A Different Conversation with David Morris

Business brain, episode 471 for Wednesday, August 2, 2023. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take a topic or a couple of topics and run them through our business brains so that we can tune our business brains and make them a little better so that we can all keep living that char life. Sponsors for this episode include miro.com podcast where you get to go and get your first three Miro boards free forever, and also Zinch at financing that works.com where you can get them to waive their $250 application fee just because you're a business Brain listener. We'll talk more in depth about those two things in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

In Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. I'm excited about the show today. We've got a interview, Dave, that we haven't had anyone on the show for a while, and this guy's. I think he's awesome.

I say we get right to it, man. How about you?

Yeah, yeah, let's do it. This will be a little surprise, but it's related to a recent episode that was very popular and you don't want to miss it. So let's get right in and talk to David Morris. Hey, Dave, I'm sure you recall a few weeks ago, we did a show that I titled the time to learn your ABDs.

Oh, I remember this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's about being different. And I. I got the impetus to talk about this topic, but a tweet by David Morris that and his thesis here is that, you know, in sales, being different is better than being better. And so the after we did the show, I reached out to David, you know, hey, thanks. You know, and David's first response, like, you should have had me on the show. I could have talked about it. And so I'm like, all right, so I'm really happy to have David Morris here today. You've probably seen his, you know, we've linked his Twitter account in the show notes. David is the president and CEO of Neo Insulation. He's got a ton of followers on LinkedIn, ton on. On Twitter, or X as I have to force myself to call it. But, David, thanks so much for being here with us today, man.

I'm happy to be here. Always means something to me when something I write goes out there, connects with somebody, and they want to have a conversation about it. So thank you guys for having me. Yeah, yeah.

It really connected with me a lot. And one of them that really might be your first topic. And I don't, I don't want to go over all of them just individually again, but because we did it a couple weeks ago. But where did this impetus to be different come from? And, and then follow up the, then the motion to share it on X or Twitter with all your followers.

You know, I think like many things in life, things emerge out of desperation. And you know, that that would probably be the best explanation there. My, my sales story kind of my sales journey started very almost haphazardly. So I grew up in a home where my dad's more or less been in professional sales for. He owns some different businesses and then he, then he's been in professional sales for, for most of my life. So I was around that world. But my background was kind of varied in a bunch of different things. A lot of it training and development, public speaking related. And then I transitioned over into more operations management type roles and I, I took on this role, the company where I as a chief operating officer. And so my job was supposed to be really to kind of build out a sales team. I was going to figure out I know how to lead. People didn't know exactly how to do that. And just by a series of circumstances, we had a distressed region of our company that the guy who was leading that region and doing sales left. And I was at. I really just started in my role trying to figure out he was saying, shut down the region, shut down the region. Nobody wants to buy here. And, and just to be bluntly honest, I, I didn't trust the guy. But I also didn't know that he was wrong. And so, so I knew we were at this critical point where if I hired the wrong salesperson there to take that role, then we would be dead in the water there. And so series of factors, I just decided, you know what, I'm going to start going and doing sales there. And so I, I had like most people do a, just a, a bunch of noise in my head about what that meant. You know, just kind of a list of expectations and it was things like giving good pitches to people and, and you know, dressing well, being, being sharp and throwing my CEO or coo, sorry I was at the time a COO card around for people like, let me tell you, I'm important. I'm the guy who can get things done for you. And, and then this other piece of like, you know, my father has always said, which I think is absolutely true, that sales is all about relationships. But in my mind what that, what that meant to me was I needed to be friends with people and we needed to go out to lunch and we needed to, you know, do all of kind of the cliche, you know, deals are done on the golf course kind of thing. And, and there's certainly some truth to those aspects. But I went into this saying I don't really know what I'm doing, but I know that these are the things that are part of it. So in the context in which I'm in sales is a lot of driving around and more or less like door knocking, kind of cold call door knocking. So I'm. Because the, the buyer that we sell to very often is kind of a field level management person, not really a corporate office person. And so I'm driving around knocking on doors and talking to people and I'm, I'm kind of living out this like I'm the important person here to talk to you. Here's who you're dealing with. You know, trying to dress night, all this, all this stuff and present yourself well.

Yeah, exactly.

And you know, trying to get people to go to lunch. I mean kind of all these things. And it's working on one hand. Just the first few months I'm figuring out that the guy that told me this region was dead was wrong. I'm talking to a bunch of kind of solid prospective customers who have never heard of us, never heard of our product interested, having good meetings. And so I'm thinking like, man, I am crushing this. Like, I am really good at this. The problem is nobody's buying from me and.

Building awareness. But you're not building, but you're not building a bottom line.

Yeah. So deals aren't closing. It's like there's all this momentum but no payoff and all this work to no payoff. And then sort of phase two happens. I get through this round of initial meetings and now I'm doing a lot of follow up calling people, emailing people, and nobody's responding. And, and I, I mean I literally was like, I've been good in my life at everything I've ever done. Generally speaking, not so much athletics, but vocationally, like, whatever. I've done a lot of different stuff and I found a way to be at least competent in everything that I've done.

Sure.

And, and I was like, I suck at this and I don't know what I'm doing wrong and I'm having, I'm having a bad time. And I was, I mean I was almost like in a level of despair. I, I used to, I, I would I would fly out to this region every other Monday morning and be there for four or five days and then back in the office where I live for a week doing my other responsibilities. And I would, I would get to the airport on Monday mornings when I was flying out and I would have to like journal out a pep talk for myself. I'm not kidding. Like, like, I mean, I was, I was struggling and so, so then I ended up having that's.

And that's a really good, like, just to highlight that. That's a good tip for anybody listening. If you're struggling, give yourself a pep talk. It sounds crazy until you do it and then you realize the power in that.

It works. And I.

Yes, it does.

Absolutely it works.

It kept me going, but I was not seeing results. And that's when I just happened to sit next to somebody. I was. When we got on the plane, I could hear the guy on the phone. I obviously knew he was some kind of sales training coach. I was a little bit too embarrassed. I kind of. To talk to him and I kind of wanted to talk to him. And so I kind of made this agreement. If he talks to me, then I'll talk to him. And then about halfway through the flight, he, he chatted with me and I just sort of dumped all this on him.

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Yeah, yeah. And I just like, oh, here's everything that's going on and I don't know what I'm doing. And, and he, he gave me a few pieces of advice and then I've actually been engaged with him for the last four or five years since then. So it's ended up being a long term relationship. But, but one of the things he said to me was he started unpacking that in sales, being different is better than being better. And that, and so that concept always stuck with me. And, and so, so the, the underlying part of it is that certainly when you're selling to people, it's not just you and the person you're selling to in the room, it's, it's you, the person you're selling to and everybody who's sold to them before in the past. And so, so that's a really good point. So they have an expectation. They have a script that's going in their minds. And, and they, they have. They've had a lot of guys coming in, looking really nice and saying, I'm the guy that can help you, and throwing down their important businesses. Yeah. And taking them out to lunch and doing all these things. And they've been let down by it. Right. And. And they've got defenses.

Yeah. What. What makes you different than the last four guys who.

That's right. Yeah, that's right. And so. So I just started trying to think about, how can I do this differently? What did these people really need from me? So I started doing some simple things which were addressing at the level that those guys did. I didn't tell them what my title was. I didn't give them my business card. I just started dropping all of those things. And I started realizing that this was so hard for me to swallow, but when I did, it just shifted. Some things for me is that they didn't want to be my friend. They wanted me to solve problems for them, and if I could make their life easier, then they would buy from me. And so that's what I started trying to focus on. For me, and then for our, our sales team as a whole, as we started building and developing, that was we. We don't win by giving some great presentation and, you know, looking apart and, you know, taking people out to dinner. We win by. By taking things that are a concern for people and taking them off their plate. Right.

And I, I say my sales business changed dramatically when we started prioritizing one thing. And we tell our, our. Our customers, you know, our job is to make your job as easy as possible. And once we started living that, yeah.

Everything opened up for us. That's the key. Once you start living that. Right.

You can't just say it.

Right.

You have to live it.

Well, I think he alluded, like when, when you say in here, it's like, I believe in what I'm selling. Our product is amazing. I've got years of customer feedback to confirm it. And you're like, and that's a problem. And, you know, instead of focusing, assuming everybody needs what you sell and, and this kind of thing, but focusing on questions and coming back to that, how you're going to solve a problem for them, that's huge.

And, and the, the other thing that just shifted my world for me is the idea that not everyone does need what I'm selling. And when I sit down with somebody, I Don't actually know until we've had a conversation. I've understood their world whether or not that's the case and that, that it's a perfectly good outcome from that meeting to determine that they don't need it. Yeah. Because, because for both of us that saves me. Because the cause, the death, the death, like the emotional death of the sales person is the, is I'm interested. But then I can never get in touch with you again. I can never follow up with you again. It goes off into a black hole. You don't know what happened. You don't know do I give up and stop. But, but I read all these and you internalize it, right? Yeah.

You think it's you, you think, what did I do wrong with this guy? You know?

Yeah. I don't want to give up too early. I read these statistics that say it's 10 to 12 times or 20, whatever, you know, I've only done three. I mean you're doing all this internal and while you're doing that a, it's kind of self defeating and you're losing momentum. And so that's the thing that I always tell people that I talk to anytime about sales, you know, friends and other companies who are trying to figure out how to work with their sales team is that sales comes down to two things. Mindset and momentum. Right. And so, so your, your mindset has to be right as you're going into, into any kind of sales interaction. You have to understand it's okay if I don't get this sale. No, no. Is a good outcome. You know, not finding out.

Yeah.

Fit is a good outcome.

Yeah, that's a great outcome. You just save yourself a bunch more time.

You have to have a mindset that's not binary. That's the other thing that gets in the way. I find so often with sales is that it's a binary mindset. A sale is success, not a sale is a failure. Right. And start. So, so there's these, these things you have to just kind of understand mentally just in managing yourself in the process.

Oh, it's, it's all about mind paths.

Absolutely.

And then, so then the other piece of it is just how do I build and sustain momentum? And, and one of the ways that you, that you lose momentum is sitting around wondering what happened. You know, I'm chasing this person down. And so much of that gets solved by just having a good conversation with people that is genuinely focused on. I need to understand whether like what your world is and if this makes sense in your world or not. And it is okay if it doesn't.

Plus they respect that and it leads to other referrals. And it's a whole different type of relationship you have with that person.

Yeah.

And so it's a relationship of confidence versus desperation.

Yeah. Right.

I mean, that, like that. That's one way to sort of frame it is. Yeah, I'm confident in our product, but I don't know if you need it and if you don't need it, doesn't matter how great it is.

Right? Yeah. People don't want to be sold to and told. You know, I mean, this is the thing that happens that I talk to my sales team about. I have to be aware of as well. Like, nobody wants to be told that they're stupid in one form or fashion. Right. They're using this competitor product and people say, well, that's trash. For this reason. That reason. This reason. What you've just done is you've told that person they're stupid for using that. And like all of us, human nature, the first thing that you're going to do in response to that is, is defend your reasons for using it. Right. You're actually like selling for your competitor when you attack them right away. Right. And so, so things like that, that, that are just different than the way most people do it to say, man, you're using a competitive product. How's it going? Yeah, that's. And if they say, man, it's going great to say, well, then good. But sometimes what I'll say to people is, well, I. Could you just answer one question for me? I'm a little bit confused. You agreed to take this meeting with somebody selling a competitive product, but you're, you're. Everything's going great and you're perfectly happy with it. Why are we meeting? Yeah. And then people will tell you all the things that they don't like about what they're using now. Right. But again, they're what, they're what they're used to. If you just go in with a normal kind of standard sales approach, approach is, I'm going to beat up on this. Yeah. I'm going to tell you all the reasons why you should use my product and how smart you'd be for that. And if you, if you approach it differently, people respond differently. Yep. And so, so that's what really kind of transformed things for me. And then, you know, it wouldn't be a good story if, if it ended with I still didn't sell stuff. Right.

My guess is you started selling things, started to shift.

Right. Things started, people started buying and, and then all these other things happened. Like, I developed some good relationships with the people that wanted to have a relationship with me. Nice. But I, I didn't need to have a relationship with customers anymore to, to gauge my worth as a salesperson. And so then, but then there was more genuineness in the relationships that I did develop. And it became okay with me if, if, you know, I've had customers, I have customers that I have sold millions of dollars of product to that I've never met in person. And on the inside of me, that violates every, sometimes those are best customers principle that they're, you know, and then, you know, and then the best thing that would happen, the way that my organization structured is that we have a field operations component that has to go install stuff. And the good customers would stop calling me at all, and they would just start calling my operations guy and saying, hey, I need you to come out and look at this job. I need you to come out and look at this job. And so, so, you know, then I learned actually the greatest position of being in sales is when you're not involved in selling anymore. Right.

I mean, like, oh, you're just an.

Order taker at that point.

Yeah. And I'm just, and I'm just kind of shepherding that relationship and staying in touch and, and, and my role is more man. I just want to make sure that everything is going well. How can we, how can we continue to take care of what you need and make your life easier?

Terrific.

Yep.

I, I don't want to. I know we got a hard stop. I don't want to keep it too long today, but I, I, I do want to ask you one last question. So the, the concept behind, I imagine you share this always be different, you know, with your sales, you know, team and this kind of thing. Sharing it on Twitter. The impetus is that is what behind that concept of getting it, getting it out there and sharing it with your followers.

So, like a lot of things, there's a very long story to, to that I was never a social media person really at all. I was early adopter kind of on Facebook when that kind of opened up in the early 2000s. And then I said, forget this. I don't want to do this. Never made sense to me. Had a friend who started writing, who actually worked with me. He was writing on Twitter, growing a big audience, and, and, you know, he just said to me multiple times over the course of time, hey, this conversation that we just had sitting here in the office, if you would write that down, it would help people. And so. Nice. So eventually I just said, okay, I'll start, I'll try it and see what happens. And, and so, so that, that really was kind of the, the beginning. I, I enjoy writing and I think the thing that has been the most kind of helpful for me is writing allows me. So just in my. I have a. I always just describe myself as having a very noisy head. So lots of stuff going on, lots of kind of internal noise about everything from positive stuff and ideas to the bombardment of self doubt. And you suck at this. And you name it, you kind of name it. And there's something about the process of writing is kind of the journaling thing that I was talking about earlier. There's something about the process of writing that helps kind of solidify, uh, all of the kind of loose things that are floating around. And so, so if, if I can do that, it's kind of a little bit therapeutic for me and helps me, you know, bring some things into focus and if it's helpful to other people, then I find that to be a fun side benefit of that.

Yeah, that's huge. It's a, it's a win, man. Well, I, again, I really appreciate you coming on the show. I know our listeners will love it. If you haven't listened to this episode 466 that we did a couple weeks ago, go back, listen to that one again. We'll put links in the show notes, of course to David's, you know, Twitter or X feed and his LinkedIn profile. And David, thanks again and keep in touch, man.

You got.

Sounds like you have a lot of great stuff to share and we love sharing it.

Well, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. You bet.

Well, that was, I, I don't have to say that was great. It was great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Super lessons in there. Some great lessons and, and just a real. Like this happened to me and I made these changes and I had some success. Make sure you go read the. The being different is better than being better. Tweet that we link in the show notes. This is some great lessons there from people.

And go follow David Morris too. We didn't ask him to tell us all where you could find him, but we'll put his links in the show notes so that, so that we can all follow him and take advantage of that. Thanks so much for listening, folks. Thanks so much for checking out our sponsors. Of course, Miro.com podcast where you get your first three Miro boards for free financing. That works.

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Save your 250 application fee, keep living that charmed life, and we'll see you next time.