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!

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

How Curiosity Transforms Companies And Cultures With Dr. Diane Hamilton

In a world drowning in information, a curiosity culture is a lighthouse, guiding organizations towards uncharted territories of discovery and growth. In this episode, Mark Cox welcomes back Dr. Diane Hamilton to delve into her latest book, Curiosity Unleashed: Achieving Business Excellence by Challenging the Status Quo. Dr. Diane explores how cultivating a curiosity culture within organizations can drive substantial financial gains and enhance employee engagement. She highlights the significance of emotional intelligence in sales and how curiosity can enhance empathy and problem-solving. With fascinating insights, Dr. Diane provides a compelling case for cultivating a culture of curiosity.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

How Curiosity Transforms Companies And Cultures With Dr. Diane Hamilton

Introduction

We've got a spectacular show for you in this episode of The Selling Well, with a return guest, Dr. Diane Hamilton, PhD. You may remember that about a year ago, we had a great conversation with Diane about her book Cracking the Curiosity Code: The Key to Unlocking Human Potential. Of course, curiosity is an unbelievably important trait in business, relationships, and professional sales.

That book discussed the history and importance of curiosity for human beings. This new book we're talking about in this episode, Curiosity Unleashed, picks up where the last one left off. It dives deeper into the value of curiosity and includes examples of individuals and organizations that have benefited financially from developing curiosity, as well as examples of those who failed by getting stuck in the status quo.

I love the way this book is structured because Diane is a nationally syndicated radio host of a show called Take the Lead. She's interviewed everybody, presidential candidates, celebrities, top business leaders, and entrepreneurs. She includes snippets of some of those best conversations at the beginning of the book.

She showcases questions about curiosity and leaders' responses, whether it's Amy Edmondson, Robert Cialdini, or Daniel Goleman, who created the concept of emotional intelligence. Then, she has ten sections in the book where she talks about the impact of curiosity on businesses, people, financial outcomes, and value systems. She also discusses how AI will play into the world of curiosity.

We also talk about some of the barriers to curiosity. What gets in the way of us executing our curiosity? You may remember from the first book that the acronym was FATE, Fear, Assumptions, Technology, and the Environment can get in the way. Overall, it was an incredibly interesting conversation with Diane. There’s more learning to do, but I learned a lot about curiosity. I think you're going to enjoy this episode, and when you do, please like and subscribe to The Selling Well podcast. Thanks for doing so. Here's Dr. Diane Hamilton.

Hi Diane, welcome back to The Selling Well podcast.

Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

We're excited to have you back. By the way, we're curious about your book. Folks, you'll remember we had Dr. Diane Hamilton on the show maybe eighteen months ago, and at that time, two things really stood out to me. One was that I had been listening to some of the broadcasts from Diane's Nationally syndicated radio show, where, by the way, you should check it out, Diane interviews everybody.

Every celebrity, presidential candidate, author, every big-league name you can think of, Diane has interviewed them. That show is called Take the Lead, and you should check out that nationally syndicated radio show. At the time, we were talking about Cracking the Curiosity Code. Everybody knows we've been talking a lot about the importance of curiosity in life.

Curiosity Unleashed

Cracking the Curiosity Code discussed the history and importance of curiosity, but Diane has just released a new book, Curiosity Unleashed, where we explore the actual impact on people, businesses, and innovation. We also touch on things that will happen with the advent of AI. Since we've got her here, Diane, what prompted you to write that second book, Curiosity Unleashed?

I thought that I had written everything I wanted to write about curiosity because the first book was exciting. What was interesting to me about writing the first book was that halfway through, I realized I had to address what was keeping people from being curious. That led to the creation of my Curiosity Code Index.

I mention that because that index helped me find out what inhibited people from being curious so I could help them build their curiosity. What I didn't anticipate was how much I was going to learn from all the training and speaking I did over the last five or six years, based on everything I had done with all the training courses and the questions I got. You can't answer everything in one book.

This new book addresses everything I've learned since then, based on all that. It ties in much more to financial connections because I got a lot of questions about that, and it turns into more stories of companies that either succeeded or failed depending on whether they embraced or resisted status quo thinking. That's how I define curiosity, it's the ability to get out of status quo thinking. It's not just about reading a new article or asking a different question, it's much more than that.

I took everything I'd learned from working with major companies, I created videos with Verizon, spoke with LinkedIn, did training with EO, went to Europe and did things with Thinkers50, and I found it was crucial to help people see the connection between building a culture of curiosity and how it helps financially, without being boring or just talking about statistics because people don't want that.

By the way, your books are anything but boring. Let me just jump in. We read a lot of books, and they’re anything but boring, especially in how they connect the dots between the core capability of curiosity and its connection to innovation, values, and business results. All of these things, and these real-world examples, are universal among the leaders and entrepreneurs you've spoken to. They all identify curiosity as a critical trait.

It's fun to incorporate something you mentioned. I've interviewed so many people, and I'd like to think I’ve interviewed everyone I wanted to. It feels like it. Everybody I've interviewed is interesting. I included a chapter right at the beginning, if you've read through some of the book I sent you. That was one of my favorite chapters.

I included some of the highlights of what some of the most curious minds had to say about curiosity when they were on my show, whether it was Daniel Goleman, the top emotional intelligence expert, Amy Edmondson, who is currently the top thinker in Thinkers50 and a Harvard professor, or even Albert Bandura, who was a top psychologist before he passed away.

Think about it, next to Freud, who do you hear about the most lately? He was sweet, too. He invited me to his house, and we talked, and he was just such a nice man. There's so much in there, Tom Peters, and just the names I was able to connect with to get their insights. To me, that's my favorite chapter, just because I didn't write it, they did. They offered such wonderful wisdom.

I found the same thing while reading it. In a second, I'll ask, how did you pick those six or seven? You've interviewed hundreds of people. Given the people you've had on your radio show and that you've interviewed, are you sure you made the right decision to join my show? Do you even know?

You're at the top of my list. I love selling. I’ve been in sales for most of my life, and I love what you do. How did I pick? I was looking for the most interesting statements about curiosity. I didn't always talk about curiosity with everyone on my show. In my talk with Steve Forbes, I didn't talk to him about curiosity. I would have loved to have included a clip from him, but it just depends on who I talked to and where the conversation went.

My shows are transcribed on my blog, so I started searching for the word curiosity, to see where it was showing up. I thought, “I forgot that conversation.” When you're doing the show, sometimes you forget what you're talking about because you're managing everything at the time, and it's good to go back and review. Reading some of the things Doug Conant, who turned around Campbell's Soup, or Zander Lurie, who was CEO of SurveyMonkey, said these people had such insights that I thought, “I wish I had said that.” So I kept it.

I love that. By the way, folks, this is at the start of the book. You mentioned Daniel Goleman. For those who don't know, Daniel Goleman brought emotional intelligence into the common nomenclature because he started with research in that area. Now, we use it in every performance evaluation we look at, but that wasn't the case 25 years ago. He was a leader in this. When you chatted with him, it's interesting. The quote I love from Daniel is, “There are two strategies that companies and people generally use in life. One is to exploit, and the other is to explore.” That knocked me over.

Yeah, and it's true. He talked about going into journalism and the things they wanted him to do versus different areas of his career. I love exploring. I love the ability to do that. I talked to many professionals where exploring is sometimes frowned upon. I'm going to be a keynote for international project management for their 30th anniversary. A lot of project managers don't want to get off track to get here, but they don't consider the opportunity cost. That need to explore sometimes gets filtered out of people depending on their profession. I had it in sales. I don't know if I shared it the last time I was on the show, but I had that experience where we had to say certain things, and I neglected to ask questions sometimes.

I did a lot of stupid things because of it. It was because we were drilled into our heads that we had to get this certain message out at any cost. That hurts. Going back to emotional intelligence and Daniel Goleman, all that is empathy. If we can't empathize in sales, that's a huge problem because we're just selling to them.

When we can't empathize in sales, that's a huge problem.

We're not asking them about their pain points. We're not doing anything but just getting our message out because we have to say these certain words fast. I was as guilty of that as anybody, but in your early twenties, they train you. You've gone through this great corporate onboarding, and you think you know it all, but unfortunately, we often don't.

Diane, you referenced one of the companies that took me through that onboarding. Unfortunately, they're one of the companies that stuck to the status quo. My first job ever was selling photocopiers for the Eastman Kodak company. By the way, I'll call it out. That organization had some of the nicest professional people I've ever met in my life, but they could not cannibalize their core business offering, which was traditional physical film. Although they invented digital photography, they didn't want to cannibalize their core business. They let others completely eat their breakfast.

Yes, that's such a sad story. Think about it, when you walked into every store, you'd get hit over the head with film. There was so much film everywhere. It happens everywhere. It blows my mind to not see it the way it was, but many companies like Kodak had this great success in the past. They think, “We've got to cling to that because it worked. We’ve got to keep repeating it.” What worked for you in the past could be the worst thing for you in the future. That's what people don't want to hear because they have that sense of safety.

What worked for you in the past could be the worst thing for you in the future.

It's hard because, again, you've got to be curious. I think having the trait of curiosity, as you aptly brought up in the first book, is something we're all born with. Being curious but applying that curiosity and living it as a core business value, as per Curiosity Unleashed, are two different things. Those are difficult things.

Just double-click on section one, and team, there are ten great sections of the book. We'll touch on a couple of them that are relevant here today, but I'll call it out again. Having just finished our book, Learn to Love Selling, Diane was one of the people who was very kind to provide a testimonial, thank you. I am aware now of what a well-written book that's enjoyable to read looks like.

I'm not sure we got there quite yet, but your books are absolutely in that category, folks. Both Cracking the Curiosity Code and Curiosity Unleashed, you won't want to put them down. It won't feel like work, you're going to enjoy them. One of our favorites, again, was when you talked about those quotes from your interviews at the beginning, Robert Cialdini.

Yeah, isn't he great?

I've always loved Influence even before I understood why. In the early days of my business career, I loved that book. Your question and response are fantastic. “In my research, I found the environment has a big influence on curiosity. Would you agree?” Then this is a question Robert Cialdini asked, and he came back and said, “It's a great insight.”

My clients will sometimes ask, “What's the one trait I should be looking for in a salesperson?” Folks, my answer is, “Empathy.” Someone who doesn't judge what is the most appropriate or likely effective approach in the situation by self-reflection or looking inside themselves, but by empathizing with the market.

You talked about empathy. Curiosity and empathy, in the early days of sales, we were just taught to pitch, but the truth is, those who understand the client better will do better, and not just listen, but understand. That's all driven by this authentic curiosity. I just love the section on Robert Cialdini, and so will our readers. They hear a lot about him on the show.

He's good. You can listen to the whole show if you want to on my website, but he's interesting. It's funny because my brother and sister took his course at ASU. I'm the only one who didn't get to take his course. I was the only one in business, and they weren't, but they became friends with him. He's a very interesting, smart, and nice guy.

He was wonderful to have on the show. Everybody knows who he is. I was very excited to have him on the show. I thought his insights were good because they tied so much into Influence. That's why all sales are important, but when he talks about empathy, it keeps coming back to how I got into any of this to begin with.

I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the impact of emotional intelligence on sales performance. That all came back to this. It got me interested in the emotional intelligence component, which is interesting. I don't know if I told you this before, but did I tell you how I got into writing about emotional intelligence? I don't think we covered that.

No, I don't think we covered that last time.

It's funny, I was taking a class for my doctorate, and it was the class where you had to decide your topic. I knew I wanted to focus on what correlated with sales performance. I had that in mind and wanted to know what made successful salespeople. I was trying to decide what to correlate it with. I had this teacher who was insane, this guy was just crazy.

I had one or two classes with him, but he was just bizarre. He would say things to me, like he’d make me call him about something, and he’d say, “Welcome to the cave. I'm going to eat you up like you’re a Jell-O pudding and spit you out. It's going to be such a hard class.” I thought, “I’ve got to get rid of this guy.” I would write a paper and turn it in fast because that's how I work, as you can tell by how fast I talk.

He would say, “This was great, but think how much better it would be if you'd taken your time and spent more time.” So, I would just write the same paper again and hold it for two weeks, then give it to him. He’d say, “See how much better that was?” He was that kind of guy. I was talking to him about what I wanted to do because it was the class where I had to pick my topic. I said, “I want to discuss the impact on sales performance.”

He just cut me off and said, “That’s such a great idea, you want to do emotional intelligence and sales performance.” I replied, “What?” I didn't even say that. As you said, Goleman's book came out in ‘95, and he had made it more of a mainstream topic, but I hadn't known much about it at that time. I thought, “Huh.” Right after I got off that phone call, because he was crazy, I dropped him and picked somebody else. And I cannot for the life of me remember what his name was because I want to go back and thank him.

It's a great story, by the way.

He was out there, but I think he hadn't even finished his doctoral dissertation, he was ABD or whatever it was. He was not even finished with his process. I don't know why I even had him, but it made me look up more about emotional intelligence. I thought, “This is such an interesting thing.” That's how I got into it. Because of that, I had to take training to become certified in emotional intelligence tests.

I had to look at the Mesquite versus the EQI and all the different sales tools and EI tools. Because I learned how to become certified in all those different assessments, I wanted to create my own. I found out how much harder it was to create one when I did it. It was tough because you don’t just want something cute to put on your website, you want a valid instrument that you can put in peer-reviewed journals and that people can use. I had to go through quite a bit, but I’ve got to thank that guy. I’ve got to find him.

What a great story. He was a quirky genius before he'd achieved genius level. I love those people, by the way. You take on their quirky attributes.

He might've just read a book that week, you know what I mean? You just don't know.

Curiosity Code Index

Someone who hasn't made it big but behaves like they've made it big. They get the secondary trait of being super famous before they get there, I love that. You were talking about the assessments, that's a nice lead into the CCI. For everybody reading this, and correct me if I'm wrong, outside of that background for creating the Curiosity Code Index, the second idea was not only were you interested in being able to measure your curiosity, but also to help others think about the barriers to curiosity. Is that right?

Right. There are other assessments out there. Kashdan and his group created this other model that is great for measuring how curious you are so you can find out your levels. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to determine the things that inhibited curiosity because to move forward, you have to figure out what stops you.

To move forward, you need to figure out what is stopping you.

My process was different. I hired all these people from unbelievable places to help me, but they were stuck in the status quo, and they kept giving me Kashdan’s model again. I said, “No, he did a great job with that. I don't need another one of those because that's already been invented.” See, his model works great with my model because if you use his model, you will find out your level. You need help in certain areas, you're okay here and not okay there.

Mine, on the other hand, tells you what’s keeping you from improving. Here's how you can do a personal SWOT analysis of sorts and create an action plan, and then you have a way to get better. It's not a DISC where you're a D, I, S, or C thing. It's more like an emotional intelligence test where these are your levels in different areas, and you could get stronger if you do these kinds of things. It was interesting to create it. I've created different assessments now.

I did one in perception, and these are very challenging to do. It takes years of research, and I studied thousands of people in different demographics. It takes a lot of tweaking of questions to figure out exactly how to get the factor analysis to work and all the geeky stuff that no one cares about. That was my process, and I had to fire all the statisticians I hired because they just kept doing the same status quo things. I said, “No, I'm going to take my own advice, and I'm going to do this. I'm going to figure out how to do it myself,” and I did.

By the way, you were referencing Kevin Kashdan. Kevin was on the show. What we'll do, team, is include the links to the CCI, the assessments that Diane's speaking of, and the references to her nationally syndicated radio show, Take the Lead, all those links are in the show notes. Maybe one path, and I know we covered this a little bit last time, but it's worth thinking about it again, are those barriers.

Barriers To Curiosity

When you start to think organizationally or at an individual level, what are some of the things that start to hinder or block this natural curiosity that we all have that you aptly point out in Cracking The Curiosity Code? When we're kids, we're naturally curious. We ask the five whys almost every time, but we start to lose that. What are these things that start to get in our way?

It's interesting looking at how it hits around age five. What was fascinating to me is that we start to lose our curiosity at that age because it's the same as creativity. It just mimics that same peak and then falls. You think about how you get into school, you do certain things at that time, not blaming teachers, but when teachers have limited time and they’ve got all these kids, they can't answer every single question.

There's some impact from education. We knew that from a lot of the research. Sir Ken Robinson's great TED Talk talked about that with creativity. It was interesting because if you look at George Land's TED Talk and the research he did with NASA, he looked at how creativity was super high when we were two, but by the time we were five in that age, it was already declining. Then you get to 31, and it's gone.

What I wanted to look at is, what happens to it? I found when I did the research that I kept thinking fear was going to be a big one because I'd asked a lot of people on LinkedIn and in different groups to give me the top things. I was surprised by at least one of the four factors that inhibit curiosity, and they are fear, assumptions, technology, and environment.

Four factors inhibit curiosity: fear, assumptions, technology, and environment.

I'll explain each of those. Fear is not surprising, nobody wants to ask questions in meetings. You don’t want to look stupid. You don't want to be in a sales presentation and have somebody ask you a question that you don't know the answer to. In sales, we were taught not to lie. Don't fake that you know it, tell them, “I don't know, but I'm going to get back to you as soon as I can.” You look a lot better than saying the wrong thing.

Nobody knows all the answers, but we’re all afraid that we don't. We don't want to volunteer information that could make us look unprepared, stupid, or whatever negative thoughts we tell ourselves. Fear didn't surprise me. Assumptions also didn't surprise me because they’re the thoughts in our head that say, “This is going to be too hard,” “They’ll turn me down,” or “If I ask this question, I’ll lose the deal.”

I'd rather lose the deal now than have it fall apart later because I didn't ask the right questions. You have to think about overcoming those assumptions. There’s so much involved in what we tell ourselves, and these factors overlap. Your assumptions lead to fear, and that's a problem.

The T in technology surprised me more than the others. It’s about the overuse and underuse of technology. We either want it to do everything for us, or we feel overwhelmed and avoid it altogether. We need to balance high and low use of technology, knowing when to rely on it and when to think for ourselves.

If I gave Einstein a calculator but never taught him the math behind it, would he be the greatest calculator worker? We need that foundation of knowledge before relying on tools. It's like an hourglass, you build the base and then build on top of that. It’s important to pay attention because some people love technology so much that they don’t get the results they need.

Stop thinking, or stop learning how to spell. We'll get to AI in a second.

Yes, I want to talk about some of my research with AI and chat. Remind me. The last one is “E” for environment. That was a big one for me, as I could relate to it. Environment includes everyone you've ever interacted with and how they’ve influenced you, friends, teachers, family, current and past bosses, social media, you name it. Anything can influence how you think. We experience confirmation bias and get all these reinforcements of our thinking. Your family might push you toward a certain job or career path, saying sales is the best or worst job, and that influences your decisions.

Exactly right.

When going through the nine sub-factors under each of these areas, we work on that. When I go to companies, they receive a big report similar to what you’d get if you took an emotional intelligence test or DISC assessment. We go over that, share insights, and then whiteboard ideas to create action plans to overcome these issues. The second half of the training is fun because we address the organization's issues, communication, turnover, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, whatever it is. We talk to leaders first to understand their top concerns, but we also get feedback from employees about what they think are the main problems.

Then, we come up with great ideas on how to build a culture of curiosity and identify what’s missing. We know from Harvard Business Review that leaders think they're encouraging curiosity, but when you ask their employees, they don’t agree. There's a disconnect, so you have to approach it from different angles.

What’s great is, whether I’m training or certifying others to do this, we create these reports for leaders. It's crucial because the feedback comes from employees anonymously. I think I mentioned in my book how Disney asked their employees for suggestions on improving their work environment. They got great solutions, like adjusting air vents and tables, which saved them a lot of money. This process is similar. You go directly to the source, get their input, and it translates into financial benefits.

I think when people hear curiosity, they think it sounds nice and cute, but they don’t fully understand what it means. It’s about being innovative, staying relevant, breaking out of status quo thinking, and saving the company money. For the individual, it increases their earning potential, especially in sales, because you build empathy, make better connections, and improve communication. Ultimately, it leads to making more money and being more engaged in your work because you’re better aligned with what you do instead of just repeating what someone told you to say.

By the way, thank you. There's much to unpack here, and we're going to circle back to AI in a second. For those watching on YouTube, you can see my dog-eared copy of Diane's book, Cracking the Curiosity Code, because I still read physical books. I highlight things and keep going back to them. Team, anyone reading this already knows the great feeling you get when you’re having a conversation with a client, prospect, teammate, or friend and you’re super engaged. You feel better. You’re learning and listening to understand. Diane points out in her book that this happens because dopamine is being released, and that’s why it feels so good. We love dopamine.

The second thing is the simple definition of curiosity, it's just a strong desire to know something. I think a lot of times, when we’re in a conversation, it doesn’t feel like authentic curiosity. Maybe in a selling environment, someone is asking questions that lead you down a path, but you sense manipulation. Every study I've read says we all repel being manipulated in any way. But when you’re having a conversation where someone is genuinely excited, you feel that energy and enthusiasm, and it’s contagious. You feel good as the recipient.

It was more interesting, too, and you don't feel that imposter syndrome where you're saying someone else's words. I found it very challenging in the pharmaceutical sales training I had, where they made us memorize long scripts that had to be delivered in a specific order and manner. When I got back in the field, my boss said, “Forget all that. Don't do any of it.” Two years of training, and suddenly, never mind, but it had such great insights.

He would go into offices and say, “Look at that Selling Well Podcast sign behind you, tell me about that.” He would be interested in what was on their walls or the plants they had. “I have a plant like that,” he’d say to make conversation. He didn't just start with, “This is why you need this,” the minute he knocked on the door. I learned a lot from watching him.

He's interested and interesting. You're trying to be both interested and interesting. As Dale Carnegie said a hundred years ago, you can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in someone else than in two years by trying to make them interested in you. It's still true a hundred years later.

He, Zig Ziglar, and all the famous figures said similar things. It’s evergreen advice because people are people and want to be related to in a certain way. Tony Alessandra's quote, “Treat people as they'd want to be treated instead of how you'd want to be treated,” is also important. I explored this concept in the book The Power of Perception with Dr. Maya Zelihic. We often forget that people don't always see things the way we do.

We often just forget that people don't always see things the way we want.

I remember calling on a doctor, thinking “I'm going to use this line, this is going to be good.” I had a migraine drug and said, “Do you know what? Your patients are calling you up in the middle of the night, waking you up. They'll have to go to the ER and all this stuff.” He replied, “I don't care if they go to the ER, it’s not my budget.” I thought, “I’m not going to you,” but more importantly, I realized you can’t assume everyone cares about the same things you do.

This brings us back to assumptions. You can go down a rabbit hole, assuming everyone cares about what you care about or shares your opinions. We’re learning a lot about this through social media. There's nothing you're going to be sure of until you ask people. You need the confidence to ask, without fear, because it's better to hear something you can't answer than to miss something you should have known.

Leadership 101, are we creating a situation where we want a bunch of yes-people around the table, or do we want to understand what's going on so that we can figure out what other questions to ask?

I don't know if you saw Travis Bradbury’s research, which he shared a while back, about CEOs having lower levels of emotional intelligence. This could be because they’re surrounded by yes-men or yes-women, leading to fewer meaningful conversations. Not having these meaningful conversations is a huge problem for emotional intelligence.

Not having meaningful conversations is a huge problem for our emotional intelligence.

You're right. On the leadership front, I think it ties back to something else you mentioned, with so much change and transition, many new leaders experience imposter syndrome. We all have it to some degree, no one is at zero on the sliding scale. But for new leaders, especially those in significant roles, there’s often a fear of being asked a question they don’t have the answer to. They want to keep everything in control.

No, you've got to hope they do ask tough questions because it helps you grow, and you’ll find the answers. The way you respond matters. If you fake it, you’re in trouble. You want to say, “That’s a good question. I’m sure others have it too. I’ll find out and get back to you today,” and then follow through. You can’t know everything, but we're so hard on ourselves, thinking we should. I think people appreciate humility. When a salesperson comes across as overly polished, it’s less appealing than someone with a humble quality who focuses on relationships.

That was one good thing about being a pharmaceutical rep, it wasn’t just about a one-time sale. It was about building relationships. Many of you might be in sales where it’s a one-time thing, but you never know when those customers might come back. High-pressure stuff might work in one-time sales, but in relationship sales, you can't do that.

Even with one-time transactions, people can sense your intent now. I walked into a retail store the other day, and the salesperson who helps me is great. I pulled something off the shelf and said, “I think this would look great.” He replied, “Let’s talk about what else you have in your closet before you buy that red jacket that always looks good to buy but that you’re never going to wear. Based on your color, there’s no way you’re wearing this thing.”

AI And Curiosity

The best people in life or your relationships understand the other side and see how they can help, even in one-time transactions. I know we’re running short on your valuable time, Diane, but I want to get this in. In section five, you talk about curiosity and AI. Will AI quell, contain, or expand curiosity? Now, I can get initial answers to almost any subject quickly. It can trigger my first line of questioning, leading to more. What’s your view on AI in this world of curiosity?

It's interesting. I sold computers in the early ‘80s, and everyone was freaked out, thinking they would lose jobs and that computers would take over. We didn’t know about social media managers or the other jobs that would be created. They’re saying it’s similar now, but it’s dramatically expanded since then, and maybe jobs will be affected more.

I use ChatGPT a lot to get ideas, especially if I’m preparing for a training session. I might think about what would be a good game to play. Whether I like what it suggests or not, it opens my mind to new possibilities. I usually take about 10% of what it suggests and then build something completely different because AI only knows what you tell it. It’s not going to know everything you can create until you put it into the internet somehow.

Recently, I did research on the financial impact of having a culture of curiosity from the C-Suite’s perspective. I asked C-Suite executives to tell me what financial benefits they received from creating a culture of curiosity. I was pleasantly surprised by the results. They reported making between $100,000 to over a million a year by implementing this in their organizations. It wasn’t just the CEO saying this, every C-level executive, from COOs to CHROs, echoed the same sentiment. I thought it was great.

I had a lot of correlative data, but I don't love doing statistics, it's not my thing. I asked for a chart to accompany my study, and it gave me one with my exact data. But then, it added fictitious information, like mentioning 250 CEOs when I only had data from 51. It was scary how it made up the data.

That’s a constant theme with AI, you always have to check everything because it can go completely off the rails.

I argued with it for a while saying, “No.” As a mother, I know how to argue with it.

I was just going to ask, “Did you win?”

I didn't win. I gave up because it couldn't do that. I think the way it's programmed is to make things look better than what you put in. They want it to be more glowing. They use certain words that are annoying after a while. The landscape comes up a lot. I don't even use that word. There are a lot of things where you can tell it's AI-generated, but I think the ideas it comes up with are important.

I think it's going to do a lot of things much faster than people can, but I think people will end up doing other jobs, just like we now have social media managers instead of people loading copy paper or whatever they were doing before. It's just going to be a different kind of world where you need the creative element. It's creative to some extent. I saw the movie made by George Carlin. I don't know if you saw that, but that was it.

No.

You’ve got to look that up. I know that Carlin's estate is suing them for it, but they took his voice and tried to replicate it to some extent. It sounds like him, but not completely. They wrote a whole comedic routine based on his past work and created it about today's issues. Since he's dead, he can't talk about these things. It was pretty accurate, the things he would have talked about and the style in which he would have given it.

It's going to take a lot of creative license, but it's only going to know what he used to think. It's not going to know what he might have developed into. It's got a scary element, no question, but it's also got a positive element because it enlightens you to some great ideas. I thought, “I hadn't thought about doing that in a workshop.” I'm like, “Give me an outline for a workshop. I want to do one about XYZ.” “I'm going to sell to this company. Tell me the most recent products they have and what this guy's background is or this gal's background.” “Give it to me in this format and certain ways.”

It just keeps things fast for you to do research or to do what you were going to do anyway. It just gives you more time to do it. There's the good and the bad with any technology, always. Everybody freaks out when new stuff comes out, and there will always be good and bad in all aspects. I think that right now, it is fun to see what it can do. I've been playing with it quite a bit just to see how to use it.

I think that's good advice, by the way. With any technology like this, it's going to be a mainstay. Play with it. Just get in and find some things. Certainly, for entrepreneurs, there's a productivity component in there. Basic marketing, you could put your book in there, you could ask for email blasts to market the book, and you could ask for sell sheets on the book.

The podcaster’s questions about the book, you could give that to the next person interviewing, saying, “These are twenty questions that might make sense for my book.” All of it comes in a minute. I find it's going to be interesting staying abreast of it. I like this theme of technology enabling your future, but I think it comes back to making sure it’s not one of your barriers. Make sure it's not the T in fate, Not too little or too much. By the way, we’ve hit the end again. What a pleasure speaking to you again. It’s great to see you, and thank you.

Thank you. I’m excited. The book’s out. Here it is. I’m sorry I didn’t get to give you an actual copy. It's very exciting to have it out. I don't know if you saw it on LinkedIn, but I did a promo offer for companies that want to build a culture of curiosity. If you have a larger number of people that you want to give this Curiosity Code Index to, I'm giving it away for free if they've bought 50 or more books.

I'm doing certain things that are a big value to people, but it's been a lot of fun. If you guys get a chance, it's out there. You can find everything. I created a special website that goes to my main website at DrDianeHamilton.com, but it's a special website just for that offer. If you want to look at UnleashedCuriosity.com, because Curiosity Unleashed was already taken, it's reversed. There's a lot to be learned about getting out of status quo thinking. I'm super excited about this book.

Closing

Team, every one of those links will be in the show notes for this episode. I can say with confidence that you're not going to regret reading either book, Curiosity Unleashed and Cracking The Curiosity Code. Great reads and interesting reads, you'll want to pick these up for sure. Diane, thank you again for joining us. What a pleasure chatting with you.

Thank you, and thank you for sharing your book with me. I loved it.

By the way, thank you so much for providing such a wonderful testimonial for our book. I appreciate it. Learn to Love Selling, folks, and team, thank you for joining the show. If you liked this episode, please share it with your friends, and then like and subscribe to The Selling Well podcast because that matters to us. That's how we get great guests like Diane, and thanks for doing so.

If there's something we can do to make this show more helpful for you, that growth-oriented sales professional, please let me know. My email is MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That comes to me. We love constructive criticism. We respond to every note we get. Some of the things we do on this show are because you gave us good suggestions. Please reach out to us if there's a great author we should be interviewing or a topic we should discuss. We'd love to hear from you. We'll see you next time on The Selling Well podcast.

Important Links

• Dr. Diane Hamilton PhD - LinkedIn

• DrDianeHamilton.com - Website

• UnleashCuriosity.com - Book’s Website

• CCI - Assessment

• Cracking the Curiosity Code, the Key to Unlocking Human Potential - Authored Book

• Curiosity Unleashed - Authored Book

• Take the Lead - Podcast

• The Power of Perception - Authored Book

• Learn to Love Selling - Mentioned Book

• The Curiosity Code: Unlock Your Sales Superpower With Dr. Diane Hamilton - Previous Episode

About Dr. Diane Hamilton

Dr. Diane Hamilton is the Founder and CEO of Tonerra, a consulting and training business. She has served on multiple advisory boards, including Docusign, the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue, the Global Mentor Network, and RadiusAI. She is the former MBA Program Chair at the Forbes School of Business and Technology, a Fulbright Specialist, and continues to serve as faculty for several universities, including Duke Corporate Education.

She is a nationally syndicated radio host, keynote speaker, and author of multiple books required in universities worldwide, including Cracking the Curiosity Code, Curiosity Unleashed, and The Power of Perception. She is the creator of the Curiosity Code Index® assessment, the first and only assessment that determines the factors that inhibit curiosity, and the Perception Power Index, which determines the factors that impact perception.

Her groundbreaking work helps organizations improve innovation, engagement, and productivity. Thinkers50 Radar, considered the Academy Awards for Leadership, chose her as one of the top minds in management and leadership.

She was named to Global Leaders Today's list of top leaders along with Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Sheryl Sandberg; LeadersHum included her on their list of 200 Biggest Voices in Leadership and the Top 10 Most Powerful Women Leaders in HR, and Hiring Branch's Top 24 HR Influencers to Follow.

Building Lasting Success Through Strategic Accounts With Lisa Magnuson

To achieve sustainable growth and customer loyalty, strategic account management is indispensable. In this episode, Mark Cox dives deep into the world of strategic account management with returning guest Lisa Magnuson, author of The TOP Sales Leader Playbook: How to Win 5X Deals Repeatedly. Lisa reflects on her LinkedIn Learning journey, where her courses on strategic sales have gained considerable popularity. Together, they explore the nuances of strategic account management, emphasizing the importance of trust and credibility, proper resource allocation, and the impact of well-defined account programs. Tune in to gain practical tips and actionable steps to elevate your sales game.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Building Lasting Success Through Strategic Accounts With Lisa Magnuson

Introduction

Team, we've got a great show for you in this episode because we've got one of our favorites back for a second appearance while talking about one of our favorite topics. You'll recall Lisa Magnuson, she was on the show prior and we talked about The Top Sales Leader Playbook: How To Win 5x Deals Repeatedly. That's 1 of Lisa's 2 books, but it spoke of doing mega deals and some of you know, I have deep experience doing mega deals. I spent four years of my life focused only on mega deals and did a few hundred-million-dollar deals and then it did a billion-dollar deal.

I love this topic. It's interesting and Lisa's book is extremely well-written and very helpful in terms of strategies, processes and tools for doing large deals. Since the last time we chatted with her, Lisa has also been doing some amazing work with LinkedIn training. She's got five courses on LinkedIn right now. 

Now, she's had 55,000 people take the courses. We go through all of the courses she's gone on LinkedIn and we talked a little bit about one specifically avoiding prospects stalls and stops. That's an interesting topic for everybody. The other important topic is strategic account management. Many of us have a small number of clients who drive a huge portion of our revenue, whether they are a salesperson in a territory or an SVP of sales or CRO running the business.

Sometimes, that Pareto Principle is in existence. A topic we don't cover on the show is strategic account management and that's the focus of this conversation with Lisa. She's got great insights when we spend a little bit of time talking about the people, the process and the programs associated with strategic account management. I always enjoy my conversations with Lisa Magnuson. I'm sure you will, too. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe. Thank you for doing that. It's how we get great guests like Lisa. Here's Lisa Magnuson.

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Lisa, welcome back to the show.

Thank you.

LinkedIn Learning

I always like asking, “What have you been up to?” Since I spend much time on LinkedIn, I know some of the things you've been up to. Fifty-five thousand people have been through some of your LinkedIn training. What a number. Tell us a little bit about that.

I started my LinkedIn Learning Instructor journey years ago and my consulting practice has always been very targeted and select clients only. My clients have stayed with me for a long time. I've got good loyalty and a good return client rate for those who take a break when they come back. The LinkedIn Learning thing was the go big. I have five courses on the platform. They're all in the strategic sales area. They've been popular, I’m pleased. I got the initial go ahead for my sixth course. I'm starting to work on that now. It takes about seven months to produce a course with LinkedIn Learning. 

In a nutshell, we're going to go over those courses in a second here because I think, team, these are things we should all be checking out, but why does it take so long to get a course up and running on LinkedIn? 

LinkedIn Learning is extraordinarily particular about its instructors. Every course has its own contract. Just because you have five courses on the platform doesn't mean you have six courses on the platform. You've met every topic with every instructor. You have to be a subject matter expert and a recognized leader not just in your field but also specific to the course. 

They have a huge library and they're constantly looking to make sure it's current and viable. As I said, I have initial approval on my sixth course, to getting final approval is going to take 30 days. I'll have to do an extensive table of contents and extensive learning objectives. When you hear a table of contents, this is not a whip-it-out-in-one-day version. It'll be back and forth and then go ahead. There's a whole scriptwriting process and many revision cycles for the scripts. 

You work with your production manager. You have a whole team. It goes from the business manager to the production manager. There are the mumble sessions, then the table read sessions, and then it goes on and on, just like a Hollywood movie. You get to their international production facility. I go to Carpinteria, California. They only have three in the world. Full production, “Lights, camera, action.” It's amazing. 

First of all, let's think of that for a second, team. Think of the work that goes into one of these courses and then, in a second, I'm going to run through the topics that we've got here. When there's that much work, expertise, and experience that goes into the process, this is where you're getting a high return for your time invested in going through the course. 

Team, check these courses out. The five are Winning Over Execs, Sales Presentations with an AI Boost, Winning Plays for Big Contracts. We're going to talk about in a second why Lisa is an expert in that space. It's also something close to my heart. The third one is How To Effectively Engage Executives. By the way, who among us doesn't need help in that area at some point in time? 

Everyone, including me. 

Yes, always. Pre-call Prep for Live and Virtual Deals. When preparation meets opportunity, great things happen. Very important. Here's one that I think everyone who is reading this, whenever you read it, has deals that have stalled, including me. Avoid Prospect Stalls and Stops. Those are the five courses that Lisa's got on LinkedIn. All 55,000 other people have already been through and checked out these courses.

Team, those of you who are regular readers, you'll remember that we had such a great conversation with Lisa the first time, probably a couple of years back, when we were talking about the Top Sales Leader Playbook because Lisa has a background in-depth in terms of big deal management and winning big deals. Many of you know that for 4 or 5 years of my career, I only did mega deals. 

The first time I heard that term was from you, “Mega deals.” I love that. You've got some great success stories. 

Strategic Account Management

I had some great success stories and then I had one non-success story. Frankly, losing that last mega deal completely changed the company I was in. We're all trying to learn and get better, but I picked up many great tips from your book, Lisa. This episode’s topic is interesting and close to my heart, somewhere where I want to continue to learn and develop because we're going to be talking about strategic account management as an area of focus. 

You were good enough to read my book, learned to love selling, and then you provided a wonderful testimonial. Thank you for that. One of the things I think is missing in that book is we did not touch on the topic of strategic account management. It is a super important and broad topic. There can be multiple books on strategic account management. Let's talk about that, Lisa, let's define it. How would you define typical account management versus strategic account management? 

That is such a good question. I'm interested in and how you would define it as well, but many companies have an account management program and it's a slightly different organization, maybe managed by somebody different than the sales organization. Once an account comes in and rises to the top as a top-tier account, the account management organization takes over and they take care of that customer. 

Strategic Account Management: The TOP Sales Leader Playbook: How to Win 5X Deals Repeatedly.

They make sure that the customer is happy. They might have lots of resources like customer success and people who help them do that, but the difference is that companies fall short if they don't have that strategic account management. That looks a little different than an account management program. That difference is also between losing one of your top tier accounts, one of those mega accounts, which is heartbreaking for companies retaining and growing with them. 

In many of the organizations, particularly, I'd say mid-size organizations, the Pareto Principle is at play in some way, shape, or form, not quite the 80-20, but a small number of accounts make up a huge amount of revenue. When you start to think of that, Lisa, strategic account management, are we thinking that these are existing accounts that have the highest spending accounts, or are these existing accounts that have the most upside potential or perhaps a combination of both? 

When I engage with companies on key account programs or strategic account management, that kind of thing. We usually start with scoring; maybe they already have accounts, and they certainly know who their biggest accounts are. Those are the accounts that get talked about and have extra resources. I usually encourage them to re-score those accounts with a balanced scorecard to your point that includes existing revenue, potential growth opportunities, and other things like cultural alignment. 

There's a strategic element, like, “Is that account in a strategic geography or is it in a strategic industry for the company?” There are other factors. The team that sits on the key account side, “Is there depth to that team?” “Can your company match that depth? If there's not, is there the possibility to build that depth together?” I think there's much more to look at than existing revenue or even revenue potential.

I love that, and because we work with large enterprises and mid-tier organizations that see themselves as entrepreneurs, I find entrepreneurs in these mid-size organizations, 300 people or below, are much better at identifying a right fit customer. They don't waste their time on the wrong fit, even if it's got huge potential or it's a large spending client. 

They can't waste time and resources trying to manage a relationship with Walmart, the way Walmart would squeeze a vendor until there's nothing left. They get much more specific about where they spend their time and how they're productive. I find large enterprise has a little less flexibility that way, where they say, “We've got to live with it.” “We've got to deal with it.” I think it's a mistake because I think it chokes out those organizations too. 

Yes, “All businesses is a good business,” thought process. The thing with the smaller companies, the entrepreneurial companies, they are good about fit. I completely agree with you there and they can land some great accounts. I worked with a company last year and they fit that profile exactly and they had some huge accounts like aerospace-type industry accounts. 

Yet, with small companies, they don't have that many resources. The CEO is taxed, and the few resources that they have are taxed. What can happen is they don't align themselves properly and put the right priority on those accounts. They get them, and then they can't have that strategic account management that we're talking about, which is required to retain and grow them. They can end up losing those accounts if they don't step up and put at least a microprogram in place. 

Let's talk about that a little bit, Lisa. A macro program. Let's say we are one of those companies and our revenue came from a hundred different clients last year and we've identified 10 to 15 of them that are significant. They're the right fit, they've got a lot of upside potential, and they spend significantly with us we want to continue to build and enhance. What do we do? We probably don't have lots of people in it, and most organizations are not doing anything. How do we think about, A) The strategy for the account, and then B) Tactically, the team that might be assigned to supporting that account? 

There are three prongs to a good strategic account program. It's people, process, structure, and programs. For those 10 accounts in your example, it can't be 50 of the 100. I've worked with companies where we started with the top ten, which is a logical place, and we whittled that down to five. If you take the people part of the equation, every account has to have a focused executive.

Every account in that top, whatever that top tier is for the company, has to have a focused executive who is accountable for the account. The accountability doesn't 100% fall on the account manager and it doesn't also 100% fall on whatever the salesperson is called, the executive, the national account manager, or whatever the sales equivalent. 

Every account in that top tier must have a focused executive who is accountable for it.

It falls on the three of them, with 100% accountability from the focus executive, the account management person, and the salesperson. Then, there are more resources as well. Even in a smaller company, that level of accountability and ownership has to be established. You look at the process. What are the touchpoints? What are the tactical touchpoints? What are the strategic touch points?

Some of the strategic touch points are engaging that executive on the account side. Maybe it's not one person. Maybe it's a group of people. Those kinds of things need to be mapped out. Strategy needs to be mapped out, as you alluded to. There have to be programs like entertainment, social programs, or business programs.

An example of a business program would be like a multi-year strategy map that you collaborate with that account on. I was in a meeting with one of my clients yesterday doing that work map. What are their priorities? What makes sense for us to work on together, and how do we map that out over time? Not everything's now. 

That's an example of a program. Some of the other things that would fall in the program area, I worked with one of my small clients this year on this. There is a time when you're engaging around the impact that you're delivering. Easy to say that you see that all the time in articles or blogs. I say that in my LinkedIn learning training a lot, but what does that mean? 

It means making sure that the people you're working with, all of them, the executive, the resources, and the day-to-day people, understand not what you're doing but the impact of what you're doing. It's a program to get that done. It's not words. There has to be a vehicle. Anyway, even in a small situation, they're not going to be as extensive, but those elements have to be in place. Sorry, that was a lot.

Make sure everyone you work with understands not only what you're doing but also the impact of your work.

No, that's awesome. I think there are a couple of great things to unpack. I want to touch on the impact, and then I want to go to this idea of reciprocity. The impact. I came off an interview with Timothy Hughes, who wrote a great book called Social Selling. He's in the UK. He’s somebody who I'll introduce you to, by the way, you should know him and he should know you.

You talk about impact, and he talked about at some point when he was selling large enterprise software for Oracle. They worked with a company in the UK called Marks and Spencer. Marks and Spencer does, amongst other things, but the bread and butter used to be undergarments and underwear for men and women. 

They got to a point with one of the top retailers in the UK where any business case within Marks and Spencer's enterprise, software, or services got translated into, “How many more units of undergarments are we going to sell because of this initiative?” That's the only language they understood. 

If it didn't do that, because that was such their bread and butter, the project wouldn't make the priority list. This impact in terms of how we are helping that organization achieve their specific desired business outcome in KPIs that they understand. Not the ones we speak to that they don't care about, but the ones they understand. 

You make that point in your book, Learn to Love Selling. You weren't talking about necessarily strategic accounts, but that point is interwoven in many of your chapters. In my mind, you said, speak. You have to test that you can speak it. Can the executive speak it? This means the executive has a third of the responsibility or 100% of responsibility shared with two other people. Can the account manager speak it? Can the salesperson speak it? 

Where's it written down and how does it get delivered? That's where the rubber meets the road. It's harder than people think. That's why it's not written down very often, but it has to be because maybe it's an executive summary. Maybe it's a part of a high-level review. However, that gets delivered, and it has to be written down. It has to get delivered and then that tends to travel once it's written. 

One of my clients that I worked with on one of their key accounts, this exact thing, that’s an impact summary. They delivered that. They had never done it before that way. They delivered it, and their client said, “We can't even tell you how much you've helped us by doing this because we were going to have to do this internally. Going through all the recommendations and all the things that you do for us and have given us. Now, we don't have to. You gave it to us. They can't get better than that. 

They can't get better than that. I love the term much. I'm jotting this stuff down as we're going through the interview. If you're watching this on YouTube. You're going to see it. We're going to start using that for all of our sales training. When we do the training, oftentimes, it's our language. We're going to speak to KPI six months from now, nine months ago. It's going to be, “We're going to have a quarterly checkpoint on the impact summary of the investment you made in the training.” “Unless you get a 50X return, we're not hitting the mark.” Let's think about this impact summary and agree to the impact summary. 

Think too, Mark, how that will travel. You have a client, and you're doing this training, and you add that. Think about how that document travels with your client. That goes from the people in the training to those who pay for the training to those who care about the training and want it to happen but don't necessarily pay for it. On and on and on. That's why it has to go from the “Think” to the “Speak” to the “Documented.” Now, I started my career at Xerox, a document company. I love things that are documents. 

By the way, nobody provided better sales training than Xerox back in the day. You and I talked about this the last time. I listened to our last interview. Nobody provided back in the day. The issue is no one picked up on that. The largest technology companies now didn't keep investing in large-scale formal onboarding programs, or else you'd see the Salesforce University that's seen as a mark of credibility, but it doesn't exist, with all due respect to Salesforce.

Lisa, here's another thing. Some of my reference points a little while back. At one point in time, I was a large-scale account manager, not a big deal person. I'd managed the largest bank relationship a top ten bank in the world had with a vendor. They had it with my company. I was the point person on it. They spent a little more than $100 million a year with us. It was a business service.

One of the things that was important when we were working with their team in this strategic account management program was reciprocity. This idea of sitting down with them saying, “We've got a program to do all of these things with you, but we need reciprocity.” If we're going to be bringing a senior executive in once a quarter to sit down to review a meeting where we do an impact summary and talk about future projects, we need the commitment on your side that you've also got an executive committing to enhancing this relationship. When the teams work together once a quarter, those executives remove barriers in the meeting. 

If we've got 4 or 5 projects going on and some are hitting barriers, both sides commit to having people in a room where they can make decisions and remove barriers to keep everybody productive. What are your thoughts on that? Tell me a little bit about the strategy around trying to earn reciprocity from the client in terms of their commitment to the relationship. 

That's a genius point. I believe that the conversation happens when you're assessing your top-tier accounts. We talked about that culture. I think it starts then. That's internal. “Is this account going to be in our top tier or whatever strategic accounts, national accounts, global accounts, or named accounts?” I think it starts there internally. 

I think it quickly spreads externally to test the waters and to talk about the value because they do not need to commit to signing up. When you're talking about building a rolling collaborative roadmap together, they're all in on that. If you do it correctly, I've been part of organizations many times over the years that did such a great job of this. 

The effectiveness of a strategic account program starts internally and quickly spreads externally.

The customer, or the key account, has even more ownership of some of these deliverables. Even you have a roadmap, an impact summary, or some of these things. They're using that as part of how they're selling their programs internally. They're using those documents in front of their stakeholders and maybe the board. They are including those things in their performance reviews. 

Even an executive can tout the things that are occurring. There's not one simple answer. It starts at the beginning and is an ongoing conversation and reinforcement. When the team understands that the things that you're doing with your key account are valuable, they want to participate. “Can we add this person to this collaborative planning meeting?” “Yes.” 

First of all, I think it's a great point to think about. That's how somebody gets qualified. On the front end, saying, “We can't have a strategic account management pro program for 40 accounts, but we can do 5 to 7.” Maybe that's where the conversation starts to say, “We would like to put you into this program, but here are the parameters. We think there's a lot more opportunity where we can help you.” 

“We know any of our help has got to be predicated on achieving desired business outcomes that you care about in your terms, but to do this is the type of commitment we're looking for from you. Is this something you want to participate in?” or, “Do we still have other work to do where we're earning the right to work with you at this level?” I like the idea of having that conversation. I will call out a couple of times where I've set up some social events with a senior executive and sat down with them. 

We have some form of business relationship with the company and maybe we're doing sales training for their BDRs or SDRs, but they'll sit down and they'll say, “We heard you did this quarterly sales kickoff program for one of our competitors or other companies. Why aren't you doing it for us?” They are a little disappointed and angry. They're calling me out on it saying, “How did we not know about this? It's your responsibility to make sure that we do know.” 

That is it. You have touched on how a company knows when it needs to start thinking this way. Putting a key account program into place. A little more formal than just, “We have some big accounts.” If a customer says to you, “We didn't know you did that.” There's a red flag and a signal that you are not ingrained with them in the way that you need to be. Other signals are more severe. They go out to bid for your share or they constantly seem to be engaging in conversations with other people who do what you do. 

For example, in the roadmap conversation, part of it is they become aware of everything you could do for them. Not that you're going to do everything, but it's everything you could do over time. It stumps me when companies don't go down this path. Sure, it takes a little bit of work and it takes some. It takes a big commitment from the top of the company and sales organization if those are two different things, but the rewards are big. 

Maybe you're right. I remember a second one, the instances this has happened to me. By the way, they're not saying, “This is unfortunate, we didn't know.” They're saying, “Mark, it's your responsibility to get in front of me and make sure I do know.” In one instance, there was somebody. She'd seen something on LinkedIn where somebody else posted something about a training event we had with their organization on a certain topic. 

She was not happy and said, “My expectation is we get these first.” It was a little embarrassing for me at the time, but it was certainly a good wake-up call. I think where it gets to a little bit is what you're looking for at that strategic account level, which is earning the right to be this partner. If you have that trust and credibility, then when you're thinking of maybe bringing potential new offerings to the market.

You might sit down with the individuals or the team and say, “We have an idea. It's not fully baked yet. Our belief is we could be driving this outcome for you. Is this meaningful for you? If so, are you interested in doing a little due diligence with us so we can further define what the actual impact would be to your organization?” That's where it feels like it goes from even strategic account management to strategic partnership.

It does go there and it can go there very quickly. Even if, in your scenario, they said, “That's not something for us, but we would be happy to be a sounding board.” They're helping you and you're helping them by seeing what's possible. It's all good. It's good for the supplier of services or products and for their top customers. Both will be better having engaged in something like what we're talking about, a strategic accounts program or a key accounts program. 

Engaging in a strategic or key accounts program benefits both the supplier and their top customers.

Amazing and gang, I'm going to call it out again. If you haven't picked up and read The Top Sales Leader Playbook, How to Win 5X Deals Repeatedly, Lisa Magnuson, this was Best Seller, gang. I've read this once, if not twice. By the way, I'm flipping through a hard copy on YouTube. I can still see all my highlights because I was taking many notes and learning. 

Avoiding Prospect Stalls And Stops

There's one topic, Lisa, given the fact that this interview will last forever. The timing will be great. It's going to get released with about four months left in the calendar year. We're going to have a lot of people reading this where they're going to say, “I'm in the homestretch on my year. I've got to figure out how in the next 60 days I position myself so I can bring home the deals to hit quota or destroy quota.” 

I got it because it piqued my interest and I'm interested. Avoid Prospects Stalls and Stops. When we start to think about it, any quick tips or thoughts? I know we've got a full LinkedIn course, and everybody's going to participate in it. By the way, this is a good time of year, team, to go through that exact training course for sure. This one's relevant. What are a couple of thoughts or ideas to make sure our deals that were in play don't stall or stop? 

There are a couple of go-to things. One is a topic that you talk about a lot in your new book. That is, “Don't rush through the qualified process.” It's funny. I'm about ready to publish an article, “Should the qualifying stage go the way of Pluto.” Meaning the planet. It's going to be a funny little piece. My point there and in my online course is that qualifying is less of a distinct stage and more of a continuum. 

There are things you have to qualify for when you're talking about business development and the interest stage. Some things need to be solidified during development before you get to propose. All of those things that have to occur don't all occur at one time, or your prospect feels pummeled. It's not appropriate. That's why it's more of a continuum, but you can't skip any of those. 

If you want to avoid a stall or a stop, you cannot skip those things. They come back to haunt you later, period. The other thing is every meeting. This goes back to my other course on pre-call prep which has been my mantra for a lot of years. If you don't plan out your next steps and gain commitment during the meeting, do not wait until the end. 

In the middle, they have to be agreed to, and maybe at the end, you will work out the details. If you leave any call without that, stall and maybe stop, but stall for sure. Those are the two things. You can't skip those essential qualified elements and you have to get commitment for that next step. The next step has to be something they're doing, not something you're doing. Sending them information is fine, but it's not a meaningful next step to get the advancement that you need. Was that too long? 

No, it wasn't. I'm letting it soak in, but I don't think I've ever heard this idea of when you're trying to create your call planner for that next meeting with the client and you're talking about the structure of it, everybody's got the desired outcome of closing for next steps. I don't think I've ever heard the idea, which is so powerful, saying to structure the meeting so that the next steps come in 20 minutes or 30 minutes, not 45 minutes in which two of the three people in the meeting already got up and left because they have to travel to their next meeting or they need a coffee before their next meeting. 

You're always hustling and and trying to jam things in all send an email that no one's ever going to read out of their 250 emails every day. I love this idea of taking that pause in the middle saying, “We've got a few more things to cover.” It's fairly clear at this point that part of figuring out if there is value that we can add here. 

We're pretty clear, but why don't we determine how you make that decision, whether there's value we can add? To do that, we need discovery. Can we agree that we're going to get together again with a couple of people on your team to walk through a couple of things in more detail? I think in our next meeting after that, we need to be able to quantify the potential impact for you. Calm, doing no rush. 

Your explanation of summarizing and restating is impressive. 

Thank you. My wife doesn't feel that way, Lisa. 

Of course, she doesn't because she can't. The way you do it. 

We've seen rolling eyes at our house sometimes when I go on my soapbox and not everybody at our place feels that way, but I'm glad you do. 

You can't escape, that’s why. After you've restated and summarized it, it's like, “I got nothing.” 

No, but that's the key point, team. That's such a key thing. It is setting up that structure so that in the middle of the meeting, we agree and think about the next steps, or at least prime them for the next step so that we can ask in five or ten minutes before you're rushing, before you're jumping off a call, or before they cut it short. That's huge. 

Those are my Avoid Stalls and Stops. There's a lot more, but those are the two big ones. 

Team, do yourself a favor. LinkedIn is available to everybody. Get into these courses. By the time you read this, maybe the end of August 2023, we've got lots of time left to A) Make sure the deals were in play or have been installed. B) There may be deals you took a look at last year that stalled a bit or earlier in the year that seemed to be lagging. 

You're going to pull tips from Lisa's courses, where you could potentially go back to those triggers and then get a deal that you could close still this year. One of my favorite tactics is always sending a note to somebody on a Monday or Tuesday. It doesn't have to be a whole deep explanation. I'm going to write, “Lisa, I was thinking about you in the top line on the weekend. I'm wondering if I can get 20 minutes on your calendar this week.” All it is, surprisingly, a lot of people say, “Let's have a conversation. I wonder what you're up to.” 

Especially if you've already established value and they know it'll be a valuable conversation. One of the things that people think is valuable is conversations that have outcomes. The whole thing of driving the conversation so it has an outcome and it gets agreed too early. That's what prospects want too. Everybody needs to be as productive as possible in the space that they've allocated for whatever you're talking about. 

Final Thoughts

Lisa, we're going to talk again and we could talk for hours. First of all, I want to say thank you very much for the wonderful testimonial for our book, Learn to Love Selling. We're appreciative of getting that kind of testimonial from someone like you. Thank you for that. Thank you for joining on this episode. A lot of people are going to want to learn more about mega deals, and doing the 5X deals. They want to learn more about online courses through LinkedIn. Team, the links to those things are always going to be in the show notes. You can find the links to these things, but Lisa, how do people learn more about you and find their way to these resources? 

Everything is either on my LinkedIn profile or on my website, which is TopLineSales.com. I know the link will be there, but there are links to my courses there. There are links to my podcast, including our prior episode and other stuff. There are some free downloads. It's a good place to visit. I refreshed it. It's all current.

Team, I read lots of sales books, and the ones that I love end up being people who are on the show. That's how we choose the people for the show. I read the book, I love it and then I reach out to people and they're gracious enough to join. The Top Sales Leader Playbook: How To Win 5X Deals Repeatedly. I love this book. Pick up this book. There's no chance you're going to read this book and not be able to pick up some tips, strategies, and approaches that you can apply to your business and your territory. 

Whether you're a CEO, a CRO, or an SVP of sales, very relevant stuff that applies at the enterprise and mid-size company levels. Thank you again to Lisa Magnuson for joining us on this episode and to the team. Thank you for reading. As you know, we run this show because we want to improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales. 

We want to run a show where you can grab ideas, strategies, or tools that you can apply to your business and your industry. If you found this episode helpful, please like and subscribe to the Selling Well podcast, and thank you for doing so. If you have ideas on how we can make this even more valuable to you, please let us know. 

We're growth-oriented. We love constructive criticism, and you can send your ideas to MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. We respond to every email we get. If anybody gives us an idea, we're going to give you a response. That is my personal email too. I'm the one responding. Thank you for your ideas. We'll see everybody next time and thank you very much for joining.

Important links:

•  Lisa Magnuson

• LinkedIn – Lisa Magnuson

• TopLineSales.com

• The Top Sales Leader Playbook: How To Win 5x Deals Repeatedly

• Social Selling

• Learn to Love Selling

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com 

N.E.A.T. Selling: Master Sales And Close More Deals With Richard Harris

Stop "smoking hopium" and close more deals with N.E.A.T. Selling! If you are tired of deals stalling and feeling like you're stuck in a cycle of confirmation bias, this episode is for you. Richard Harris, author of The Seller's Journey, joins the show to debunk sales myths and equip you with practical tools. Discover the N.E.A.T. Selling Compass to identify true customer needs, quantify impact, navigate approvals, and create urgency. Learn how to build trust through empathy, address emotional decision-making, and finally close those deals. This conversation is packed with actionable advice to humanize your sales approach and boost your win rate. Tune in and get ready to transform your sales journey!

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

N.E.A.T. Selling: Master Sales And Close More Deals With Richard Harris

We've got a great show for you. Our guest is Richard Harris. Richard is the Founder of The Harris Consulting Group, and they help other founders with go-to-market strategies and teach sales reps how to earn and ask the right questions, which questions to ask, and when. Richard is the host of The Surf and Sales Podcast, and he's the author of The Seller's Journey: Your Guidebook to Closing More Deals With NEAT Selling.

We start the episode by talking about The Seller's Journey and NEAT selling. The acronym stands for Need, Economic Impact, Access to Authority, and Timeline. We also get into a lot about sales culture and sales management, a couple of great topics in the book, the respect contract that you're going to engage in with your clients and prospects, listening tactics, and a little bit about negotiations.

In the back half of the episode, we talked about something important, which is the state of mental health in professional sales because Richard and The Harris Group were involved in a report with the Sales Health Alliance. For several years, they've done some research and surveys on around 600 sales professionals in the US.

You're going to find some of the stats interesting. I found it alarming that 70% of salespeople are struggling, and that's an increase of 11% year over year. The good news is that the report also identifies thirteen things that sales leaders can do to help this situation and move these needles in the right direction. I enjoyed my conversation with Richard. He’s a great guy. It's a great read, The Seller's Journey. I'm sure you're going to enjoy it. I hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, please like and subscribe because that helps us find other great guests like Richard. Here's Richard Harris.

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Richard, thanks so much for joining the show. It’s great to have you here.

Mark, I'm excited about this conversation. We've talked offline a couple of times in life. I appreciate you having me.

I’m excited to talk about The Seller's Journey: Your Guidebook to Closing More Deals with NEAT Selling. It’s Page Two. It looks like The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier and the Sell Without Selling Out by Andy Paul. I couldn't wait to jump into it.

Andy is the one who introduced me to Page Two. I owe him a lot of credit. He gave me some advice on how to title the book. He's open. If people don't know Andy Paul or his podcast, please listen to this one and finish it. Andy's a good friend of both of ours, and I highly recommend his sales content.

They're fantastic. He's a constant topic on this show and your podcast as well. We heard about it in the intro, but Surf and Sales Team is a great podcast to check out with Richard. Before we jump into the book here, give us a little bit about your short story journey in professional sales.

I'm one of the few who knew they wanted to be in business all along. In high school, my first job, for those of us of a certain generation, was at the mall, working for the Gap, folding and selling clothes. My first job was always in sales. I never looked back. I always knew that's what I wanted to do after college. In my last year in college, I started working for the Gap again. I went into management with them because I knew that's what I wanted to do, and, like many people, I moved around from different sales roles to different sales roles. I can go further, but you and I are both from the last century.

One of the things we don't often hear these days is that you had this intention of going into it. We have many guests of our generation. They say, “I fell into sales. I'm one of those people.” When we had Frank Cespedes on the show from Harvard, his recent book, Sales Management That Works, he says that if you graduate college or university now, you have a 1 in 2 chance of being in a professional sales job at some point in time in your career.

If you check out Richard's LinkedIn, you're going to see he has consulted two or worked for some of the largest SaaS companies in the world, all the big names that everybody knows. Let me ask you this: It feels like a generic question, but it's sincere. With everything you would've studied over the last several years as you were growing up in professional sales, why did you think there was a need for another sales book? What prompted you to write The Seller's Journey?

I'll be one of the more honest people. Selfishly, I wrote it because I needed to write it to continue to build my brand. That was one reason. The other reason was that I felt like there was a disconnect between all the stuff we've been taught and even the stuff I taught early in my career and all those terrible buzzwords and buzz phrases and the reality.

When I looked at the happiest and best salespeople and sales leaders, and including what I learned the most, it was about people who were human. We go up and down with this humanity and sales thing. We saw a big spike in it in 2020 with COVID, and now we're moving away from it again, intentional or unintentional. I wanted to put that out there. It's time to bring humanity back into sales again. Those are at the highest level. That was the philosophical stuff.

The other parts are the tactics. There are thirteen tactics that people are never taught or taught differently. One of my favorites is teaching how to deliver pricing and negotiate, specifically negotiating with procurement. I don't know anybody who was taught to negotiate with procurement. I'm trying to give stuff away that is different and helpful. Those are the reasons that I wrote the book.

I appreciate the practical application that we're going to talk about in the chapters in a second. One of the things I pulled out that I thought was helpful is that you craft email follow-ups and give a great template after a first meeting or a second meeting. Whether you're talking about the social contract or the respect contract that you're trying to support, which we'll get into in a second, the verbiage is. I find that people are looking for direct tactical help in many ways, but you start strategically.

You talk about getting a map and the NEAT selling compass, whereas we talk about need, economic impact, access to authority, and timeline. You say, “Is this a philosophy, a process, or methodology? The answer to those three questions is yes. Let's start with this. I love how you say, “This isn't a complete rip-and-replace. This is almost an accelerator to what some people are doing now.” Let's start with the fundamental framework there, if we can, a little bit NEAT.

Is the question, how did I come up with it, or what made me do it?

Let's talk about how you came up with it. Let's spend a little bit of time on each of those things. Bullet points with need, access to authority, economic impact, and timeline.

I came up with something because I felt like, one, there was a big miss, and two, differentiation. I say this all the time, and I say it in the book that not a lot's changed since Mesopotamia in sales. All that's changed are greater insights and different insights. Sometimes, they're not even greater. They're different perspectives. I was trying to do that.

I also knew that I was never going to be a rip-and-replace. Ripping and replacing is often done because someone new comes in, and they need to feel like they're doing something. Why are sales leaders brought in? It’s because they need to make a change. The challenge I have with rip and replace is that sometimes, what was already in place is not because it was the wrong thing. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it's not the wrong thing. It's that nobody was coaching to it.

If someone is well-skilled in a medic version, it fits. For me, a medic's bigger sales cycle is at least 60 to 90 days sales cycle. It's not a transactional sales cycle. I get why someone would come in and replace it because that's what they know, and they've been trained on, and they've trained multiple other teams. They can get it as opposed to maybe something else, which is fine. I don't think it's the first thing you need to do. You need to assess first, and you even need to assess before you rip and replace because you have to figure out your exit criteria.

That's the quick version of how I think about it. In terms of the differentiation, the things that I felt were missing were driving the economic impact of the pains. I'm as guilty as anybody else. I still sometimes get stuck on the surface pain. That's normal. I'm a human. I give myself the grace. I want people to give themselves the grace and space to go, “I could have done that better, but we're not driving to economic impact.” The economic impact is specific to what's happening now.

What is it costing you, not in time, the dollars of that time, or the dollars of that revenue, but what can you do when you fix that revenue? What is that growth like? I have a couple of clients who sell to scientists. They sell to scientists in the pharma industry. It's like, “You can do this faster. Does that mean the drug gets to market six months sooner? What's the revenue growth of that new drug?”

What happens is, if you're a startup in the pharma world, if you can get to faster revenue growth in six months, what does that do for your valuation? That's the economic impact. That's what I think of your point earlier about being honest and direct about stuff. There's always a need. What's the pain? There's the economic impact behind that because that economic impact is the only thing, in my opinion, that can drive urgency.

There's always the pain, then there's the economic impact behind that because that economic impact is the only thing that can drive urgency.

If you look at it, we have a similar philosophy. Sales is about helping a client or a prospect achieve desirable business outcomes sometime in the future. We have to understand that outcome. In some cases, we have to guide them in the right direction. Depending upon the level you're working with within a business, somebody has got to see that economic impact. If it isn't the director of sales or the VP of HR, at some point, the CFO goes, “We've got available CapEx of X. Why should they invest in this project versus the 72 other projects we could be spending the money on?”

ROI is such a BS. It's used to scare people because nobody believes it. When people bring up my ROI, I will ask them and say something like, “Mark, when was the last time you asked a salesperson about ROI, and/or ever believe them?” They all pause. They're like, “Well.” I'm like, “No, you paused and weld it. You don't believe in ROI.” I say, “This is what is costing you now. I don't know about your other 72 projects. All I know is about this one. If you want me to walk through some exercises about helping you pick a project, I'll give you an honest opinion because I'll talk to you about the economic impact.”

That's why it's important for me. It's the only way that you can help someone, particularly if you have a champion, find a way to articulate the value up the chain and the approval process. Even then, you have to teach them how to say it because if they don't know how to explain the economic impact themselves, they're going to have a problem getting it approved.

You mentioned this in the book. Depending upon what you sell, who you sell it into, what the lifecycle of that solution is, and how often they look at an alternative, they don't make these decisions all the time. When you're going through this process with them, you have to have that value, insight, and expertise to bring to the table because not everybody is ripping and replacing an SAP system for a $300 million implementation. Even a couple of hundred grand worth of implementation, hard and soft costs, it's not something they do all the time.

They're not professional buyers.

Some of them are professional negotiators, but they're not professional buyers.

Even then, I question their ability to be professional negotiators.

At least they've had some training.

They don't practice it. They don't role-play. They don't sit down and talk about how to do this and how to do that. Procurement people go to actual professional negotiation training. In the SaaS world, and even for the big companies, they don't because it's never thought to be taught. It's thought to be understood.

The role-playing is fun. You say, “They don't do role-playing.” I've been an advocate for several years that role-playing is under-leveraged in sales training. Some of the largest enterprise sales software companies in the world think they're above role-playing. Every performance sport in the world uses repetition and rehearsal. Professional sports, acting, trial lawyers, and people who do improv practice the concepts of improv.

Going from economic impact, you go to access to authority. This is one of those things that we're mistaught. We're taught to go, “Who's going to sign the check? Who's going to do this? Who's going to make the decision?” There are things that have changed. One is there are multiple committees, and there's the vendor selection committee. There could be a different vendor approval committee. There's a budgeting committee. Who's going to sign the check committee in terms of timeline? There are all these little committees, and there's never one person. We all know this if you've read Challenger. There are 6.82 times pi r squared decision makers.

There were always lots of people influencing big deals anyway.

We're asking the wrong question. The simple question we should be asking is the skeptic. Who's the skeptic? We should be saying at the end of the first meeting, “Mark, like everybody else, you're going to go back and take this to your team.” Mark is going to go, “Yeah.” I'm going to go, “Out of curiosity, who's the most skeptical person on your team? What are they skeptical about?” You're never going to get to authority until you get through all the skeptics. That gives you way more insight into what's going to delay the deal, pause the deal, or stop the deal.

We've heard it 1,000 times, “IT can't say yes, but they can certainly say no.” Let's ask, what would they say no about? Why would they say no? Is it because they've got 20,000 other projects? Is it because they don't care about sales and don't see it that way? Is there internal political friction between the leaders? I don't know. Let's ask the most important question about what's going to prevent the deal from happening, not what's going to make the deal happen. That's a big piece for me about how you get access to authority.

Let's ask the most important question about what's going to prevent the deal from happening, not what's going to make the deal happen.

Let's round it out with a timeline before we move.

We all know this, and we all have been taught. I taught and did it, which is reverse engineering the timeline. Do you want to implement it by July 1st? That means we need to do this, and that means we need to do that. Before you do that, we want to understand what's the compelling event. For me, it's a fairly simple question. What happens if you don't hit that July 1st timeline?

If you've done economic impact, and you've talked about the skeptics, and you now know what happens if they don't do it, those are the three biggest things that are going to drive urgency. If it doesn't drive enough urgency, we either A, didn't do a good job, which is okay to say, or it's better to say, “We could have done a better job,” or B, there was no real project in the first place.

As much as I don't like to hear that, I'd rather have that and go to bed at night knowing that I don't have to pick up the phone the next day and talk to Mark about this deal and try and bullshit my way through it and fill up my pipeline with nothing. Nothing exhausts the spirit and will of a salesperson more than chasing maybes.

Nothing exhaust the spirit and will of a salesperson than chasing babies.

We leave stuff in our pipeline for two reasons. The most important reason we leave stuff in our pipeline is that we don't want leadership to know the deals are dead. All of a sudden, our pipeline looks empty. The second thing is we use it as our tickler file. That's the thing we're going to use to call people back. However, you sit there and stare at it, and you're like, “There's nothing in here. It's like a closet full of nothing to wear.” That's why a timeline is always critical, but those are the philosophies behind why I teach a timeline that way.

All progress starts with the truth. You come across organizations where there's a lot of malarkey in the pipeline, which is the vast majority of them, by the way. When folks like you or I come in to do consulting or training you, it doesn't take too long to go into the pipeline. The first question is, do we have a consistent way of qualifying a deal that gets to be in the pipeline? Does everybody have a consistent definition of what it is?

Nobody is duller than me mentally. I need a tickler file, but it's not in my pipeline. You need a CRM system to remind me to reach out to Richard several months from now, remind me of why I enjoyed the first conversation, and get to the point of interest. All progress starts with the truth. Let's understand where we're at so we can focus on the thing that's most important. Sometimes, that's a culture or management thing where you want to feel like you've got a lot of pipelines. You can get through the next one-on-one because it's all about inspection instead of coaching and motivation.

I'd love to give a tip to the leaders and individual contributors. When you look at your deals, the simplest question to ask is, “Mark, what's the one thing preventing this deal from closing?” It's not that there's one thing. The piece is that it forces you to focus. By asking for one, you determine the three. That's what's important.

To your point earlier, let's get truthful. Let's get real or go home. That's going to help you figure out the truth and eliminate that stuff in the pipeline. My last suggestion is anything that's two X your regular timeline or sales cycle. You kill it because it's not real anymore. There are some deals that you have to do because they're bigger deals. I'll say, “Get me a note from the Pope.” I’m a nice Jewish kid. I'm happy to take note from the Pope.

You'll take the note from the Pope. We appreciate that. Thank you for acknowledging that. Let's have open minds.

Whoever it is. If the Dalai Lama gives me a note, I'll be like, “Okay.” The goal is to examine the truth. Let's examine and understand where we are. I keep ranting. I'll shut up.

There's a key point for reading this, and you've seen it. Sometimes, there's this clean set of eyes that comes in. It's easy to come into an organization and go, “They've got a great culture. They don't have a great culture.” We'll get to a little bit of that theme because we're going to talk about the state of mental health in sales because Richard, with others, has done some work there.

One of the things that's helpful for the folks reading is there has to be that comfort to share where you're at because the forest from the tree syndrome exists. You talk about biases. Daniel Commons has 135 biases in thinking fast and slow. We all are affected by them. When you're working the deal, it's hard to have that clarity that says, “I'm moving down the path. I'm getting lots of nods. I'm looking for positives.” Sometimes, we do need that second set of eyes that says, “Have you thought about this or that?”

I call it smoke and hopium. You're hoping this stuff works out. In a lot of ways, we know. I'm not above making any of the mistakes I'm coaching against. I'm human. There are some deals in my pipeline that I should get rid of. I do it once a quarter, go anyway. That's not real. It still hurts. I don't like it. That's part of the game. You have to get rid of that confirmation bias. It's in the pipeline, and we're looking for all the reasons it should stay as opposed to all the reasons it should leave.

If you get the right organization, you've got that trust where you can disagree with someone, but you can listen to what they're saying. You can hear what they're saying. There are other organizations where, as soon as there's disagreement, a wall goes up. That person can't take anything they can. Those are the things that have a more systemic issue, problem, and challenge. I hate coming into those organizations and trying to forecast because it is hard to get the truth out of anybody. It is hard to understand.

I like them. I call it job security.

It’s not for the person who hired you. It’s not for the VP of Sales, who has eighteen months to live.

That's another topic we could go down.

You said, “Sales haven't changed in so long since Mesopotamia.” What I like about the NEAT compass model is it is a simple way of understanding some of the most important things for your cell cycles now. Richard went through the effort of taking more time to write a short book versus giving us a long book. It is clear and concise, and it'd be applied. I take that away.

The second thing I think was interesting was that there were a couple of topics. You talk about respecting yourself for the respect contract. You lead to some work you share in the book about working with your therapist and therapy. It allows you to respect yourself. You come up with the transaction analysis diagram with the three egos of parent, adult, and child and how some of that influences the emotional responses of your buyers. We know buyers make decisions emotionally and back them up with facts. Do you want to share a little more color about that component? That's one of the second most important things I pulled out of the book. I thought it was interesting.

It's interesting because it's all about emotion. Every purchase we make and every decision we make is emotional at this point. In some cases, we think of them as instinctual because we've done them through repetition. There's a reason that all the candy bars and everything are right by the checkout line. They're playing on a desire of want, not a desire of need. That's a big piece.

I learned this transactional analysis. I didn't create it. Eric Berne did back in the ‘50s. It's ego and superego, but it's way more simple and easy to understand. I had to learn it to understand where my perspectives were coming from. Why was I struggling with this mental health thing? What was going on? Ninety-nine percent out of 100%, it all goes back to mommy and daddy issues and how we were raised. I had to confront and heal things in childhood. Let me be respectful. I did not have a horrible childhood.

You do mention that in the book to make sure that's clear.

I was not abused. I was not hurt. My parents were not alcoholics. My parents weren't drug users. They were parents, and they were a product of that parenting in the ‘60s and ‘70s. It was different. I promise you. There are people who've had far more trauma in their childhood than I have. That being said, we all have our baggage. I had to understand that piece, relearn myself, and learn what mattered to me emotionally and internally so that I could make different decisions going forward.

That plays a role in how we all make decisions and how it comes into sales. That's where I learned it, understood it, and how I approached it, not even sales. I think about it with my kids and my wife. It’s not to manipulate people. I want to understand their perspective, which is what sales is like. Our job is to understand and be empathetic. You can't be empathetic if you don't understand their perspective. Otherwise, it's fake sympathy. I can rant, but I'll stop there unless there's something you want me to do.

There's no rant there. It's clear. We read the consistent theme of this show, where we know people make decisions emotionally. If we can't put ourselves in the shoes of the buyer, how can we help them with that? If we don't understand them, their business, their industry, and some of the trends, and if we don't have insights into what they're up against, how can you have that empathy if you don't have some understanding of it?

The second thing is on the emotional side. We haven't had him as a guest, but there's a guy named Nick Morgan. He's from Harvard, but he wrote a book called Can You Hear Me?. Amongst other things, he has got research in there that he is pulled from other people that says in a show like this, where I can see you, and you can see me, it's milliseconds, or you can sense my intent.

Mark's got a controversial podcast that he's going to try to make me look silly. Does Mark want to have a good conversation about professional sales to help the listeners, or is he looking for clickbait? I believe that the same thing happens these days in a professional sales interaction. For whatever reason, buyers feel the way they feel about us now. As soon as they know they're dealing with a professional salesperson, they're hypersensitive.

I loved some of the verbiage you used, but saying, “I'm going to have a conversation, and let's figure out if there's an opportunity.” Before we dive in, I want to say that I believe we're both here on a fact-finding mission. Let's exchange some ideas and see if it makes sense to continue. If it doesn't, both parts are framed. They get this sense, “Richard is not trying to fit a square pan in a round hole. We're trying to figure out if there's a good fit on both sides. Let's have a conversation.”

They can sense that intent. It might concern a lot these days with what we see, particularly SDRs and BDRs, get thrust into a role. It's a lot of activity. They have nothing else to do but pitch. They don't know anything else. They get no training. It's this churn factory. You've seen that type of thing in what you do.

I've been a part of the churn factory. I've been churned, and I've built a churn factory. You get two days of product training. Here's the big book of objections/. Sit next to Bob, listen, and see what Bob does. Meanwhile, nobody picks up the phone while Bob is calling. Bob is sitting there going, “Richard, don't do what they told you. Do it this way.” I'm from that school mentality of like, “You got two weeks to get him on the phone.” I'm like, “That's terrible.” I've been through that churn and burn.

As we round out a little bit on Richard's amazing book, The Seller's Journey: Your Guidebook to Closing More Deals with NEAT Selling, the table of contents is, 1) Get your map in your compass. 2) The Neat selling compass. 3) The process. 4) Sales is always personal. 5) Respect contracts. I like this one. I highlighted this one. I double-click on the respect contracts. 6) Listening and asking tactics. It’s helpful. 7) Objections and competition tactics. 8) Money pricing in commercial terms. We're getting into a negotiation. 9) Accountability tactics. 10) Everything we believe on this show. It’s a never-ending journey.

Do you know why we put authors on this show? We buy the books. We read the books. If we like the books, we go and find the person. With this one, I'm going to put it in that category. Let's put this on our list, The Seller's Journey by Richard Harris. In the show notes, we're going to have a link to Richard's podcast, Richard's LinkedIn, and the Amazon link to buy the book. It's an Amazon bestseller.

In the last several minutes, one of the other reasons I was excited to have Richard on the show was because he was involved in some research on mental health and professional sales. He has been a part of this research over the last few years. I know you did this sometime back, Richard. It's certainly not a test on any stats, but there are a couple of things I pulled out that pulled me over.

Seventy percent of salespeople are struggling. That's an increase of 11% from 2023. They are struggling from a mental health perspective. There was a tremendous regression in investment in these things to help the salespeople over 2023. During COVID, we peaked and started to pull some money back. Only 28% of salespeople say they work in a supportive environment. That's a tough place to live.

Let me ask for a couple of thoughts. This research was done on around 600 people in professional sales. You've seen all the other research out there on mental health and professional sales. You've done a lot of other people's podcasts. Tell me a couple of key insights. If anything is current, you do get into some tactics about what sales leaders can do to try and move the needle in the right direction, which might be helpful for some people, or at least a couple of them.

The goal of this, as we built the study, in addition to what they were struggling with, but we also asked people at your peak performance, what was your leadership team doing? That's a different question. It's the same question but asked in a different way. We wanted people to think about their best moments, not just, “Woe is me.” Some of this data comes from that.

The top thing was that their leadership wasn't being vulnerable. That was number four. Vulnerable doesn't mean coming in and talking about your emotional childhood. Vulnerable means owning up to it. When was the last time a sales leader recorded a sales conversation, sent it to the team, and said, “Tell me what I could have done better.” Coming in and saying, “I finished buying my first house. I'm going to have the real estate agent come in and talk about this in our sales meeting because I want to make sure people know this stuff. There's a lot of stuff I went through that I didn't know. I want to give you a life skill.” That's what vulnerability means.

Vulnerability, at the tactical sales level, doesn't mean giving people what they need to do. Don't should on people. Here's what you should deal with. It's more about asking, what do you think we should do? Would you like to hear my opinion? If you don't, I won't give it to you. Let them know that you're vulnerable enough to do that. As a leader, in your one-on-ones, what if you said once every three or six months, “Mark, what's one thing I could do better to help manage you?” That's vulnerability.

Meaningful work matters. It needs to have a purpose. Everybody says, “I have to work for a company that I can believe in the product or service.” I'm like, “You do, but what does that mean? What's going to make that meaningful to you?” Digging into what that means. That's what people need, and leaders need to try to suss that out in the interview.

Meaningful work matters. It needs to have purpose.

Job security is one. I don't like that phrase, but salespeople need to think about career security. I want career security. In sales, we're always free agents. What are the things I need to have that piece? That doesn't mean in the role you don't want job security. I get it. Number two is achievable targets. We've all been down that path. 2023 taught us that wasn't true. We're already seeing it again in 2024. That's what I'm seeing.

The most important one for salespeople is the career path. What's my career path? Even if you don't have a career path available, you need to be honest and vulnerable. If you're an early-stage startup, your career path is different if you work at Zoom or Salesforce. Make sure you understand those are the things that people want from their leadership. There are thirteen. Those are five of them.

It's called the State of Mental Health and Sales Report from 2024. We've done it for the last several years. I want people to be able to Google it. You can find it at the SalesHealthAlliance.com. If you haven't had Jeff on, I would encourage you to have him on. He's written books about this. He's the data geek around this stuff. He knows the data of it. We're here to promote me, but I want to help someone else. He has a burnout questionnaire on his website. How close are you to burnout? It's free. You don't have to pay for it.

It's an important topic. It's not talked about enough. It's shied away from because people don't know how to talk about it. To a certain extent, there's this whole legal issue. We shouldn't talk about these things. This is why I like startups. I like big companies because they pay well, but in startups, you can have a different conversation. Even when you go to the big companies, they like someone like you or me, helping them get real. We can say the things they've wanted to say. For whatever reason, they can't make space for it. We help them create some space and grace to have those conversations.

Richard, thanks for the overview. Team, we'll have the link to that report. It's a short and easy-to-read summary. If nothing else, there are a couple of takeaways for everybody reading. We've had a couple of people on the show, Richard, talk about security or the lack of job security being a trigger for mental health issues. A lot of the answers from people a lot smarter than me come back with, “You have to future-proof your career in sales.” The people who are reading a blog like this one are already doing that because we're talking to some of the best authors in the world, like yourself.

You talk about the never-ending journey in the final chapter of the book. That's the path we're on. We're in a place where there's no formal education or single source of certification to be a professional salesperson, even though it's the most important profession there is. You have to future-proof your own career. The average spent on sales training in the US now is 5,000 per person. That's from Frank Cespedes's book.

I'd question most of the footnotes in my book, but don't question the footnotes and hit, “They're right.” From sales management, it's under $5,000. It's a $70 billion industry sales training. If you are with an organization that's not making that investment, I encourage you to invest in yourself. Learn, develop, and keep training yourself because it's critical.

When we had the leaders of Pavilion, they liked the idea of keeping a side hack. Thinking about those ways that you can continue to invest in yourself gives you some comfort. If you're a leader, I like that authenticity. Try to get to that place where you feel comfortable admitting when you're right or if you're wrong. That's okay. Nobody is perfect. Richard, I have a feeling we'd talk for hours about these topics, but we can't now. First of all, thank you so much for joining.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I always enjoy our conversations, Mark.

Richard, for those who are going to pick up The Seller's Journey or learn more about you, where can we go to learn more about you in The Harris Group?

N.E.A.T. Selling: The Seller’s Journey: Your Guidebook to Closing More Deals with N.E.A.T. Selling

It’s Richard Harris on LinkedIn. I'm the one with the goofy trademark by my name. I know you can't do that. I was doing emoticons for everybody else. Certainly, TheHarrisConsultingGroup.com. This is the crazy part, Mark. 415-596-9149 is my legit cell phone number because it's the one my kids ignore whenever I call them. I will gladly chat with you. I'll answer questions whether it's about sales, mental health, life, or career. I try to be supportive and put Karma in the world. Do me a favor and maybe text me saying you heard me on Selling Well. Otherwise, I won't answer unknown calls, but I’m always happy to chat with people.

I highly encourage you to pick up The Seller's Journey. It’s a fantastic book. Thank you to Richard and the team. Thank you very much for joining the show. The reason we do this is we love learning. We want to run a show that enables everybody in professional sales to one-up their skills, knowledge, and capabilities within an hour of reading this blog post. I hope you enjoyed the show, but we also know we're not perfect. We're growth-oriented.

The reason we do this is because we've received some great constructive feedback from people like you. If there are other things that we can do with this show to make it more valuable to you, please email me directly at MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. We respond to every idea we get. We love constructive criticism. If you like this, please like and subscribe. Tell your friends because that's how we get great guests like Richard. They look at the viewership, and they come on to the show. Thanks for doing that. We'll see everybody next time on the Selling Wealth.

Thanks, Mark.

Important links:

• The Harris Consulting Group

• The Surf and Sales Podcast

• The Seller's Journey: Your Guidebook to Closing More Deals With NEAT Selling.

• Richard Harris - LinkedIn

• The Coaching Habit

• Sell Without Selling Out

• Andy Paul – Past Episode

• Frank Cespedes - Past Episode

• Sales Management That Works

• Can You Hear Me?

• SalesHealthAlliance.com

• Pavilion - Past Episode

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

• Richard@TheHarrisConsultingGroup.com

About RICHARD HARRIS

Richard has more than 20 years of SaaS experience and teaches revenue teams how to earn the right to ask questions, which questions to ask, and when to do it. Richard’s clients include Zoom, Salesforce, Google Cloud, PagerDuty, DoorDash, Salesloft, and Gainsight. He’s also the co-founder of Surf & Sales. Learn more at theharrisconsultinggroup.com.

The Sales Transformation Toolbox: Essential Tools For Sales Success With Collin Mitchell

The sales landscape is changing at breakneck speed. Sales transformation isn't a luxury; it's a necessity. This isn't just about buzzwords; it's about arming your sales team for success in the modern market. Join host Mark Cox as he unpacks the secrets of sales success with industry veteran Collin Mitchell. Collin talks about how his extensive experience and passion in professional sales translate into success by sharing insights into his journey. From refining team coaching methods to reimagining conventional sales quotas, he unlocks the secrets to thriving in today's dynamic sales environment. Tune in as he shares the key behind his enduring enthusiasm for the world of sales.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

The Sales Transformation Toolbox: Essential Tools For Sales Success With Collin Mitchell

Before we get started, we've got a special offer for you as a reader of the show. We launched the next generation of our In The Funnel Sales Academy, the leading online training platform and B2B sales community that helps companies optimize their sales and generate ongoing, predictable revenue growth. For readers, we're offering 50% off your first month for any of our subscription plans. Go to SellingWell.com/Podcast and then use the promo code PODCAST, and you'll get 50% off your first month. We're looking forward to working with you. Now, onto the show.

We've got a great show for you. Our guest is Collin Mitchell. He's the Managing Partner of Leadium, a B2B lead generation agency. You'll learn from this discussion that he's been with lots of different organizations over the years in professional sales, almost every two years, investing in or running a different sales organization.

Collin is probably best known for being the host of the Sales Transformation Podcast, which is one of the top 1% of all the podcasts out there. He has an amazingly large subscriber base on that podcast and he's had about 300 different conversations with great sales leaders. In fact, I even got to be on that show with him and enjoyed the conversation, and because of that breadth of discussions, I got into a conversation with Collin where I'm very interested and understand what he has gleaned from all of those conversations.

How does he take everything he learned from those 300 conversations into a playbook for the next sales organization he takes over? We talk a lot about people and the attributes that he hires on and that we hire on and how we get through an interviewing process to try and uncover those attributes because we all know it's tough to interview salespeople these days. Collin's got a very controversial approach to quota.

They don't have them at Leadium, so we have a great conversation about how he manages a team to perform without quotas. As always, we're interested in people's journeys to this point. Collin is an amazingly successful business professional who's gone through lots of adversity along that journey in life, as many of us have. Frankly, it's an inspiring journey. I enjoyed my conversation with Collin. I think you will, too. If you do, please like and subscribe to the show and tell your friends. Here's Collin Mitchell.

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Collin, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. I’ve been looking forward to it. I know we've been looking to make it happen. You did such a great job on my show. I'll do my best to try to return the favor.

Every once in a while, you get a little nervous before one of these shows. I'm a little nervous because your podcast is one of the top sales podcasts out there. You're one of the top 1%. The amount of downloads is absolutely flabbergasting. As we go through this, and I'm growth-oriented, please feel free to coach me in real time on how to do these things better.

I think you'll do fine. You showed up and rocked the mic like a pro when you came on my show.

Thanks for that. There are lots of changes in your life. We were chatting about it offline. Tell us what's going on.

One thing is I joined Leadium as their VP of Sales and then became a Managing Partner there. I’ve been doing some great work and a great team. The funny story is I used to be a Leadium customer. Maybe we'll get into it, but I've had four startups. I sold three of them. Two of those businesses, Leadium, helped me scale. I was a Leadium customer before I joined Kevin and Sergey over there, and then they acquired my podcast. Sales Transformation is in its third season now. We're at almost 800 episodes. I honestly couldn't be happier with where the show is and the quality of the content that we're putting out these days.

Professional Sales Journey

You've got such a great model for this show. I enjoyed being on it and you run it well. Readers, please go check out the Sales Transformation Podcast. You're very likely already doing so, but there are small bite-sized chunks, massive amounts of content, information and value. It's a great model. I enjoyed being on the show and learning from you from that one. You did talk about little bit about your background. I think you've got an amazing background with your 15 or 16 years as a professional sales hacker and all the rest of it. Tell our readers a little bit about your journey in professional sales.

I didn't go to college. I didn't quite know what I wanted to do with my life, to be honest. I was not the most responsible young adult. My first job was moving around furniture. Prior to that, I grew up poor. I was raised by a single mom. I’m 1 of 4 boys. She did the best she could, but we struggled more often than not. I didn't know what I wanted to do other than I didn't want to be poor. Sales seemed a great way to not be poor. When I got that first sales job, I never looked back. I took it very seriously. I was the first one in the office every single day. I was the last one to leave every single day. I'm not promoting hustle culture or anything like that, but that's what it took.

I was willing to put in that hard work like some people are these days and some people aren't. That's what it took for me. That worked my way up to the top very quickly as one of the top full-cycle AEs. After that, I got my first leadership position and did that and learned a lot more new skills. I made a lot of mistakes and learned a little bit more business acumen and experience. After that, I started my first company with my wife. We grew that from $0 to $5 million in 26 months. After that, I started a few more companies, had a couple of exits, and now here I am at Leadium.

What an amazing story and an amazing journey. Thanks for sharing that and being open about it. For everyone reading, it's never a bad idea to work hard. I know at certain periods of time, we have our natural ebbs and flows. Those of you who are fans of Peloton, I'm a huge fan of the Peloton, they'll tell you no matter who you are, your fitness level is not on an upward slope all the time. You keep testing, but things go up and down. You keep working through it, but overall, it starts moving up.

We can't go at ten all the time, but I think there are certain times of year when you have to increase your activities, your energy, the hard work, put up a little bit of elbow grease. As we recorded this on October 11, 2023, we're starting Q4. For those of us in technology, this is a busy time of the year, the next 45 business days and a disproportionate amount of business gets closed in these next 45 business days. It's a good time now to put in some elbow grease.

There are different phases. When my wife and I started our first business, we had very low expenses. We had no kids. Our first office was our living room. It’s very easy to throw ourselves into work saying, “We're going to put in this hard work now for planning for our long-term future.” The thing is, with Q4 for every seller, which is obviously top of mind and relevant, hopefully, you're not now shifting gears of putting that work in because the work you do in this quarter doesn't always pay off in this quarter. Hopefully, you've been preparing in Q3 to close out Q4 strong.

Transferring Learnings To Startups

If you happen to be one of those folks who's looking a little light in Q4, this is a time where you go hard with the hope again for Q1, Q2 2024, give yourself reasonable goals and expectations, but Q1 and Q2 give position yourself for great things in Q1 and Q2. Collin, 800 podcasts talking to sales thought leaders, first of all, flabbergasting. Second of all, what a joy to meet many sales thought leaders. You've been involved in many businesses. I'm interested to know how you have taken all of the learning from those conversations and how that breaks down for you when you walk into that next startup. I know you're a powering strength at taking companies from $1 million to $10 million in revenue.

When you come in and do an assessment of where a company is at $1 million. How have you taken all that learning and built it into this methodology? I bet you have a repeatable methodology you apply the next time you're looking at that startup or you're looking at investing in it. What filters do you use to look at a business like that? If you were going in and taking over the sales organization, what's your approach, methodology or playbook?

It's a tricky question because there is no simple answer. Every organization is different to some extent. There are some basic principles of a sound go-to-market strategy. I think where a lot of people get stuck is thinking about what worked in the last startup that's going to work in the next startup, and that's not always the case. That could be as simple as what your sales team looks like.

Do you break out the SDR function and have AEs? Do you not have an SDR function and have full-cycle AEs? Do you outsource the SDR function? Do you do it in-house? These are all critical things to building a sound foundation for your sales team and then even getting more into the lower ACV. Is there more of an emphasis on marketing versus sales where are you going to put the budget and allocate?

Are you bootstrapped? Have you raised money? These are all things that you have to look at in order to decide what the best possible strategy is. At the core, a lot of it comes down to, “How do we get to product-market fit? How do we get to product messaging fit?”Those are the essential things. If you can figure those out, then everything else tends to work itself out for the most part to a certain extent. The more you grow, then the more you have different challenges and problems. The other thing that I think a lot of people make mistakes early on is, 1) Hiring sales leadership too soon and 2) Investing in an expensive tech too quickly. There's a common misconception that a lot of people want all the fancy tools, all the shiny bells and whistles.

Ultimately, below $1 million in revenue, even up to a few million in revenue, you don't need a lot of that stuff.  As long as you have a good CRM, good data and good dialing technology, those are the essentials. Investing in all this conversational intelligence, sales enablement, coaching tools, cold email tools and you name it. A lot of those things can wait because technology isn't going to fix a lot of your core foundational problems. A lot of that stuff needs to be worked out. Technology can enable you to accelerate or be more efficient, but a lot of times, it can be a distraction if you haven't figured out some of the core basics.

Technology isn't going to fix a lot of your core foundational problems. A lot of that stuff needs to be worked out. Technology can enable you to accelerate or be more efficient, but a lot of times it can be a distraction if you haven't figured out some of the core basics.

You mentioned, “Think about when you bring in sales leadership.” A big challenge for a lot of founders is they want to absolve themselves of the responsibility of sales because they don't have that core competency. They're great people who started an application development, got good, built a product, or even in the manufacturing business, and it's an engineer who was in some other manufacturing business, but rarely is a founder, somebody who grew up with a professional sales background.

To many, it still seems a little bit like this dark art, then they go back to the concepts from many years ago, which was, “Hire somebody who's mature and experienced, and so on and so forth. They're going to be a rainmaker.” That rarely happens because the rainmaker was a rainmaker at SAP or Oracle and then they come down to the $1 million startup and they go, “Where's my marketing? Where are my sell sheets? You're not knocking on my door to go to our annual conference in Orlando?” It’s a very good council there.

Another thing to add to that, let's assume you're maybe raised, had a good round of funding. Lots of times, people hire too quickly. They're like, “We've got money. We got to spend it.” They get into this cycle of playing the numbers game at the expense of people. This is very common in sales. People, at their core, believe sales is a numbers game, which is numbers are important. You and I get that, and I don't even know if you agree or disagree with this, but sales is not just a numbers game. What happens when you're playing it is a numbers game? You're throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what will stick. What that looks like is more emails, more phone calls and very little strategy, if any.

They take it all the way to the extreme of people, “Let's hire more people. Let's keep hiring more people and then eventually, we will hit the revenue goals at all costs.” That's another mistake that a lot of people tend to make. I know that you were recently on Andy's podcast. I love the new podcast. I've been a little bit obsessed with WIN since he's gone down that train. It's a very important initiative that he's focused on because it's laughable that tech and SaaS companies think winning 20% of the time is good or even great.

You think of the days when you and your wife were running your business on your couch. The truth is, and certainly in the early days of in the funnel, your win rate was probably 60% or 70%. You couldn't afford to invest a ton of time in working lots of deals. Your ability to qualify and move on was tight because you didn't have the bandwidth to waste time with deals that weren't real. There was this, “You're a mature salesperson. You know what you're doing.” There's a qualification that takes place. I think you're right. We might be leaving this era and I'm interested in your opinion where, again, let's go back in time a few years ago.

There'd been seven years of VC money going into tech companies just exploding sales organizations, and then the world became polluted with garbage emails. A whole group of people is turning LinkedIn into the world's biggest spam engine and all these kinds of things. At the core of these poor folks, they were hoping technology could absolve them of the need to be able to have an engaging conversation, showcasing business acumen, industry acumen and sales acumen. They didn't have it. As soon as we have that first live conversation, all I'm going to do as quickly as I can try is punch you into a demo where we're going to talk to you during a demo as well. This is where these conversion rates become minuscule.

It’s a very accurate description of the problem or the monster that's been created. Sometimes, I can be a little bit jaded because I'm in B2B Tech and SaaS. If you look outside of that then things are a little bit different. The thing is that if you look at what the core of the problem is, it's reps putting stuff in their pipe that never should be there in the first place. They've got managers breathing down their neck about their activity and pipeline creation quota, then you get everybody thinking, “We need more leads, so we need more people. We need to spend more money,” or whatever the case is. When really, they probably have more than enough leads. They're just not focusing on the right ones or disqualifying enough of the leads.

For example, at Leadium, we're a service business but we disqualify it on average 62% of our deals that we engage with on our first call never get to opportunity. The ones that get to stage 2 opportunity, we close 87% of the time. We are very selective and fortunate that we can pick and choose who we want to work with based on criteria that we know what's important and things that we look for that make a great customer for us.

Sales Team Management

First of all, those two numbers are staggering. I hope they came out in Andy's podcast. I bet they did because they're so important. Let me ask you this because it's such a great thing to bring up. How do you coach your team so that they're on that first call and they disqualify 62% of the folks on the other end of the call? What are they doing or how are they mirroring against an ideal client profile? How do you help them with that disqualification? How do you coach them to be good at disqualifying somebody?

There are two parts to it. One part you might hate and a lot of your readers are going to hate. The other part I think people will understand. When we go on our first call, which is a 30-minute call, 25 minutes of that call is us asking lots of questions, and then we say five minutes to pitch if we feel that it's a good fit. In that, we are uncovering, “Is this a company worth partnering with? Is this somebody we would want to work with? Do they have something unique about the problem they solve or the niche they work in?”

There are all of these things that we look for that we know make a successful customer. If it's a successful customer, we've been doing this for a long time. We've helped companies raise over $7 billion in funding. We've had 80 companies be acquired and we've had 6 companies IPO as a result of the work we've done for them. We know very well if we want to work with them, we can do good work. That's part one, which I think a lot of people will understand. The second part, a lot of people are absolutely going to hate and probably may not work for your business and that's fine. We don't have quotas.

There's something to unpack. Your team must have reasonable levels of business and industry acumen to be able to get people to respond to 20 or 25 minutes of questions before they get frustrated. You have to earn the right, as you know, for every one of those questions. They must be great questions that get people engaged. I love this thought about the no quota. Tell me about why you have no quota and what you think that does in terms of helping the organization grow faster.

In full context, this does not work for every business. It may or may not work for your business. A large organization, you might be like, “This guy's a whack job.” We understand our business extremely well as far as, “Pay people well, they do a good job,” and what it looks like from a profitability standpoint. That's because we are bootstrap. We understand from a profitability standpoint what the expectation is of what a rep should be closing in order for it to be profitable for the business as a whole, which is important for every business.

It's a loose like, “We expect you to do this between this.” Surprisingly enough, they always hit within that range cons consistently. Consistently, we hit within that range of the loose expectation. It's not this, “Just close whatever. If you don't close anything, that's fine too.” It's not that. There's an expectation of like, “Based on your role, segment, market or whatever, this is what we expect,” and that's what it is. There's this number constantly changing and all of that.

For some people, that's a little scary. I get it. It probably wouldn't work for your business, but for us, it works great. Some organizations are moving in more of a direction like, “Maybe we don't have this crazy pipe quota. Maybe we don't have this crazy activity quota that we're constantly demanding.” You see some things changing in that direction, but there's even this whole thought of something that I used to be totally against. Kevin Dorsey opened my eyes to it as like, “Not every salesperson is money motivated either.” Every comp plan out there is mostly built for money-motivated people, which is only a small percentage of your sales of your sellers or those people that are money-motivated. Most people are motivated by many other things. Most people want low stress. They want to do good work. They want to be around, work with good people, and be compensated well. That is the majority of people.

In his book, Seth Godin said he surveyed 10,000 people and said, “Tell us about the attributes of the best job you've ever had.” The five top ones that came back, none of them had anything to do with money. It was about, “I did my best work. We were doing meaningful work. I was well respected. I didn't mean it was easy. I loved that job because I accomplished something significant. It had nothing to do with the largest paycheck I've ever had.” I should have done this earlier, but for our readers, because you said it's not right for everybody's business. Tell us exactly what the business of Leadium is.

We're a service business. We work in the B2B space, mostly service businesses or a lot with tech and SaaS. We help them with their top-of-funnel challenges through services. That could be done for you go-to-market outbound. That could be inbound lead management or a combination. We have US-based sales development reps in our Virginia and Las Vegas offices. We are their SDR function.

Outsource the SDR function. The name of the book is The Song of Significance, meaning, “People want to feel significant.” I'll throw out one other thought. Management consultants, lawyers or professional services firms, generally have goals, but they don't have quotas. They're not managing the quarter on a quarterly basis, but those people, of course, have to bring in new business. There's a world where I think all those people, most of those people very clearly feel the need to help grow the business. They're focused on business development but not tracking monthly quotas of activities and so forth. Coincidentally, we had Dan Pink on the show, the author of my favorite sales book almost ever called The Sell Is Human and eight other New York Times bestsellers.

He loves sales. At the end of it, I said, “What do you see happening?” In his final comment, he said, “ A low-end, tactical sales are going to go the way of the dinosaur with technology. Sales today is management consulting,” which is why I made that analogy to those professional services firms. He talked about how salespeople must be intellectual, curious, problem solvers, super sharp, smart, engaging and exceptional at discovery. He said that's management consulting. Those worlds don't have quotas. What an interesting idea. There's our clickbait for this epispode, no quotas. How big is your sales team?

We have in total, including SDRCD work for clients, which I help with that team, about 35 people.

Hiring Practices

We got everybody out there reading, lots of CEOs of SMBs you guys are fundamentally an outsourced top-of-funnel generation firm with a big team. I bet everybody would love your opinion on what you look for when hiring these people. It sounds like you have some great people as part of that team. If you're hiring somebody in professional sales, SDR, BDR, and account executive. I'm sure there are some differences, but tell us a little bit about what you look for given your experience doing this when you're hiring these people.

There are some basics, but hiring is tough for everybody. Everybody struggles with hiring, has ever been in a leadership position, has never felt like they've fully figured it out because as soon as you figure it out, there's that one that you took a chance on and you're like, “Why did I do that?” I hate to say that.

It's the truth. I had the same conversation with Frank Cespedes from Harvard, who you probably know. He is probably been on your show three times. I said, “I did the math. I think I've interviewed maybe 1,200 people. I probably hired a couple of hundred people in my career. I thought I was pretty good at this. If I'm honest, I got a 65%.”

Sixty-five percent is great.

He came back and he said, “I've been doing this for 35 years. I've been running Harvard's sales program. This assessment is at best. It's a flip of a coin.” He said in the ‘90s, he started pontificating to people, saying, “It's such a flip of the coin that if you see somebody on paper, there's almost no point to interview them because it's only going to be a 50/50 chance anyway. Don't bother interviewing.” He said he started talking about that and preaching that for a few years until the world wouldn't accept it. He went back. I appreciate your honesty. We get a lot of people saying, “I'm an expert at this and all of this stuff.” I'm with you. This is hard.

There are a couple of things that I do that may be a little bit different. 1) I don't look at their resume at first at all. LinkedIn is the go-to, and frankly, if you're a salesperson and you haven't figured out LinkedIn, then sorry, you're going to get passed over. That's the hard truth that maybe nobody's going to tell you. If you're in sales and when you don't have a job, your job is selling you, optimize your profile. I don't know if you've had Kevin KG on your show. He's got a lot of good insights around hiring.

The hard truth is this: if you're in sales and you don't have a job, your job is selling you. So, optimize your profile.

I'll have to go and get him after this, though.

He scaled ZipRecruiter before it went public. Lots of hiring and they were a platform that helped people hire. He has a lot of good insights about this, then my good friend Nigel Green has a whole course for hiring that's not your guru bogus course, but legit tactical great information for sales managers. The first thing is I'm a big fan of personality tests. Having them pick personality tests. I’m a big fan of that. That’s the Step 1. Step 2 is after the initial call.

The first call is very not what they expect. Typically, candidates come on a first call expecting, “We're going to talk about my job experience and go through my resume. You're going to try to poke some holes in it and ask some questions and all that good stuff like every other hiring manager does.” The first call is more rapid-fire questions, 15 or 20 minutes tops. I'm asking them a bunch of questions. Some that have to do with professionals, some that don't because I'm hiring for the person, not the role, not the skills. None of that. That stuff's important, but it's way less important. What's more important is the type of person you're hiring.

You're looking for certain things about the person as a person, not necessarily as a seller. In that call, you can ask them certain questions like, “What's the most difficult thing you've had to overcome professionally? What was it? How'd you work through it? What'd you learn from it?” Personally, same question. There are a couple of things you're looking for. 1) How they handle themselves under pressure, getting questions like that. 2) One big thing that I'm looking for is, “Are they giving me honest answers or are they feeding me what I want to hear?

Sales Transformation: The role and the skills are important, but they’re way less important. What's more important is the type of person you're hiring. You're looking for certain things about the person as a person not necessarily as a seller.

Authenticity.

The easy way to point that out is if they're being vulnerable, honest, and maybe telling you things that you probably wouldn't want to hear. I love that. If they're like, “I don't know.” They're looking off. Reading their body language is very important. Those are some things that you look for. You're looking for things around work ethic, if they're hungry and humble, “Tell me a time when your manager gave you some feedback that you didn't agree with. How'd you deal with it?” Things like that, then some wild things like, “If you had a boat, what would you name it? Why?” You want to see if they're creative and things like that. I’m looking to see if they're confident.

Those are the things I'm looking for. I'm hiring for the person. I care less about their job experience at this point because this is way more important. They get past that. The next step is a written assessment and personality test and if they get past all that, then it's a more deep-dive interview around job experience, poking holes. Go get a reference. Don't take the reference they give you. Go to the one they didn't give you. If they have five jobs, they give you their most recent job and two jobs ago, I want to know what happened in the middle. I get it. Sometimes, people get put in bad situations and they don't perform, but everybody should at least leave on good terms, which is important.

Readers, these are great stuff here that we can apply for in our business. I love the end of the day, you came up with the attributes you look for, humble, hungry and smart. We like those. There are different ways of calling those things, but we like those, too. Those go back to Pat Lencioni and he is a fantastic guy, but all of the stuff that he came up with, The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team and everything else, humble, hungry, smart. We love passion and optimism. In this day and age, if you've had 5 jobs, you've had 1 or 2 bad sales leaders.

I'm with you. I don't think there's a problem if somebody comes back and says, “I'm not going to give you that second person as a leader because I had a bad sales manager. They were new. They weren't trained. We didn't get along that well because of it. I felt a bit frustrated.” They were about them. Not the team, but the one I had is fantastic. Even the way they share that, I think, points a little bit to that authenticity. You don't want the veneer. Hiring the person is spectacular. It's no different than a sports team. They don't just go for the person with the stats and the speed. They meet these people because they want to know what they're like as people.

One thing I would add to that is if we've all had bad sales managers, get it. You do want to look at how they describe that. You described it in a very straightforward, cordial way. If they badmouth and, “He was an a-hole and the worst boss ever,” if they get into that, pass them over. Something else that I would say stands out if they say something more along the lines of, “That last job I had, like I took a chance, it was a startup, first-time sales manager, top producer, I had a lot of issues. Here's what I was responsible for. Here's what I could have done differently. Here's what I wish I had done. Here's what I learned from it,” you got an Ace.

You always want people who take responsibility. We all make mistakes, but if they're more of a, “I'm going to point the finger and it's all the sales manager,” we're all human beings. We've all had bad bosses. We get it. I'm not a big fan of the people who do nothing but complain about it and don't take responsibility for their actions or what they could have done differently, or at least come out on the other end feeling like, “I made a bad call here. Here's what I could have done differently. Here's what I wish I would've known and here's what I'll do differently next time.” The key difference in the type of person of how they would explain that.

It's a huge difference. I love the idea of you saying, “What did you learn from that?” and then being able to share, “I realized something about me. This is what I need to be successful.” The other question I always love is, “What do you need to learn now?” You think about that growth orientation. For us, humility is growth orientation. I might be confident, but I'm humble enough to know I don't know anything. I'm humble enough to know there's lots for me to learn. Let's put it that way. It's one of the reasons I love this show so much. I love talking to people like you because I've been doing this many years and there's the world of what I don't know. 10X is what I know and it's changing all the time. I love that question to somebody to say, “What's the next thing you need to learn? What are you reading right now? Tell me about the favorite sales book you've ever read. Tell me about it.”

That's one of my questions, “What's the last book you read?” If you're like, “Uh,” not anything very recent because you want people who are committed to investing in themselves and constantly learning. I’m not a huge book reader, but I'm an audiobook person. I'm big on podcasts and audiobooks. I don't read many physical books. It's not my jam. If somebody said like, “I don't read books, but I listen to these podcasts, here's the last episode. Here's what I learned. Here's the last audiobook and here's what I learned.” It's good enough for me.

It doesn't matter how you learn. One of the things we find a lot and then an opportunity for people is we say, “Tell us about your favorite sales book.” They'll go,” “The Challenger Sale.” We'll go, “That's fantastic. We love Matt Dixon. He's been on our show three times. The guy is great. The next question is, what'd you get from it? What did you take from that book?” You'll get people going, “I'm not sure. The Challenger Sale in every chapter references the same three things. Teach, tailor and take control.” “Great book. You remember. It's well written, teach, tailor and take control.”

Readers, when you're out there, you're reading these shows and learning, take some time to pull out your phone, dictate and pull out the things you like. Capture them so you can go back to them. Teach, tailor and take control. You could even do it in the car. Be safe. You don't have to be highlighting and taking notes, but you do want to make sure you don't expect yourself to remember something super well on one read because not many of us do that.

The interesting thing is, depending on how they answer that question, it tells you either 1 of 2 things. They didn't read the book, which is not good or they don't retain things very well, also not good. Reading 52 books a year is not something you want to wear as a badge of honor. If you read three books a year and you take a lot from them and put them into practice, that says a lot more about who you are than, “I've read 52 books this year, but I've put nothing into action remember very little.”

If you read three books a year, take a lot from them, and put them into practice, that says a lot more about who you are than someone who has read 52 books this year but has put nothing into action and remembers very little.

Passion For Professional Sales

It's the same analogy as the numbers in sales. We have 100 approach calls this quarter and 3 progress into the next stage. Probably be better if I had 10 approach calls where 3 progress to the next stage. I had 10 approach calls and 4 went to the next stage. It’s not just the number. It's, “What did I get from the effort?” This will be my last question. I know you're busy. Your energy and enthusiasm for talking about this is absolutely contagious all I'm thinking about on this side of the mic is going, “This guy's had 800 conversations with people. Isn't he sick to death of this topic yet?” Tell me why you love professional sales so much because it's clear that you do. Why is it you love this whole discipline so much?

I'll give a little context first and then I'll answer the question. To be fair, it's not 800 conversations. It's 800 episodes. The iteration of the podcast has changed, but I've probably had a lot, 300 conversations, if not more. I've also probably guessed it on close to 200 shows. There are lots of conversations, but with the podcast, we've done a lot of different things over the years. When we did solo episodes, we did long form and chopped them up into five-minute episodes. What we do is we typically drop a 10 to 15-minute episode with a guest on a tactical topic. Nonetheless, I love it for a couple of reasons.

1) We didn't get too much into my past, but to shed a little bit more color there, I grew up dirt poor. I didn't go to college. My dad was never around. We grew up on food stamps. We lived out of motels. I had nothing. When I got my first sales job, it was my only way out. Within 12 months, I was making 6 figures and I never looked back.

I learned some bad habits early on. Your typical sleazy, commissioned breath salesperson, that was me. I had to unlearn a lot of those things. I didn't have a lot of mentors. I was not the type of person at that stage of my life who was willing to invest in coaching or something like that. The only way that I could learn was by following people on social media, reading blogs, listening to podcasts, and reading books. That's how I learned. I had a lot of mentors from afar.

Now, I have a life that I couldn't even have dreamed of. I live in a beautiful place and have things and four kids and a beautiful wife and you name it. That's all because of sales. The podcast has always been my way of giving back to the sales community for someone like me who comes from nothing and has somewhere they can count on that's reliable. We drop almost daily content on the podcast, on LinkedIn and weekly newsletter, all for free. It's my way of giving back to the sales community for the person like me who doesn't have resources, money, didn't go to school and could have a life beyond their wildest dreams.

First of all, I am sorry for the hardship you encountered and amazed at the success that you've earned for yourself, your wife and your team. It's amazing on this show, when we talk to all of these incredibly successful people, the amount of challenge they have gone through to get to where they are. It's never this linear path and this slope of acceleration. It's always ups and downs and challenges then they showcase resilience. It is such a pleasure having you on our show. Thank you for joining today. It was great to connect with you. Could you remind our readers how they get to leverage you as a mentor like you leveraged others? What resources are out there for them to engage you?

I can give you links, but to keep it super simple. It takes a lot of hard work to put on a good quality show like this. The first thing that you can do is give the show a rating and write it a review. It's the best way you can show your gratitude to Mark. Share the show with your friends, then if you love podcasts like I do, you can check out Sales Transformation on any and every podcast platform. We drop almost daily content there. From there you can pretty much find everything else, whether it's LinkedIn, website, or newsletter. It's all there.

Thank you so much for the gracious comments. I'm going to encourage everybody to go to the Sales Transformation Podcast immediately. That was ranked as one of the top 1% of podcasts in the world. We want to go and check that out. I want a special thanks to Collin Mitchell. What a wonderful guest. It is so great to spend this time with you. Readers, thank you for joining.

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As Collin mentioned, we run this show to improve the professionalism and performance of B2B sales. In doing so, we think we're helping improve the lives of professional salespeople. We want to hear from you. If you think there's another way that we can run this to add even more value to you, please let me know and we love constructive criticism. My personal email is MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. We respond to every single person who gives us feedback and we're very appreciative of it. Thanks, everybody. Great selling and we'll see you next time.

Important Links

• Leadium

• Sales Transformation Podcast

• The Song of Significance

• Dan Pink - Past Episode

• The Sell Is Human

• Frank Cespedes - Past Episode

• The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team

• The Challenger Sale

• Matt Dixon - Past Episode

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

• Collin@Leadium.io

About Collin Mitchell

Collin has over fifteen years of sales experience and is passionate about driving revenue growth for sales teams with top of funnel services. He is currently a Managing Partner at Leadium, having previously been VP of Sales, where he helps B2B SaaS companies generate qualified leads and appointments. He also hosts the Sales Transformation Podcast that delivers daily insights and tips on how to sell better and faster. Additionally, he is an investor and advisor to several organizations, drawing on his three successful exits as a founder and co-founder.

Getting Some Room To Grow With Tammy Gillis

Can professional B2B be outsourced? Mark Cox says yes, and he sits down with the person to prove it: Tammy Gillis, author of the book Room To Grow. Tammy explains how she developed a unique approach to mend the gap of B2B outsourcing, making it more targeted in addressing the client’s needs in the most efficient ways possible. They discuss why sales are more than just transactions and sales talk, but meeting people wherever they are. Tammy also presents the ideal attributes every great salesperson should have and the best approaches to building a well-rounded sales team.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Getting Some Room To Grow With Tammy Gillis

Can professional B2B sales be outsourced? Good question. We’ve talked about this a lot on the show over the years. Most of the time, the answer was no, in my view anyway. Finally, we found a model that works. That’s why you can find this episode so interesting because we’re talking with Tammy Gillis. Tammy is the author of Room to Grow: Not Leaving Sales to Chance.

Tammy is also the Founder and CEO of Gillis Consulting and Training. They’re an outsourced sales provider to the hospitality industry and a very large one. What’s unique about their model is the one gap on most outsourced sales models is that the outsourcing firm does not understand the industry and the client as well as the actual host company. Tammy’s model fixes that because they have only got experts working on their sales team. They know more than many of their clients about how to sell professionally at the B2B level for hospitality. That’s the interesting part of this model we’re going to get into.

The other thing that’s interesting is although Room to Grow, Tammy’s book, is focused on the hospitality industry. It addresses most challenges and opportunities in professional B2B sales. One thing that struck me so much was how applicable this is to every industry in B2B sales. Not just hospitality. It’s a very well-written book. It’s concise but powerful.

We talk about everything Tammy and I, from the book to the outsourcing model to the importance of being relentless about understanding how to help your clients and prospects achieve better business outcomes. Our conversation was amazingly interesting to me, folks. I certainly learned a few new things. I hope you will too. If you like this episode, please like and subscribe to the show because that matters to us. It helps us get great guests like Tammy. Here she is, Tammy Gillis.

Tammy, welcome to the show. It’s so great to see you again.

Thank you so much. I’m a big fan of the show. Thank you for having me on.

Thanks for saying that. It’s such a pleasure to speak with you. I got to say I was super excited to chat with you for two reasons. First of all, I’m a huge fan of the book. Those who read frequently know, Tam, the way we do this show is I read almost everything out there. When I read these amazing books, I go after the author to see if I can get them to join the show and coerce them into the show.

One of the amazing things, the book we’re going to be talking about is Room to Grow: Not Leaving Sales to Chance by Tammy Gillis. Fantastic book. It just hit me. You are a perfect example of the reverse of the Mark Twain quote. I wrote you a long letter. If I had more time, I would have written you a short letter. You took the time and wrote the short letter, but it’s so well put together and so concise.

One of the things that’s very interesting, this isn’t a book just about selling in the hospitality industry. Although Tammy, I know that’s what you wrote. It’s a book about selling because the one thing that became so clear to me every time you identified an issue or a challenge or what’s happening in sales and we’ll get into it. You talked about it being applicable in the hospitality industry. We know with all of our clients, it’s applicable everywhere in sales.

It is. Any B2B sales for sure.

Looking Back

Tam, by the way, I’m not the only one who loved this book. “Filled with tons of rock-solid strategies and practical advice.” An amazing testimonial on the cover of the book, Joe Conrath. One of the biggest names in our industry gave a wonderful testimonial. The second thing we’re going to talk about, which is interesting. We talked about that a lot on this show, Tammy, is outsourced sales models. That’s what your business is. It’s outsourced sales within the hospitality industry and a very big flourishing business adding huge value to the clients you work with. We’ll talk about that as well. Maybe to start, what’s the short story on your journey? How did we get here?

First of all, thank you for that lovely introduction. When you’ve been doing it as long as we have, I don’t know if there’s a short version. I will say that I’m one of those accidental salespeople and I talk about it in the book. I didn’t grow up saying, “I want to be a salesperson.” Rarely does anybody even know what that is and what that looks like.

I went to school for hospitality but I still didn’t know what sales meant. I was out at a college, finished a contract position at UFT, and helped them in their events department. My professor said, “The Hilton Toronto Airport is looking for a corporate sales manager. I threw your name in the ring.” I was like, “I don’t even know what that means, but sure.” Talk about faking it until you make it.

I showed up and I got the job. Many years later, I’m still in sales. I can’t imagine any other profession and the reason I’m still here is because there’s a better way to do it versus when I was on-boarded 30-some years ago. I’m dedicated to the profession. I love it. It’s about people. It’s a skilled trade, but it’s not treated like a skilled trade and a professional trade. That’s why I love your show is because you bring on smart people who are dedicated to elevating the profession. I’ve been so fortunate. It was the greatest accident professionally to ever happen to me. I hope to be doing it to the end of my career.

You brought us so many things, Tammy, that are worth unpacking a little bit. Let’s go down a bit of a tangent, the profession. I came on Andy Paul’s show and he was saying he was looking for big ideas in sales. The question was, if we could start it all over, what would you do? He listed a bunch of things not working very well in professional sales. He said, “If you could start it over, what would you do?” I didn’t know the question was coming. It hit me and I went, “I’d make it a profession. You have to get certified and you need ongoing training like an accountant, a lawyer, a doctor, a real estate agent, or a project manager. How is this any different?” What are your thoughts on that?

In the hospitality industry, and I don’t think other verticals are any different. Unless it’s big complex B2B stuff. They might treat it differently. Basically, are you a good talker? Are you good with people? Do you know your product or service? You’ll make a great salesperson. Those are all the wrong things to look for because we need to do more listening than talking. It is not about our product or service. It’s what our product or service enables the customers to do.

That’s what gets missed. Adnauseam salespeople are told whether it was many years ago or current state, to know your product, your service, and your competitors as opposed to what you’re buying or what the client is buying is and what you’re selling so go figure that out. It still perplexes me to this day that we think about transactional sales and we think we’re selling a product or service. It’s all about the mindset and how we onboard sellers and how I was onboarded with Hilton many years ago.

With Hilton, they were the best ten years of my professional career but it was about rates, dates and space, and transactional selling. Not much has changed sadly. It should be a profession because it is an art and a science. Especially with the availability of technology and data and all of these tools that should be together strategically with the fundamentals that never go away. It’s this convergence of technology and fundamentals that we rarely see that’s missing from sales.

It’s so interesting. There’s a perfect example. In the book, Tam, you say, “In hospitality, it’s about a personality, being able to talk and knowing your product.” We have SaaS people reading. We have manufacturing businesses and services businesses reading. We see the same problem everywhere in professional sales. You’re a CEO. Their version of it is you get blasted with emails that know nothing about you. They’re pitching a product and all they’re trying to do is push for a demo. In hospitality, we’re going to do a tour. We’re going to walk around and do a site tour. In technology, if they’re pushing for a demo and it’s talk and me. The worst first date ever.

There won’t be a second date. I can tell you that I get a lot of those emails from some of these technology companies. I use them. Respectively, I lock out the name and the company, but I use those in our training with our team to say, “This is how you don’t prospect. This is how you don’t rise above all the noise.” Who’s the connector in the translator between what they’re selling and how it’s going to help me? We need to be translators to translate the value proposition. There is such a tremendous disconnect that it gives salespeople a bad name.

Salespeople need to be good translators of value proposition. There is currently a tremendous disconnect here, and it gives salespeople a bad name.

You’re right. By the way, jokingly, I don’t do it either. I can’t do it, but I’d love to. We get hit three times a week by another sales training company trying to sell us sales training. We’re sales training. Our website’s not fantastic, but it screams we’re sales trainers. Somebody just looked at the website. Sell us anything else. Stop trying to sell us what we sell. That’s a perfect example.

By the way, this is one of the reasons I love the book. The book, although I’m not in the hospitality industry. In every concept, every principle that you share every idea, it’s so universal for professional sales in general. The other thing that’s so important is it’s so clearly laid out. This is one of the things that it’s the magic of this book. There’s so much on professional sales, whether it’s internet platitudes and ideas or there’s hundreds of books that are great on professional sales.

Many of them are very are either strategic or tactical or they’re very tactical on one idea. To help somebody who’s getting into the profession or somebody who’s in the profession that wants to recharge a little bit. Your book has done a nice job of giving a general overview of the things we need to think about that could have a dramatic impact on what we’re doing. There’s no question in my mind. Anybody in professional sales who wants to read Room to Grow, you’re going to pull something from this that you can apply to you in your business, in your industry.

Thank you so much. It was a labor of love. That’s for sure. Common sense, as you know, does not equal common practice. I will often hear, “It was such a great reminder of the fundamentals.” It goes to show that our mindset, if we’re not intentional about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. We quickly go back to that. I call it Pitch Slapping. We’re pitch slapping. It’s a habit. It’s a formed habit that we have to exercise and fight against that current to feature dump.

Common sense does not equal common practice.

You lead to this so nicely in. By the way, your book is one of the easier more enjoyable books to read. The hardest book I’ve ever read, Tam, it’s a must read, but the most difficult book, you referenced Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. You talked about those habits, the 150 cognitive biases. That’s one of the things that’s so hard for behavioral change. I love the way you say that common sense isn’t common practice because human beings are hardwired to save energy and not think about what we’re doing.

We’re hardwired to keep doing what we’re doing. It’s Kahneman and Tversky. I always forget Tversky. It’s Kahneman and Tversky’s Nobel Prize-winning, Thinking, Fast and Slow, that take a pause. You talk about this in the Strategy Before Tactics, chapter four, saying, “Think about what you’re doing, then think about how to do it.”

We all default to just jumping in and that’s where we left this show, Tam. If nothing else, take a pause every once in a while when you read this and say, “Do a little start, stop, and continue for yourself. What’s working, we’re going to continue doing. What isn’t working, but it’s become a habit for us. Maybe we’ll take a pause and stop.”

What’s something we hear about on this show, if you’re going to invest the 45 minutes in reading, just take 1 or 2 things. Go, “I wasn’t doing that. I should start, stop, continue to try and break those cognitive biases that are so tough.” Tammy, before we get to the outsourced model, the structure of the book is a great chapter, A perfect storm. It’s written in 2021, right in the heart of COVID. Are you selling like it’s 1990-love it? Becoming a modern seller. Chapter 4, Strategy Before Tactics. Please, thank you.

It’s the why you’re doing it and not the what. Number five, the Sales Reality. We’ll talk about a few things there in a minute. Number six, Executing your Sales Plan. Number seven, All the Sales Leaders Out There, business leaders, and entrepreneurs, know what good looks like. You touched on that beginning in terms of hiring. What are we hiring on? What skills and capabilities? You do reference our friend Daniel Pink a couple of times in the book. We love everything from Daniel Pink. Final chapter of the book, chapter eight, Everybody’s in Sales.

It is the why of your business that matters, not the what.

As everybody knows, we reference Daniel Pink on the show all the time. One in nine people in a professional sales job or probably more than of the 8 and 9 who aren’t in a professional sales job, what percentage of their day is spent persuading somebody else to their point of view? Forty percent of their day.

Influencing internally and externally.

Hospitality And Travel

Let’s get into the timing. Tammy, given up all the industries out there, hospitality has to be the industry that got most significantly hit during the pandemic. It has to be.

It was devastating.

What was the timing? It was released in 2021. Were you starting this before COVID or did you get on it and use some of the time during COVID? Tell me about the timing of putting it together and then releasing it.

It’s so crazy. It feels like ten years ago because so much has happened over that four-year period. For people in hospitality and travel, airlines, event management, hotels, but rental cars, and travel agencies.

Ninety percent of the world stopped traveling the week of March 16th, 2020. Was that tattoo to my brain or what? It impacted us not only because we exclusively support the hospitality industry, but we lost 70% of our clients in ten days because they no longer needed us to sell for them because nobody was traveling.

Some clients were shutting their doors. They had a mass exodus. We’re losing millions of dollars a day in canceled bookings and future bookings. When they were going down their list and their P&L, they were saying, “What contracts can I cancel?” We lost 70% of our business in ten days and had to quickly say, “A good percentage, 90% of our business is in the US.”

The US did not shut down the same way Canada did. Thank goodness because that kept the lights on for us. We have clients in Texas and different states that still have travel. We had to quickly say who is traveling. How can we offer a level of service? There were traveling nurses, government organizations, and medical organizations traveling because of the pandemic. We had to let half our team go.

Fortunately, within four months, everybody was brought back with care. It was the most devastating, on one end, we’re letting half our team go knowing the impact it’s going to have on them. While trying to still find business for the hotels that remained in our program. It was an insane time. I thought about as we stabilized back half of 2020, everybody thought that this COVID thing was going to be six months and not two years or three years.

I started because I had time, although I was in the weeds and managing the day-to-day and trying to hang on to the business. I started thinking about how is our industry going to recover? Management companies and hotels let all their salespeople go. Big brands let 70% of their sales organization go. What is that going to look like when travelers start traveling again? Who are they going to reach out to?

There were a lot of things. That’s why the first chapter, the Perfect Storm, was so important because we were getting away with a lot as an industry. Prior to the pandemic because for ten years, we were making a lot of money. There were international conventions. Every Fortune 500 company had travelers, tour groups were coming in, and sports tournaments. Sellers on property didn’t have to look too far to find business.

They had a lot of incoming inquiries and they were very transactional. They were using different muscles. They got away with being transactional because there was more business than they could manage. When the world stops traveling and there’s no business. You have to go from farming to hunting and going after business from market segments that you’re not experienced in. That was a heavy lift for a lot of people.

I knew all of these bad habits because part of our company also trains people. Even when times were good before COVID, I was getting in front of people saying, “You’re transactional. It’s going to catch up. You’re getting away with it.” For me, writing the book and the timing, there was more of a sense of urgency for me to get this out, to help the industry recover. I spent a year putting it together. In fact, I thought, will it come out in time?

In 2021, we were still in the throes of COVID. 2022 was the year that revenge travel came back and here’s what happened. Travel came back before hotels had their teams in place. The travel came back and hotels weren’t ready for the big league. They weren’t ready for it. They didn’t have the people. People left the industry. Millions left the industry and decided, “This isn’t recession-proof. I can go make more money somewhere else and not be treated the way that I was treated over COVID.”

This, to me, was a recovery toolkit to help hotels get back on their feet. We’re still trying to get back on our feet. That’s the crazy part. We’re getting there, but sales teams are very much still smiling and dialing. I hadn’t planned on it, but it became very crystal clear to me in 2020 that something had to be done and I had the time to dedicate to it. I made the time.

Again, when you talk about that environment, that high-level, broad environment, and economic environment for hospitality. There are a lot of industries today, Tammy, experiencing the exact same thing. In the SaaS industry, for example, you say we’ve been getting away with it. The SaaS industry had venture capital and private equity money flooding their organizations with sales and marketing personnel.

Turn rates skyrocket. No one’s hitting sales productivity. No one’s hitting quote is anywhere close to it. Customers are feeling this impact because we have unskilled and overconfident people reaching out and wasting the time of buyers. Now the buyer is coming back and going, “I rather do most of this online.” A good portion of buyers say, “I prefer never to speak to a salesperson.”

They’re thinking of a root canal that engages with a salesperson.

This is this interesting thing where this question I was asked on another show seemed relevant, which is, “There are a few metrics that keep screaming at us. We’re not getting better.” Are we plugging holes or is there a way of looking at this in a different way so fewer people can become accidental salespeople? We have a different industry if you couldn’t fall into the job because you have a pulse and I need to fill a body on my inside sales team. Would it be different if I had to go through a course for a year or two and have some certifications? Do some ongoing training to maintain that certification.

Good Salesperson

Over time, not overnight, with the buying community starting to see us as truly the consultants, we need to be B2B successful. That’s two different things. It might end up in a different way but let’s keep on with the book because I want to get to the outsourced model again. Let’s take another one. We’ve run through the different chapters here, folks, but knowing what good looks like is still an important thing for everybody.

Whether you’re a salesperson reading, and thank you for doing so. When we talk about what good looks like, that’s what we all have to try and attain as lifelong learners. If we’re going to be in this profession, we can talk about what a great salesperson looks like. Tammy, you identified some great examples, by the way, in the book of what good isn’t and what happens in interviews.

What I loved about the book was you laid out amazing questions for an interview. Folks, grab those questions, whatever industry you’re in, and use them. They’re going to be helpful. Tell me about the attributes of a great salesperson in your mind. I met your sales team and your sales leader. They are great.

Thank you.

What do you look for when you go through building out your team?

For any organization looking to build a sales team, they have to be clear on what is the role profile. In our world, are they managing incoming inquiries? Again, this is very specific to hotels. Are they order takers and managing incoming inquiries? That requires a different mindset and a different skill set. Are they having to grow existing accounts? Are you hiring someone to do business development?

Business development, which is when you’re hunting for business. You need to be strategic. You’re looking at the comp set, where the business is currently sitting, what business you have, and what business you don’t have. How are you going to get to those decision-makers? That’s a very different skill set. For us, because we are a 100% remote team, clients are hiring us to do their sales and to outsource their sales to us.

We are not managing incoming inquiries. They can take care of that. They are not paying us and our skilled people to make a wedding booking. In fact, when they’re talking to us to say, “What can Gillis do?” I’m saying we’re not talking to brides. I’m not booking hockey teams. Let us go after the B2B decision makers that you may not have the experience or time to go after because it requires research, a business conversation, and an understanding of the value proposition. It could take twelve attempts to get on their calendar.

First of all, for those reading, what role and profile are you looking for? What do you need them to do? What do you not need them to do? Part of the challenge in our industry is if a general manager at a hotel, most of them have a heavy operations background. The seller reports to them. They don’t know what to look for and they think all salespeople are good at all things. They’re not. We’re not good at all things.

I have certain strengths when it comes to selling. Cold calling was never one of my favorite things. I’m great at other things. You have to be clear that you’re not getting a unicorn who’s going to be all things to all people. At Gillis, we need to have people who love the hunt, scrappy, resilient, and good investigators. They are following the clues. Putting the pieces of the puzzle together to say, “Why would this prospect benefit from hearing from me now? What’s going on in their industry?”

Jill Conrath calls it trigger events. What’s going on in their company that might be triggering travel? Is there a shutdown? Are they redesigning a new line for Toyota? There’s a bunch of vendors coming in. Are they hiring? Are they firing? What’s going on to cause travel? Those are trigger events. There has to be some sleuthing that’s going on as opposed to that transactional seller. That’s what we look for. We screen about 500 resumes a month.

Two full-time people in HR and with all due respect, when we first started many years ago, if someone applied and talk about knowing what good looks like. We have a good idea ten years later. If we thought, “If you were an on-property seller, you’re great. You can hide. You can hide being on property or you could hide being in a big organization.”

If your leader doesn’t know what good looks like, not being observed, not being coached, or you don’t have the right KPIs, it is crazy the transformation when people who make it on our team and we call it the 1%. They sometimes have fifteen years of experience and still, we are rewiring their brain to sell the way we need them to sell and to think the way we need them to think. Everyone on our team will say, “They have never been more trained and supported or they’ve never been forced and challenged to think about sales the way we think about sales,” which is a testament to our business model.

If it was easy and if anyone could do it, our hotels wouldn’t need to outsource it. That’s a long answer to your question. There’s so much to unpack there but knowing what good looks like, it depends. Everybody has to take the time to say, “What is the role profile? Are they scrappy? Are they competitive?” Here’s a question when we’re talking to folks. We’ll say, “Are you competitive? No. What part of sales do you love? I love relationships.”

How are you going to do that to people you don’t have relationships with? How are you going to get to that point? Tell me you’re a 12 at a 10 on the competitive scale and you like to win and you don’t like to lose. You’re not given up and not easily discouraged. Now, we’re talking about someone who isn’t going to be afraid of rejection when they make twenty calls and they get a hold of two people out of the 20. That’s a long answer. A lot of times, it’s gut. There’s a bit of science, but there are some gut checks that are usually pretty accurate.

First of all, so much again to unpack there. We’re going to get into it, but I love that Dr. Nick Morgan's book, Can You Hear Me? Apparently, we make impressions in milliseconds. Particularly, in an interview, we’ll make our impression of somebody in like 90 seconds or less. The rest of the hour, we spend finding data. That gut is your emotional decision on somebody and we can’t make decisions without the emotional part of our brain. A lot of it’s emotional.

In fact, unfortunately, there are some studies done with people who have had brain injuries that have damaged the emotional center of their brain, where the logical portion of their brain is still working perfectly. If the emotional center of the brain has been damaged, they need 24/7 care because they can’t make a single decision without that working. They can’t get dressed in the morning. I forgot where I read that.

I found that so interesting when we think of how people make decisions. Circling back here, you talked about a couple of things that were so important there. One was, Tammy, you talked about how we have to have a business conversation and not a sales conversation. That leads to your chapter, which I love, Are You Selling Like It’s 1999 but industry business acumen.

Forget what my product is. What’s going on with the business of the person I’m reaching out to? We did a great exercise with a training client where they were targeting a large organization. We’re going after the CEO there. We spent six minutes. We asked the individual, what are you going to do? They said, “I’m going to reach out.” We said, “What point of interest do you have?” They shared one.

We had about nine people in a room spend six minutes each finding data that they could leverage. We went around the room and said, “Name two things you found that we could leverage to get through the door.” It’s unbelievable what we found in six minutes. Not an hour. Not an hour and a half. It’s not one of my economic papers of trying to get into university cramming. In six minutes, we can find a point of interest that plays on that theory of reciprocity and they understand it’s about them.

You reference Dale Carnegie in the book again. All your references, we love. Dale Carnegie, “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to make people interested in you.” A beautiful point that you raise in the book. When we come back to this.

The other thing is, Tam, this is an important one. We have been in markets where you could hide in professional sales. You sold for Salesforce in the early 2000s. You were doing high-end order-taking. If you sold for HubSpot after 2012, you were doing high-end order-taking. God bless. I’m glad everybody had a good time.

The challenge you have now though, you may be unskilled, overconfident, and tough. It’s like me in the kitchen. I have no idea what I’m doing, but for some reason, I believe I’m a master chef. It’s hard to teach someone like me. I don’t think I need to learn. I’m dropping pans, breaking things, and flipping stuff that’s not supposed to be flipped. I have no idea why I’m like that.

The pizza delivery guy’s on his way just in case.

Outsourcing Sales

He’s on speed dial all the time but these are important things for us as an industry. These are the things in the aggregate that start to lead to the fact that the buyers have this impression of us. This is what we’ve got all of us got to improve the performance and the professionalism of what we do. Tammy, it is a nice pivot into your core business model. I’ll be honest, we’ve talked about outsourcing sales a couple of times on the show.

Until I came to your business and understood your business, I wasn’t a fan of it at all because for the most part, the market’s made up of the major outsourcing of a sales function is outsourcing of SDR work, sales development work but it’s in the tech sector. What happens is the organization builds a farm of individuals doing this, but they’re not your model.

That model is they get a client. It could be anything in technology, then they hire new feet on the street. They try and ramp them up with industry and business acumen but it’s never as fast as if the company did it themselves. There’s frequently a lunchbox let down is what we’ve seen. Now there are always exceptions. You crack the code the opposite way because you found industry hospitality that can never be outside of the top tier largest organizations. They can’t build a scalable core competency for doing this in-house.

Instead of having 1 or 2 people do it off the side of the desk, you went and found industry professionals who go through a rigorous interviewing process because they’re experts. Not only do you deliver the function to the client, but you’re also delivering expertise and knowledge because they have no idea how to do this in some cases properly because they don’t have the size and scale to get there. Was that intentional? Did you spot this intentionally, or was it the passion of what you grew up doing?

Many years ago, I spent time at BlackBerry. I left the industry. I said, “I’m burning out in hospitality. I need a break. I’m going to join a high-tech company. I’m going to slow down.” The joke was on me because this was 2007. I spent seven years at BlackBerry, left and came back, and knew I wanted to get back into hospitality.

The first year and a half, I was training. We still do training. I went back to my roots and reached out to clients I had worked with. I spent a year and a half training for a large brand to franchise model. They would bring me to the regional meetings and their annual conference. I built out three sales certification programs for the front desk, sales folks, and their general managers. I was embedded with that organization, which was amazing.

Every time I went out to train a general manager or an owner, they were a limited-service hotel brand. Limited service, meaning 80 rooms or less, no restaurant for the most part, and no meeting space. It was for that transient guest. Eighty percent of those hotels did not have property sales people going after B2B business. A lot of people say, “What are you selling in a hotel?” For your audience to know, what’s not a build it and you will come model.

There’s Expedia, Trivago, and all of those what we call OTAs third-party sites. That can fill rooms but that B2B business is Sunday to Thursday if you’ve got a construction project in the backyard. If Toyota’s there or a major company is there. There is something at that location that manages travel that you need to negotiate their travel program with.

I went to our client and said, “You keep paying me, which is wonderful to come and train your owners, but they can’t execute when they go back on the property. They don’t have the time and the expertise.” I’ve worked on this model. This was imagined many years ago. It was still to this day, some owners and hotel GMs say, “You have to be in the market. You have to get a desk at a hotel. You can’t sell remotely,” but then COVID happened. We proved to the world that you can sell anywhere.

COVID-19 proved to the world that you can sell anywhere.

I took this model to Best Western. That was my big client at the time. They have 2,400 hotels in North America, over 4,000. I said, “If they’re not making money, you’re not making money. You can only use programs, but they’re not activating it.” They gave us eight of their underperforming hotels as a pilot and six months later, we had 8X or 10x, the ROI, and improved the model. That’s how it started.

We were building the plane while we were flying it if that makes sense. We’re like, “We better get a CRM. We better bring on a director of ops to start building out all these SOPs.” It didn’t start out strategic. I was in the weeds every day managing the business until we got to a point where you got to bring in the directors of sales, the BI people, and the sales ops people on the team. Now here we are many years later with what I feel is a best-in-class sales model because we’ve got incredible leaders whom you’ve met who oversee the execution of our sales folks.

We’ve got the sales operations people like Nikki and her team who are making sure we’ve got the reporting, processes, tools, and accountability. HR to make sure that we’re constantly filling our funnel with good candidates. It’s been an incredible year of continuing to get better and prove this business model. It started out, “I hope this can work,” to us having over 220 hotels in our program and having a strong, great, I’m trying to sound modest, some brand recognition in the industry that I’m proud of.

Everything’s about the result you provide for a client, 8X to 10X a result for a client. That’s the only way a business is going to succeed. We have to provide results. First of all, no need to sound modest. I’ve met you at a leadership team. They’re dynamite. It’s just fantastic, but this is where this outsourced small because this comes up a lot. There’s nothing but entrepreneurs out there.

Most entrepreneurs don’t grow up in sales. They’re going to swap if their application developers, they create code, want to productize it and sell it or they’re an engineer, come up with a product, have a manufacturing firm, and want to sell it. No one grows up as an entrepreneur in sales. They go through years of what the hospitality industry goes through, where they’re churning through salespeople. They don’t understand why, but they’re the avatars you reference in chapter two, if you build it, they will come.

That applies to a hotel. It also applies to most CEOs of technology companies because they love their product. They’re flabbergasted that not everybody buys their product because they know the nine reasons it’s better than the next one. The best product never wins or rarely wins. It’s the best sales organization wins.

This model where you’ve cracked the code by saying, “We found this niche where they can rarely do they get scale. They need the help so we can outsource it but we understand their customer.” We already grew up knowing their product but we know their customer. That’s what these outsource SDR farms never get to. They start to learn the product a little bit but they’re new into business.

They don’t understand the corporate client. They don’t have that business acumen. They can’t be viewed as a consultant reaching out. They never get to that level of trusted advisor. It’s too hard. It’s a lot of churn and it never had seemed to worry about this. it’s the first time I’ve seen it, but obviously you folks are killing it and power to you.

Thank you for that. I would say we are exclusive to hospitality. This is all we know. We’ve been approached throughout the year by other companies saying, “Will you do outsource sales?” There’s enough business and hospitality. That’s my passion. If I’ve never sold for another industry, I don’t want to go and get distracted from a pure financial point of view.

We live and breathe hospitality and I can relate to it as the CEO. I know what good looks like. I don’t know what good looks like for other industries. The people that we attract are best in class. Part of the scale that you talk about is one of the value propositions. It’s at 8X to 10X. We’re a team of 55 people. The infrastructure is also what our clients are buying into. It’s not that one seller who’s giving fractional sale support.

They’re getting my time. They’re getting our senior director’s time, getting access to tools, and analytics, an entire system that would be so cost prohibitive. This model allows them to run their business, take care of their employees, and take care of their clients while we keep their sales funnel flowing with new accounts coming in.

We take that responsibility very seriously. I couldn’t fake it by selling for another industry. There’s no other industry that would light me up as much or motivate me as much. That’s why we have this real niche business model because we know who we are. We know why we do it and who we do it for, which is critical.

By the way, the other thing that firm gets is they’re getting to the collaboration of 54 other people on the team. I’ve been in the room with your leaders. They’re highly collaborative. We believe in the power of teamwork and collaboration. If managed and facilitated well, the power of the experience, the insight, the market knowledge, the understanding of the trends in the industry, bringing that to each and every client. Shocking. Frankly, that’s why people pay McKinsey or Monitor or Boston Consulting Group. Whatever strategic advisory firm is. They’re paying for that market knowledge and insight.

It’s true.

You bring it to bear with insight in terms of what’s going on with 250 hotels. That’s a lot of knowledge.

It’s a lot of knowledge in terms of here’s who’s traveling, what they’re saying, and the future trends that we share. Also, all of those accounts, all of those prospects when a client, let’s say in Peterborough, Ontario is we’re onboarding a hotel there. They have ABC accounts in their backyard. Chances are, unless they’re one-off accounts that only reside in that market. We are working with that account across our portfolio.

We know the decision makers. We’re shortening the sales cycle and we’re doing all the stuff that they don’t want to do. One thing I’m so proud of, we are going through our quarterly business reviews. Our directors of sales and our leaders who you’ve met, they have individual pods. That’s how we’re structured. They have up to ten area sales managers and 60 hotels they manage. For our clients that have multiple hotels, we have QBRs.

I am blown away. We have prep calls for the QBRs. I attend as many QBRs as possible. The value and insights that our directors of sales are bringing to the QBRs, the level of care and accountability that our team brings to say, “We’re protecting your investment.” It is something that doesn’t exist. I beam with pride because this is over and above their day-to-day job. Our DOSs are putting in a ton of time, but I see the retention. Our client retention continues to increase because they trust us with their investment. They see the results and they see the care and the communication.

The lesson learned for me and for everybody reading is what are we all doing to take care of our clients with this level of unnatural focus and intensity because all of our businesses exist only because of our clients. If we’re not as focused and relentless to bring that much value to our clients every day in every conversation, somebody else will.

Someone else will. That’s my healthy paranoia. I say, it’s healthy paranoia. I don’t know if my husband would agree.

That’s right.

I have healthy paranoia about, don’t change for the sake of it but we need to be constantly elevating and making sure that we’re bringing the best to the business every single day.

Closing Words

I love the quote ar the beginning of your chapters, by the way. You quote Mark Cuban, “The one thing in life you can control is effort.”

I love Mark Cuban.

I love that quote. When we started to think of everything we talked about, having forbidden the pandemic and all these different things. First of all, you so much have that entrepreneur’s mindset where something happens, it doesn’t matter what happened. You’re about the future. There’s always this opportunity. Every crisis is an opportunity and even in the heart of it, you were going, “We’re going to come out of this and these people are going to be understaffed and this is an opportunity.”

Tam, when we think of what we’re doing every day as professional salespeople, there’s a massive opportunity. The opportunity is to stand out. We can stand out if we go that extra effort to understand, even take from now, business acumen. What are we watching? What are we reading? Which shows do we listen to elevate?

Room to Grow is the book to read. What are we reading and learning so that we have more insight and knowledge that we can bring to our clients and prospects so that they can run better businesses? Good things will happen for us if we can do that. That might be a key thing, Tam, to leave in the show notes. The one thing in life you can control is effort. We’re coming to the top of the hour, so thank you so much for joining.

This was so much fun. We could talk for hours, as we always do. I have about twenty books I have to read, thanks to you and your show because you bring on great guests and so many good recommendations. Thank you for all your work in elevating this profession. I learned from you every day.

Great guests like the one we have now. Thank you so much, Tammy. By the way, Tammy, how do people learn more about Killis and you?

I’m on LinkedIn and that is the one social that I dedicate time to simply because our product is an Instagram and Snapchat. All that good stuff. I’m an active contributor there and GillisSales.com if you want to learn more about what we do. I love to write. I love to write articles and do shows and use LinkedIn to develop best practices to share because we still have a long way to go. We still have a long way to go as a profession and as an industry. One show at a time, we can start to change the mindset of people and hopefully, turn around the reputation that the profession has, unfortunately.

Room To Grow: We still have a long way to go as a profession and as an industry. One podcast at a time, we can change the mindset of people and hopefully turn around the reputation of the profession.

Beautifully said, Tammy. Thank you again for joining. Thank you so much for joining the show. We do this podcast to increase the performance and professionalism of B2B sales. Our belief is that if we can do that, we’ll improve the lives of professional salespeople. That’s our mission with the show. This show is super fun, but it needs to be of value to you and you’re the folks who can let us know if it is.

Please send your comments about this episode and all of them to me. I’m MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That’s my personal email that I check. We love constructive criticism. Let us know what we can do to make this more valuable for you. We will respond to each and every suggestion we get. Thanks for making them. If you liked this episode and love this conversation as much as I did, like and subscribe to the show. Please tell your friends because that’s how we get great guests like Tammy Gillis. Until next time, thanks everybody for joining. We’ll see you next time on the show.

Important Links

• Room to Grow: Not Leaving Sales to Chance

• Gillis Consulting and Training

• Thinking, Fast and Slow

• Can You Hear Me?

• BlackBerry

• Best Western

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

About Tammy Gillis

Tammy is a recognized leader in the hospitality industry in sales and sales leadership and the founder and CEO of Gillis Sales. She disrupted the traditional hotel sales model in 2014 and launched a Dynamic Sales Solution providing remote sales support for hotels.

Tammy launched her sales career 30 years ago and has led high performing teams with Hilton Hotels, Blackberry and her current team of 45 sales professionals who provide sales support to over 200 hotels across North America.

She has trained thousands of sales professionals, hotel owners, general managers, and front-line associates, earning her a Training Excellence Award from the Institute for Performance & Learning and recognized as One of the Top 100 Most Inspirational People in Global Hospitality & Travel.

She has a passion for improving not only the skill set but also the mindset of sales professionals to succeed in this digital age of selling to modern buyers. Believing that sales is the life blood for all organizations, her mission is to make sales accessible and achievable for all hotel owners.

Tammy’s engaging and genuine approach helps her clients break ineffective sales behaviors to become trusted advisors with a client centric approach to selling that drives results and differentiates them from the competition.

The Curiosity Code: Unlock Your Sales Superpower With Dr. Diane Hamilton

Struggling to capture attention in a world overflowing with information? This episode dives deep into the transformative power of curiosity in sales and beyond. Our guest, Dr. Diane Hamilton, the author of the acclaimed book "Cracking the Curiosity Code," joins us to shed light on why curiosity is a superpower for salespeople and individuals alike. Dr. Hamilton dives deep into her insightful FATE model, which identifies the four key factors that can stifle curiosity: Fear, Assumptions, Technology, and Environment. We'll learn how these elements can hold us back from asking insightful questions, and how to overcome them to unlock our full potential. Dr. Hamilton goes beyond identifying the roadblocks, offering practical strategies to cultivate curiosity. You'll discover how curiosity acts as the spark that ignites innovation, propels motivation, and enhances emotional intelligence – all essential qualities for success in sales and personal growth. So, get ready to ditch the script and embrace the power of curiosity!

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

The Curiosity Code: Unlock Your Sales Superpower With Dr. Diane Hamilton

Is curiosity important in professional sales? Is it important in life? Of course, it is. You’ve read a hundred times on this show that curiosity is the key component during discovery, where the client or prospect will feel literally that we care about them achieving a better outcome for their business. It turns out curiosity makes us feel good. It releases the enzyme dopamine, which is the pleasure enzyme. It makes us feel great when we eat a wonderful meal or even enjoy sex. Curiosity is good for us.

Curiosity is a critical success factor in business. In fact, a quote from a book that we’re going to review, “Next to integrity and trust is my curiosity and willingness to encourage my colleagues to challenge the status quo was one of the most critical characteristics that held us to whatever success we were fortunate enough to experience.” That quote came from Keith Krach, who wrote the forward to this book.

Keith is the Founder of DocuSign and Ariba. Ariba ended up with a $40 billion market cap. Whatever success, we were fortunate enough to enjoy. Keith enjoyed a lot of success. Keith was writing about Cracking the Curiosity Code: The Key to Unlo by Dr. Diane Hamilton and Diane’s our guest for this episode. An amazing conversation about curiosity.

We learned that as infants or children, curiosity is everything. We have an abundance of it. That’s how we learn and grow and develop. Over time, things get away and there are barriers preventing our curiosity. It’s so important for personal and professional success. Diane shares with us the four factors that get in the way, fear, assumptions, technology, either overuse of technology or underuse and even the environment, the messages we hear and the stories we’re told.

Diane is an expert on this. In fact, she’s a sought-after expert in curiosity, perception, emotional intelligence, and behavioral science. She’s got four decades of real-world experience and she’s written five books and we’re talking about one of those books. She’s amazingly recognized in this field. She was named to the Global Leader Today’s list of top leaders.

Other people on that list is Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Cheryl Sandberg. What company? She was also listed as one of the 200 Biggest Voices in Leadership and in the top 10 Most Powerful Women Leaders in HR. I enjoyed my conversation with Diane. I’m sure you will, too. By the way, Cracking the Curiosity Code should be required when reading in professional sales and maybe in business. If you like this episode as much as I do, please like and subscribe to the Selling Well Show because it matters to us. That’s how we get great guests like Dr. Diane Hamilton and here she is.

Diane, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining us.

I’m super excited to be here, Mark. Thanks for having me.

I’m super excited to chat with you. We’re going to be talking about Cracking the C. Diane, the folks who read our episodes knows me go on and add in fun item about the importance of curiosity and authentic curiosity in professional sales. It’s not about us. It’s always about the person we’re speaking to and having that authentic curiosity. You’ve got an amazing background. I wonder if you wouldn’t mind sharing the short story of your journey, your professional journey that led you to writing this book.

Diane’s Professional Journey

I come from a sales background for sure. Decades of sales. I’ve sold everything from computers, software to mortgage loans. You name it. I was in pharmaceutical sales for a long time. There’s so much that you do that is impacted by your sales background, which is wonderful. When I worked in pharmaceuticals, I worked for AstraZeneca. I worked in their AgChem division for almost 4 or 5 years, then they’re another 15 years in their pharmaceutical sales.

I learned a lot from that experience. One of the things I got out of it was they paid for my Master’s, which was wonderful. I never wanted a Master’s. I never thought about it. I never occurred to me to even go back, but I’m thinking, “If they’re going to pay for it, I’ll certainly get one.” I loved education and learning new things. I went back to see how hard it would be to get a PhD. That was my whole goal, just to see how the challenge behind.

I fell in love with online education in the process because I did my entire Bachelor’s at night. You work for 8:00 to 4:00 or 5:00, then you go to a school from 7:00 to 10:00 at night. You want to shoot yourself. I loved online education. I wanted to teach in that realm because I thought I want to help other people not have to do what I do to do. That got me into online education. I’ve been in that coming on many years. I don’t even know. I’ve taught thousands of online courses because I love it so much.

I ended up as the MBA Program Chair at the Forbes School of Business, which is out in the University of Arizona. It was a great experience but when I left, I thought I wanted to try to do some. I still work for them part-time. I teach for a bunch of different universities that have online departments. I’ve taught thousands of courses and I love it.

I wanted to develop my consulting and speaking business. When I went out of my own, I did so many different boards. I work on a lot of different boards from DocuSign. I was on their board advisors and different companies like RadiusAI and technology companies. Many wonderful things. What I do is I learn things and I share what I learn. That’s what I do for a living.

My main thing is, I have my consulting and media business and like you, I had a show like this that’s on hiatus because I’m doing shows for some other people. Mostly, I work with organizations to help them build curiosity. I created the Curiosity Code Index and wrote the book that you held up that goes along with that. It’s the first assessment that determines the factors that inhibit curiosity, which is pretty exciting because you have to know what stops you to get better.

It’s the first assessment that determines the factors that inhibit curiosity, which is pretty exciting because you have to know what stops you to get better.

How interesting in terms of the journey. The journeys on this show are fantastic and I’m sure you experienced the same thing. The list of the guests you had on your show is flabbergasting, as is the list of the testimonials for the book. Everybody’s provided an amazing testimonial, but you mentioned being on the board of DocuSign with Keith Krach who did the forward to the book. He’s such a fan of yours as well.

I’m a friend of his.

The interesting thing about that journey that I liked, Diane, and a little bit of alignment. I as well did an executive MBA. I’d been in my career for a while. I’d had a little bit of some modest success. I thought in my own mind I wanted to become a CEO. I thought I had a bit of a gap in terms of financial acumen. I ended up doing an executive MBA, which is evenings and weekends. You go and spend some time into a wall while working.

Reading your book, the one thing that jumps out at me is it was that experience for me that I’d say, reinvigorated my curiosity. Up to that point in time, up into my low 30s had some success. I thought I was having success because of my inherent capabilities almost Carol Dweck, a fixed mindset, saying, “I’m pretty good at this,” but it’s because of my inherent capabilities.

Cracking The Curiosity Code

I went to the MBA school to try and come back. Maybe become a CEO then I realized all I want to do is sales. It’s the only thing that’s important in a business. It’s the most important thing but it triggered this lifelong learning and this desire to keep growing. The fact, I love doing this show. It’s speaking to people like you to continually learn. Let’s zip around to the book, Cracking the Curiosity Code.

Cracking the Curiosity Code: The Key to Unlocking Human Potential

A couple of things that are interesting. At the beginning of the book, you’re trying to pursue this topic to understand, where do people fit on this spectrum of curiosity? Can being more curious make you a better leader or more successful, or help you address your fears? All these things that we should unpack as part of this discussion, but maybe the starting point is, how do we define curiosity? What is curiosity?

It’s funny, because I gave a big talk for Coaching.com. The very first thing I made everybody do was define a couple of words. What how do you feel? What was the definition for curiosity for you at work, especially? It’s fun to see everybody’s answers. A lot of it is exploring new things, asking questions, and doing things you haven’t done in the past. Those have come up a lot.

When I wrote the book, I always saw myself as a very curious person. I wanted to know why other people weren’t curious. I wanted to just delve into that a little bit more because I had all these people like Steve Orbs and billionaires on my show. Everybody’s super curious, wonderful, and interesting. I would teach some of my classes and some of my students maybe not as interested in looking. You’d want them to give them the fish instead of teach them to fish.

I wanted them to want that. I looked at curiosity like everybody else. It’s the desire to learn new things and all that. As I started to work with organizations and give them my Curiosity Code Index and find out what was slowing them down and talk to them about all these things. I see it so much as getting out of status quo thinking in organizations because blockbusters and the codex and the companies, Blackberry, that was a great movie. I watched how they all failed because they stuck with the status quo way of doing things.

If it worked great in the past, we don’t need to explore and look into new ways because we like those blackberry thumb buttons that we but then Steve Jobs ate their lunch. We have to realize that just because something worked in the past, it’s not going to necessarily work in the future. Having a strong sales background, I saw the importance of asking questions and all those aspects of curiosity. It encompasses all those words that everybody typed into the box.

We have to realize that just because something worked in the past, it’s not going to necessarily work in the future.

What an amazingly consistent theme out there, which is what worked in the past won’t always work in the future. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to take in some of the positives of the past or we’re changing everything. I do believe that in professional sales, particularly over the last 15 or 20 years, there have been significant meaningful changes that we have to respond and react to.

That’s a real challenge in professional sales because you’ve got well established mature folks who have a bit of that Kodak thinking. I was at Kodak at that time. It was interesting time I got hired into Kodak as my first job selling photocopiers back in the early ‘90s. It was quite interesting because they had this photocopy division that had a professional sales school and competed with Xerox. They had some technologies that did compete quite successfully with Xerox.

You could see that mentality if they didn’t want to disrupt their cash cow. It was always this discussion about the film business. As you aptly point out, they had the patent on digital photography and they would literally joke about companies like Sony and Agfa and some of these other competitors because they were so minor league in traditional film compared to Kodak then they ate their lunch.

I know. It’s crazy. I’ve had Jeff Hayzlett on the show. I’ve talked to him. He was the CMO of Kodak. It’s a common thing that a lot of companies have had. They’ve had such great success. You couldn’t walk into a Kodak store without getting a bunch of Kodak film landing on your head because it was so packed everywhere. It’s the thing that it’s hard to foresee the future of what’s going to change. What I found was interesting in sales that has changed so much is the teams are much more popular. When I was at the pharmaceutical rep, I started to see a little bit of that when I was leaving. This is more than twenty years ago than when I was doing that.

I loved having my own territory. I had nobody to bother me. I could do my own thing, then they go, “If one person calling on this doctor is getting such great results, let’s have two do it.” They would have me do it instead of every four weeks calling on somebody. My counterpart would go every two weeks and we would split it up. “That works so well. Let’s have four people.” By the time I left, there was eight of us calling on this guy or gal. It was a lot.

They got overwhelmed by it. It was interesting to see. My daughter is a big director of marketing sales for a company called Split and she’s been in sales forever. I get to see what they do and some of these teams. When I was selling loans, they threw you the phone books, “Here, dial for dollars.” Now, they’ve got this person gets the lead, that person closes the deal, and this person does this. That’s what I think is the biggest change in sales since I did it.

You’re right, that’s a huge change in sales. That came about with Salesforce. There was a guy named Aaron Ross, who helped grow Salesforce in the early days. He came to the conclusion that established sales reps wouldn’t do what’s called demand generation or what they used to call cold calling many years ago.

He came up with something, the specialist model where we have people who do demand generation. They passed the opportunity over to the more mature account executive because that person’s never going to do demand generation. I don’t agree with that, but they’re never going to do demand generation. A very famous book called Predictable Reve.

That triggered this specialist model. Part of this is damaged the sales community. That’s a different episode for a different time but that idea is interesting. That idea of this isolation as a salesperson as well. Curiosity comes into play there a little bit too and to a certain extent. extent. One of the things that we’re always surprised by in our training is that people get benefit from being a part of the community, even people who sell for companies in different divisions, different industries, and selling different products. There’s an amazing amount of consistency in terms of challenges or opportunities or the importance of the mindset.

They get real value understanding what different people do. You talked about, “I enjoyed being alone and being on my own,” then suddenly there’s eight people calling on that poor physician. Diane, in the book, you make these great connections. The book is such a great read. It’s so incredibly interesting because you make these great connections between curiosity and motivation, curiosity and leadership, engagement and emotional intelligence. All these things we want it success and we want to know about.

One of the most fascinating points you bring up that’s validated by the research is that and correct me if I’ve got this wrong, that children or babies are all about curiosity. By the time they’re three, they’re asking about 100 questions a day. Survival is based on curiosity and they’ve got this going for them. By the time they’re 12 or 13, that’s cut by 75% and they’re asking very few questions. It’s almost like the environments are bleeding the curiosity out of these kids as they grow up.

Emotional Intelligence

You bring up something that comes up in the Curiosity Code Index. The environment was one of the factors that inhibits curiosity. What was interesting to me was you mentioned emotional intelligence and some of these other things that we’re trying to develop at work. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the impact of emotional intelligence on sales performance. That’s what got me into the interest of emotional intelligence, which I fell into randomly. I hadn’t even heard of emotional intelligence at that time. It was a long time ago.

I thought, “This is a cool and interesting topic.” I had no idea how big this thing flowed. As I was writing this, I’m thinking, “I like all this assessment stuff,” because I thought it was fascinating. I got certified in emotional intelligence tests and Myers-Briggs. Whatever was popular at the time. What I learned was emotional intelligence and motivation and all those things you mentioned are all the things people hire me to speak.

They’d say, “Can you speak about soft skills or whatever they call the different things?” As I started to look at some of these things, I realized that to fix any of those things, you’d have to fix curiosity first. Curiosity is the spark. I liken it to baking a cake. You want cake as your outcome. If you’re baking a cake, that’s your goal. You’ve got ingredients like flour, oil and eggs. You’re mixing them together and you put it in a pan. You put it in the oven and you want cake.

In the business environment, our cake is money and productivity. We want that. These are the ingredients, emotional intelligence, motivation, communication, engagement, and innovation. Everybody’s working on these things but nobody’s realized that they’ve put it in the oven. The oven’s not on. You got to have it on the oven with a spark of curiosity to get cake. That’s how it all ties together. That’s why I broke those things out into different chapters for that reason.

FATE

Let’s talk about the spark. We’ve got folks out there reading that might say and almost like Carol Dweck with growth mindset, “In one area of my life, I’ve got a real growth mindset. I’m a musician. I love learning, and watching online videos for drumming. I love getting better. I love improving. When I’m not playing well, I don’t see it as a scarlet letter. I go, this is part of my journey to getting better. I’m going to get better. Yet in business, I might have this fixed mindset and I’m not open to coaching. I don’t want to learn and develop.”

In Carol’s book at one point in time, she says, “One of the main ways of changing or triggering that growth mindset is understanding the difference between a fixed and growth mindset then looking at some part of your life where you have that growth mindset.” If people are reading and they say, “Maybe I have plateaued a little bit or regarding my curiosity, maybe it has diminished.” How do we re-trigger curiosity?

I use Carol Dweck’s work, George Lanky and Sir Ken Robinson. The last two have some great TED talks if you haven’t seen them. If you look at some of this stuff, in George Lanz’ work with NASA, he looked at creativity, which mimics exactly what we see with curiosity. It goes up about age five then tanks. In our 30s, we have very little left.

What he said is, “We come up with these great ideas, but at the same time, we over-criticize them.” It’s like putting on the gas and the brakes at the same time. You don’t go very far. How do we know if I’m a musician and I love that but I told myself in my head what you were saying, “In business setting, I’m not this.” That’s our assumptions that we have. That’s our voice in our head.

When I studied for the Curiosity Code Index, that’s my main thing that I work with organizations with. I give this assessment. The reason this assessment got so much attention is because there was nothing that determined these things that hold us back. We already talked a little bit about environment, but there’s four factors that you can figure out what’s holding you back from curiosity.

If you know these things, that’s how, as you said, awareness for from Carol Dweck. If you recognize these things, then you can move forward. I spent years studying thousands of people and this is all peer reviewed scholarly research that I had published because I wanted to not come up with an assessment that’s cute for my website. I wanted something that’s going to fix this. The four factors that inhibit curiosity are the acronym is FATE.

You have to recognize how fear, the F. A is the assumptions, which is that voice in your head. T is technology, which is over and under-utilization of it and environment is E, which is everybody with whom you’ve had contact who’s told you, “You shouldn’t like this or family all does that or I don’t have time to answer this.” All these can overlap a little bit. You talk about environment.

If maybe somebody has said or maybe your sibling said, “That’s a stupid thing to do.” You get all these people in your life. Your boss, “Don’t come to me with problems unless you have solutions,” or somebody said, “That’s a great question. I’ll make you the head of that committee and I’m not going to pay you to do it but here’s more work.” All these things have this voice in our head going, “I don’t like that or I’m not going to do that again.” That leads to fear.

We’re in the meetings and going, “I’m not going to suggest anything. The last time, they made me the head of that, or I don’t want to look stupid.” There’s all these things. It was so interesting to me to get it in writing like, “This is what holds you back under fear. Here’s what holds you back under assumptions, technology, and environment.” As you said, you know where you stand but as in an emotional intelligence test or an engagement test. You then can create a personal swat, look at your weaknesses and threats, then create smart goals to overcome them. That’s basically the process I go through within organizations with people.

That’s the process you go through. By the way, if we go online and we do the Curiosity Code Index, is there a tool online that we can self-assess and do these things?

Yes, it’s CuriosityCode.com.

Those links will be in the episode. Everybody should take a look and take that on. The acronym was FATE, fear, assumptions, technology, and environment. You start to think and all of these are cognitive biases. Many of these, anyway, at least environment cognitive biases. A lot of them apply, by the way, to sales. I think that environment and these voices you hear in your head, certainly when I started I’m not sure about you. I wasn’t very proud to be in a professional sales role when I started.

All my friends, looking back, had the worst jobs in the universe. They were MBAs who were the lowest level in terms of the financial community and investment banking, where they get abused for years. We had lawyers who were articling and miserable existence. I’m selling photocopiers into businesses all the time, dealing with people and learning about business, but it had a real self-esteem issue likely because of this perception in the universe of what sales is. The stereotype from many years ago like Gil from the Simpsons. It wasn’t very good. By the way, there’s still a little bit of that out there.

A long time ago. It was Willie Lohman and death of a salesman.

There you go.

I watch Glenn Gary and Glenn Ross. You watch these things and you go, “It sounds awful.” I believe that every should have a sales background to some extent. It’s the most helpful thing. I had Barry Ryan on my show. He teaches curiosity and sales at Stanford. Some of this stuff is fascinating to see how much sales helps you.

For me, the biggest thing that helped me in sales was questioning to develop my empathy, which is a big part of emotional intelligence. What was interesting, when I worked for AstraZeneca. They rated us on our concern for impact. This was like 1980 when I took the first assessment with them. They were way ahead of their time. How I came across to other people was huge for them.

I thought, “That’s such an important part.” Emotional intelligence is your ability to understand yourself and others and those emotions and react appropriately. In sales, if you don’t know how you’re coming across to other people, that’s a problem. It’s also in sales, you need to develop this empathy to be able to know what your customers even need. It’s so complicated. Even though sales has got that Willy Loman thing to some people.

In sales, you need to develop empathy to be able to know what your customers need.

To me, you’re bringing in all the money for the company. You’re the heart of everything. People are starting to see that this is so important that we need to have people trained and have them understand. I have a sales story. I share this more than one as a pharmaceutical rep. I’m young doing this. I was just out of college. I had never sold anything.

I went through their intense training program. I’ve never had better training in anything in my life. They’re like, “You’re going to say this. You’re going to do that. It’s going to be this order. You’re going to talk about this product.” I went through all that training. It was years of training in some respects, but my first call or so, I’m in a building. It’s like a three-story building. I get up there and I’m in the waiting room. You’ve got to wait for these, it was a guy at that time that I had to call on.

You had to wait for him a long time and you’re all nervous going, “I’m going to say this. I got to talk about this product and that product.” I got in front of him finally and they told me, “You don’t know how much they say. This guy’s got five seconds. He’s not going to want to talk to you. You’re going to have to do what your best. Chase him down the hallway. Whatever you have to do.” For some reason, I was able to sit in an office with him, which was unusual. I got through three of the products. All three, that was the goal. No one gets through three. I got through this one and that one. I walked out of that office. I was so proud of myself like I had just done the most amazing presentation.

You just pitched.

It was wonderful. I closed him. I did everything you’re supposed to do, but I had to go get my samples. I go down and get in the elevator to go down to my car. As the door’s closing, a guy gets on the elevator with me. I’m such an extrovert, I can’t go three floors without talking. I look at him and I go, “Sir, do you work in the building?” He looks at me, so mortified. He goes, “You just sold me your products.” That’s the same guy.

You never looked up.

I look at him.

Fantastic.

The worst thing. I died. Wouldn’t you? It was the worst sales call you could ever have. I didn’t ask him any questions. I often think about if you hadn’t gotten the elevator, you don’t know how bad you are sometimes.

First of all, what a tough lesson to learn and how spectacular to learn it on your first call for the rest of your existence.

It helped me.

Change In Professional Sales

By the way, Daine, what you described is the biggest change in professional sales in the last 30 years. There was a time where that person on the other side of the table needed you to explain what products were out there. The difference now is everybody knows everything. They don’t need you to explain what products and services. This is a problem. Most people still want to pitch but the reality of it is, this is where curiosity comes in. What they want to know is, how can you help me run a better business?

Whatever it is you do, can you help us run a better business somehow or help me achieve the goals and objectives of my division? If I’m a doctor, help me run a better practice. That’s where the shift where you interviewed at the end of our show. Sales is management and consulting now. He said, “Used to be pitching and all that but all that’s going to get taken care of online by AI.” By the way, thanks for sharing that story. We’ve all got them.

You get a real groan from the audience when you share that one in a sales group because it’s just awful.

We’ve all got them and you’ve got those things where you were so nervous. You did what you’d been taught, “Better know my product. Better pitch. Get better. Keep going.” This is why it’s lifelong learning doing this. This is a hard thing to do.

It’s a funny aspect to look at how things have changed, as you said that because a lot of people don’t ask the questions that they need to ask. Back then, you would ask different questions. Again, we’re getting on a status quo. You have to know the kinds of things to find out how to help them with their practice. I can remember a doctor I called on.

I got better and started asking him questions. I start painting the picture they used to teach us to paint the picture. I’d say, “If you use my migraine drug when your patients come in and they have this horrible headache. They call you in the middle of the night and wake you up because you have to send them to the ER. It’s all this money it’s going to cost them. They’re going to have all this.” I painted this big picture. The guy says to me, “I don’t care. That comes out of somebody else’s budget.” I’m like, “First of all, it might be not to go to you.”

You don’t care about your patients.

Sometimes painting the picture helps bring out the questions. That’s another way to explore what their pain points are.

Sometimes, painting the picture helps bring out the questions. That’s another way to explore what their pain points are.

I had this experience where we have a networking touch point with somebody. They’re extraordinarily successful individual. We had a great conversation, but somebody thought we should chat. At the end, they went, “I’m thinking about this. Why don’t you let us know what you do there?” I thought to myself, “I’m not going to give too much data here. I don’t know anything about your company. I’m not going to go too deep.” I sent this note over and I literally got this email with probably 35 points attacking what I’d sent over. I sent a quick email back going, “Fantastic thoughts. Let’s chat live about it.” As soon as you start pitching anything. It’s very easy for somebody to come back and go, “I don’t like this.”

You don’t know what they even want.

We have no idea what they want. My email back was going to go, “I agree with all your points. What problem you think you’re trying to solve?” You asked for this but if you don’t know what problem we’re trying to solve, then I can’t help. Your book would be so important for everybody reading. There’s a difference between a line of questioning that is meant to trigger an answer that leads to the problem I solve and me pitching again.

By the way, through Dr. Morgan’s work, the book’s called Can You Hear Me? People are always sensing the intent of someone else. Consciously and subconsciously, we can tell their intent. The second these they start to think that we’ve got commission breath, a wall goes up. You’ve come across those people that have that authentic interest in you and your business or what’s going on. That’s the skill to try and cultivate, which is have a unique interest. Try and understand what’s going on.

Do your research to earn the right to understand. understand. The outcome down the road might be an opportunity for you. If you’re constantly focusing on trying to figure out how to add value to somebody else or some other business or a buyer, things will work out for you down the road. Even if it’s not an immediate sale for you. That’s one of these key lessons that is also new in sales. I don’t think people get that.

We learned a lot from the focus on culture and perception and some of the things I wrote about after my Curiosity book. I wrote a book on perception because I thought it was so important what you’re talking about to recognize this. The power perception and the perception power index is all based on recognizing that perception is a combination of IQ, EQ, emotional quotient, CQ for curiosity quotient and for cultural quotient.

As you look at all these aspects, sometimes you can put yourself in somebody else’s shoes a lot more easily when you recognize perception is a process. My acronym for that is EPIC. It’s evaluate, predict, interpret, and correlate to come up with conclusions. There’s so much of our backgrounds and culture. It doesn’t matter if it’s religious or female or male. All these different factors of how we were raised can impact so much of what we think the other person’s thinking.

Again, it comes back to the assumptions and the curiosity thing. We assume that this is their problem. We assume all these things without asking. It all comes back to asking questions and building that empathy and our perspective. We all sit on this world in a different spot. I see you’re selling the Selling Well show from this angle but somebody sitting here might see it from here. When we think about that, it’s so easy for us to assume everybody else is thinking the same thing we’re thinking and they could be on completely different plane.

It’s such a great point. By the way, because of the forgetting curve with Herman Ebbinghaus, we constantly have to reinforce this or reengage this or recommunicate it, frankly. Whatever conversation we’re having because we’re also busy. What might resonate and stick to one person at one point in time. Particularly, he says, “You come and see them three weeks later.” You think they understand your value proposition to the market in your company and your product. They don’t even remember your name.

Curiosity And Leadership

You think, “We’ve already been through this.” I’m going to tell a very short story because it leads to curiosity and leadership. On chapter four in the book, curiosity and leadership but everybody in this podcast has heard very quickly. I was the worst sales manager ever in the year 2000. Pretty sure in the history of time, there was nobody worse because I’d been this very strong superstar salesperson, who gets promoted into being a sales manager.

I thought it would be Shangri-La. Now I’m responsible for eight people. All I want to do is tell them exactly what to do all the time. I want them to do it as I used to do it. They can’t do that, so I’m miserable. They don’t want to do that, so they’re miserable. In big companies, when you perform badly, you keep getting promoted. Within about a year, I got promoted to run a division that I knew about whatsoever.

I’m managing a team and every time I’m working with them, they say, “Here’s my situation, what should I do?” All I can do is go, “I don’t know. What do you think you should do?” Suddenly, management became easy. They were happy and engaged. They felt empowered and I started to slowly learn the business. Tell me a little bit about the chapter curiosity and leadership, some of the connections of these great leaders. What did you found there?

Leadership was such an interesting thing. When I had Francesca Gino on my show, who’s a big Harvard professor, who did the case study for curiosity in HBR article, which I love. Everybody should read that. We talked about how leaders think that they encourage curiosity if you research them, a lot of them. when you interview the people who work for them, they think, “Not so much.”

There’s a disconnect in leadership. What leaders want to know about curiosity when I work with them is how does it impact the bottom line? They want to know a lot of that data when I’m talking from their perspective. What is interesting now that ChatGPT is such a hot topic. If you type into chat and ask you know how does this help leaders? How does this promote the bottom line to have curiosity? It almost tells you like, “It’s intuitive, dummy.” When it comes back what it says to you it’s funny.

It helps with communication and emotional intelligence and emotional stuff. There’s not a lot of data out there, which I love that Francesca had some for leaders that we’re seeing some of this. I work with big companies like Novartis, Verizon, and LinkedIn. I speak and go around the world and talk to these companies and give this assessment. I get to talk to a lot of leaders and they all have a different way of promoting curiosity within the workplace.

At Verizon, they sent me back and I created these videos. These small little teaser videos that they play in their onboarding sessions. They can share the value of curiosity in a couple of minutes from me talking. They’d have an employee who was super successful and they give their story of how they became successful based on their curiosity. They create these little videos. They play them all throughout all the stores and all their onboarding sessions.

They’re sharing the culture of curiosity. That’s Verizon’s way of doing it. Novartis pays 100 hours of education a year to their employees. They all have different things that they do. It’s emulating what you want to see if you’re a leader. You have to ask the stupid questions. You mentioned Keith Krach and I’m on a lot of boards with him. I’m at the Krach Institute at Purdue. It’s a technology awareness company that he’s created and Global Mentor Network. He grade him on that one.

What I loved about Keith is his leadership style. That’s why I asked him to write the forward of the book. Whether he was the CEO at DocuSign or undersecretary in Washington, he’s stayed very humble. He doesn’t say he knows everything. He gets these giant boards. When I was at the board at DocuSign, there was like 250 of us. I’m with sharks and McDonald’s. I’m like, “What am I doing here?” In a way.

He gets media people, scientists, and technology. He gets all these people together and he doesn’t say he knows everything that everybody knows. He knows a lot more than he pretends because this guy’s the smartest guy I’ve ever met. He’ll be very humble about it and say, “I hire these people around me that know all this, who all are all knowledgeable in these areas.” Leaders need to recognize you can’t know everything and you don’t know what you don’t know and that comes up a lot. If you surround yourself with great mentorship, you can build your curiosity and utilize everybody else’s curiosity, your advantage.

What resonated with me about the chapter, Diane, was all of the amazing leaders Keith and others that you’ve interviewed. When they talk about some of the most important traits on leaders, curiosity ends up being one of the biggest ones. They’re not in meetings telling everybody what to do. As you know and I know now, but it’s a hard learning curve. Nobody capable wants to be told what to do. Generally, capable people want autonomy to grow themselves, to achieve, be creative, and have flexibility.

No one wants to be told what to do even in your earliest days selling for AstraZeneca. You wanted to be left alone. That’s how you phrased it. One of the important things, the best leaders are, they ask the right questions to challenge the team and elevate the team. They do have that core capability, experience and intelligence to assess to a certain degree what’s coming back because at some point in time, we want to be curious. We want to get facts, but eventually we have to make a decision and you raise that in the book as well. We can’t get paralyzed by curiosity where it’s analysis paralysis.

When I was speaking to that group, you reminded me. I had shared a story of Doug Connect and how he turned around Campbell Soup by asking. I teach so many courses where they have that case study in there. It’s because he took engagement and drastically improved it. Everybody was walking dead going to work. What he did was ask people about themselves and learn about them. He wrote them handwritten notes. He wrote 30,000 of them in his time there.

You should see his face when he talks about it. It was more than he expected but it completely turned around the culture. You can’t assume you know the answers to what motivates people. I’ve had more people offer me tickets to basketball games or dinners at night as a reward for my sales output. I want to go bed at 8:00. That’s not rewarding to me. When you’re talking to motivate people, you got to find out what they care about.

By the way, we’re cut from the same cloth. The early the bed, early raises the thing. It’s interesting you talk about something like that note what motivates people, even that note. We’ve done maybe 100 of these episode and wonderful people. Every conversation is great like this one. I had Stephen Covey booked for six weeks out or eight weeks out or something. First of all, I get his book in the mail. He sends me his book in advance. There’s a nice little inscription on the front and I thought, “That’s nice.”

Amazon doesn’t have to come to the house this week. The next thing, a week later, a letter comes in the mail. He said, “I’ve been watching what you’ve been doing. You’re knocking the ball out of the park. I can’t wait to have a great conversation.” I still have that. I kept that letter somewhere but it’s just this meaningful impact. It’s funny in this world, you bring it up quite a bit that gratitude matters so much to Millennials and so on and so forth. I’m not getting rid of that letter in the short term. That was such a nice thing. You can be darn sure I was as prepared as you can ever be for that episode.

I understand what you’re saying. I’ve had like Tom Hopkins and different people. When I was a kid here in Arizona, Tom Hopkins was like. I wasn’t even a kid. I was in college and whatever but he was so big. It’s so fun to see the Zig Ziglar type people and what their little things that they do. We can learn from so many of these sales gurus out there.

I attend a lot. I think a lot of salespeople don’t attend enough training. I’ve gone to Tony Robin’s things or whatever things. You go to a different things and you get bits and pieces because you can find, “This piece works for me. Maybe that works for this person.” That’s one thing I liked at pharmaceutical sales. Before they hired you, they made you ride in the car with 3 or 4 different salespeople. You spent three different days to decide if this is the job for you.

I remember the first person. She was like, “This is the worst job watching her.” I thought, “I’m never taking this job.” The second person, I’m like, “This is the best job ever,” because I hated the way she did things. It was like, “This is not how I could do this.” She was inefficient. It was awful watching her but I could take a couple things that she did. I could take a couple things that this guy did. You take them and you go, “This makes it right for me so that I’m most effective.”

All those folks you talked about, by the way, I love the testimonial from Tom Hopkins. Tom Hopkin is a total legend in professional sales with those same people from 30 to 40 years ago, but amazing things. One consistent theme from all of them become a lifelong learner. No one’s a know-it-all. You’ve got to be a learn-it-all. This is why the book is so important. Everybody’s heard me chat about books, but when we’re on the show and the joy the show is I have to read these books to prepare for the episode.

Sometimes I’m delighted. I got to call it out with Cracking the Curiosity Code. This is a fantastic book, folks. We didn’t have time to get into everything but Diane makes this very detailed fact-based and research-based connections between curiosity, motivation, leadership, engagement, intelligence, creativity, innovation, age, or maintaining health. What’s that connection? What holds you back from being curious? We start as infants where we’re nothing but curious.

Suddenly over time, it diminishes, how do we retrigger it, curiosity, and technology. In chapter seventeen, that’s where we talk about the Curiosity Code Index. An interesting thing to go through. We’ll have the links in this episode so you can go find it. This is a great book, folks. Diane, thank you the show. What a pleasure speaking with you.

Thank you, Mark. This has been so much fun. I love talking to salespeople. This is so important for everybody. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience here.

Thank you so much. How do people learn more about you? What’s the easiest way to connect with you?

The easiest way you can find me on social media is at Dr. Diane Hamilton. My website is DrDianeHamilton.com. For curiosity, you can go to CuriositCode.com, which is part of my main website. If you go to DrDianeHamilton.com, you can get there that way as well. The most important thing on the site is to start with the Curiosity Code Index because it goes along with the book. That’s the most important aspect of how you can develop your curiosity is the Curiosity Code Index. I hope they check that out.

Thank you, Diane.

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As always, the intention of the show is to increase the performance in the professionalism of B2B sales and improve the lives of professional salespeople in doing so. I know the conversation with Diane would have helped you in that regard. I also know I can get better at running this show and you’re the folks who can tell me how to do it.

If you like this show, please like and subscribe to it. That matters to us but if there’s things that we can be doing to make this show even more effective for you, please let me know. My email is MarkCox@inthefunnel.com. That’s my personal email that I checked. We love constructive criticism. Send us a note and give us some ideas on how to improve the show. Everyone who sends some ideas to us, get a response from me directly and thank you for doing that. In the meantime, I hope everybody continues to have a great time and good luck selling.

Important links

• DocuSign

• Ariba

• Cracking the Curiosity Code: The Key to Unlocking Human Potential

• Selling Well Show

• AstraZeneca

• RadiusAI

• Coaching.com

• Kodak

• Xerox

• Sony

• Agfa

• Jeff Hayzlett

• Salesforce

• Predictable Revenue

• CuriosityCode.com

• Can You Hear Me?

• Novartis

• Verizon

• LinkedIn

• DrDianeHamilton.com

• MarkCox@inthefunnel.com

• Facebook – Dr. Diane Hamilton

• Twitter – Dr. Diane Hamilton

• YouTube – Dr. Diane Hamilton

• LinkedIn – Dr. Diane Hamilton

About Diane Hamilton

Dr. Diane Hamilton is the Founder and CEO of Tonerra, which is a consulting and media-based business. She is a nationally syndicated radio host, keynote speaker, and the former MBA Program Chair at the Forbes School of Business. She has authored multiple books including Cracking the Curiosity Code: The Key to Unlocking Human Potential, and The Power of Perception: Eliminating Boundaries to Create Successful Global Leaders. She is the creator of the Curiosity Code Index® assessment, which is the first and only assessment that determines the factors that inhibit curiosity and the Perception Power Index, which determines the factors that impact the perception process.

Her groundbreaking work helps organizations improve innovation, engagement, and productivity. Thinkers50 Radar, considered the Academy Awards for Leadership, chose her as one of the top minds in management and leadership. She was named to Global Leaders Today's list of top leaders along with Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Sheryl Sandberg, LeadersHum included her on their list of 200 Biggest Voices in Leadership and in the Top 10 Most Powerful Women Leaders in HR.