spend on people. I understand why they're doing it. I think that they're very afraid of competition in the economy and AI.

They're distracted and think that resources should go elsewhere, but it's been years since people were the focus. I don't even understand what they think happened to all the latent burnout from COVID that was in everybody's bodies and systems. Somehow, we just magically moved into hybrid and then into normalcy. I don't think it left people. I think that it's living inside of us as this latent anxiety and stress all the time. I'm pretty worried about what's going on out there. I think the solutions being deployed are very downstream in their nature, therapists and wellness days.

That's way at the end of the cycle, as opposed to going up to these predictable, unbelievably obvious patterns of eleven hours of back-to-back Zoom meetings and vacations where you check email every morning before the kids wake up, and these incredibly predictable life circumstances that are leading to chronic burnout, but not really being addressed at that upstream point. I am never a hopeful person, but it's a tough time. I think it's a tough time to make room for people.

I think it's a tough time to be courageous. What I always find with these things is you have to be, particularly in the corporate world, I think you have to be in an environment where you're comfortable enough as a senior executive, where you can veer away from the norm for your team and step away because I think that the corporate mass, in general, it's not a smart animal.

Not in the big companies. That's why for the very first time in our careers, we're moving toward midsize companies because there still is a little bit more humanity and control retained. I'm finding the heart of the owner is still palpable in the environment. That's been a really big change for us, trying to meet these midsize and smaller business leaders.

You reference a couple of these great ones, like the CEO of Basecamp. We're big fans of Basecamp, but these folks who are doing smart things that say, "It's not optional. You've got to take your vacation. You've got to take your lunch. By the way, if you don't, we're going to penalize you." I think some of these things are so smart by standing behind the walk. Sometimes it does feel, without being cynical, it feels at the corporate level, they do some things really to insulate themselves from liability, to say, we have these programs available, or you could have done this, or we have an HR department.

The Importance Of White Space

At the core, you don't get that feeling that we're actually trying to help folks. This show is trying to help folks. By the way, you've spoken to a couple of people. You're a little famous in my eyes, for a couple of reasons. First of all, not just because you speak on some of the largest stages in the world, but one of the comedy gods in my eyes is John Cleese.

He was great.

Those folks out there who are fans of great comedy, smart comedy, Monty Python, life-changing. Some of the funniest things ever invented have come from Monty Python. Tell our folks the circumstances by which you ended up interviewing John Cleese and talking about him sharing the importance of white space.

I did. He, first of all, comes on the line. I don't know if he's 80, 85. I have no idea how old he is. He's flirting from the first second he's on the line. He's laughing. He's making me laugh. He's just incredible. I'm a huge fan. He wrote about white space for years. That's why I wanted to interview him in his book. I'm going to miss the name of one of the books he wrote in the past, but he wrote about what he called open mode and closed mode. He would talk to corporations, not a lot, but from time to time, about when they were in the Python-esque creative frame, how they had to be in this open mode of just receptivity and lots of space and 90-minute chunks of unplanned time, as opposed to the closed mode, as he called it, of doing and making work go forward.

In fact, one of his techniques has become one of my creative favorites, called the set-aside technique. He said that when he was working with the other Pythons, he found that he was talking about one in particular, whose name I won't say, but he said when he compared the two of them, he always found, honestly, that his inventions were a little bit more novel.

The reason that he attributed that was that when the other Python would get an idea, if it was a good, solid idea, they would go for it and use it. Cleese would not. He would get a good idea, he would note it, set it aside, and then return to the well. He would ponder again. He would get another good idea and set it aside. I do this all the time, creatively, when I think I've latched quickly onto the next fabulous idea. I'll use his technique to pause and say, "Nice, let me write that down," and then go all the way back to a whiteboard and see what comes next. He said that in that iterative process, he would get deeper and better ideas over time, which I completely agree with.

Was that the yellow list? When you say putting it away and coming back to it, is that the yellow list that you speak to?

You could. I'll teach you the yellow list because it's the number one tool to reduce email traffic. That is a form of a yellow list, but it's a little bit more strict in its usual definition. The yellow list is just a document you keep in your computer for each person or team you work with frequently. When you're about to send a digital communication, sometimes literally when you're about to type, you pause and say, "Should this actually be digital, or could I just jot this down on the yellow list for the next time I talk to this person?" When we get senior executives, we make them take out their email. We make them do yellow list inventories, and they go through and try to allocate what percentage of the email traffic that they are generating, if they had this mindful tool, could actually have been saved for a yellow list.

It's often 20%, 30%, 50% of email traffic. What that leads to then is that when you send an email, the thing about email is that every email has babies, and those emails have babies, and those emails have babies. If you cut it off at the source and you can stop before the first send, you compartmentalize. You bring things into an interpersonal realm because that conversation, when you finally debrief, the yellow list is going to be face-to-face or ear-to-ear. It has just so many incredible benefits.

You talked about the perils of email. I'll throw in one of the other tactical favorites for everyone, which is, in addition to the yellow list, you're curbing your outbound, that's going to curb your inbound, create a CCFYI folder and train your Outlook or your Mac so that every email that comes in that is either CC or FYI goes into one folder, and you only check that folder once a day. You've reduced the volume, and you've really cut off the stream with those two simple actions.

We're tactically on email. This stuff is just such gold. A couple of things I always share, particularly with folks in professional sales out there, email makes me sad generally. I know you talk about the dopamine hit and people, we can't wait to see, but having been a senior executive in a large corporation for so long, even sometimes with our smaller team here in the funnel, it's rare that I'm going to get a dynamite piece of news by email. It feels like it's work.

The work is getting through them because there's this thing in you that says, "I got to get through them." We file things away and all the rest of it, but there's absolutely nothing worse than opening your phone and seeing an email from somebody that's four paragraphs long and has a diagram. It feels, there's this ongoing coaching that I feel like I'm giving folks, saying you have to actually work very hard to write me the short letter. Mark Twain is right.

Absolutely. We say clarity, brevity, and punch are the three components of a perfect email. Clarity, are you thinking stream of consciousness, or did you actually put some intention into the thing that you wrote? Brevity, are you writing, let me say, like a bikini brief but covering the main subject matter?

How can you get it tight? Punch is a visual element where we're separating out certain text pieces with bolding, underlining, and bullets so that the eye doesn't have to be looking at this mass of, "Oh, I have to read this novel on my way down." It's a little bit lighter. It's a great thing. We can drill with teams and workshops, writing with clarity, brevity, and punch. Nobody teaches people how to write. We find this in corporate, and we find this in the military. When we hire anybody, the first thing that we do is get a video of them speaking and a writing sample because we want to see if they can present themselves and how they write. It's a fading talent, for sure. I would say that brevity of all of them is probably the one that is the hardest for people.

Sometimes I might be starting to sweat here a little bit. I've reported to some tough people throughout the course of my career. Think of the extremely nasty hockey coaches that, somewhere in their psyche, they thought they were helping you but weren't. One of them did teach a very good lesson because he just had absolutely no patience for anything.

When you communicated in any way or set an agenda for a meeting, almost anything you said was a bit of a turnaround person. You were watching the words that you shared. You were literally getting 1 or 2 sentences, but it did teach you to send that three-sentence email that set up the meeting perfectly. The objective was very clear.

These are the things we're asking for an answer to. To his credit, what he did do is, when you did that, he read it. If you did it properly, coming to the meeting still wasn't an easy meeting, but he would still actually read what you sent. This concept is all of us in professional sales. Think of what we're doing to our buyers when many of us still can't write. We're sending emails and proposals and presentations, agonizingly boring, super detailed. We wonder why they don't understand our competitive differentiation in the marketplace because they couldn't extract it from the 400-word email.

There are a million things to talk about there. First, I also write proposals for our training and consulting company. We all know that everyone just skips to the last page just to see what the price is. Everything that is before that is skimmed over the first time anyway, and then they'll go back and they'll read, but they've already made a value decision, probably based on the last page. You have to re-resell them almost in terms of your value. I love when people are willing to be coached to come down off of what Donald Miller calls the bowling balls that we hand people in communication, just such weighty, overwritten text. We get them to do it with a tool called the mental highlighter. We get people to have printouts of over-verbose emails.

We first have them highlighted with a yellow highlighter, which is actually of the highest value on the page. When they've done that, we say, "What if that tool was in your mind? What if you could just look at something and just mentally highlight it?" You could start asking yourself, "Well, why are the rest of the words there? How many of these words can you reduce?" You see emails begin to drop from 200 words to 100 words to 30 words. Sometimes, they disappear entirely. It's just a short yellow list mentioned at the end of that exploration. Thinking as if you have a highlighter is a great way. This works for proposals or slides, anything where you can identify high-value words, and then pause to step back and say, "Why are the other words still there?" It will give you the same objectivity.

Outside of being so frustrated when you read it, the forgetting curve with Hermann Ebbinghaus is still alive and well. In 1885, he created a formula for how quickly people forget learned information. The only reason we still know Hermann's name is that it turns out, he was right, and the formula keeps getting tested. When we run our training workshops, we realize that two hours after a workshop, half the people will forget half of the things you talked about unless you interrupt that forgetting curve somehow. This is critically important for all of us in terms of communication. Let's circle back to the top, we got really tactical, super helpful with email. Let's start at the beginning. When we start to think of this whole concept, we need this moment to pause. We need the white space.

What really resonated with me, Juliet, was the analogy of the fire. Because I'm like you, I've never camped before. If I was left out there, I'd have a hard time starting a fire. You use a great example of you, your three boys, and your husband out in the woods, trying to make that first fire up in the cabin. You had all the materials, but they were so condensedly packed together that there was no oxygen to let the fire breathe. Nothing happened.

As a novice firemaker, I packed it in there the first time. The beautiful thing about this oxygenation metaphor is that as soon as you re-fluff the stack and open up the space between the wood, the first match just takes everything away, and that's all it needs. What's so completely reliable is that human beings are the same, work teams are the same, and great ideas are the same. Everyone wakes up in the morning with a little spark that will be their professional contribution. They walk in, hoping for it to be fanned and oxygenated. Sadly, as we were talking about before, usually it's the opposite that happens, by about 9:45, things seem overwhelming, hopeless, and stressful. That little spark is quickly extinguished. We should probably define white space.

We call it time without assignment. The reason that it's white is because, in the back, I'm trying to see if I have a paper calendar with me. In the old days of coaching executives, way back in the day, I would get some busy, crazed executive, and I would try to get him to just open up the paper planner and say, "Show me the white spaces on there. Where is the time that you don't know where you're already going to be?" That is where possibility is held in your day. Those white spaces quite literally became this idea of time without assignment. We advocate that people take it in really manageable sips. We can't all take an executive stretch of 30 minutes, but you can take a minute and two minutes.

You can insert a little wedge of white space between activities, and you open and oxygenate. You have 7 minutes between your meetings and 2 minutes to transition projects. You pull in the driveway at home, and you take three minutes before you come in to the kids so you can be present, and all of a sudden, there's oxygen in the system.

It's so critically important. You go back to the pandemic days; those were some of the first things we picked up when we were on Zoom calls for eight hours straight, and how mentally exhausted we were. I remember physically putting in 14, 15, 16-hour days, no trouble at all, then working out at the end of the day. Suddenly, when I was sitting at a desk and it was all through Zoom, the exhaustion at the end of the day, the mental fatigue, was unlike anything I'd come across.

The second thing I always like to contemplate, whether we're executives running large teams or we're actually selling and interacting with clients and buyers, is that we owe it to them to be our best selves in the meeting. We owe it to them. Taking that pause and reflection, a little bit of meditation, whether it's box breathing or something that gets you out of that last meeting, allows you to leave that stuff and then come in to be your authentic self in this meeting. It's so critically important, but boy, I'd say that the wedge is not something that's universally leveraged in the business community these days, that's for sure.

Not yet. It's not. I will say this, as you talked about the well-being resilience angle of that pause, I will tell you that there's another one that's paramount for sellers, and it's difficult to sell to them because of the ego around, "I can get into my Herman Miller at $1.59 and spin around, and I'm on, and I'm good, and I know my stuff." We chronically undervalue the strategic white space before sales meetings to get to know the person you're about to talk to deeply, to what I call take a bath in the client.

I will spend 10 or 15 minutes just, I'm on YouTube. Is there a video of them talking? I'll read their website. I'll look at their LinkedIn. I just want to be in their universe deeply. Do I have notes from the last time we talked before I got on the phone with them? If you don't have wedges, you are pretending to be present for the first five minutes of every meeting while you secretly move the notes from the last meeting over.

You get your Post-its organized, and you're not as good an actor as you think you are. You're not as present. At some point, about five or six minutes later, you will click in, and they may or may not feel it. It's just a pernicious detractor of your connection with other people. From a sales perspective, that's where we really double down on white space for teams. Every seller should be trained in this protocol.

Whether there's a number of folks who've talked about how quickly you can sense somebody else's intent, if you walk into that meeting and you've, I love that, bathed yourself in the customer, I've seen them on YouTube, and I understand what's going on with their business. Maybe I've leveraged a little bit of AI to help me. I know them, their business. I know I've got this point of interest as to why we're having this conversation. I think psychologically, I feel like I've earned the right for an authentic conversation. I think it comes across.

I think you're right. I love that. There's the text-based preparation, AI reading, etc. There's something for me you can't always get it about the human part. If you can listen to them talk or on a podcast or video and you, and you're, it's not going to be the very first time you hear their voice. It's just an incredibly powerful way of orienting yourself to another person.

Thieves Of Time

Absolutely. The other thing we always throw out, I like looking at somebody's picture. Particularly if I'm selling and I'm doing demand generation, if I'm writing an email to them, I might be looking at your picture of you in your book. It feels somehow like I'm making a connection. I see your smiling face, and I feel a little bit more connected. I think those things tend to come across just wonderfully. By the way, you see how important all of these things are in terms of taking the rest, the break, all of these things are universal for executives or salespeople. Let's get into some of the thieves of time.

When we've got these folks out here reading, we're at work, doing the things we want to do, but there are thieves of time, and there are remedies for these thieves of time that we can talk about. A lot of folks, you talked about personalities at the start of this. We know there's a lot of driven entrepreneurs out there reading this. There's a lot of driven salespeople. What's the real risk when somebody's too driven?

Let's put that in the context of the thieves themselves. The thieves came out of our research studying busy people, and we found that there were actually four main drivers that fueled almost all professional overload. What was tricky was that they were all good things that had simply overgrown. There wasn't a bad thing in the list, and they were four things. They were drive, excellence, information, and activity. If you do a developmental assessment, we have one that's like a Myers-Briggs or a DISC, you'll see that different people lean toward different ones. I would assume from your audience, you're going to have a lot of high-drive people, but drive as an asset has a corresponding risk, which is, in the age of overload, it becomes overdrive.

Drive, excellence, information, and activity are all good things that have simply overgrown.

When we're doing nine projects in the same month for our poor, exhausted team, we are no longer running on an optimal battle rhythm for them. Each of the thieves has a corresponding risk. I am a high-excellence person, so mine is perfectionism. Information turns into information overload, and activity can become just frenzy.

What happens with the thieves is they love little victories and stimulation. They keep going for that dopamine hit, that thin achievement in the day. They keep us from the mode where we can go deep into that really quiet work. My deep mode time is about 7:00 AM before anyone's awake, and I can go deeply into it. Once you get into that cadence with the thieves during the day, for me, it all becomes about tiny boxes being checked. This is where you can end at the end of a day, a week, a month, or a year feeling like you didn't move the needle.

It's so unsatisfying. Those days are so particularly unsatisfying. The reference you use in the book, which resonated so much with me, was scary, Sunday mornings. The best work I've ever done? Sunday mornings. You ask yourself, I wonder why I'm working so well then. First of all, no crazy sense of urgency, no thieves, I'm calm. By the way, if I want to take a break for 20 minutes and lie on the couch, play with my cat, or do anything, I can do so guilt-free.

You're riding the natural pace of your body, too, on a day like that. You're in the flow of what's natural and normal. You don't have other people bothering you. You don't have Zoom calls. You don't have meetings. I think that that Sunday feeling is possible in the workday if we create containers for it. As an example, everyone on my team has a deep workday once a week. That's just a day where we don't interact with them.

That's their Sunday. Jamie, my assistant, had her deep workday. We had one emergency for a client. I made one phone call. She got pulled out for two minutes, and that happens sometimes. For the rest of the eight hours that she will work, she will be alone and not hear from anybody, which is all we really need to replicate that Sunday experience.

We're going to take that one and apply it to In the Funnel.

That would be good.

I've read the book, but I certainly haven't done that. Sometimes, it's a little more ad hoc where I'm thinking, hey, somebody is working on something. I'm going to try and leave them alone because a lot of the kerfuffle is actually caused by me.

Join the club, boss.

Happiness

We're a small company. A lot of the issues, I'm the stopgap for many things, I'm the logjam, but I also cause many of the issues. Instead of intentionally saying, okay, I've got to be careful, Sandra is super busy, so just say one day a week, and we have no meetings. Nobody has to do anything except spend some quiet time. They have their own quiet time to go and get the things done that they need done. Although I don't have the data point in front of me, Juliet, I bet you do. Just as we wind down a little bit here, one thing is how does this interrelate or relate directly to somebody's happiness in life?

I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a part of a great entrepreneurial coaching program called Strategic Coach. They're huge on successful entrepreneurs taking what's called free days, taking a full 24 hours, you don't even read a business book, nothing to do with business, try not to think about it. They have this theme that says the more time off you take, the smarter you actually get. It's amazing how, when you're away from the whole game, everything becomes crystal clear and you become better at what you do. Where does this play, particularly in your world, in this time world that we're talking about?

Does it play into somebody's happiness or reducing depression or anxiety? It feels to me like there's a real connection here.

I'm curious about that practice. Is it an additional day besides a weekend, or is it an instruction simply to take at least one of those weekend days disconnected?

It's the latter because you're an entrepreneur as well. You understand that to a certain ceiling of complexity, entrepreneurs work weekends until you have a self-managing company. They just generally, there's the Sunday that comes in for me. This idea is, hey, you know, you take at least a full 24 hours off every seven days, but literally the more successful you do, your bragging right is how many more days you take. That includes a weekend.

Absolutely. I'm a huge believer. I will tell you that some of the greatest demonstrations of white space power in my work have been the three times I've taken one month off. My little team is probably around the same size as yours. They manage without me so beautifully and so predictably. I've done this a couple of times, and the happiness that I regained from being gone that long is incredible. If you start with that as a grand aspiration, then you move downward from there.

I think that when you have time to step out, you are experiencing the only time that you have to look back at your business and become objective about it. I'll give you an example. I told you this air force new thing with the Air Force has been fabulous. It's honestly been overwhelming in how quickly it is building and pulling me into its constant work. I had to take some time to pause and say, “Do I want to build a big military training business? If I don't, what am I doing? Am I following this complimentary inertia of, if in five years I had a large military training business, would I want that? Would I want that?”

When you have time to step out, you are experiencing the only time that you have to look back at your business and become objective about it.

If you don't step out of those things, your happiness is always at risk because you're not planning your life intentionally. There's no way of actually being the coach to your own player as you move forward in your life. Whether it's the willingness to take a fifteen-minute walk without your phone, or whether it's a full day on the weekend or a one-month sabbatical, I think these are the moments where you check in with how your life is actually going and you course-correct constantly, every second, every minute, because it's never going exactly the way that you want it.

Oliver Berkman has a wonderful quote. He says, we spend so much time clearing the decks for the real life to begin. I experienced that so much. Even on a weekend, planning this and planning that and cleaning this and cooking that. You think, am I prepping for something for which this feels like a dress rehearsal?

It is not. I do think it's inextricably linked. I will tell you that the one you asked me for is a statistic, balanced people are 21% more effective than people who don't report themselves as being balanced. When you return to work after all of this leisure we're discussing, you show up differently, measurably so.

Thank you for that. By the way, I think it's so important for the folks who read this show because many are in sales, and many are CEOs of small and medium businesses, but all of them are going to be leading at some point in time. If you've got the growth orientation to wanting to be running, reading this show, they're going to be leading.

One of the things that always helped me reconcile taking free days, not filling my calendar when I was a leader, a sales leader, was I felt like I had to be my best self to be able to coach people effectively because they're looking for that calm, confident guidance. When I first became a leader, I remember it was a wake-up call where I was having a tough time running a sales organization. I was brand new to it. I didn't really understand success through people, and success was still about me.

I remember being in a one-on-one, and I think I said something like, one day you might be able to have my job. Somebody on the other side of the desk said I would never want it. Saying, you're making this look so unpleasant, there's no chance. What a wake-up call to go, hey, I'm probably doing this wrong.

That's a hilarious story. It's that thing we said earlier, I think we can come back to, as we start to slowly wind down, is success is a mountain that gets higher as you climb it, which means that you're always exerting more and more and more effort to be what you perceive to be at the same place. Just questioning what you really want and what your real value is can only occur in some white space. There is no way to be doing while pondering your life, one or the other.

A Minute To Think: There is no way to be doing while pondering your life. It’s one or the other.

Juliet, it was a super pleasure chatting with you here.

You, too.

Folks, we've been talking about A Minute to Think, reclaim creativity, conquer busyness, and do your best work, Juliet Funt, whose famous dad, I still remember, of course, Candid Camera, Alan Funt, and Candid Camera, great family connection. I love that in the book. Team, this is one of those books, as I mentioned, I was reading it on vacation. Not only are there nuggets of gold in here, but it's actually super well-written and crazy interesting. You'll actually enjoy the book while you're reading it and extracting meaningful things you can take away. Juliet, I know you do some other amazing things with your training company, including virtual training on all of us doing this better on Zoom calls. Tell us a little bit more about how someone reading this can learn more about you, your business, and stay connected to some of the great value you're putting out there in the universe.

Thank you for asking. We are at JulietFunt.com, pretty easy, and everything that you'd need to reach out to us is there. If you're a military friend reading, it's TheEfficientTeam.com.

Awesome. We like to really thank Juliette Funt for joining us. Hopefully, this won't be the last time we chat with Juliet. Team, I'd like to thank you for joining. As all of you know, we run this show to improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales teams because we believe that in doing so, we actually improve the lives of anybody in professional sales. No question in my mind, this show and Juliet's book can help you with that. We also know we're growth-oriented and want to get better.

Your feedback is super helpful. If there's another way that we can make this show more valuable to you, please let us know. My email is MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email. We love constructive criticism. Some of the things we do in the show and some of the guests we've chosen are a result of you giving us good advice. We respond to every email. Thanks for doing that. Please continue to like and subscribe to the show because that's how we actually get great guests like Juliet, and we'll see everybody next time.

See you soon.

Important Links

• Juliet Funt

• A Minute to Think: Reclaim Creativity, Conquer Busyness, and Do Your Best Work

• Daniel Pink – Past Episode

• TheEfficientTeam.com

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

About Juliet Funt

A regular feature in top global media outlets, including Forbes and Fast Company, Juliet Funt is a renowned keynote speaker and tough-love advisor to the Fortune 500. As the founder and CEO of the boutique efficiency firm Juliet Funt Group, she is an evangelist for freeing the potential of companies by unburdening their talent from busywork.

Juliet’s warm, relatable manner and actionable content earned her one of the highest ratings in the largest speaking event in the world, and she has brought her powerful concepts to Spotify, National Geographic, Anthem, Vans, Abbott, Costco, Pepsi, Nike, Wells Fargo, Sephora, Sysco, and ESPN.

Winning Strategies For Selling Your Way In With Kristie K. Jones

Selling Your Way IN isn't just a book; it's a roadmap to sales success. Join Kristie K. Jones, the author, and Mark Cox for an insightful conversation about her journey and her passion for empowering others to succeed in sales. With a wealth of experience working with early-stage startups, Kristie delves into the complexities of the modern sales landscape. She explores the dual nature of sales challenges—business and personal—and offers strategies for professionals to identify their ideal customer profiles and maximize their potential. Discover how to identify your unique selling style, build lasting client relationships, harness the power of mentorship, and prepare for the future of sales.

---

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Winning Strategies For Selling Your Way In With Kristie K. Jones

Kristie’s Journey

Kristie, welcome to the show. It's great to meet you.

Thanks so much for having me on. I'm excited to chat with you.

I'm super excited to chat with you. We're talking about Selling Your Way IN: The Playbook for Setting Your Income and Owning Your Life by Kristie Jones. As everybody who tunes in to the show knows, we only publish episodes with folks whose books I really like. I like this book. I'll tell you from what perspective I think it's dynamite. It's such a helpful tool for somebody who's going into sales perhaps in the earlier part of their career.

When they go into a new organization, you and I both know that the onboarding plans are not magnificent with most companies. This book is such a wonderful guide for someone to drive their own onboarding plan and shorten that time to success. We're going to get into all of that but to start, maybe you could share the short story of your professional journey through university and starting as a buyer with The Jones Store Company. Tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are.

You're right. I went to the University of Kansas. I'm a proud Jayhawk, or maybe not during football season but I can't wait for basketball season to start. That's when we fly our flag with pride. I did start in retail. I spent my first eight years out of college in a retail environment. I was working initially for the Mercantile Group, which doesn't exist anymore, out of Cincinnati. The Jones Store Company was one of their stores in the Kansas City area. We had about 7 or 8 stores in the Kansas City area.

I cut my teeth working in the stores. Ironically, as a department manager, I started by working in the commission department. I ran the cosmetics department and the shoe department. Famous-Barr, which is part of the May Group, then hired me and moved me. I relocated to St. Louis so I could work there. Since they were rebuilding two stores, I got an opportunity there to close down the old physical building and move inventory and everything into the new building.

I then got a chance to go to the buying office. I spent my last about 5 years out of those 8 in the buying offices and the downtown store. A lot of my negotiation skills came from that as well as analytical skills people. I say to people, “It sounds glamorous, but no one invited me to Paris to set fashion trends.” My boss wanted to make sure I didn't run out of pink tees in the middle of summer in size medium. It was a lot of math and a lot of analytics.

I started my sales career in retail sales and then got disenchanted. That was a big Fortune 500 company with lots of red tape and lots of ivory tower-ish type things. I grew up in an entrepreneurial small business family. When I decided to make a leap out of the Fortune 500 world, I landed in a company with twelve employees in the SaaS space.

It’s a pure startup. That's a small SaaS company.

I'm so old that we didn't call it SaaS. We called it a subscription model back then. We had a subscription model. I spent ten years there cutting my teeth. I did everything but code. If the server needed rebooting,  I knew how to reboot the server. Initially, when I first got to the company, the server was down the hall in a closet on the third floor, which is horrifying to those in cybersecurity. It wasn't even locked. If you needed Post-its, that was me. If the copier was jammed, that was me. If you needed to help close a deal, that was also me. In a company that is that size, you wear a lot of hats.

It was an amazing opportunity. I worked directly for the owner for those ten years. About 2  or 2 and a half years in, I had full revenue responsibility, so net new sales and business development team. By 2003,  we had a BDR team. We were early adopters of that. We also had a customer success team, which when I first got there, we called account management. I've dabbled a little bit in everything.

From there, I loved the SaaS tech world. I fell in love with that, so I stayed in that swim lane, as I call it, and worked for some bigger companies. At some point, after leaving that company, after ten years, I landed at a VC-backed company, and then I got the VC-backed bug. I wanted to work with B2B SaaS companies that were VC-backed on top of everything else. I stayed in that world for a while until 2016 when I got restructured out of a SaaS company that was VC-backed to series E. I had gone from a lot of Series-A type companies or seed companies to the big dog.

In the midst of looking for my next VP of sales role, the universe conspired to take me in a different direction. One of my Kristieisms is when the universe speaks, you should listen. The universe was speaking very strongly to me. I had always wanted to dip my toe into the consulting role, but I still had a child in school and not off to college yet. I always had intended to do that after the fact, but it was very clear that that was not supposed to happen in my timeline. It was supposed to happen in the universe's timeline. The rest is history. I had been doing the right thing by people all along. I'm a giver. I say I've got 30 minutes for everyone.

Selling Your Way IN: When the universe speaks, you should listen.

I thought that was really interesting. I liked that idea in the book of saying whenever somebody reaches out, you make sure you offer them 30 minutes. Given the turnover and transition in professional B2B sales, I'm sure your calendar's packed with those kinds of meetings.

I'm getting a lot of those types of calls. Not long ago, an SVP at the organization that I was reorg-ed out of reached out and is looking for a new opportunity. An SDR leader that I placed a few months ago also reached out. In that case, that was a different situation, which is something that we are dealing with. The organization decided everybody was going to be back in the office five days a week and he was hybrid. Since they were hybrid, he had moved 2 hours outside of the city and was making that commute 2 days a week but wasn't willing to make it 5. I got two of those calls.

I spent a lot of my time helping those companies that are in that early series A B2B SaaS world, even transitioning from founder-led selling into hiring their first sales rep and putting all the sales processes together. I spend my days mostly working with companies that are $0 to $5 million in revenue and need to proselytize and document those types of things.\

Role As A Buyer

That’s fantastic. Thanks for the share. Tell me a little bit about your role as a buyer. Outside of the negotiations, how did that help you have a little bit more empathy for what buyers are going through? Also, tell us about what they see when salespeople are coming in to visit them.

I spent one week almost every month in New York negotiating, trying to negotiate my best deal and trying to make sure I've got the assortment that I need. I don't ever believe that negotiation has to be 50/50 but it does have to be win-win. There has to be something in it for everyone. I was bonused on margin, so gross margin was really important to me. Now, I live in a world where people are like, “What’s profit?” That was important. Each $0.5 mattered. It could be because the quantities of material or clothing that you were buying, all of that made a difference.

There's a great example of something where if you really understood that buyer and how they were compensated what's important to them personally and then professionally for the organization, you start to align to figure out how you can best help them. It may not be top line fee for the actual service, but if they understood you, your business, your world, and what was most important to you, they might be able to, at the negotiation table rather than trying to split a pie, make the pie a bit bigger for everybody.

When I'm talking to clients and taking them through as I'm building out sales processes, I make it very clear that there are two types of problems. There's the business problem and the financial impact that's having on the business, and then from the economic buyer or the influencer standpoint, there's a personal problem and the impact that that's having on them personally, their career, and their day-to-day life. I'm always telling my teams to look at both problems. You said that based on my background, I was trying to do the best thing for the company, but I also had a personal stake in that game very much.

That's the one that we get tied to emotionally so much. We had Alice Heiman on the show. Thank you, Miller Heiman, for one of those core models that has really stood the test of time. I know you've got a lot of respect for a lot of other sales process books out there. Miller Heiman, to me, is something that's so universal because there are still multiple people who influence a sale. You have to get a consensus. They have personal and professional needs and wants. It's universal.

You dropped Alice's name. Alice and Liz Heiman are part of a networking group that I belong to that's a fairly exclusive group of female sales consultants called Women Sales Experts. Trish was a member, but Jill Konrath started it. Trish was an early member. Lori Richardson was running it. I've been spending a lot of time over the last few years with Alice and Liz. They are products of the Miller Heiman School of Business.

It's a great gang. 6 or 7 of that group have been on the show. Lori has been on the show. Lisa Manuson has been on the show. Without looking at the list, we're at 100 episodes. They were magnificent conversations. They’re all thought leaders. One of the things I love, and you speak a lot about this in the book, and what I'm jealous of is it's such a great peer group and support group it is for all of you. In the early days a couple of years ago, when I used to do an episode with one of them, they would then send me an email saying, “You should put these three people on your show.” That's how I ended up getting all these great people. It's such a good peer group because they look out for each other.

You know from reading the book that one of my other mottos is, “Your circle matters.” Without having this circle, I don't think my business would be where it is. I've never been a part of any kind of group, female or not, that has been so transparent about what they charge, how they decide to charge, sharing contracts, and sharing pitfalls.

Your circle matters.

One of the first conferences I attended of the Women Sales Pros was in Minneapolis where two of the presenters were talking about how their business was on the brink of failure. It was very vulnerable. People were passing tissues around. I'm like, “I did not think I was coming to a conference where I was going to need a tissue.”

The fact of the matter is that a lot of times, men don't talk about failures in a very open and transparent way. The people who were brave enough to share that year about the things that had gone on in their personal and professional lives that caused them to be on the brink of failure were doing it so that we wouldn't end up in the same place. It was so the rest of us in the room wouldn't end up in the same place. It was from a place of giving.

Developing A Personal Plan

Your book's very giving. Let's talk about some of the positivity you're putting into the universe with the book. The book is structured into three great sections. The first one is so unique that we don't see a lot of it. We're going to talk a lot about it. Section one is developing your personal plan for becoming a rockstar professional. I love the term rockstar for a couple of reasons we'll get to in a second. According to Harvard, if you graduate college or university, you've got a 50% chance of being in a professional sales job at some point in time in your career.

That doesn't surprise me.

Everybody's going to be in a professional sales job from this point forward. You talk a lot about, “Take a look inside first. Who were you? let's understand who you are.” What drove that for you, and what guidance can you give to folks when they're trying to do that assessment of who they really are?

I see so many sales professionals who are not in the right sales role. They're not in the right sales role selling the right product or service into the right industry at a mid-market versus SMB versus enterprise and working for the right company or even the right sales leader. The better you know yourself, things like, “What comes naturally to me? Where are my superpowers?” as well as things like, “How do I like to be rewarded?” come to you. What I think people don't understand is the breadth of sales roles that are out there. As you know because you read the book, I grew up in a family where we owned a real estate company.

You were kitchen table entrepreneurs.

My mother was 100% commissioned. My dad only took a salary when he didn't have to give it up to make payroll for the rest of his employees. It was everything from a 100% commission sales rep to a 100% base salary person and everything in between. What's your risk profile? How do you like to be rewarded? How do you like to be managed?

If you've been in sales, this book is not only for newbies but people who are maybe not in the top 10% yet and can't figure out why. Do you need a quicker sales cycle? Are you struggling to keep the sales cycle alive, if you will, over 6 to 9 months? Are you an instant gratification person? Do you have patience for, “I like the game. I like playing the game and all the things it would take to play the game over six months,” let's say?

You mentioned you downloaded the workbook. There's a lot of opportunity in the workbook to answer those questions and put them in writing. You won't figure it all out, but there's a lot of it you already know but you haven't gone to a quiet spot to think these things over. When you do, then you'll be able to say, okay, “I'm an instant gratification person. I need a sales cycle that's no more than 60 days. My risk profile is at about 70/30. I need a little bit more base salary and a little less variable,” or vice versa. Maybe you’re like, “I want unlimited potential. I would take a 30% base salary and a 70% variable commission plan.”

Once you start to figure those things out about yourself, then all of a sudden, your sales world narrows. I've got a passion for whatever reason. I have a passion for healthcare. For personal reasons or other reasons, I really do well with healthcare professionals, or I do well with HR professionals, or I don't mind dealing with those finance folks. That CFO doesn't scare me. When you start to figure that out, then the sales world isn't this big. I want you to find your swim lane because that's where you have the best chance of getting to the top 10%.

Once you start to figure those things out about yourself, then all of a sudden, your sales world narrows.

It's such great advice. This is where the book really resonates. It's right at the beginning but it stuck with me. Far too often we're, we're all driven by this outcome. You’re like, “I want the job. I want to say that I worked for Salesforce. I want to say I did this. I want to say this,” and then you take a step back and go, “Let me think about me. What do I like doing?”

The other thing I think is a really good thought for folks is you may jump into an organization and realize you are in the wrong spot. That's okay. It's not failure. It's saying, “What's right for me?” Sometimes, you have to try a few things, get out there, and figure out what's right for you and what's wrong for you. People always say, “Do what you love.” What I love doing is playing drums and hockey. I wasn't good enough at either of them to be paid a lot for either. I happen to really love doing this, but this is something I love that people will pay for. It's okay to try some different things.

You snuck in, in my view, what’s almost the most important part there. You said, “What kind of leader do I work well with?” No matter who you are in sales, the X factor of professional sales is your leader. There is a lack of great sales management out there in the world. For lots of good and logical reasons, venture capital is the cause of some of them.

I don't disagree with you.

Principles And Practice

I like that takeaway, thinking about yourself and playing to your strengths. Get into your swim lane and know what's right for you. We then get into two principles and practices of a rockstar sales process. One of the things that is an indisputable truth in B2B sales is to start with the ICP. Know who you're selling to. You spent a lot of time talking about this. Why was that the first thing you jumped into in terms of the sales process? Why is that so important for anybody out there tuning in to this show? 

It's probably a product of my working with startups who, a lot of times when I get there, don't have a defined ICP. I talked to a client who said, “We want to talk to companies who are in growth mode.” I said, “You only have two AEs. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you have a human resource issue. You don't have enough humans to decide that that's your ICP.”

They have a very specific industry, so that helps. I said, “First off, ZoomInfo doesn't tell you that. Apollo doesn't tell you that. Databases don't tell you that. They don't have a checkbox for, “Are they in growth mode or are they not in growth mode?” We can't even go in and filter on that, so that makes that a bad ICP characteristic, if you will.” It's not even a firmographic. It's a subjective item.

A part of it is the product that I work in that $0 to $5 million world where we're still trying to identify that. I told them, “You can't boil the ocean with 2 humans and even 20 humans. Even if you had twenty account executives on your sales team, you wouldn't be able to boil the ocean. What do you really want to be known for? What do you  want to own?” I use my personal example all the time. You may have had Brynne Tillman on the show.

We have.

Good because I was like, “If not, add her to the list.”

We talked to Brynne.

I had Brynne help me revitalize my LinkedIn profile. At the time, there were X number of characters that I could use to describe what I do. I gave her my punchline and she said, “Too broad.” I said, “Okay.” I did it again and she was like, “Too broad.” We did that a lot of times, so I got irritated and was like, “What do you think I should say?” She goes, “You work with companies and startup founders at $0 to $5 million who don't have any formal or documented processes or maybe don't have more than one or two salespeople. What you do is very specific.” It sounded terrifying.

You feel like you're cutting off the rest of the market.

That's right. I'm like, “I'm a sales trainer, a sales coach, and a process expert.” She goes, “So what? Do you know how many sales trainers are out there? Do you really want to compete with all those people?” I'm like, “No, I don't think so.” She said, “You don't have to because most of us don't want to deal with VC-backed early-stage startups between $0 and $5 million. If you say that, it will narrow your world.” It was the scariest thing I did and the best thing I did. I credit her for pushing me in that direction because my elevator pitch is very short. People go, “That's really specific.” I'm the first person people think of when they need something that fits that specific swim lane that I live in.

We love Brynne. For folks reading, you can go back to an episode of the show. Brynne Tillman is an expert on leveraging LinkedIn for sales. She's got really practical advice for doing so, like this. Frankly, the advice she gave you is business strategy. It's not a LinkedIn suggestion. It's a core business strategy. Although our ideal client profile is larger than yours, they still have these issues where you have folks selling into a market, and they may have lots of clients but they haven't been quite specific about their ideal client profile and the one they want to replicate. You get into the Pareto principle with them.

You’re like, “Who are our best clients? Why do we want to replicate them?” The more specific you get about your ICP, the more the ICP values what you bring to the table. The unique value to your market, they'll realize it because they're your ideal client profile and they'll pay for it. You get away from negotiation, price-getting, and all those kinds of things.

I really like you sharing your focus with the business. A lot of us can refine that. When we start to think about our sales plans for Q1 of 2025 based on when you're tuning in to this episode, sometimes, we need to recalibrate those things and take a look at what's working and what isn't. It’s like, “Which clients are trying to negotiate us into the ground or think we're a commodity?” If somebody views you as a commodity, they're the wrong ICP. They're not seeing the unique competitive differentiation or value you bring to the table. One of Kristie’s is the fact that all she does is work with VC-backed startups, so she understands that world so well.

Even to take it a step further, your company that you work for may have an ICP, but you probably have a personal ICP. A lot of the clients I work for are like, “We're industry agnostic. We have software that can help accounting teams.” That's industry agnostic. You personally might not be industry agnostic. You may do better with manufacturing. You may do better with software companies. You may do better with how healthcare. You may do better with a logistics company.

That's what that whole second section of the book is. It is customizing and tailoring what the company ought to be providing you. If you came out of section one, which is understanding what your superpowers are, how you like to be rewarded, and what you do better than other people, then you may say to your sales leader, “Instead of going after these 70 industries, I'd like to go after these 7 because I understand those.”

Even within personas, in most companies, there are 3 to 5 personas that you can sell into everything from the economic buyer to the champion or influencer. It’s the same thing. You’re like, “The IT team may need to be involved from a security standpoint or this and that. I don't do so well with them so I'm going to start with a different department. I may get a partner and bring in a solution consultant or a sales engineer to help me with that other side.”

You and I know that not always do we walk into a situation in a company where everything is baked out, if you will. Some things are half-baked or some things are frozen. If there is any baking going on at all, even if it's half-baked, you should really be thinking to yourself, “Even if I'm being put into a territory, within that territory, what industry, what personas, or what size companies?” If you understand that, you're going to be able to play to your strengths.

The guy next to you or the girl next to you, let them go after the industries you don't care about or the personas that aren't doing so well. Let them go hunt big game. I always say to people, “Enterprise sounds sexy but it's hard. There aren't that many of them. The majority of the world lives in the SMB and mid-market space. Go get mid-market. It’s a faster sales cycle. It’s easier to make decisions. There are fewer pieces of red tape. Legal doesn't get involved all the time.” You have to think through all of those things. Even when you've chosen a company that says, “This is our ICP and these are our personas,” you have to be saying to yourself, “Where within that can I really  shine and win?”

That’s great advice. One of the things that's nice about that is if you go after consistent ICP, they value the competitive differentiation you bring to the table. You learn. In every sell cycle you're involved in, you're not learning everything in the universe. Let's pick an example. You sell into industrial manufacturing. You're understanding the trends, the issues, the challenges, the obstacles, what they face, and all those kinds of things.

What I found really interesting when you were sharing your thoughts on knowing your industry is you had a great stat. The Training Industry Inc. and ValueSelling Associates conducted a study to determine how B2B sales interactions are perceived by buyers. They found that 75% of buyers say that sales reps don't demonstrate knowledge of their industry structure and only 37% of sales reps provide unique industry insights. 

In onboarding new clients, I'm part of that. A lot of times, I do what I call hiring help. I'm helping companies hire their first few sales reps, and then I stick around as part of that package to help do some onboarding. I train them on four things, which are industry, product, sales process, and sales tools. The very first thing I do, and I can spend up to a week doing this, is industry. Not only do you understand the industry, but where your place in the ecosystem is as a company. The company that you're working for, where do you land in the ecosystem of that? Manufacturing is a big industry. Where within that specifically does your company play best?

I couldn't agree more. When you think of the life of a salesperson, one of the things you want to be doing in any sales interaction is adding value to that conversation in some capacity. You want to be making some form of deposit before you ask for a withdrawal. Frequently, the folks who win sell cycles are the ones where the buyer felt like they understood the buyer's world better than somebody else. If you do understand that buyer's world better than somebody else, then you can figure out how to take them to a better place in the future, but you have to understand it.

One of the opportunities for everybody tuning in is in that next call, whether it is an existing client, an SDR reach-out call, or a mid-cycle call to continue a discovery, do we have value, insight, and knowledge that is of some value to the recipient on the other end? A lot of times, we underestimate how much our organization knows about our client base. We're not leveraging everything in our four walls to pull the information from client success, the product team, the CEO, the executive team, or even our VP of finance to say, “What do we all know about the people we're selling into so that we can better arm our sales organizations to have intelligent conversations that provide value and insight?”

Agreed. There's a wealth of information out there. I'm always surprised when I ask candidates as I'm interviewing them, “Did you join your local association?” The answer is no most of the time. I'm like, “If you want to really understand your industry and become an industry expert, it probably costs you a minimal amount of money to join your fill-in-the-blank. There are associations for everything. If you're selling to morticians, The National Mortician Association exists as well. There are associations out there. You should be attending your local association. Meaning, the regional or national if your company will let you go. Those things are invaluable. They’re not that expensive. It’s probably an hour or two a month.

Hiring For Professional Sales Jobs

That’s great advice. You snuck in there when you're helping organizations hire and then you help them onboard. Onboarding is a pet peeve of ours. I experienced a wonderful onboarding plan a long time ago. I had a beautiful head of hair like yours in those days. Those days are gone when organizations would onboard you for 90 days in a different country in a sales education center that was built for onboarding. Those days are over. I really like everything in the book that's talking about how we do that. Let's talk about hiring for a second. What are the attributes that you look for when you're interviewing somebody for a professional sales job? 

Success begets success. First and foremost, I want somebody who has been successful in a prior role, or even coming out of college who's been an athlete,  or who's been a leader at some sort of club or something at school. There's a physiological reaction to winning. If you felt it before, you know what it feels like and you want to feel it again. I want people who are ambitious. I want people who are independent. I'm going to provide them some structure, but I always say, “Please don't check your brain at the door when you walk through it every day.”

There's a physiological reaction to winning. If you felt it before, you know what it feels like, and you want to feel it again.

This is a high-rejection sport, so I need people who are gritty and resilient. I need people who are going to be able to get up every day and hear the noes and then keep on going. I also want people who are enterprising but also innovative. In the world I live in, the founder is probably a tech founder and he probably has sold very little. It is what he needed to do to get past the founder-led selling stage. I want to make sure that people are coming with some sort of personal process.

I do spend a lot of time talking to people about, “Tell me about the current process,” and then I ask them, “How have you customized that? What's your personal sales process? Which part of that sales cycle is your strength and that you're playing to? How has that made a difference in your close rate?” and those types of things.

I also spend a lot of time looking for the intangibles, so to speak. The top ten percenters are doing things outside of work to better themselves personally and professionally that the other 90% are confused by and aren't doing. When I ask a specific question, like, “What three things do you do consistently regardless of the company you're in or the sales role that you're currently in that you truly believe, “If I do these things, I can be successful?” the top ten percenters and people who know themselves will say, “I'm at the gym every morning by 6:00. I have a tight circle of friends and we get together quarterly to support each other.

I listen to a business podcast instead of watching The Bachelor. I read a business book. I'm putting the right things in my body. I gave up drinking a few years ago because it wasn't serving me. I have a spiritual or religious practice.” Those are the tipping points. When I hear that right away, I know I'm dealing with a different type of candidate. There’s their prior success, skill, and whether they can sell what we want them to sell, but in general, those people will figure it out. They have the discipline. 

That's the other thing that we haven't talked about yet. In order to stay within your ICP, in order to be a top ten percenter, or in order to do all those things and be top talent, it requires an extreme amount of discipline because there's always a Happy Hour to go to instead of going home to family or going to the gym. There's always something that can keep you from doing the right things. People with discipline know, “I need to do these things.”

I'm an eight-hour sleep girl. My friends, if we go out, I say to them, “At some point, I'm going to turn into a pumpkin.” I'm going to disappear on them. I'm going to Uber myself home because I don't need to be out until 1:00 or 2:00. That's not how I live my life anymore. I love going to happy hour, I love going out with my friends, and I love a good cocktail, but I also know that if I don't get eight hours of sleep, I'm going to be not the best version of myself the next day. 

Going back to the core question, I love this idea of trying to smoke out discipline and growth orientation. Many of those things that you called out, like, “What are you reading? Do you go to the gym? What's your system? What podcast do you listen to?” and all those types of things are a combination of discipline and this growth orientation. It’s like, “I know enough to become a learn-it-all instead of a know-it-all.”

It’s lifelong learning. You can't teach that. That’s an innate desire.

Carol Dweck has a great book called Mindset. She talks about the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset and the impact on your own mental health, frankly. You have this fixed mindset and you don't think you can get better than any time you fail. It's like a Scarlet Letter. It crushes you. If you have this growth mindset, you go, “I lost that hockey game. I let in a couple of bad goals. Let's watch the film. Let's try and get a little bit better. I'm going to be a bit careful. I'm going to make sure I don't move before the shot next time. I'll respond instead of anticipating.”

I call it victim syndrome. We don't want to hire people who have victim syndrome. They’re like, “My territory sucks. My manager sucks. My SDR sucks. Marketing sucks.” You can identify those people right away. We can eliminate those pretty quickly.

It’s accountability. When we hire, we like intelligence, drive, and humility, and then we like passion and optimism.

I like all of those.

I'm certainly no rocket scientist. You don't have to be on the top end of the spectrum in terms of intelligence to be good at sales, but you do have to be clever, quick, intellectually curious, and all of those kinds of things.

I'm hiring for a company. The sales manager taught me a new term, which I love and wish I had known before the book came out. I would give him full credit. He calls it situational fluency. That is one of the traits he's looking for. I'll call him out. His name is Guy Caldwell, a Sales Manager at BizLibrary. I'm helping them do a bunch of hiring. He says, “I'm looking for situational fluency.” I'm like, “Wow.”

It almost feels like that's this combination of curiosity and emotional intelligence to be able to read the room and read the situation. I like that term. That one will take off.

I know. That's a good one.

The Concept Of Mindset

One thing I really like is section three of your book, Selling Your Way IN. We're talking about bringing it all together and creating abundance. There was this theme about a mindset throughout the course of the book. You shared putting positivity in the world by taking a 30-minute meeting with people. Most of the time in professional sales, those 30-minute meetings come when somebody's in between jobs.

1 in 3 people churn jobs every year. Most people in sales last about eighteen months in their current roles, even CROs. That 30-minute meeting with someone like you who's got a network is a lifeline to someone. Even if it doesn't turn into anything, the fact you took the meeting is such a great thing. Tell us a little bit more about section three and this idea of abundance versus scarcity and this concept of mindset. 

That mental side of sales has played into my career and my success. That's what separates the 10% from the other 90%. This is what I call once you've gotten there, this is the get-back. This is a 30-minutes-for-everyone type of situation. I do it in a lot of different ways. I'm also a Junior Achievement instructor. I like to go to schools. I want young girls to see me as a role model. I want them to know that they can own their own business as a woman.  One of the things I love about Junior Achievement is it has a financial component to every single grade lesson. Most people in the country and other countries don't have financial literacy, financial acumen, or business acumen. I really like that part about it.

I've had plenty of these people in my life. Mike Weinberg wrote the foreword to my book. He has always been one of those generous people who makes sure that he takes 30 minutes for everybody. When we got ready to do the book launch, he was in constant contact with me. He was calling me all the time and was like, “What are we doing? When are we dropping this? Here's what I'm going to send out to my people.”

The universe takes care of you. I'm not just doing it because of what I’m going to get back. I say this in the book. Since I was raised in an entrepreneurial family in the way that I was, and I call it getting my MBA at the kitchen table, I feel like I have a responsibility to help share things that I learned along the way that other people's parents couldn't, wouldn't, or didn't know how to teach them and environments that they grew up in. A lot of my friends get frustrated sometimes with things. They're like, “We didn't grow up like you.” I'm like, “You're right.”

My dad had very strong financial foundations. When I got my first job with The Jones Store Company, he said, “How soon before you can contribute to 401(k)?” I was like, “I don't know.” It turned out to be three months. He said, “From the very second that you can contribute, contribute the max that they match. The goal is 10%. If you do that right away, you'll never miss it. It's gone. Every time you get a raise, add another percentage until you get to the maximum.” I'm at the age where I can do some catch-up because there were a couple of years where I didn't always max out. Since I've owned my business, I have a personal 401(k) and I max it out every year at the government's maximum.

People aren't taught even those basic things. When I get into companies where stock options have been presented, I sit new employees down and say, “Do you even know what this means?” People go, “Does it come with stock options?” I'm like, “It sure does.” I then sit down in my office, close the door so we're private, and go, “Do you even know what a stock option is?” They're like, “Yeah. You gave me a piece of the company.” I'm like, “It could also be that you have to buy it.”

You mentioned the eighteen-month abortion. It’s where people like, “We're out of here. Abort. In eighteen months, we're gone.” People don't understand that they have to purchase those. In a lot of companies you're at, you don't want to leave without having done so. I always say to reps, “When you get a really good commission check, you should put some of that toward your stock options.”

I truly believe that I have a responsibility because I was raised in a way that other people weren't raised. If I can help people better themselves financially, whether that's because I've got some sales advice for them or I have good kitchen table advice that I learned while listening to my parents talk business every night, that's part of my give-back as well.

That’s great and indisputable. I'd be one of those people that did not have good financial. I had good book smarts financial acumen up until my mid-twenties. I had some good things happen very early in my career but that money went up in flames. That money went to bars and good times. It's all gone.

Your entertainment budget was high.

It was pretty high back in those days. I can't believe it, but it looks like we're running down on time. First of all, I want to say thank you so much for joining the show. One of the real pleasures of running this podcast is I get to read a whole bunch of amazing books by sales leaders, thought leaders, and all that good stuff and then meet the people. It has been a real pleasure meeting you. I enjoyed very much reading Selling Your Way IN: The Playbook for Setting Your Income and Owning Your Life. How do the folks who are tuning in learn more about you or engage you?

If you want to know more about the book, you can go to SellingYourWayIn.com. It will take you to a section of my website, so then you'll also be on the website if you'd like to learn more about the services I offer. What I'd really love for your audience to do is connect with me on LinkedIn, drop me a note, and let me know about their one takeaway from our conversation.

That’s an amazing ask. Thank you. We have to do that moving forward. That's a great idea. Thank you again for joining the show. Team, thank you for tuning in to the show. We do this show because we're trying to improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales teams. Since we believe in doing that, we improve the lives of anybody associated with professional sales. Thanks for tuning in.

If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe to the show and tell your friends because that's how we get great guests like Kristie. Also, we're growth-oriented. We know we're not perfect at doing this and we know your feedback is awesome for improving the show, so please keep the feedback coming. We're growth-oriented. We love constructive criticism. Send your suggestions to us on running the show or ideas for guests to MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email. I personally respond to everybody who gives us a suggestion. Thanks for doing so. We'll see everybody next time on the show.

Thank you.

Important Links

• Kristie K. Jones

• LinkedIn - Kristie K. Jones

• Selling Your Way IN: The Playbook for Setting Your Income and Owning Your Life

• Professional Sales with Alice Heiman - Apple Podcasts

• She Sells-Attract, Promote and Retain Great Women in B2B Sales with Lori Richardson - Apple Podcasts

• How To Win 5X Deals Repeatedly with Lisa Magnuson - Apple Podcasts 

• The LinkedIn Whisperer with Brynne Tillman - Apple Podcasts

• Mindset

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

About Kristie K. Jones

Kristie, author of “Selling Your Way IN”, is a speaker, coach, and sales process consultant. Companies hire Kristie to elevate their sales organization because most sales leaders and professionals are discouraged and frustrated about anemic pipelines, low close rates, and missed targets.

Kristie’s willingness to get her hands dirty and her “take no prisoners” approach when helping companies drive more revenue from their Sales and Customer Success teams is what makes her so valuable to her clients. Her mission is helping companies find top talent as well as creating a sales accountability culture to ensure revenue growth.

Kristie is passionate about coaching sales teams to leverage their superpowers to reach their full potential, and she wants representatives and sales leaders to identify and embody the practices and characteristics of Top Ten Percent achievers.

Do It! Selling: Strategies For Success In Today's Market With David Newman

Offer value, invite engagement—that’s the key to winning in sales. In this episode, Mark Cox sits down with David Newman, the author of Do It! Selling: 77 Instant-Action Ideas to Land Better Clients, Bigger Deals, and Higher Fees, to dive into the secrets behind his no-fluff, high-impact approach to sales. David’s journey from a theater major struggling in New York to a successful consultant is filled with hard-earned lessons that every entrepreneur can relate to. Together, they explore how to overcome the aversion to sales, the power of asking the right questions, and the importance of consistent, value-driven content. Whether you’re new to the game or looking to refine your strategy, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you land better clients and close bigger deals.

---

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Do It! Selling:  Strategies For Success In Today's Market With David Newman

We've got a great conversation here. This episode is with David Newman. He is the author of Do It! Selling: 77 Instant-Action Ideas to Land Better Clients, Bigger Deals, and Higher Fees. He is a professional services sales expert. He works with leading consultants, coaches, and speakers who want to land better clients, bigger deals, and higher fees. He's got a specific target market, but these 77 instant action ideas are universal in terms of smart methodical B2B sales. They're applicable to all sorts of folks, which is why I was excited to get him on the show.

The other thing is that it's an extremely well-written book. With these 77 ideas, David has gone through the effort of making them concise and powerful, leveraging core concepts and B2B sales, and providing tools you can download to apply the idea. I love the way the book is laid out. It's a book that you're going to leave on your bookshelf and go back to repeatedly because it gets specific on things like scripts, ideas, and approaches to conversations.

One of the things I like so much is David's simple clarity in the way he writes and speaks. He's got this simple and clear but powerful definition for something like marketing words that offer value, invite engagement, a simple definition of selling, send invitations, and spark conversations. We talk about a couple of different concepts in the book, not all 77, but we do get to the first conversations. He's got five powerful tips for first-contact calls. We get into all of them. We get into the four ways to create follow-up magic. It’s powerful. A little bit of a spoiler alert. The first one always leads off with the prospect's comments from the previous call.

David started this career after starting in the theater. We're going to read about that journey. He’s an interesting fellow. He’s the host of his own podcast called The Selling Show. It's got over 400 episodes. You're going to enjoy this conversation with David Newman. I know I did. If you do, please like and subscribe because that helps us. Thank you for doing that. That's how we get great guests like David.

David, welcome to the show. I was excited to talk to you.

Mark, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

We only interview the folks who've written books in selling that we like, David. I got a call that said, “There are many things I like about Do It! Selling: 77 Instant-Action Ideas to Land Better Clients, Bigger Deals, and Higher Fees that I've already bought Do It! Marketing.” I haven't gotten it yet. I did it this morning, but I've got the Do It! Marketing coming my way because I'm in your target market. A lot of these things are so applicable, and I learned many things from them. I had a chance to listen to a few episodes of The Selling Show. I got asked this question because it seems clear that you were a Theater and Drama major. How does a Theater and Drama major end up being an expert in selling, professional services, and coaching?

From Theater To Sales

I started college pre-med. I failed out of Chemistry, Physics, and Calculus all in the same semester. I decided to change my major to Drama and English. I had so much fun doing that. I went to graduate school and got an MFA in Stage Directing. I did several years of professional theater in New York City. That was a crazy episode, but I wasn't making any money because it's hard to make money in theater in New York City. It's like going to LA to be an actor. You end up waiting tables.

A friend of mine says, “There's this adjunct professor thing opening. This was a guy who had the job. He was moving away. Would you like to interview for my adjunct faculty position?” I started teaching in my graduate school. I did that for a couple of years to make ends meet. Another friend says, “You could do this teaching thing for companies.” That's called corporate training.

In 1992, I launched my corporate training and consulting career. That spanned three different jobs. I did that for several years. I ended up with some HR consulting management, technology, and firms. Dumb as I was, in 2002, I said, “I can do this on my own. I know how to teach, train, and consult. How hard can it be?” Mark, I found out how hard it can be because when you're on your own and leave the corporate nest, it's about selling the work. It's not about doing the work.

I knew nothing about marketing, sales, lead generation, and business development. I was a babe in the woods. I was also a generalist consultant and trainer. I had 30 different workshops and 30 different topics. I realized that if I wanted to eat, I needed to learn how to sell. I read all kinds of books. I connected with mentors. I took courses. I became a student of the game. About several years into this, I'm like, “I have no niche. I have nothing. The sales and marketing thing is pretty cool. Why don't I teach what I'm learning to folks who are several years behind where I am?” That was the whole genesis of how the drama major ended up in a marketing and sales training role.

Do It! Books

Here we are, fast forward 1,800 clients later, you've worked for some of the largest organizations in the world. I’m having finished my first book. David's got three books, Do it! Selling, Do It! Marketing, and Do It! Speaking. I'm amazed at a couple of things, David. I'll call out to those folks who are going to pick up this book, and you should. First of all, the design and clarity of the book, it's a good-looking book. It's easy to read. I love the fact you don't see a lot of color books out there. These things matter. We dream in technicolor. That’s something I'm taking away from myself next time.

Do It! Selling: 77 Instant-Action Ideas to Land Better Clients, Bigger Deals, and Higher Fees

The way you've laid this out, these short snippets and action ideas that are clear. It feels to me like you're the example of that Mark Twain quote, “I wrote you a long letter. If I had taken more time, I would've written you a short letter.” You took the time to write a short letter. It's all gold. There's no fluff. There are no stories that aren't relevant. There's no filler.

In many of these action items, there are tools you can download to apply the concept in the book. It’s a bit of the Bucky Fuller. Those of you who are Mensa candidates remember Bucky Fuller, the Founder of Mensa, who said, “If you want to teach someone, don't bother teaching them. Show them how to use a tool because that's how you teach them for life.” It's a spectacular read.

A lot of times, when we have guests on the show, David, what I'll do is I'll read and highlight the book. I'm going to go back and dictate my highlights. I have a two-page summary. I can go back to it someday because I want to retain it. I'm not saying this for the show. This is the book that would stay on my shelf because I'm going to go back. There are some things I've picked up here that are helpful. There's a clarity of message. It's the way you are. Maybe it comes from the theater background, but was that an intentional focus to make sure it's short, clear, and powerful?

All three of my books are written in this format. I call them microchapters. When folks come to me and say, “David, I want to write a book, but I don't have time to write.” I say, “Don't worry. They don't have time to read. Write short.” If I put my whole publishing philosophy into four words, it would be to write short and market hard.

It was a book publishing blog. This was in the last couple of years. They were saying about short attention spans. Everyone wants to write the 50,000 to 60,000-word mega monster business book. They were saying, “If you're sending this to CEOs, VPs, or busy senior corporate leaders, they don't have time. Don't write a book. Write half a book.” That was the advice.

Two hours and thirteen minutes is the flight time from New York to Chicago. If they can read it, scan it, or skim it and get enough of an idea of your professional expertise in those two hours, because, Mark, folks like you and I don't get hired based on books that clients do not finish. It’s like, “Did you read David's book?” “I only got about a third of the way through it and put it aside because it was too dense and hard to read.”

Microchapters do two things to help experts. Number one, it helps to encapsulate your thinking in a short, sharp, little package. It also makes the book more digestible because, Mark, I'm sure you read a lot. I read a lot. We want to have that completion complex. We want to have that little happiness going off in our brains with dopamine. I finished another chapter. It's like, yeah, you read a page and a half. If you read a page and a half, and you're seeing the next chapter right there, you're like, “I'm making progress.”

The best compliment that I got on all three of my books is a backhanded compliment. They said, “David, I love your writing style. It's perfect bathroom reading.” I was like, “I will take that in the spirit it is intended.” That was the nature of the microchapters and the short, sharp, clear little nuggets that are the writing style.

We're critical of sales books. Because of the show and my nature, I've read hundreds of sales books. We've had over 100 guests on this show. Out of consideration, we read the books they write before they come on the show. There are some fundamental truths that you've got in here. We've heard that people who have lived this life understand. Because you've got a specific target niche that you're trying to support and help coaches, consultants, and trainers looking to get bigger clients, bigger deals, and higher fees, you get practical. When you're talking about a sales process or a first call with someone, you give specific examples of the four things to do. Here are a couple of turns of phrases you can use.

If you're in that category, this is the book you can pull away. You will go back to it, and you'll start to leverage some of the, I won't call them scripts as much as guides, but they're logical. You're also referencing some sales fundamentals that are universal regardless of who's reading. Whether or not you're a trainer, a coach, or a consultant, getting through that first call is critical. There are a couple of ideas that are powerful. People can take away these tips no matter what they do. If you don't mind, we'll jump into a couple to get right into it.

Whenever someone has the book in front of them, there's a little voice in my head going, “I hope I remember what I wrote and what he's about to call out here.”

When we're in front of a group of people, every once in a while, there's somebody who's a zealot and reads every episode. They go, “Mark, you referenced this data point, and this reference point from CSO Insights back in 1987,” I go, “It doesn't even ring a bell. It doesn't even sound like me.” I'll give you some context.

Action item number four, do you love selling? It was the one that jumped out at me. Given the title of our book, Learn to Love Selling, do you love selling? You have to believe in selling. You have to understand that people have some of these challenges. I love that down at the bottom, we might be feeling anxious and depressed. We get paralyzed, overwhelmed, and mystified. The summary point that says no sales, no clients, no money, no bueno. That's simple. You have to do it. Are we going to be the best pizza parlor that's never had somebody come in the front door, or are you Dominoes?

This is where it's not selling expertise that comes from the book. There's this expertise you have as a growth-oriented entrepreneur. There are many of those other entrepreneur books. There wasn't a question on this one so much as we wanted to call it out because of the title of our book. Let's go to the definitions. I love the definitions. You've come up with these four-word definitions. One is for marketing. Let's talk about the top end and sales.

This leads to a mindset. It makes it so much more helpful for those who didn't grow up in sales or those of us who didn't decide we wanted to be in professional sales when we were ten years old. That's 99.999% of anybody who's in professional sales now. On the marketing front, forward definition, offer value, and invite engagement. It doesn't sound so hard.

Marketing

My first book was about marketing. My second book was about speaking as both a marketing tool and a sales tool. This book has a sales focus. People are not afraid of marketing. They might not understand it. They might not do it well. They might think it's pitchy and like, “Buy my stuff.” The sales part, which you're an expert in, that's where the fear comes in. They don't want to be salesy. They don't want to be pushy. There's a whole population of entrepreneurs that are sales averse, which is why your book is important.

Conversation

From a marketing standpoint, when people say, “I'm hesitant to market my stuff. I don't want to be always talking about me, my offers, my services, my programs, and my products because that gets old.” I would agree with you. That does get old, and it doesn't work. Offer value invite engagement is about how to be radically generous and radically helpful. Provide content that people will benefit from even if they never buy from you.

Is your marketing content, and I mean your social posts, newsletters, LinkedIn profile, and LinkedIn posts, can people extract value from them? When you read Mark's book, LinkedIn, and articles, and when you watch the YouTube channel, are you saying to yourself, “This is valuable. Imagine if I became a client?” That's offer value. Out the goods out there in the marketplace.

A lot of folks are afraid of doing that because they’re like, “That's my stuff. If I give this away, they're not going to hire me. If you don't give it away, there's no way they're going to hire you. If you give it away, a small, teeny, tiny percentage are going to be able to run with the ball and get some initial result. No way are they going to get the massive transformational results of the clients who hire you. Part one is offer value.

With invite engagement, I hear this a lot from clients and friends who say, “David, I've been sending a weekly newsletter for several years. It's never given me a shred of business. David, I posted the one-minute video on LinkedIn every single morning for the last several years, and it's never brought me a shred of business..” I look at these newsletters and watch these videos. I say, “There's no invitation. There's no next step. There's no like, comment, subscribe, opt-in, or book a call.

The call to action and the invitation to participate further are not buy my stuff and hire me. The invitation could be simple, like, “Can I get an amen?” Comment and like are the easy ones. A little bit more involvement and engagement is like, “Do you want to download this thing? Are you willing to trade your email address for a free PDF, video training, and mini-course?” That's level two. It’s more of a commitment because you know that you're opting into their world.

Level three is like, “If you think this might be helpful to you, let's book a chat. Let's discuss where you're at. If we can help you, it’s great. If not, we'll point you in the right direction, and there will be no harm or foul.” When I look at these several years of email newsletters, and there's not a single invitation to take the next step, people are lazy, busy, and befuddled.

All the folks that are reading are saying, “They know the next step. They could have replied to that email. They could have called my phone number, which is right there on my website.” They could have, but because they're lazy, busy, and befuddled, you don't tell them exactly what to do. Inertia is going to take them off into something else. They're going to click off, scroll by, delete that email, and say, “This guy, Bob Jones, has an amazing email newsletter.” They might even be hiring someone else because they don't know all the things that you do.

How many times have we gone to a prospect or even a new client, and the client hires you for something, and you found out that last year, they hired someone else that does something that you do, but the client never knew that you did? They’re like, “Mark, I wish I knew that you did sales assessments and sales kickoff meetings. We hired this other person to do our sales kickoff, and it was disappointing. I wish we knew that you were a speaker.”

You're a speaker, but if there's no invitation at the bottom of the email newsletter, for example, hire Mark for your next sales meeting, sales conference, or sales kickoff, here's the info packet. Put that in there so that you're not trusting people to use their own initiative. You're giving them a clear next step in how to engage with you. That's an invitation.

I love the focus on those four words. This is something that you refined over the years, but it's powerful. I couldn't help but smile when you were talking about that, David, because we do many things where we're training big groups of people. It's hard for people to process the fact that they may have explained to the community, a client, or a prospect exactly what their business did. They have a hard time understanding Hermann Ebbinghaus’s Forgetting Curve, which says, “An hour after the meeting, that person forgot between 50% and 75% of everything you said. A month from now, it's 90% to 95%.” People go, “What do you mean? It seems difficult.”

One of the things that has been helpful for me going from the corporate world to becoming an entrepreneur several years ago is that I am befuddled by many things that are on my radar regarding things that I want to do with the business. These things are passing ideas, and the night they come, they go. Every day, I can only get through the three things that are most important for our business.

This idea of staying front of mind, that the number of times somebody engages us and we end up into this conversation. As we get through the conversation, they say, “I've been following you for several years.” You go, “For several years, didn't you think to trigger a conversation several years ago?” We do have those calls to action, but they don't. They want to get familiar with you. They want to make sure there's some value in what you share. It's on their timeframes. It's such a helpful point and a beautiful definition.

Let me do a public service announcement. If you've been following Mark Cox for the last several months, you know he is the real deal. Get on his calendar, pick up the phone, reply to the email, and comment on the show. Several months is all you need for Mark Cox. You don't need several years to wait.

David, remember you said, could you come on more often? You're going to be on every second episode now. There you go. If you're open to doing that in that voice, you're on every second episode. Let's do the episode together.

Clip that out and use it as a commercial.

The four words from marketing are offer value and invite engagement. Double-click value. The four-word definition for selling is to send an invitation and spark a conversation. What do you mean by a conversation?

One of our mantras that shows up somewhere in the book is nothing good happens outside of a conversation. You can send emails until you're blue in the face. You can post on social media. You can even send cookies in the mail. You can send an amazing $50 pen to an executive with whom you want to have a conversation. None of that matters until we are voice-to-voice, screen-to-screen, or face-to-face. This is an area where the sales-averse. This is the part that terrifies them.

Mark, what happens when the dog catches the car? I got a call on Tuesday. The guy replied to me. He wants to have a call with me on Tuesday. Their heads explode. Everything that we do in marketing and the front end of sales, like prospecting and lead generation outreach, is designed to bring you into that first conversation. People have this like, “This is a huge pressure moment. I have to sell, pitch, and blast them with my amazingness. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

No matter what business you're in, you could be selling products, services, or expertise, the framework that I recommend that you hold this initial conversation in, and there are a lot of guides, frameworks, and language that you can use in this first contact meeting. Think of it as if you're already hired. They're already a client. You have nothing to hide and prove. The way that I open these conversations is, “Mark, great to speak with you. Let me ask you. Do you mind if I treat you like a fee-paid client during this call?” People will say, “That would be great. You can even see their body language change.” Sometimes, they go, “What does that mean?” I say, “I'm glad you asked.”

It means a couple of things. Number one, it means that I want to make sure that we maximize the value of our time together for you, which also means that I'm going to ask your permission to interrupt and productively redirect if I feel our conversation is going off track. I would do this with a paying client. Number three, there may be some things that you share with me. I'm going to tell you the honest truth. I'm going to tell you what you need to hear, not necessarily what you want to hear about you, your company, and your team.

Do I have your permission to do that? They say yes. They're already in the house. They're already in the family. All the pressure that's on you as a seller has gone away. You can start doing your initial diagnosis. What's been going on? What prompted you to book this call? What's wrong with your leadership, sales team, technology, and innovation that we're helping them with? How long has that been a problem? What do you think is costing you time, dollars, hours, profit, percentages, rework, wasted time, and wasted effort? We're in a conversation. Look at every prospect as if they're already a client, and they don't know it, or they haven't signed off on the paperwork. The more you treat prospects like clients, the more clients you will get.

This is tip number 29. Five tips for first contact calls. The first one is a great opening question. The second one, do you mind if I treat you like a feed-pay client? It's the same script that David went through, which is powerful. This is the dirty little secret that trainers, consultants, anybody in professional services, lawyers, engineers, and consultants don't know.

The truth is this is the easiest part of the conversation because all you are doing is pulling information from them with amazing questions that get them trying to paint this better future for themselves. They're emotionally connected to either the pain they're in or the better future. You are sitting back and asking questions.

My belief is that most of the folks get a lot of these folks, like lawyers, financial professionals, and consultants. Their concern is they think they need to pitch. We're going to get the PowerPoint. My rule of thumb is never to open PowerPoint again during a conversation. It will kill your conversation. Don't go anywhere near a demo. Don't go anywhere near PowerPoint. Have a conversation.

Get Into Action

The easiest one in the world is thank you so much for setting up time with me. I'm delighted to chat with you. I took a look at your website. It looks like you've been growing. Congrats on the acquisition. I'm excited to hear about that. On LinkedIn, it looks like you've got 125 employees, but you get seven open job postings. Things are moving in the right direction. I’m excited to hear all of it. What prompted you to reach out to me?

It’s something crazy easy, nice, and open-ended. We can sit back and have this conversation. You and I are having this conversation. You've packaged this up for your audience in a new way. We've been doing this for several years, packaging up. The reality of it is that this is what Dale Carnegie suggested we should be doing in 1939.

You'll love this, David. At one point in time, I had this, and I wouldn't call it imposter syndrome, but it was perplexing me that in our company, we hadn't come up with a brand new way of helping another human being that no one's ever thought of before. That would be the magic potion that would completely change B2B selling. It perplexed me so much. I went down to see one of our friends, Frank Cespedes. Through this show, we got to know him from Harvard. He has written nine books on B2B selling. He is fantastic. He's been teaching the sales program at Harvard for many years.

I had this conversation with him. I said, “I feel like an impostor at times because, Frank, I've been doing this for many years. Nothing's changed. This is what I was doing in 1995 to be successful.” He brought up a great point. He said he had had this big group of super high-end entrepreneurs at a Harvard course. He was having a conversation with them. It wasn't resonating. He went back to some principles in search of excellence back in 1992. He said this thing lit them all on fire. He said, “Sometimes, you have to take these universal principles, but they need to come out in the voice of that generation for that particular group.”

There was a theme of this in your book, David. A lot of these are fundamental truths. The second thing I thought was that you should take it a level down because you make it simple for somebody in professional services to understand the concept but immediately apply it. The other thing I love about early in the book is that after about section one, David says, “Let's take a pause. What have you done with the information in the book so far? Are you going to make some behavioral changes here? Are you going to read another book?” What a great move. That screamed right from the page. You want me to do better, not to sell another book or do another workshop, but you want to change someone's behavior. I bet you get a lot of feedback on that.

The whole Do It concept and get into action are all about implementation. Great ideas are a dime a dozen. This is why there are a million weight loss books and how to get rich books. The key to weight loss is to move more and eat less. The key to becoming a zillionaire is to spend less and save more. There are a million personal finance books out there. The ideas are useless. The implementation and the execution of the ideas.

Given the stage and phase of the business that you're running, your market, audience, and prospects that you're marketing and selling to, you'll know how to adapt these ideas to your own personality preferences and strengths. It’s the same thing, Mark. In your book, we can keep reading until we're blue in the face, and no one is going to sell anything anymore. It's about the implementation of the ideas.

Sometimes, we can be relentless. People will say, “Mark, I love your podcast. This podcast is amazing. I read your book three times. I highlighted every other page. You say, “That's beautiful. Thank you for the kind compliments. I'm curious. How has listening to the podcast or reading the book impacted your sales results?” They start looking at their shoes. Their shoes start to get fascinating. They're looking down, and they’re like, “I still love your ideas so much. You're such a rock star. You're amazing.”

You and I leave those conversations a little bit deflated. We're not here to write books and publish podcasts. We're here to help people tap into their inner potential that, for some reason, has been blocked up until now because they're sales averse or they don't have the sales skills, discipline, or conditioning that they need to reach their goals. I love it when people appreciate my ideas, but I love it more when they make money with them.

Follow-Up Magic

David, I couldn't agree more. There are two stories. We end up with some of the clients we work with. We used to help them and teach them how to interview salespeople. It’s a tricky thing to do with one in three churns every year. I want you to hear a lot of interviews with professional salespeople. You'd say, “Is there any methodology you follow? Have you had any training before in your career?” They'll come back and say, “I read The Challenger Sale by Matt Dixon and Brent Adamson.” We're going to go, “We've had both of them on the show. What are you applying from that book?” This is where the shoes get attractive. They've taken nothing from it.

I love the idea of clarity in your book, which is something people should apply almost every day. You talk about that. One of the important things is it has to be a habit. It has to be something we think about and do every day. We had another client who was one of our first clients ever from several years ago. They used to continue to send all their new salespeople to our training, and their leaders who would come to our training.

At one point in time, they brought us into their office to do some work. We could still see these templates that we had given, but they were the ten-year-old templates from the early days. They were still leveraging them. We felt happy that they were trying to operationalize and still get value from what we had done.

We do it differently now when we're doing large group training. We'll do the training, but before we do the training, we define specific desired outcomes, metrics, and outcomes that we want several months after the training. As part of the training, we regroup with the leadership team to track progress with senior management. We keep the sales leadership team accountable to make sure we're executing these things, and they don't go through another sales kickoff where it was fun but didn't change any behavior. We want to make that change critical.

I want to call out one other thing. We're not going to go through 77 of these ideas. Many of the people who are reading this are looking for something they can take away and apply. Item number 58, 4 ways to create follow-up magic. The number one need of most human beings outside of food, water, and sustenance is to feel like they are heard. Always lead off with the prospect's comments from the previous call. Did you even hear what they were saying, “Start there and break the wall completely down?” This is all part of feeling like they're already doing business with you.

One of the top sales minds out there, in our view, is a guy named Andy Paul. He's probably into 1,500 podcasts. He's spoken to everybody. One of the phrases he loves to to use, which we like, is, “The folks who win in a sales situation are the folks that the buyer believes understand them and their situation better than anybody else.” You get comfortable.

It's not about prices you bring up or service features. Those things oftentimes don't even matter. Does this individual understand our world and what's important to us? They didn't hear us. They understood what we were saying. I love the easy one. It’s to ask follow-up questions to every statement they make. Who, what, how, and why. These multipliers keep them talking.

It's the who else, what else, how else, where else, and why else? Who else will notice these improvements? What else would be important to them? How else do you think you might benefit? Where else has this been a problem? All of those who, what, where, and why else questions are sales multipliers. Those are revenue multipliers because, from the prospect, you're inviting them to share with you what the problem multipliers are. When you have problem multipliers from your client, you have sales multipliers for multiple different ways that you can help them solve those multiple problems.

Sometimes, people believe this is self-evident, but you'll ask a question like that of a senior executive. They haven't thought about the answer until they say it out loud because you ask the question. It imprints. They are emotionally tied to it. You ask a question. How big a priority is the firm for this? Somebody comes back and goes, “It's an interesting question. If we don't fix this revenue issue, I won't be in this chair several months from now.”

There have got to be a top three. What are the other two out of interest? What are the implications if we don't address this? I'm not going to have a job. These are the things that crystallize in the mind of the buyer. I love a conversation in a follow-up call where somebody comes back and goes, “That's a good question.” That means we did our job. You talk about that in the first conversation, doing some myth-busting and adding value.

It occurs to me that even if we misread the situation badly and ask a question about something that's not important to them at all, and the executive comes back with, “Mark, that's the least of our problems.” Have the presence of mind to say. “Got it. What are the top three?” We don't care about that at all. That's the least of our problems. What's the top three in the most category? Have some fun with it. The other thing is amateur sellers put so much pressure on themselves. They're serious. Professional sellers like you and me like to have fun. We like to make the prospect smile or maybe even sometimes laugh. We humanize the sales conversation with humor. That makes selling so much more easy and fun.

Amateur sellers put so much pressure on themselves whereas professional sellers like to have fun.

We were talking about dopamine at the beginning. We’re familiar with dopamine. Curiosity also triggers dopamine. When we're asking them those questions, this is why it's so easy if you do it this way and have this conversation. The whole conversation's about them. To be authentically curious about the answers, they're not answers leading to my sales pitch. They're answers where I'm authentically curious about how to help this person get a better future. You or I are clear. If we can help them, it’s wonderful. If we can't help them, but there's somebody else we know who could help them, we'll be the first to do that. We understand good things come when you take this approach. Your intent comes across.

More so than any sales technique you come from. What you're talking about is where you come from, your intention, and your character. No matter what script, template, or framework you use, they can tell if you've got the old sales breath or commission breath. They can also tell when they're talking to someone who is genuinely curious, genuinely there to help them and serve them, and completely detached from the outcome.

That is the other magnificent point for everybody reading. Anybody in professional services, training, and consulting, the idea is you're not trying to find another sales opportunity. You're having another conversation with the right actor for you, the right person. The ballerina and not the truck driver is another theater analogy.

The idea is you're not trying to find another sales opportunity you're having another conversation with the right actor for you the right person.

I'm having this conversation about helping them. He's a guy from Harvard, Dr. Nick Morgan. His book is called Can You Hear Me? He talked about how we can sense another human's intent with nonverbal cues in milliseconds. How do we go into that conversation? When we got ready for this episode, I heard you on your show, but we met for the first time. We got on this Zoom call. I thought to myself, “This is going to be fun. This is going to be a great conversation. I already like David.” These are things that we can connect.

The truth is that it is better for the process. It's also better for the individual because this is what you want to do with your life and career. It's not about pitching and cajoling. I'm not trying to get one more opportunity in the funnel. I'm trying to help another human being. What ends up happening is great things happen for everybody.

David, we are going to chat again. I have to call out the last thing I loved about that number 58, which is four ways to create follow-up magic. It's not a need or a pain until you hear it from them. You think, “I know the reasons people engage in sales training. I know the reasons people buy enterprise software that does financial reporting.” It doesn't exist until they say the need, the paint, or the opportunity. The return on investment doesn't exist unless it's in their model with their metrics and hitting their goals, whether it's MPV or payback. Those things have to come from them. I love it has to come from that.

Reach David

Tim Hughes is a great guy. He wrote a fantastic book called Social Selling. He used to sell large-scale enterprise software to massive retailers in Europe, including Marks and Spencer, which is one of the largest retailers in the UK. Every business case they write had to come back to how many more pairs of undergarments because that's their number one category killer. Do they sell because of this project? It was always that. Would this result in more undergarments being sold or not? That's the only metric we understand. David, a couple of things here. Thank you for joining the show. We are going to, if you're open to it, have you back for Do It! Marketing when I read that book.

That would be amazing.

We'll get that on the radar. A lot of the folks reading are going to want to reach out and engage with you. Who do we want? Who is that ideal client profile for you? How do they best make contact with you or learn more about you and your fantastic offering?

We work with professional services firm owners. If you're in the business of selling your expertise, which usually takes the form of a training company, a consulting firm, or a coaching company, and all B2B. Mark and I are brothers from another mother. As far as some resources, we have our podcast called The Selling Show, which is at TheSellingShow.com, and some free resources on the main website, which is DoItMarketing.com. There's a blog there and a free 37-page sales and marketing manifesto. That's at DoItMarketing.com/manifesto. Our free on-demand web training is at DoItMarketing.com/webinar.

When you buy the book, Do It! Selling, you go onto an online system that's going to provide all the tools to execute some of the core concepts in the book. You're going to get your payback immediately from the book for downloading these tools. You can apply these concepts to you and your business. David, thanks again for joining the show. What a pleasure meeting you.

Thank you, my friends. Same here. As they say at the end of Casablanca, “The beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Thank you so much for joining. As you know, we run the show because we want to improve the performance and professionalism of the world's most important business discipline. In doing so, we believe we're improving the lives of professional salespeople everywhere. Thanks a lot for reading. We're growth-oriented. We know we can continue to elevate the way we run this show. Please keep your constructive criticism coming to us at MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email. We respond to every single person who gives us good ideas and keep them coming because that's how we get great people like David. Thanks again. Continue to sell well. We look forward to seeing you in the next episode.

Important Links

• Do It! Selling: 77 Instant-Action Ideas to Land Better Clients, Bigger Deals, and Higher Fees

• David Newman - LinkedIn

• Do It! Marketing

• Do It! Speaking

• Learn to Love Selling

• Frank Cespedes – Past Episode

• The Challenger Sale

• Matt Dixon – Past Episode

• Brent Adamson – Past Episode

• Can You Hear Me?

• Social Selling

• Do It Marketing

• Do It Marketing - Manifesto

• Do It Marketing - Webinar

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

• David@DoItMarketing.com

About David Newman

David Newman is a Certified Speaking Professional and member of the NSA Million Dollar Speakers Group. David is the author of the business bestsellers, “Do It! Marketing”, “Do It! Speaking and “Do It! Selling”.

David has worked with over 1,800 consultants, coaches, and speakers to help them accelerate their revenue and grow their business by 50%-500% in less than 15 months. Nothing makes David happier than client results.

He has been featured and quoted in the New York Times, Investors Business Daily, Selling Power, Sales & Marketing Management, Forbes.com, and CNBC.

David also hosted the national audio magazine of the National Speakers Association, Voices of Experience, and over 300 episodes of The Speaking Show and The Selling Show.

Navigating The Evolving World Of Sales: Insights From The Field With Victor Antonio

The game of sales isn’t just about closing deals—it’s about guiding informed buyers to make confident decisions. In this episode, Victor Antonio reveals his journey from electrical engineering to sales and explores how today’s sales landscape has evolved. With buyers now more knowledgeable than ever, the role of a salesperson has shifted from pitching products to providing expertise and clarity in complex decisions. Victor breaks down how the commoditization of markets has made the how more important than the what, highlighting the need for industry insight and consultative selling. Whether navigating indecisive buyers or mastering the balance between automation and human touch, this conversation dives deep into the nuances of sales dynamics, leadership styles, and staying resilient in ever-changing markets.

---

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Navigating The Evolving World Of Sales: Insights From The Field With Victor Antonio

Welcome. We’ve got a great show for you on the show. We’ve got one of the top sales thought leaders in the world because Victor Antonio is on the show. Victor is the Founder and CEO of the Sellinger Group. He’s the author of sixteen books on professional sales, leadership, and personal growth. His first book on AI came out in 2017. He was ahead of the curve on that one. We discuss that book in this episode.

I originally came across Victor when I was traveling in the US. One night in a hotel room, my wife and I were getting ready to grow out, and on the television was a show called Life or Debt. We had the TV playing while we were getting ready to go for dinner. That was Victor’s show he was on. It’s on the Paramount Network, I believe, Spike TV, and Amazon. It’s called Life or Debt. He hosted that show and ran that show for a few years.

This conversation is about professional sales and leadership. We get into sales management. We get into the top trends in B2B selling and B2C selling. We talk a little bit about the impact AI is going to have on professional selling. Victor’s got some pretty bold predictions in terms of what may happen to some sales roles.

He’s a spectacular individual. We talk about sales leadership and what’s required to truly allow the teams that we manage and run to grow to their full potential. Part of that is allowing them to do things their way so that they can grow and learn and giving them the time and space to do that. He’s got a forward-thinking approach to leading people. We talk a little bit about what buyers are going through. Victor sees a lot of this with the teams he trains and the organizations that he’s working with.

We also learn a little bit about how somebody who’s at this level of sales thought leadership continues to invest in his own personal learning and growth. We find out a few of the sources that he likes to go to to stay current with what’s happening in professional B2B sales. I learned a lot from Victor. I’m sure you will too. He’s a spectacular guy. You’re going to enjoy this conversation. If you do, please like and subscribe to the show because that’s exactly how we get great guests like Victor Antonio. Thank you for doing so. Team, here’s Victor Antonio.

‐‐‐

Victor, welcome to the show. What a pleasure to meet you.

Thank you for finally having me on your show.

I’m so glad to finally get you on the show. One of the things that is helpful for our audience is they’d be interested to know the short version of your journey in professional sales, specifically, how a mechanical engineer with an MBA ends up becoming one of the top sales thought leaders in the world. What’s the short story on that amazing journey?

Small correction, electrical engineering with an MBA.

It’s electrical. Pardon me.

No worries. We’re in the same family. I was working for a wireless company designing wireless systems, to do the short story. I remember I designed a big system, I was always traveling with a salesperson. His name was Ken Cook. We won the deal and Ken took me out to a great lunch, and then I found out that on the first phase of the actual design that I designed, he would probably make about $50,000. $50,000 versus this $50 lunch, I said, “I’d rather be on that side of the fence.”

World Of Selling Now

That’s a good start. Here we are, X number of years later. Amazingly, you’ve written sixteen books. You’ve been in front of some of the largest crowds in the world. You’re a student. I’ve certainly studied a little bit before this episode. I’ve heard you on so many other podcasts. Not only do you have thought leadership but you’re also a student of research and facts, but an open-ended one. With your depth and professional selling, how are we doing as a business discipline?

I zoom out. I looked at the world of selling. I’m probably a little older than you and most people who are probably reading this. I’ve seen sales from when you were carrying everything with you from projector to displays. You really had to carry the bag back in the day. There was no software. There was no type of CRM. You had to work the customer base. You had to work your territory. Fast forward, we got all kinds of tools to make us more efficient at sales.

This is a data point that blows my mind that people don’t think about. No matter how many tools we provide salespeople, they're still only spending about 1/3 of their time selling. We’ve gone beyond sales enablement, and yet we’re not selling as much. It’s almost like something’s stunting the actual sales process. When I talk to salespeople, they hide behind their emails a lot. They don’t like to do cold calling. They’re afraid to reach out and talk to customers. I get it. It’s generational differences. Some people want to communicate via text or whatever it may be. What I find that's changed is not so much selling. It’s the buyer that’s changed. That’s the real mind-blower.

Depending on whose study you believe, buyers are more into the buying journey or the buying process. In other words, they’re smarter. They know more. What we have is a different buying animal, one that’s done the research that says, “I’m 90% into the buying cycle already. I need you to clarify certain things, confirm certain things, or give me the confidence that this is the right decision.” To me, the biggest change is not so much on the sales side because a lot of these sales processes are still the same. I don’t care what flavor or book you put out there. A lot of the processes are still the same, but the buyer’s mindset where they are in the buying journey is what we have to pay attention to.

You reference a couple of things in that buyer’s journey. Folks of this show are pretty familiar with the spaghetti diagram from Gardner from 2017 and the stages of that buying process that has been made famous in lots of different places. They’re going through that journey. We’ve always heard, “There are lots of people involved in the purchasing decision,” all the way back to Miller Heiman.

In my view, if you did big deals, you and I aren’t that different in age. When I started and did large deals, there was always a large buying committee on large outsourcing deals in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. There’s a big group. Major things. That was always the case. Going back to the salesperson or our business discipline, we had Dan Pink on the show a little while back.

I love Daniel Pink.

I love his writing. I love the fact that he wrote To Sell is Human and he wasn’t even in professional sales. There was this interesting divide between everybody he knew in professional sales who were intellectually curious, problem-solvers, and business people with business acumen and this 40 or 50-year-old stereotype, so he wrote a book about it.

The line that got me was, “What science is telling us is one thing. What business does is another thing.” It was a great line. It talks about the gap between science and actual practicality. 

You’re right. There’s a little bit of that in Drive. I’m not sure you’re familiar with Drive.

I don’t want to make this a Pink episode, but I read Drive and To Sell is Human. I forgot about the one about Johnny Bravo or whatever. He’s also got a sleeper called When which a lot of people have not read. It’s a great book. When I say I’m a fan, I’m not saying that to be nice to the guy.

With When, here’s the message to everybody reading. If you get a medical procedure, make sure you get it done in the morning.

If you don’t know what we’re talking about, read the book.

Do your driving in the morning. Coming back to what we do, I always like the stat from To Sell is Human, 1 in 9 people in a professional sales job. When we had Frank Cespedes on the show a little while back, he said, “If you graduate college or university today,” like you with electrical engineering and MBA, “You’ve got a 50% chance now in your career that you’re going to be in a dedicated professional sales role.” It’s so much different. 1 in 2 people are going to be doing this.

If you listen to the noise, it does seem that sales performance may be declining. You’re always seeing the stats of the percentage of quota achieves going down or the percentage of buyers who enjoy interacting with the professional salespeople going down. They’re trying to avoid it in some cases. I’m not sure I agree with all of these stats. Sometimes, they’re a little bit hyped up. What’s your view on the profession? You’re in front of lots of groups of folks. You’re training lots of different teams. I’m sure you’re brought in when leaders are trying to turn around underperforming organizations. How do you think we’re doing as an overall business profession or discipline?

I don’t want to be that old guy in the room like, “Back in the day, we used to,” that whole thing and talk about declining performance. The way to look at this market is it depends on what segment we’re looking at. For example, I like to look at things on the spectrum, like simple to complex sale or transactional to complex. When we look at transactional sales, we can see how the salesperson is being attrition doubt eliminated because people want to make their own buying decisions. That’s where you see some of these numbers.

When someone says, “76% of B2B buyers don’t want to engage with a salesperson,” it lacks a lot of context. I’m like, “In what context?” You came from a technology background. I came from one. If it’s a complex system, I want to talk to a salesperson, especially a salesperson who has experience and has done this. When I look at the spectrum from simple to complex, it’s almost like Pacman. It’s eating all the transactional stuff up. In other words, it’s going to be like, for example, AI and auto. We don’t need people. They can make their own buying decisions. That is the consumer.

As we get more complex and it becomes difficult, we’re going to see a return to Mack Hanan’s approach to consultative selling where the decisions are going to get so complex that that’s where really good salespeople are going to rise to the top. Those are the experts, the best of the best. If I’m in sales and I’m looking at these data points, I always ask, “What’s the context?” When we talk about lack of performance, what’s the context?

We’ve thrown in a new curve ball, which is virtual selling. We don’t have anything to compare that to, so how do we know how people are doing? If I were to summarize this, it all depends on what we’re talking about. For complex sales, you’ll still need great salespeople who are subject matter experts. I can also see how people want to get away from talking to salespeople.

I always use this simple example. Think about how you and I would buy a car many years ago versus how we would buy it now. Now, we do all the research and get all the information. We know what the price should be. When we walk onto the dealer lot, we want a transaction. We don’t want a relationship. That’s one of the biggest shifts because we’ve done the research. I go back to we've enabled the buyer so much so that in many cases, they don’t want to deal with salespeople.

It's an interesting example of a car. Certain people will go online and do the research if they’re high fact finders if you believe in Kolbe and all that. We still buy through a broker. Our cars over the last couple of years, I want to make sure that I’m making a good investment but I want to go to somebody who’s an expert who can help me cut through all the noise. I want to spend my time researching this. I don’t want to research cars and I don’t want to be researching my sports equipment and all that. I go to folks who know these things. I want to use them. It always depends on the individual you’re working with.

We think the difference in a lot of companies is how well they sell. There’s this world where things get commoditized so quickly through lots of different reasons but eventually, things get commoditized unless you’re Apple, Amazon, or somebody like that. The way you sell as an organization is what differentiates your company. Sales is management consulting. That’s always about the client, the better future, how you can get them there, helping with trust, earning their trust and credibility, but being able to help them achieve a better future, get them to that better future, and understand what that better future is with industry acumen and business acumen.

I don’t know if there was a question in there. That seemed more like a statement. I’ll try to add this flavor to it. Since there are so many options out there, a lot of buyers are confused. It’s the whole, “I don’t know which way to go, left to right.” Many books have been written about this, including The Challenger Sale and The JOLT Effect with Matt Dixon about making this decision.

In Robert Child’s book, Influence, there was always that example. It was the study by Mann-Mouth University where he talked about the 24 flavors of jams on 1 table and then there were 6 flavors on another table. They want to see which table sold the most. The one with 24 flavors only sold 3%. The other one with only 6 flavors sold 30%. A confused mind will never make a decision.

I’d like to use Brent Adamson’s words. We almost have to be like a sales Sherpa, which is to guide the buyer to what we know they want. It’s like, “I’ve listened to you. We’ve done the discovery phase. I understand what you want. I understand your pain points. I understand the impact you want. As you pointed out, I’m futurecasting where you want to go. Therefore, may I suggest we do this?” That’s what customers are looking for.

I alluded to this earlier. They want clarification. They’re like, “Help me understand what’s this versus that.” They want confirmation so they’re like, “It can do that.” The third one is the most important component, which is confidence. They’re like, “Give me the confidence. I want you, the salesperson, to give me the confidence that this is the right decision for me to make.” They want clarification, confirmation, and then the confidence that you give them because you know your subject matter. They go, “I trust you. Let’s go with that one. Even if I have to pay a higher price, let’s go with that one.”

You mentioned both Matt and Brent, the authors of The Challenger Sale.

I love their work also.

Matt wrote with Ted McKenna The JOLT Effect, which talked about that no decision. Tying into that confidence, which is relevant to your model, they said a buyer makes a decision when they’re in pain. They say, “I want a solution.” Once they’ve made a decision, there’s a second decision that says, “Is this the right thing to do? I’m almost getting advanced buyer’s remorse, or, “Am I better missing out versus messing up?” That’s this idea that 60% of deals, if not more, go to no decision where my main competitor isn’t somebody else doing sales training. The organization decides not to move forward at all.

There’s a subtlety in what you said that was put in that data, right?

Yeah.

If I remember, you got an average of 60%. Of that 60%, 20% go to your competitor and 40% go to no decision. I would argue that maybe of that 40%, 10% go because of pricing. It still leaves you with 30% no decision, which implicitly means this. Your real competitor isn’t your competitor, which is only 20% of the business loss. Your real competitor is indecision.

What you’ve said is very important. I don’t want people to skip over that because you said something very important that’s highlighted in the book. “You create enough pain where you’re beyond the status quo,” is how they phrased it. In other words, “You don’t need to convince me I need to change. I know I need to change.”

The second part of the problem, part B of the problem, is, “I don’t want to mess up,” which is what’s highlighted in the book. I thought that was a very interesting way to slice that that some people were beyond they know they need to change but they’re afraid to make the change for fear of messing up. In other words, it's the buyer's regret. I thought that was powerful in the book.

People know they need to change but they're afraid to make the change for fear of messing up. In other words, it's the buyer's regret.

Sell Cycle

I know you’ve got a great background doing large corporate deals in large enterprises. With our business, there’s a lot of work where we’re doing with medium-sized enterprises. I find in a large corporate enterprise the fear of making a decision or putting your head up and being a leader. A lot of large corporate enterprises are about risk management as an employee. You’re not getting the zealots who want to get out there and make a difference.

Well said.

Bureaucratic might be the wrong word, but in some cases, moving the needle is so hard. They’re managing and maintaining. Whereas the joy of working, a lot of times with medium-sized enterprises, you’re going to get to a CEO. What do they want to do? Grow their business. What do they want to do? Increase the enterprise value of their business. By nature, they’re entrepreneurs, so they might be a little bit more courageous that way to a certain extent. They make decisions. As you aptly pointed out at the beginning, it’s a much different type of sales cycle.

Can I add one more layer to that? What I’m seeing in the market is very fascinating. We talked about where the salesperson is going to be in the future and where they will play. This is very interesting. I do a lot of residential business, like contractors, whether it’s HVAC, plumbing, or pools. A big customer base of mine, like Window World and Orkin Pest Control Company. They’re not going to be AI-ed out soon. That’s a fascinating segment also because we never think about contractors that way.

That’s an interesting market because they’re, in my opinion, still pure sales. In other words, if we don’t look at the top of the funnel, which could be AI-ed out, but once you get into the funnel, that’s pure sales because you still have to get to the house, walk the house, and have the conversation. I almost want to say that the last bastion when the sales process is found is very pure.

You’ve struck a chord as close to my heart. I started running a painting company when I was in university.

You are impressive.

I’m not sure about that. I’ve got a number of people who would debate you on that, for sure. One of the things that was so great about the organization was it was a franchise painting company. One of the guys who had started it came from IBM. I’m not different in age from you. This is in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s while I’m going to university.

It was the identify the need and develop the need. You’re walking around a house and somebody says, “Why are we here? They say, “The windows are peeling and I’m worried about it.” You’d come back and say, “We’ll make them look better, for sure. This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to prime them and paint them. The issue here is if you don’t do something, it’s going to rain. Water’s going to get into the wood. It’s going to expand. Instead of painting, you’re going to have to replace a window.”

I loved it because, first of all, you were helping. It was all truthful. It was ethics-based. By the same token, everything in sales we try to do in these long sell cycles over time, you’re doing in a very short period of time with a one-hour visit with somebody selling. This triggered my love of this business discipline and profession.

I wanted to highlight what’s interesting about this market segment. Let’s call it the residential contracting business. I made a statement earlier that simple sales or transactional sales will be AI-ed out. In other words, the buyer will buy on their own. This is a simple sale, and yet, it’s one that cannot be automated out. The thing is you still need that consultative piece.

That’s why I find residential sales a very interesting market. Whether it’s you own your own small company or contractor or you’re a franchise, that’s not going to go away. What we’re going to see in the future is that’s going to be a more robust market for salespeople. We’re going to see a lot more salespeople jump into that market because that’s where sales training is really needed.

We're going to see a lot more sales people jump into the residential sales market because that's where sales training is really needed.

This is very interesting. We’ve never had this kind of conversation on the show before, so thank you. I left the painting company and I went into corporate sales. I’m of a similar age. The first big technology sales were selling big photocopiers. It was harder to extract $5,000 out of a homeowner for a paint job than it was to get a hundred thousand dollars out of a corporation for a new photocopier. It’s not easy to do that. When you’re doing that, they’re making that assessment, trust, and credibility. They’re going through the phases of, “Do I have a problem? I’d rather miss out than mess up.”

That pure idea of sales being a last bastion, I completely agree. We go through it all the time. I always find there’s this interesting gap with the folks we train where we ask the question, “How do you like to buy? What’s important to you?” You start to ask them, “How are you selling today?” There’s a gap. There’s a difference.

Salesperson Versus Management

There should be no gap. How you buy is how you sell. I want to go off on a small tangent because we don’t talk about this enough. It is sales-related. It’s managers and how we train salespeople. What I’m seeing is that there’s something called Polanyi’s paradox. Polanyi’s paradox is that you know it but you can’t explain it.

In other words, we all had managers who go, “Go do it that way.” You go, “Why?” They’re like, “It’s because it works.” They think that sales training. What I’m seeing is that a lot of managers are still doing what we’ve done for many years or decades, which is to throw people into the fire and say, “Figure it out,” type of thing. They’re like, “Deepen the pool. Swim. Figure it out.”

A lot of managers are still doing what we've done for many decades now, which is to throw people into the fire and say, “figure it out.”

I would love your opinion on this because I came up with a simple way of looking at managers versus salespeople. Tell me if you agree with this analogy or this visual. I was trying to find a way to explain why management styles are misaligned without making it too complicated. I came up with a tortoise and the hare mindset. Allow me to explain. You’ll enjoy this.

We’re both familiar with Theory X and Theory Y management styles. Theory X is command and control, which is, “Do what I tell you. Go left. Go right Block here. Squat there. Do this. That’s how you sell.” Theory Y is more delegation. It’s like, “I’m sure you’ll figure it out. If you have any questions, come see me.” In other words, Theory X is command and control. Theory Y is, “If you have trouble, come to me. Other than that, figure it out.”

When I look at salespeople, I put them in the tortoise and the hare. What I’ve realized is that a tortoise loves instructions. You have to tell the salesperson what to do. You have to choreograph the steps. A hare or a rabbit likes to run. Give them an end goal and they’ll run. Here’s what I find interesting. If you have a Theory X command and control person, if that’s your personality, then you’ll do well with a tortoise who loves instructions and loves to be choreographed. You’ll struggle with the hare because these are people who want to do it their way and have their own personality. The inverse is true. If I’m Theory Y, I’m very delegative, if that’s a word. In other words, rabbits love me because they’re like, “He says, “Do it my way.” Tortoises need instructions.

Here’s my point. A lot of salespeople who are promoted because they’re very good started out as a hare. When they’re promoted, they’re Theory Y. They’re like, “Go do it.” When they come across a tortoise and a tortoise is like, “How do you do that?” You’re like, “It’s easy. Go figure it out.” I bring that up because I see this misalignment sometimes in management style versus the actual sales salesperson. I want managers to be aware that their selling style could be in conflict with how a salesperson wants to be talked to.

It’s spot on. There are a couple of challenges with sales leaders. For the most part, what we do is we promote the hare. A lot of times, the hare, the top performer, or the Wayne Gretzky, if you will, is not a good coach.

That’s a good analogy.

While he was playing, he kept saying, “I would never be a good coach.” He told everybody, but then he bought into the Coyotes and had to coach. They were miserable. He was miserable. The second thing is there may even be one in between that tortoise and hare. I don’t know what the animal analogy is, but outside of the command and control, there’s Stephen Covey’s Trust & Inspire. It’s not the command and control anymore but there is active coaching. You see this in professional sports.

I played hockey to a certain level, not professionally. In high school, we would have people throwing garbage cans around in the hockey dress room. That was command and control. Hockey players were not the sharpest tools in the shed, so they had to make a point. They were making points that way. There’s a lot of talk that you have to be a player’s type of coach. The way that players make ten times what the coach makes and all these types of things, you have to get the best out of them differently. 

Maybe there’s this different world in terms of leadership. You probably had them. I certainly had them, but not all the time. It didn’t mean they were soft and cuddly or super warm all the time, but I did have a sense that they had our best interest at heart or their own. It wasn’t just about making them look good. It was about helping me develop as a person and a professional. To me, that’s one of the things we see missing in leadership. I’m with you. One of the X factors of professional sales is sales leadership. The other thing is I find we are very busy training professional salespeople and the leaders are quick to put their teams in our training. 

They’re like, “Train them for me. Make them sit up and roll over and then give them back to me.”

That’s right. They’re not quick to put themselves in training. We have sales leadership training. No one signs themselves up for it. The CEO signs up the sales leader to go into the training. It’s an interesting thing with leaders saying, “They need to work, develop, and continually learn, but I’m not sure I do.” Do you see that?

I see that. That’s almost like a broken record. There’s nothing in there I could disagree with. My greatest management lesson in managing people has come from my daughter. My daughter works for me. She’s a younger generation. I remember I was applying my old management style. I was complaining to my wife. I said, “There are a couple of things I need her to do. She’s not doing this.” My wife’s like, “Did you talk to her about it?” I said, “I did.”

One of the things that don’t offer the younger generation or students that are coming out of college or new salespeople is that we don’t give them enough runway to learn. We want them to be binary. By that, I mean go from 0 to 1 quickly. My wife said something that shook me to my core. She said, “That’s the problem with working in Corporate America today. They don’t give them the time to develop. This is your daughter. Your job is to give her the time.”

I took that to heart. It sat there for a while. This is how my filter interpreted what she was saying and I executed on. One, be patient. Two, let them do it their way. Provide guidance, but in the end, let them do it their way. Let them stub their toe, so to speak, and let them learn that way. Give them room to make mistakes, which she did. They weren’t horrendous, but there were some that were a little costly.

At the end of the day, she’s my ultimate demon marketer. She runs all my marketing stuff. As they say, as the plane was taking off, it was quite wobbly getting up there. Once she got going, I gave her that space to make her own decisions but to do it her way. I shut down my own brain and say, “Let’s do it your way. Maybe you see something I don’t.” It requires a certain level of humility to say that, tucking your ego in your back pocket, which a lot of managers don’t want to do, and then letting them do it their way.

You have to ride out the turbulence of learning with them. Once you get past that turbulence, it’s clear sailing. The problem is a lot of people in Corporate America don’t allow for that turbulence of learning to happen, and then they’re very disappointed. They’re not happy because they’re not doing it their way. They’re not growing. They don’t sense they’re not growing. You are not happy as a manager because they’re not performing, which is why you probably have a lot of attrition amongst young people, a high attrition in terms of job turnover.

Bravo. What’s your daughter’s name?

Camille. 

Shout out to Camille. It’s tough to work for your dad. I’m sure it’s super fun but tough. Shout out to Camille tuning in to the episode.

She loves it now, but early on, she’d be like, “Ugh.”

Way to go, Camille. You’re on such an important point for everybody tuning in to the show, which is allowing the appropriate time. You and I see the same stats from Gardner, McKinsey, and everybody else talking about an eighteen-month tenure on a sales leader. It’s the same tenure for an SDR and BDR, which is an entry-level job in professional sales.

Some of the largest technology companies in the world, which we’ve done some work with, still have outdated approaches of, “Let’s hire 30 people. We’ll do group interviews.” That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen ever. They’re like, “Four weeks after we hire 30 people, maybe 12 or 13 of them are still here.” Can you imagine the impact on a new professional?

The next Victor Antonio graduates with electrical engineering as an MBA. He takes his first job with a name-brand technology company and tells all of his friends and family. They’re so proud, and then four weeks later, they’re out of a job. The devastation and the self-esteem. To the folks reading out there, get better at interviewing. Hire the right person. You have to give them a formal onboarding plan and a reasonable period of time to be successful.

The turbulence period is important. I want to tell you this quick story. This was the biggest learning moment for me from a management standpoint. For my first job out of college, I was working for Honeywell. I worked for this guy. We’ll call him Joe. Joe was very Theory X, command and control. He was like, “Do it my way.” I would put together a $50,000 proposal and take it to his office for signature. He would take out his red felt pen, bleed all over the proposal, and say, “Go ahead and fix that. Bring it back and I’ll sign it.” I would fix it and bring it back. He’d bleed over it a little less, but he’d bleed on it nonetheless.

This went on for 3 or 4 iterations. When I finally got it right, he signed it. That goes on for a while. By the 10th proposal or the 20th proposal, I don’t want to put in a lot of work because I know he’s going to change it. My willingness to do any work goes down. He’s looking at me like, “You’re not getting any better because these things still keep coming in bad.” I’m like, “That’s because I’m not putting in a lot of work because you keep editing it.” It’s a vicious cycle of negativity.

Not surprisingly, I leave the company. I then go to another company. This is where I met Ken Cook, the sales guy. In this case, I’m still an engineer. I walk in on my first day. My manager’s name is Tom. I give him the proposal. It’s a $1.5 million proposal, not $50,000. It’s a binder. I hand it to him and I’m thinking, “Here it comes.” I see the pen. It’s not red, but I see the pen come out of his pocket.

I remember he opens it up, looks at the executive summary, and goes all the way to the back. You’ve seen those big deals where it’s 200 pages. He looks at the materials list, looks at the pricing and the profit margin, and closes it. He looks at me and asks me this one question. He goes, “Is it all there is?” I go, “What?” He goes, “Is it all there?” I go, “It’s all there like that.” He signs it.

I walk out of the office and you would think I would be euphoric. The first thing that hits me is pure panic, like, “He signed it. I hope everything’s right.” I’m hyper-panicking. I go to the senior engineer. His name is Roy. He says, “What’s wrong? Is the house burning? What’s wrong?” I said, “I went into Tom’s office with my first proposal.” He says, “Yeah.” I said, “It was 1.5 minutes.” He goes, “Yeah.” I go, “I went in there and he signed it. He didn’t look at it. He signed it.” He said, “What?” I go, “He signed it. He didn’t look at it.” Roy looks at me and says, “That’s your job, not his,” and walks away.

Tom was Theory Y. He hired you for your skills. He was like, “Figure it out. I’m not there to micromanage you.” I thought those were two interesting management styles. Theory X is, “Do what I tell you. Do it how I do it,” and zero motivation. Tom remains one of the best bosses I’ve ever worked for because he’d let you run. He let the rabbit run, so to speak.

It’s easier on Tom. He’s training you to do the job that you’re there for. Instead of him trying to redo the work you did and do the work, his job is to continue to elevate you so you can achieve your full potential.

This is what they don’t understand. For example, Camille comes up with stuff, like content marketing strategies, that I could never have conceived. She was given room to grow and run. She’s coming up with stuff that I can’t even think of. To your point, it makes my job easier. It would make Tom’s job easier if he let people run. Joe never figured that out. We have a lot of Joes in this world. 

I’m an entrepreneur. You’re an entrepreneur. A lot of things with entrepreneurs, at some point in time, when we start, we like to be busy. You start to feel, “The more I do, I’m getting things done.” You start to realize, “Did I do the accounting for the business? Did I run through a P&L? Why don’t I pay this fellow to do that or this lady to do that? Maybe I should be selling new deals for In The Funnel.” There’s this busy addiction, to a certain extent. We feel like we’re making a contribution.

When you come to those folks who are great leaders, they understand their job is to elevate everybody who’s working with them. That’s how you 10x, 50x, or 100x a business. I understand the theory. When things get a little stressful around here and maybe I didn’t get my coffee, and I haven’t eaten enough on that given day, I’m sure I default to those things when I’m not in my best self. It’s a great example.

It means you’re human. That’s all it is.

Thank you.

We all do that. We have to have this awareness though that if we’re thinking long-term, we have to let people underneath us grow and give them an opportunity to grow. I hope if managers read this and they have young salespeople or anybody, even young employees, you got to let them run a little bit. Let them grow a little bit. Feel like they’re contributing something and they’re making it their own.

We have to have this awareness that if we're thinking long term, we have to give people underneath us an opportunity to grow.

The Greatest Gift

I’m going to shift gears a little bit. You have such a plethora of work that we could go into on all of the key topics in life, business, and professional sales. I’m really looking forward to continuing the work in terms of researching everything you’ve done. I’d love to chat briefly about one of your books, The Greatest Gift: Five Gifts That Will Dramatically Change Your Life

You found that one. That is a gem.

The five gifts that will dramatically change your life. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you talk about self-discipline, mindset shift, personal responsibility, focus on giving and continuous learning. Have I got the five right?

They’re in there somewhere, but you had to get the greatest gift. The greatest gift is this. Everybody will enjoy this because this is the essence of the book. When I wrote The Greatest Gift, it was written, if you know who Og Mandino is, in the style of Og Mandino.

I don’t.

Og Mandino wrote The Greatest Salesman in the World and The Greatest Miracle in the World. He is one of the greatest writers of the ‘70s and the ‘80s. It was written in a conversational style. It’s me at a coffee shop speaking to an old guy named Simon. In that conversation, I’m speaking as a young person to a guy named Simon who’s 70-plus years old, my elder. It’s a great conversation.

Somebody needs to know this. At the age of 50, I gave myself the greatest gift. Here’s what I mean by this. The greatest gift is the gift of forgiveness. It allows you to move forward. I’m not making this up. I truly did this. At the age of 50, I said to myself, “From this point on, visualize that you write all your screw-ups on a board.” Imagine this board in front of you and you say, “Remember the time I lied about that? I shouldn’t have lied about that.” Everything you could imagine that’s stupid or wrong. You bent this. You did that. All the things.

Imagine you’re looking at the board. You got everything. You threw up on that board. Everything is on there. What you do is you then erase the board. You say to yourself, “From this moment on, I will no longer recall those thoughts as part of my identity.” When I find myself thinking about something, I say, “Remember that one time I did this? Was that before I was 50? You can’t count that anymore.”

It’s almost like a mindset mental reset. You don’t carry the past. You don’t bring the past into the future anymore. If I can simplify it, that is the greatest gift. You say to yourself, “From this point on, we’re starting from zero. We’ll reset and erase the board. No longer will the past be brought into the future or the present of any decision I’ll make.” You’ll take the experience, but you won’t castigate yourself, like, “The last time I did that, that didn’t go well.”

That’s exactly right. 

That is the greatest gift that you can give yourself. 

100%, I’m going to do that. The truth of it is I’m going to need 2 or 3 whiteboards.

It’s a big board for all of us.

For the things that I’ve messed up, I’m going to need 2 or 3 of those. What a great exercise, that concept of letting it go, forgiving, and moving forward.

We’re too hard on ourselves sometimes. Life is hard enough. You mentioned Stephen Covey. Do you remember that whole circle of control, circle of influence, and circle of concern?

Yes.

Focus on the things you can control. That’s part of the whole attitude and mindset thing. Stop castigating yourself. You did stupid things in the past. Let's leave them in the past and start moving forward. Let’s look at all the great things we’ve done since then. 

It’s a great exercise for the leaders and the CEOs out there for your next meeting with the team. One of the things that we all are challenged by is keeping people in a positive mental state or a healthy mental state. We’ve got a couple of episodes coming out about mental health and professional sales where we’re talking to different people.

This is such a wonderful exercise to protect your confidence and protect your mindset. I’m going to do that. I appreciate that very much. I do love all of the gifts that will dramatically change your life. They’re indisputable. Something like the focus on giving or helping somebody else out makes you feel better. Not all of us learn that soon enough.

Resources

One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about this interview, and also, I had a chance to listen to you on a couple of other folks’ podcasts, is you’re extremely well-read. You’re also up on facts, data, and research in professional sales, which, in some cases, is a little lacking. For the folks who are reading, what are the sources of information for you? How do you stay current on what’s happening in professional B2B sales and B2C sales? What are the sources of information that you used to stay current in business?

I’m all over the place. I read a lot. I try to do at least one book a month. That’s me. One book a month. Anybody who is known, if Matt Dixon, Brett Adamson, or Tim Riesterer over at Corporate Vision puts something out, I buy books. There are certain people whose books I buy. If Daniel Pink puts it up, I’m buying it. Simon Sinek, I’m buying it. Adam Grant, I’m buying it. There are certain people that you go, “I know they have research in there.” You have to curate who you want to listen to, in many cases.

The thing is I also listen to different podcasts. One of my favorite podcasts is Steven Bartklett’s The Diary of a CEO. He has some of the best interviews. I also follow Gartner, CSO Insights, and all these research companies. I sign up for everybody’s newsletters. Salesforce is another great site. They have a lot of content. I’m always trying to figure out what’s going on and what the data’s showing.

I also go to LinkedIn and scroll a lot through a lot of the sales leaders. You have yourself there and other people. I’m like, “What are they saying? What’s their perspective?” It’s interesting to see what everybody’s take on sales is. I try to humble myself by saying, “I’m 1 degree of 360. There are 359 other opinions. What are they?” You can agree and disagree with some of them, but I try to consume content.

We often talk about the internet sometimes in a very pejorative way because of what it does to your attention, focus, and increased distraction. I also think there’s a positive side of social media that you learn stuff and discover people you wouldn’t have discovered. I remember the days, like you, when you had to go to the library and look at your Dewey Decimal system index cards to figure out if there was a book. When you ran to the shelf, the book wasn’t there. That was a blown trip.

We have access to all this information, whether there are different podcasts, videos, shorts, and reels. To me, I find it enriching. It’s not the tool. It’s how you use the tool. I like to listen to different people, thought leaders, on what they’re doing. I’m listening to Mo Gawdat. He’s a thought leader in leadership, health, and technology. I’m like, “I can listen to this guy all day, “and then I jump onto somebody else and so forth. I’m constantly listening and learning. That’s how I use social media. 

It's not the tool. It's how you use the tool.

First of all, most of the people tuning in to a podcast like this one are growth-oriented. These are sales professionals or CEOs looking to take their businesses to the next level. Think of somebody who’s so deep in our space. You’ve written sixteen books. You’ve been in front of some of the largest crowds in the world. You’ve worked for some of the largest companies in the world and run an enormously successful business in addition to being a TV star.

The first time I came across you, I remember it vividly. I was in Boston. My wife and I were down for a visit. I was doing some visiting with clients. When I came back, the TV was on and you were on the Spike TV Show, Life or Debt, which was awesome. It was really great. Think of an individual like this who’s also a lifelong learner. Once a month, another new book, being open to other ideas and other opinions.

AI And Sales

There’s something you can pull from everybody. This is why we love doing this show so much. It gets us in front of other thought leaders and learning about their unique abilities and their approach. I know your time’s tight. We’re going to let you go soon. It’s a huge topic, but tell us a little bit about your recent work with AI or your thoughts on AI.

I started AI back in the late ‘80s when I was working with Honeywell on their torpedo system. At that time, it was an expert system because it was rule-based, not like what we have now. Fast forward, to make a long story short, I went to Korea. I saw that they were already using natural language processing in 2016 to analyze calls. At that point, I said, “AI’s back.”

I started doing research. That’s when I wrote the book with my co-author, Dr. James Anderson, Sales Ex Machina. Sales Ex Machina means sales from the machine. In other words, I believe that CRM is no longer the correct phrase. I like Gong.io’s phrase, a revenue intelligence platform. What we’re doing is we’re enriching the database with not just customer information, but it could be inventory information, manufacturing information operations, marketing, legion, and all this stuff. We need a better phrase than CRM. That’s an old phrase.

When I saw this, I wrote the book. When I wrote the book, everybody was like, “What are you talking about?” The subtitle is How AI is Transforming the World of Sales. I wrote it in 217. In 2018, I published it. Hardly anybody read the book because at that time, nobody even knew and really thought about AI. It wasn’t until a few years ago that ChatGPT came on the scene.

The best way of looking at this, and Mo Gawdat gave you the best analogy, is the internet has been around for many years. It wasn’t until Netscape, the browser, came out that you went, “There’s the internet.” AI has been around, but ChatGPT gave it a browser that made it user-friendly. In other words, direct-to-consumer. 

What I’m seeing is an acceleration. I’ve had debates, almost arguments, with people who say, “AI will not replace salespeople.” I’m like, “You will be replaced in many cases.” The residential industry is probably one that’s protected a bit, but a lot of jobs will be attritioned out. What you’re going to start seeing is the rise of AI agents. AI agents are things that will do things for you on your behalf. Nobody’s talking about that or at least very few people are talking about it.

Everybody thinks AI is all about ChatGPT, creating something on Midjourney, beautiful graphics, and all that stuff. It’s beyond that. The real power of AI in the future for sales lies in these agents. Imagine being able to do the following. You’re like, “I want to buy X product. I want to do this with the outcome being this and that.” The agent goes out there and interacts with other agents or information bots, finds your information, comes back, and says, “Here. I found the best solution for you.”

I’ve had people argue with me, “A bot can’t be as creative as a salesperson.” I said, “It can. A bot can also probably have more content than you can have in your brain.” For example, to keep it simple, if you have 100 skews in your inventory and sell 100 different products and we have to add another 1, we have to train people. With a bot, you don’t have to do that. You have to give it the information and it’s trained. What we’re going to see is AI start taking out a lot of sales jobs, whether it’s SDRs or BDRs. All these are going to go away over time. Most people don’t believe that’s going to happen. I truly believe it will happen.

You and I can have another conversation on AI. We should bring it back for that after we’ve done a deep dive into the book. We have a marketing intern here. When we released our book in July 2024, he came back and said, “I can get your audiobook done for you with AI.” He circulated to my wife the first chapter of our book done by an AI tool that took about five minutes. She said, “That’s Mark’s voice.” One of the key things is, can you leverage the tool as an expert in prompting AI to maximize productivity and leverage quantum computing with big data? These two things start to have a flywheel effect on the things you can do.

Once you start talking about quantum computing, it’s a new game. You get it because you understand it. A lot of people don’t understand how fast this is coming. We have a lot of Luddites who don’t think that AI is going to take their jobs. For example, on the audio for your book, ChatGPT can do it with only fifteen seconds of your audio. By sampling fifteen seconds or something, it can duplicate your voice.

I hear a lot of people say, “You can still tell it’s a robot sometimes.” I say, “You’re right, but in 5 or 10 years, you have to think of the iterations or the process. This is an exponential. This is not a linear improvement technology. This is an exponential improvement technology, which means that in a couple of years, you won’t be able to tell.”

I’m no expert, for sure, but one of the things I’m a big believer in is to get in and try these things. Try it out. Young people start in sales. They don’t have a deep level of business acumen. They’re reaching out to a VP of HR or a VP of IT. They have no idea what that person does for a job. Go to ChatGPT and ask for a job description for either. Ask, “What are their top priorities? What are the trends affecting the industry who are thought leaders in the industry?” Suddenly, you can increase your level of acumen in the afternoon. 

If I could provide a hack that most people don’t really think about.

Please. We’d love those.

They’re going to love you for this hack if they haven’t thought about it. If I’m going after a company and I want to interview for a certain company, I would do everything you said. It’s perfect. I got the information and the content. I then would enter something like, “What are the ten reasons they wouldn’t hire me or push back on hiring me given this experience?” It would give you the objections they’re going to bring up.

Here comes the true hack. Most people don’t realize that you can have ChatGPT role-play itself. In other words, I can say, “I’m a new hire trying to get a job at blank corporation that sells blank product. This is my background. I’m going to be speaking to a VP of blank. What I want you to do is role-play a scenario where I’m trying to get a job.” It’s like, “Here are the 5 reasons or 5 objections they’re going to give me.” Respond appropriately. You can say, “Do this for 5 or 10 minutes,” and it will role-play itself for 5 or 10 minutes. Most people don’t know you could do this. It will role-play both positions. It’s the coolest thing.

Is it prompts?

Yeah. 

It’s about the prompts.

It’s all about prompt engineering. You got the prompts right, but you can have it role-play itself. If you want to practice, you can say to ChatGPT, Gemini, Anthropic, or Claude, “You play this person or this role VP. I’ll play the person and try to get the job. Give me a chance to respond to every tough question you ask me.” You can practice. Isn’t that wild?

Contact Victor

A fantastic client of ours is using something called CoPilot, which is doing that to train SDRs and BDRs. It’s specific to their business. Their industry gets smarter. Ramping up with the whole sales conversation is still developing. It’s not perfect, but what a great hack, great idea, and great example everybody can leverage. First of all, I have to say thank you. Thank you for joining.

You’re welcome.

What a pleasure chatting with you. The time has flown by. I really appreciate your time. Everybody tuning in to this is going to want to learn more about you. How should they get in contact with you? 

You go into the search engine and type in Victor Antonio. You should find me. You can also go to VictorAntonio.com. You could find out about my books, my speeches, and my keynotes. If you want to see the show, Life for Debt, you can get it on Amazon. I don’t get a commission for this or royalty. It’s a great show on how to manage your finances.

They found me and said, “We want you to work with families and teach them how to run their families like a business.” I always recommend this show for people who are struggling or know somebody who’s struggling, trying to get their numbers together and get them right.” Watch the show Life or Debt on Amazon or Hulu off the Paramount Network. Go to VictorAntonio.com.

Thank you. I watched Life or Debt. I love it.

Thank you.

It was a great show. It’s really interesting. If we’re not in that situation as you go through life, I was in that situation in my twenties, for sure.

It could also be that we know people who are in those situations. The nicest compliment I’ve gotten about that show is from couples who say, “We watched your show. It was almost like a mediator. It gave us an opportunity to talk about our finances as a family. That’s what we loved about your show.” I thought it was cool. 

That’s a great idea because it’s so emotional sometimes. It’s great to meet you. Thank you.

Same here.

‐‐‐

Thank you for joining. The reason we run the show is because we want to improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales. That’s because in doing that, we think we’re improving the lives of everybody in professional sales. Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe to the show and tell your friends because that’s how we get great guests like Victor.

We’re also growth-oriented. We know we can make this show even better. Please keep your advice coming to us. We love constructive criticism. You can email your thoughts on this episode or any episode to MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That’s my personal email. We respond to every piece of advice we get. We love constructive criticism. The way we run the show is a function of some of the feedback you’ve already provided, so thanks for doing that. We’ll see everybody next time on the show.

Important Links

• Sellinger Group

• The Power of Regret with Daniel Pink

• To Sell is Human

• Drive

• When

• How to Sell in a World that Never Stops Changing with Frank Cespedes

• The Challenger Sale

• The JOLT Effect

• Influence

• Trust & Inspire

• The Greatest Gift: Five Gifts That Will Dramatically Change Your Life

• The Greatest Salesman in the World

• The Greatest Miracle in the World

• Sales Ex Machina

• Gong.io

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

About Victor Antonio

Victor Antonio is a globally sought after sales speaker, trainer, author & sales consultant. He has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, an MBA, and has built a 25-year career as a top sales executive and then CEO of a high-tech company.

He has delivered sales motivation keynotes and conducted sales workshops in Europe, Asia, Latin America, UAE, Australia, South Africa, and the Middle East.

Victor has shared the big stage with some of the top business speakers in the nation including John Maxwell, Paul Otellini (CEO of Intel), John May (CEO of FedEx Kinkos), Daymond John (Shark Tank), and many other top business speakers. He's the author of 13 books on sales and motivation and recently released his Seminars On Selling course with 300+ sales training videos.