John Barrows: High Performance Selling and Building a Business #212

Hello, hello everyone. This is your host, Akhil Jabbar, and welcome back to another episode of SaaS District. In today's episode, we'll be talking about high-performance selling and helping you build your business by mastering effective prospecting and connection building. Today we have our guest, John Barrows, joining us. John is the CEO of JB Sales Training, the go-to sales training for the world's top sales forces, dedicated to helping individuals become the highest paid sellers in any given room. Throughout his 25 years plus of experience, he has held many roles in the industry, acquiring extensive knowledge and expertise in sales strategies. Currently, he's the founder of his own sales training company, John collaborates with some of the best organizations in the world, such as Salesforce, LinkedIn, Amazon, and Google, while helping them rapidly grow companies worldwide. So welcome, John. Super excited to have you on the show today.

Hey, Akeel. Excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

So before we get into hearing some of your approach and, you know, techniques that you've helped, you know, many sales folks in organizations, you know, the first step a lot of maybe folks are thinking about is, Our sales team. And do I have— first of all, do I have an effective sales team? Whether they have it in place and maybe they need to think about reorganizing or reorganizing or structuring it differently, or they're looking to build out their sales team. What is, in your opinion, the initial steps involved in building an effective sales team? And can this also be applied to, say, other teams such as, you know, say, your marketing team? All right.

Yeah, that one's— I mean, I think a lot of companies right now are going through a reassessment of their sales org, especially in the tech tech space because of what has happened over the past, you know, 6 months here. You know, I think the, the economy took a hit, obviously, and then, you know, the whole ChatGPT and AI revolution is really shaking a lot of things up. So I think that a lot of orgs are, are kind of realizing that what got us here is not gonna be what gets us there, right? So, uh, you know, in the past 10 years, if you've been in SaaS sales, it— I'm not saying it's easy, sales is never easy, but it's been a lot easier than typical, right? Because you, you get We've overengineered the sales process and we have, you know, reps just cramming out. You've been able to get away with just blasting out templated cadence emails, setting up, you know, generic discovery calls with pretty much anybody with a pulse and asking band questions and droning through demos and then offering a massive discount. And unfortunately, I think we've, we've lost sight of the fundamentals. And that's why now that everything's retracting and sales reps are now, you know, being forced to actually sell, a lot of them are struggling. Struggling. And so I think it is time to reassess what, what our sales teams look like and also reassess the model. You know, I think the predictable revenue model that Salesforce really evangelized and was great, you know, 20 years ago, that was a fantastic thing for us as organizations because it was able to scale our sales teams, you know, really well. Like, and it's all about, you know, the segmentation of roles, right? The SDR, the BDR, the AE, CS, and everything else. But the problem with that model is it is great for us and it was great at growth times, but it's not great for the customer. And it's not great now because, you know, the average SDR or BDR stays in their role, I think, less than a year at this point. And so it worked when you could kind of bring in relatively inexpensive resources as an SDR and then grow them into your future AE. And, you know, but now that they're not staying around, it doesn't make a ton of sense. And the client gets really frustrated being handed off 5 times before they actually talk up to somebody who knows what they're talking about. And so I think that SDR— I'm sorry, the, the SDR model I think is in a lot of trouble right now, and I think companies need to reassess it quite a bit because most of what SDRs— and this is not their fault, by the way, I'm going to be very clear on this— most of this is leadership's fault for putting the SDRs in this position. But most of them are acting like robots, right? I mean, they're cranking out template cadencing emails. They almost never make a phone call. It's go, go, go, go, go, hit your 50 dials or cadences or whatever it is. And now AI can do a lot of that way better. You know, I used to, I used to roll my eyes at personalization at scale when I would hear Salesloft or Outreach talk about that, because I was, you know, I would say, look, just because you change somebody's name, title, and industry does not mean that you're personalizing your email. But now AI is legitimately doing some personalization at scale. And so I think, I think we're going back to full cycle sales supported by true ABM with AI. That is going to really look at true intent data and being able to reach out with the right message at the right time. So one of the things that a lot of organizations can do is look at their go-to-market strategy right now and say, is this model sustainable based on where we're going? And with the now no longer thankfully grow at all costs, you know, profitable growth is now back in vogue, heaven forbid. So with that, you know, you have to look at that scale piece and say, do we want to grow at all costs and therefore more fuel to the fire? fire, or do we want to take a more thoughtful approach to scaling our organization with tailored and targeted and really personalized approaches? Because if that's the case, then I think you do need to restructure a lot of things as it relates to the current model.

Yeah, that makes sense. So what would you say to folks who are looking to maybe start building their teams, thinking about, okay, now do I look at building what's been Working or now introducing AI for personalization. But there's also the, you know, the AE side, which is also important, which I think we, you know, we still haven't been able to replace yet, right?

No, we haven't. But again, I mean, AEs are acting like robots too. I mean, how I talk about the, you know, you know, yeah, prospecting is ridiculous. But also, you know, I'll tell you right now, my least favorite part of the entire sales process is the demo. I mean, Sales reps, I go through probably 3 or 4 demos on a weekly basis and every single one of them is exactly the same. You know, first of all, the AE gets on and basically asks the same questions as the SDR did, right? Because they didn't do any real good transition to it. And then they jump into a demo without really even qualifying to a certain degree. And we're still in this pitch world. It cracks me up that I still get companies reaching out to me saying, hey, John, you know, I, we really need to make them transition to solution selling, right? Because our reps product pitch too much. I'm like, I'm like, you do realize that Xerox invented solution selling back in the late '70s, right? Like, like, where have you been for the past 50 years? So, you know, but AEs, they drone through their PowerPoint or their demos without barely even asking any questions, and then they, they're gonna say, great, you know, let me send you a proposal. So I do think that there's, I think there's 2 options here to transition your sales org. One is rip and replace, quite frankly, and I'm, I'm not kidding. It's like, okay, you should kind of figure out what your 12 to what 24-month growth projections look like and what your plans are. And then look at your team to see— I would actually use some of the assessment tools that are out there to see if your team that you have right now is going to be able to do what you need them to do to achieve that 12 to 24-month plan. And if they are, great, and keep them and help transition. But if they're not, I mean, quite frankly, get a new team, restructure it. I do think the more reasonable approach to this is to leverage your existing team because a lot of companies have cut pretty hard right now. They've cut a lot of the fat and they're down to that kind of a core group that they think is gonna get 'em to that next level. I say we gotta give these people a chance and actually leverage them to figure out this transition of AI. So one of the recommendations I'm making to a lot of organizations right now is you almost wanna treat your sales team as like a sales lab, right? Where, you know how engineers have hackathons, right? Where they all get together and they kind of nerd out on a certain topic and figure out who can fix it.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think we should do the same thing with our sales orgs, right? So Friday afternoons, have a sales hackathon where, you know, from 2 to 4 o'clock, everybody gets together, SDRs, BDRs, AEs, everybody, and you pick a topic, right? I mean, Salesforce has this, their sales, their state of sales report came out recently and they said some, I think that's the data was something like, and this has been around for a while, but the new one is like 30, only 37% of a sales rep's time or 27% of their time is spent actually selling. The rest is admin stuff. And so if you look at all the admin pieces that a sales rep does. Well, each one of those can be addressed by AI. So if you take this sales hackathon approach and you say, hey, let's pick one of those areas. Now for 2 hours, we're gonna break up into teams and we're gonna let, we're, we are gonna set the parameters of what we're trying to accomplish here. And now whoever can find a solution to this and how to optimize that using AI and some of these free tools, you know, wins whatever, right?

Mm-hmm.

And then you have the reps working together to find solutions on very specific topics that's gonna, that are hopefully gonna alleviate some some of the administrative burden onto them and help them be more effective. So what you're doing there is you're— because look, all these reps know what's coming. Like every one of us are looking over our shoulders going, when is AI going to make me irrelevant? Right? And so instead of hiding from it or pretending like it's not happening, let's, let's open this up and then let's leverage the team to figure this out. Because there's not— I'm sorry, there's no leaders out there right now, especially in the tech space, tech SaaS space. There's no leadership that's going to be able to figure out what is the right tech solution AI-wise to implement in their organization. 'Cause most leaders are kind of aging out, right?

Yeah.

In the sense that they, they're not AI native. So, but these kids who are coming outta school, they have a lot more ability to connect with those AI tools and figure 'em out. So let's leverage what they're good at. And then when you do that, what you do is you increase employee satisfaction 'cause they're getting to play around with the tools that they know, you know, are out there anyways. You're actually saving time because instead of the, each individual rep going out there and trying to exp— you know, explore all these different things, you're actually doing it all together. And heaven forbid, if you actually find something that works, now you can reduce your cost on your tech stack and you probably reduce your complexity of your tech stack as well. So to me, it's a win-win situation that helps us transition through this mess that we're all in.

Yeah, I love it. That's a great idea. I mean, I don't know if anyone's doing that already, but I think if they're not, they should already. So you mentioned the part of prospecting. Let's talk a little bit about that. What is your recommended approach for Effectively reaching out, right? So I mean, there's one way of, you know, being mass prospecting, and then here you're talking about effectiveness and obviously, you know, from there increasing the likelihood of actually establishing a successful connection with your leads right now.

Yeah. I mean, again, the answer on this is it depends on what you're selling, right? You know, I mean, there's enterprise complex sales all the way down to SMB transactional. So assuming that it isn't too much SMB transactional, right? Because that to me, I think that's a lot that can be handled by marketing. If you're, you know, ACV is, you know, under $5,000, I got a hard time thinking that you should have a sales rep doing outbound for that, right? So, but if you're, you know, mid-market or selling an ACV above $5,000, then I think a lot of it is, you know, I go back to the sales rep, that full cycle sales and how sales isn't— it's almost like sales reps need to be mini marketers right now because it's not about that one call, that one email, that one whatever. It's about all of it, right? And it's how we orchestrate this to make positive impressions to the people that are on our target list. So first and foremost, I think every company needs to reset on their ICP, right? Their ideal customer profile. I think they need to take a step back and say, you know, let's reassess what is a true ideal customer profile today. Like not just in general, but today, right? And educate the team along the way while you do this. And a great way of doing this, for instance, is grab your, you know, your top 5 to 10 clients that are actually doing really, really well right now in this market and dissect the hell out of them, right? Like Literally, like just rip them apart and figure out every nuanced thing about why they're being successful, especially using your solution. And then you come up with that heat map of all those different characteristics. Then you know, and I tend to tier out my accounts: tier ones, tier twos, and tier threes. Now the tier ones, I think every company should have a list of every rep should have a list of top 25 accounts, right? And these are the ones we're going to follow on social listening tools. We're going to track on tools like Owler and Sales Navigator and Google Alerts and whatever else is out there. And I'm gonna be very thoughtful with those. Whereas the tier 2, I can do volume, but I'm gonna do volume in a very targeted way, right? Because if I get nuanced on my ICP, I can then run reports on variables, right? So, or, or, or characteristics. So I can say I wanna see every VP of sales in the SaaS industry under $100 million that uses Salesloft and Gong, right?

Mm-hmm.

So that group, that might only be a group of 20 or 30 accounts in my patch, but I can come up with messaging that is relevant to that group. Right? And I can send out 20 or 30 emails at a time if I want to. But with that breakdown, now you have to be that mini marketer, right? So you have to come up with a contact strategy that includes social, phone, email, video, all of the above. And, and not always saying, hey, what's the best way to get 15 minutes on your calendar? What's the best way to get 15 minutes on your calendar? Right? Like that type of crap. You gotta figure out how— it's almost like Gary Vee has that book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, right? Yeah. And the concept there is effectively add value, add value, add value, then ask, right? And so I think that's where we have to, you know, get on somebody's LinkedIn profile, add a comment on there that isn't, hey, I wanna sell you something. Connect with them without pitch slapping them immediately. You know, leave a voicemail to tell them that you just sent them an email or a voicemail, right? And really think through the story that you wanna tell that person and making sure that every touch has some type of value or at least relevance to the type of person that you're reaching out to.

Yeah.

You know, the last point I'll make on that is, you know, People look, the holy grail of prospecting is personalization and relevance, right? If you can be personalized and relevant, I think you tend to win the day. But if you force me to choose between personalization or relevance, man, I'm going relevance all day long. You know, just because you know I went to University of Maryland does not buy you any points these days. But yet I still get emails from reps saying, "Hey John, you know, I see you went to U Maryland. Go Terps!" And and then hard cut to. some piece of shit value proposition that has nothing to do with what I'd be interested in. So I'd much rather have you be relevant, being like, hey, John, you know, as the CEO of a sales training organization, how have you made the switch from onsite to remote delivery and retained your revenue streams? I think that's a very relevant question you can ask somebody like me. And guess what? You can ask that to 50 other CEOs of sales training organizations if you want.

Relevant personalization, right? I think that's it. Yeah, that makes sense. What is your— you mentioned this concept of, I guess, you know, we were talking about trying to stand out. So you mentioned a really good strategy on prospecting, but the other side is the mentality of your sales reps. And you use this concept, which is the 1% mentality. How do you— how does that kind of emphasize on this kind of continuous learning and improvement and improve your chances of, you know, growing as a sales rep?

Yeah, I mean, that's something I picked up from the book. What was it? Raving Fans, right? There's the Ken Blanchard's Raving Fans book. It talks about how, you know, know who you are, know what your customer expects from you, and then add 1% every day. And to me, it's, it's about— and Kobe Bryant actually has this mentality, or had this mentality too, when he talks about like, every day, can you go home and look at yourself in the mirror and say, am I better today than I was yesterday? And look, we're not always gonna say yes to that, but that's the goal, right?

Yeah.

And the way that I try to do this is, you know, and I, I'm working with a lot of sales reps right now to try to figure out how to shift this mentality because Look, sales is a brutal profession. Okay. Um, what, what used to make it somewhat tolerable was when we were all in the office together and we were all in the bullpen and we were all getting our asses handed to us together.

Right.

So if you had a bad day or a bad call or something like that, like you could, you could look at your colleague and be like, yo, did you hear that? Like, that was a train wreck. Like, you want to grab a drink? Right. And you could, you could commiserate with them where now most reps are sitting at home by themselves in their studio apartment. Right. And so if they have a bad day, You know, who are they going to commiserate with? Their cat, right? So now what I'm suggesting that reps do is is really look at sales as much more of a science than an art. You know, and when I say that, it's obviously both. Sales is a science and an art. But somebody asked me recently, you know, if you could go back and tell your 22-year-old self something, what would it be? Well, my number one answer to that was A/B split test everything you do. And I mean that, right? So like say say you're making cold calls to CIOs in healthcare. Okay, well come up with two different messages to CIOs. Healthcare and make 20 phone calls with this approach, make 20 phone calls with that approach and see which one yields a higher response rate. Objection handling. Write down an objection that you're getting smoked on right now and then just Google like best way of handling that objection. You'll find a bunch of techniques from guys like me, you know, putting up dumb stuff, blogs and whatever. So pick a couple of techniques that you think resonate with your style. And then the next 10 times that objection comes up, deal with it this way. The next 10 times, deal with it that way. By doing this, you're not only gonna figure out what works a lot faster, but you're also gonna stay a lot more motivated. Because if I were to tell you, hey, you know, make 50 dials today, right? And you made 50 dials and you got no meetings, you know, that's a demoralizing day. That is a brutal, brutal day.

Right.

But if I told you to make 50 dials and you made 50 dials, but instead of just making 50 generic cold calls, you came up with 2 very specific approaches to the same type of person, and you made 25 dials with this approach and 25 dials with that approach, and you still got no meetings, To me, that's actually not a bad day because you just figured out 2 approaches that don't work. And then tomorrow you come and try a couple new ones, and eventually you're going to start to figure things out. And, and if you can literally go home at the end of the day, 1%, and say, I, I learned something today, then you'll get through this and you'll get through it a lot better than most.

So that's where the kind of 1% improvement happens, right? Because you don't know if you got better if you did 50 of the same phone calls versus, okay, I've done these 2, they don't work. Now you Yeah, repeat it tomorrow. And that's the 1%, right?

Yeah, that's the whole definition of insanity too, right? Like, if you're just gonna keep smashing your head up against the wall with, all right, I'm just gonna work harder here with the same stupid message that I've been delivering and the same generic pitch that I've been calling for the past, you know what I mean? Like, that to me is ridiculous.

Yeah. How do you define sales triggers? I think Andy mentioned that as well.

Yeah, triggers are just things that happen in accounts that I can use to personalize, right? So this is, this is the personalization side of it where, you know, from a business standpoint, I mean, you know, the common triggers, you know, open up, uh, launching a new product, opening up a new office, merger and acquisition, you know, those type of things. And then from an individual standpoint, it's like, you know, your post on LinkedIn, your, your, your podcast, your, you know, um, you know, a quote that you said in a magazine or something like that, or something you shared on social. And really the, the main goal is to be able to reference that and then, then make it relevant to why you're reaching out to that person. So it's, you know, effectively you'd be like, hey, you know, Akeel, I, I've been, you know, keeping myself updated on your business. Actually noticed what you just did this, right? Company did this, whatever. You just said that, and I was— I wanted to reach out to you because, because, you know, a lot of our clients where that thing happens, they actually leverage our solution this way, and I thought it'd be worth the conversation. You know, love to talk to you about it.

Yeah.

So it really is looking for a reason to reach out to somebody. That's the main goal, is that every single time you reach out to somebody— and I don't care if it's an existing account, a new account, it doesn't matter— you got to have a reason, right? And, and, and the last thing, and I, and I hope nobody on— I know a lot of people do this, and I beg if there's anything anybody gets out of this conversation that we're having right now, I beg people never to say the phrases touching base and checking in ever again in their lives. They are 2 of the most meaningless phrases in sales. It means there's absolutely no reason for your call. So therefore there is no reason for me to talk to you. So that's why I finish, like every time I'm making a phone call, I try to finish the sentence, the reason for my call is, because if I cannot finish that sentence, I shouldn't be making the phone call.

Right. You have a very, very clear reason for why you're reaching out. Yeah.

And triggers our reasons.

Yeah, good point. So, you know, we talked a little bit around, you know, using AI. I guess that's the biggest kind of, you know, topic in today's environment. Now, how are you kind of using it? And do you have any kind of favorite tools or methods that you're implementing it and have seen success that maybe you can share with our audience that also includes what we talked about, which is, you know, the personalization or a little bit more the relevancy Right.

Yeah. I mean, look, I'm no AI expert. I don't think anybody really is these days, especially in the sales realm. And I've heard a lot of people talking about how they've been able to be super efficient with it, but I have yet to hear a lot of people talk about the results they're driving with it. So I think we're a little far off on people really seeing, you know, the true impact of this. But there are some out there. I mean, for me, for me, what I'm doing is it's all about practical application.

Yeah.

It's kind of like the— what I was talking about with the, with the, um, sales hacker, you know, sales hack approach or hackathon approach. You know, I'm looking at different areas of my process and, you know, I'll do it manually and then I'll do it in ChatGPT to see if it can either be done faster or more efficient, whatever, right? And if it's close, then I, then I move towards the AI version of it because, you know, it's just going to get better and better the more I train it. But, you know, Like, I'll do a quick example right now. ChatGPT, and everybody knows this at this point, is the timestamp of the internet from 2021, right? So it's good for historical stuff and maybe some opinions, but it's not great for up-to-date things. So that's why I'm using Bing and, you know, Bard. Bing's the one I've started to play around with more recently because of, you know, its access to the internet actually, right?

Mm-hmm.

And, and so, you know, You know, example, instead of me going on a company's website and doing research on them to try to figure them out before a meeting or before I prospect into them, I'll just go on Bing and I'll say, hey, you know, what's the— tell me what this company's all about. You know, what does this company do? And then I'll get curious. And I think that's one of the things that I encourage people to do is not to look to these AI tools for the answer, but use it to pique your curiosity and educate yourself. Right? So, for instance, you know I have a meeting coming up here this week with a pretty high-level company and a pretty high-level executive, and I'm using Bing to prep for it. So, you know, I'll take their 10K annual report and say, "Hey, could you please summarize for this for me?" And what are the key takeaways as it relates to sales and growth? Right? Because I do sales training. Tell me what this company does, and then based on what it tells me it does, I keep asking questions. All right. Well, how is that relevant to me? Is there anything that, you know, they need that sales training could help impact with what their growth objectives are? Hey, this person, you know, this person is in this persona. Help me understand what these personas care about right now. Right. So I used to do, for instance, I used to do this report every year of the top priorities of the top executives in the top industries. And we develop, we give it to all our members, you know, of our membership. And it used to be this great resource and still is. And I would spend like $3,000, $4,000 on it and it's tabbed out. I mean, you pick the industry like, you know, oil and gas, manufacturing, tech, SaaS, everything broken down. CEO priority 1, 2, 3. CFO priority 1, 2, 3. So on and so forth.

Right.

And the concept there is CIOs in the healthcare industry have different priorities than CIOs in manufacturing. And so this— every time we would drop this, we drop it early in the year and people are like, oh, this is bananas, right? It's a great resource. Well, now I can do that on the fly, right? So I can just go into Bard or ChatGPT or again, more, more the recent ones and Bing and say, hey, what do CFOs in the financial services industry care about today? Like, what are their top priorities. And, you know, and, and especially as it relates to AI or something like that. Okay, cool. What would, you know, how are those priorities relevant to my solution? Put in my website, that type of thing, right? Now I'm now meeting with the CFO from this company. You know, what are some great— what are some good discovery questions I can ask this person, right? And I get into it. I'm like, okay, and what are— and I even, even add more, right? What discovery questions that focus on the impact of their sales, you know, challenges. Could I talk? Could I ask? And, you know, some are better than others, but it's like, oh, that's actually a really good question. All right, I'll put that one on the list. And then another area is, I, you know, role play. You know, I'm going into a meeting and I, I train ChatGPT to say, hey, look, here's the scenario. You are a CFO of financial services company in this market for this type of thing. I'm now meeting with you. We're at the discovery stage of the sales process. My goal is to get this, you know, get a meeting with blah, blah, blah, right? Let's role play this conversation and I want you to be direct but not very open with me on some of your information and I wanna go back and forth, right? So you set the stage.

Right.

And then you role play it out. It's like, hey, you know, and you ask the question and you see how it goes. You tell it to give you an objection, you handle the objection, right? So these are all, you know, real simple things that I think we can do to start to get used to using these tools. Because that's the key. It's just if you're not starting to use them, at least you're going to be left behind, period. There's no question at this point.

Right. And by using that, it seems like you just become a lot more prepared and it seems like just more productive in terms of your sales process. Now, this is kind of the— leads into kind of the last question I have, which is, you know, which a lot of sales reps or maybe some of the best ones are really good at managing their time and from there are then able to, I think, lead to better productivity. Do you have, you know, so you mentioned this method as a way of leveraging tools to help you become more productive. Is there any other ways that you've seen that you can suggest to some of our reps to help them become, overcome some of these time management challenges in sales and then from there kind of improving their productivity?

You know, I think the— it's tough, right? First of all, I recommend everybody putting time on their calendar to play around with the tools like the AI tools instead of just haphazardly trying them out, because you can go down a rabbit hole real quick with all these AI tools. I mean, there's been times where, you know, 3 hours later, I, you know, I went into Bard to start writing an email, right? And 3 hours later, I'm, you know, still down the rabbit hole of AI seeing what it can do, and I haven't sent the email yet, right? So I think, you know, just structuring a little bit of time every day, right? 30 minutes a day or something like that to go in and, you know, you just, just maybe just Google or ChatGPT it, right? It's funny, people say, John, you know, what's the best way to get involved and start using ChatGPT? I go, you know what? That is a fantastic question to ask ChatGPT.

Okay.

Like literally go into ChatGPT and say, I'm a 47-year-old man who sells sales training. I'm the CEO of my own sales organization and this is my setup. Like, what's the best ways that I could start using ChatGPT? to start making my life more effective, right? I mean, it'll tell you, it'll walk you down the path. And so I think you just pose up, you know, you pose the challenge, you look at it and you say, hey, this is what I'm doing that I know can be more effective, you know, and then just play and then spend 30 minutes a day asking it that question. Like, how can I be more productive doing this? You know, this is my current process. How can I do this more effectively? So I think that's one way. I think the other way is, you know, just time management. You had said earlier that summer reps are great at time management. I actually disagree with that. I think most Sales reps are miserable at time management.

The good ones, like the best ones.

Yeah, the good ones are, but the good ones are like, I think the good ones, it's almost like, you know, you should read 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, right? Which is, you know, we are so stuck in this, you know, instant gratification world and everything needs a response and immediate, I gotta do this. Like, that is none of that. I mean, good Lord, my, I went on a vacation recently and I do this every time for my out of office. And my out of office is always the same thing. Thanks for your email. Since I'm not an emergency room doctor, I'm guessing your email can wait until I get back. Thanks for your email. I'll, you know, I'll hit you up when I get back. And that's it, right? And it's basically saying like, we sell shit, okay? Like, we are not brain surgeons. We are not emergency room doctors. If a client doesn't get, you know, the send me information email immediately after you hang up the phone, they're not gonna die, okay?

Exactly.

So I think one thing that I would suggest most reps do is stop putting— stop proactively setting expectations with the client. Instead, ask them. So easy example, when somebody says, send me information, most of us will stop everything that we're doing and send that nice custom piece of information like it's never— like we've never sent it before, right?

Mm-hmm.

Well, why not just ask the client, hey, when do you need to see that information? Is it okay if I get it to you by the end of The day, right? Same thing with proposals. People are like, yeah, John, why don't you send me a proposal? Be like, oh my God, okay, I'll get it over to you by the end.

It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

When do they need the proposal and why?

Right?

And control the process a little bit more. So I think a lot of it just has to, you know, look, the, the, the summary of time management comes down to goal setting, prioritization, and focus. If you can set good goals, prioritize those goals, and then focus for a period of time, you can be pretty reasonable at time management. And then, then once you do that, then you start to find ways that AI can, you know, do some of that stuff maybe for you, or at least do it a little bit better. And hopefully you can start to create some efficiencies that way as well.

Yeah, it sounds like a good place to kind of look at the AI tools is more like, yeah, almost like your mentor or your life coach, right? It's like you're not sure about a problem, you know, and it kind of gives you a more kind of a plan and a strategy on what to do, right? And kind of move forward.

Absolutely. I think that's the way to look at it is, I mean, I guarantee you we are all going to have a personal AI assistant within the next 2 to 5 years at Most. Yeah, I, I did that. I mean, my daughter already has one. It's, uh, you know, Snapchat. On her Snapchat, she can— it's her friend, you know what I mean? She asked it, hey, how you doing today? Oh, I had a great day, you know, how you been? I mean, we're all gonna have that, so yeah, might as well start diving into it.

Yeah, and start training it now. Yeah, yeah, they train it to train it back to you. Yeah, yeah, that's cool. Well, uh, John, this has been fantastic. Uh, I would love to kind of switch gears here and understand we're gonna kind of go Towards the more personal rapid-fire questions, if that's okay with you.

Yeah, sure.

Fire away. All right, let's do it. So John, what's what activity you enjoy outside of work that you say gets you into flow state?

Get me into flow state? Well, how how HR friendly do you want this podcast to be?

Whatever.

I smoke a lot of weed, to be very direct with you. Not a lot, but I use I use weed to get into my flow state. So because here in Massachusetts. since it's legal and I'm a, you know, I'm a medical marijuana holder, there's all sorts of different strains that can get you into different zones, you know, like focus versus, you know, creative, creative and those type of things. So I've got it, I've got it dosed out where I know which strains allow me to do certain things and it shifts my brain into a different gear. So quite frankly, you know, smoking weed is, is definitely how I get into my flow state.

It's a good, it's a good answer. Um, what's one piece of You wish you had known, and if you can go back, you would tell, let's say, your 20-year-old self?

You know, I think the split test, the A/B split test everything, is, is something I wish I had paid attention to because I was doing the activity early anyways. You know, I was making— for early in my career, you know, I remember I made $400 a week, you know, for 5 years in a row, and that was just pure effort. You know, that was just me. I knew I couldn't control much, but I did— I knew what I could control, and that was my effort. And I knew I also wasn't that smart compared to some of the other teams and reps and everybody else. So I just figured I'd got— I was gonna outwork 'em. And, and I did. But the problem, it was just brute force, right?

Right.

So looking back on it, I'd still probably make the 400 dials, but instead of making 400 generic cold calls, I'd probably come up with 4 different approaches and I'd do 100 of each and see which one yielded a higher response rate and keep tweaking. So that, that would be something tactical. You know, the other one is, is really, I think I, I've always been this way, but I think it's, it's, it's more important now than it whatever, is to go through the values exercise of really understanding what your core values are. Because once you understand what your core values are, I call it your decision stack. It's something that you can then use to make better decisions, right? Because you look for opportunities like jobs and companies that align with your value. You look to hire people that share your values and all that. So, it makes life a lot easier when your values are aligned with what you do and who Absolutely.

What are some of the biggest challenges you're currently facing, you currently face in order to continue your firm, which is, you know, JB Sales Training? Meaning what keeps you up at night these days, if any?

Uh, a lot. Yeah, look, what happened over the past 6 months had a significant impact on me and my business, right? I mean, 95%, almost 100% of my clients are in the tech and the SaaS space, and pretty much you know, Q1, it fell apart. And so we had to restructure the business. I'm back to being on my own with JB Sales and my chief operating officer. And so for me now, it's kind of resetting on how do I scale, right? Because the challenge in my space, and especially when you do what I do, is when I was getting into this world of sales training, you know, at first I wanted to be a business, right? So I was coming up with a name and a lot of people said to me, John, if you're gonna get into sales training, you gotta brand yourself, right? And this was before personal branding was a thing. And so, and I did, and I'm glad I did, 'cause I have a, you know, a pretty strong personal brand at this point. The problem is, is as you try to scale an organization based on what you do, like my training and everything else, it's hard to have somebody else deliver your training.

Mm-hmm.

At the level and the quality that, that you want and, you know, what your customers expect of you. So hiring people is, is really a challenge. So I'm actually looking at AI to, to effectively replace me. replace me. Like, I'm actually going pretty deep with creating an AI coach, uh, John Barrows AI coach with its own LLM, um, with only my content on it and the stuff that I approve. So you can have 24-hour access to me in any language. And I think that's the way I'm gonna be able to, you know, not be the guy who has to get up and do training every single day to get paid. Um, you know, I was there for a couple years there. I had kind of hit that euphoric state that most entrepreneurs look for where the business was really running without me. And without the need for me. But then it all fell apart and, you know, I got to go back to figuring it out again. So, you know, it's just reinventing. I think a lot of this is, you know, agility is the number one competitive advantage anybody has right now. And thankfully I'm pretty agile and I can make pivots and adjustments and kind of do what I need to do to survive here. So that's— but, you know, scaling and not being the guy is probably my answer to the what keeps me up at night. Right now, nice.

I like that. Yeah, I mean, you got to be adaptable in this this market for sure. I guess always. Yeah. John, who or what are some of the best three resources? This can be books or mentors or just people you follow in the space who you say have been most instrumental to your success over these last you know decade or so.

You know, I think well, I mean mentor-wise, my my mentor one of my mentors is Jeff Hoffman. He's the original founder of the company called Basho Technology that was the training that I took and loved. And, um, you know, he's— he has MJ Hoffman, I think it's MJ Hoffman and Associates or something like that. But I look to him a lot, right? He's, he's about 7 years my senior, so he's kind of been there, done that on the trajectory that I've been on. So every time I'm looking for advice or something like that, I'll, I'll grab him and we'll kind of talk through some stuff. So he's been huge in my growth. Um, uh, you know, another resources-wise to stay up to date on everything, for instance, I use, I use Feedly, right?

Mm-hmm.

So F-E-E-D-L-Y, it's the RSS aggregator. So I put in, you know, for, for people who don't know what it is, it's you can go into Feedly, say there's like 4 or 5 different sales blogs you like reading. Well, usually you have to go to 4 or 5 different sales websites to read those blogs or get 4 or 5 different emails. With Feedly, you can create a folder called sales blogs and you can dump all your sales blogs in there. So for me, that's my morning paper. You know, I follow— I find like the thought leaders in all the, in all the areas that I want to learn about. So AI and, you know, tech and all these different things. And I create folders in Feedly. And then in the morning when I'm reading my morning paper, if you will, that's my morning paper. Right? So I'm scanning through headlines and I'm just kind of staying up to date on what some of the trends are. And I'll say, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk, you know, he's actually been not a direct mentor. I've met him before. I've actually gone to his 4D session. But, you know, I don't know him. But the thing I like about Gary is he, he usually stays 5, 6, 10 steps ahead of what's happening right now.

Yeah.

And so I don't want to stay that far ahead, but I see where he's looking and then I kind of boil that down to reality. And it helps me stay at least one or two steps ahead of the rest of the market. So you know I tend to follow a lot of what he's what he's doing. Yeah, so those are those are some. I mean, I'm not a big reader. I don't like reading much. You know, I like to my actually and one more is quite frankly my podcast. And I'm not saying that to promote it. I'm saying that because the reason I started my podcast is you know I don't learn by reading. I don't learn by sitting in a class. I learn by talking to people who are smart. smarter than me. So the main reason I, I started my podcast was to have access to people who are smarter than me and learn out loud. And so what I do is I get a lot of, you know, experts in the industries and stuff, topics that I'm really interested in, and I bring them on my podcast. And I'm just genuinely curious, and I just ask them as many questions as I can to learn. And hopefully that translates to the audience.

Love it. Um, John, what does success mean to you today? Whether personally, business, financially, life, I guess there's no right answer.

Yeah, no, success is my daughter's happiness. That's success to me. How old's your daughter? She's 12. And so I always tell my daughter, when somebody asks you, what do you want to be when you grow up? There's really only one answer to that, in my opinion, and it's happy, right? And so for me, my long-term success, my dad My dad, he passed a couple of years ago and I think he was 82 years old. And if I can make it to 82 years old and see my daughter happy and successful in whatever she defines as success, I will have lived an incredible life, in my opinion.

Yeah.

So for me, success personally, in addition to that, is being able to do what I love. And, and make money doing it and support my family while I do it. So, you know, that, that's kind of success to me. I'm not— I don't need to be a multimillionaire. I don't need to be an IPO, you know, all that stuff. And, you know, I'm not, I'm not cheap, if you will. I'm not trying to live a cheap lifestyle. I definitely want to enjoy, you know, the, the finer things in life, no question about it, but not, not um, not to, to take away from, you know, the happiness of, of my family, right? So like, I don't want to be working my entire life to, to make as much money as possible for what reason, right? I mean, I think right now, going back to values, you know, my 2 top values and my core values are family first and everything. That's number one. And number two is freedom, right? I mean, money is, you know, you've heard a lot of people say this and I believe it, which money doesn't buy happiness, right? But it, but it, it allows for freedom. And freedom to me is happiness, right? So if I can do what I want, when I want, with whoever I want, that to me is happiness, and therefore that's success.

Yeah, it's interesting, right? I'll say that what kind of subconsciously drives all of our driving force in life and to want to produce is when you have kids, it just changes everything, right? Everything is driven by how do I give the best? And everything you do, I think, is driven by what can you provide But I think as a man, I think we're just built like that. We're providers, right? I think we have to understand that. But yeah, and the challenge there is— sorry, the challenge you say there, which is about seeing where's the limit of that freedom that you want to buy, right? Because it's endless. And I guess there's no— it's hard where to understand where to stop, where to draw the line, because it can continue forever. You think you can provide endlessly.

Yeah. And I think that's the balance too. I think I remember, you know, my wife and I, when we had our daughter, you know, we actually consciously looked at each other and said, look, we Because so many of our friends got lost in their kids. All of a sudden, they didn't even have a life, and everything was about the kid, and their relationship suffered because of it. My wife and I were very deliberate in the sense that we looked at each other and said, no, you and I are one, right? As far as, like, we have to be right. And our daughter is one, A, but we are one. Because if we're miserable because we're only focused on her, and if our relationships suffer, it's going to impact her. And so that's where we made a commitment to make sure that we were good as a couple and we, you know, knew what our priorities were and then supported our daughter along the way. Because it is easy to get lost, you know. As much as my daughter is my priority, you know, I don't believe that, you know, I think too many parents these days are going way overboard with their focus on their children, you know what I mean? Like, they go to every practice, they go to every game, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know about you, I mean, I'm 47 years old, my parents barely showed up to shit, you know what I mean? They showed up to games every once in a while, but, you know, Yeah.

I had to walk home from practice.

You know, and it was like, and they could care less. Like, they'd just kick me out of the house and say, be home by dinner type of thing. So, you know, and these kids aren't allowed to figure it out anymore. You know, they're overprocessed, they're overstructured, they're overdone, and none of them have the ability to actually have critical thinking or anything like that. So it is a balance.

Yeah, parents do all the thinking for them or deciding for them.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm hearing, you know, this has been going on for a while, but I'm hearing Stories of like, you know, parents going on interviews with kids, like for a job out of college. Like, we're like the parent, and if the kid doesn't get the job, the mom calls the boss and says, "Why didn't you hire me?" Like, are you shitting me right now? Like, I would lose my. If my parents did that, I would be so mortified. Like, I don't even know what would happen. So I don't know. It's just you're seeing some unfortunate things these days.

I'm waiting for the day where I schedule a podcast and the parent is on the podcast. Yeah.

Exactly right.

That's funny. Cool, John. This is, this has been great. I enjoyed this. Um, where, where can, you know, go ahead, share whatever you'd like. Where are the best place for people listening in to get in touch with you, learn more about you or your podcast?

Yeah, I appreciate it. So, you know, the easiest way is actually just check out my, my website, uh, jabarrows.com. So the letter J, B as in boy, A-R-R-O-W-S.com. That's where you're gonna find everything like my background and, you know, kind of why I do my why and values and vision and that type of thing as well. And all the social channels. You can always hit me up on LinkedIn. This sounds like a humble brag, but it's more of a pain in the ass than anything else. I can't connect with anybody on LinkedIn because I've hit the 30,000 limit on connections, but you can still follow me and email me there. But actually, Instagram is probably where I do most of my one-on-one coaching and consulting with people for free. So, my handle is John M. as in Michael Barrows, and you can hit me up there anytime. Least is my Make It Happen Monday podcast. And we're on the HubSpot Podcast Network, so you can find us there or iTunes and Spotify and all that stuff too.

Okay, awesome. We'll add your links to the show notes if you guys want to check them out. Say make sure to check out John and say hi from our side. So thanks again, John. Appreciate you joining today.

All right, Akhil, I appreciate you having me on.

Cheers. Thank you all for watching this episode and Joining SaaS District today. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit the bell for future episodes where we interview top leaders in the SaaS industry. If you're a SaaS company looking to grow and unlock the true value of your business, get in touch with us at Horizon Capital, and myself or one of our consultants will provide a free assessment to help you get there and hit your goals. If you have any feedback or suggestions for this podcast, please comment down. down below and help us improve our content for you all. Thanks again and see you on the next one.