Stars In Every Position: The Fuel Your Team Needs to Dominate

We are going to go 100 years back, and we are going to do an interview with John Henry Patterson, the founder of modern selling. Are you ready for this?

I cannot wait. This is not only going to be educational, but also very entertaining.

Oh, hello, everyone. Well, so good to be back alive again. It's been a hundred years.

We want to thank you for contributing to the profession of selling. Can you share your essential principles of modern selling?

I thought no one would ever ask me that question again. And excuse me as I. As I look down for this. My memory isn't quite as good as it used to be from all this sleep I've had. Selling is an art and science. These principles were born out of necessity as I sought to train my salespeople effectively. Each is a cornerstone of building trust, meeting customer needs, and achieving results.

Well, you founded the national cash register, and you taught your salespeople the basic principles of selling. What is the first principle, Gerhard?

The first principle is know your product inside and out. A salesperson must be an expert in what they're selling. If you don't fully understand your product, how can you convey its value to any customer? At ncr, I demanded that every salesperson know the mechanics or of our cash register, down to the smallest detail. Knowledge breeds confidence, you know.

Well, that is a principle that has never changed. Because when salespeople know their product, they feel more confident. What will be the second principle, Mr. Patterson?

The second principle is understand your customer. Empathy and curiosity are key. Learn about the customer's business, their challenges, and what keeps them up at night. The principles ensure you address their specific needs, making your product indispensable.

So know your customer. That is also a principle that is still very, very much alive. Everything needs to be goodness, customized. So you've done really well. What would be the third principle?

Well, the third principle is practice relentlessly. Even the best salespeople need constant improvement. I introduced role playing exercises where my team practiced overcoming objections and refining their pitches. Rehearsal builds mastery.

Wow. That is so uncanny, because we just had a presentation by Eli Cohen where he showed us how you can practice with an AI agent and get feedback. Any closing thoughts?

Sales is more than transactions, Gerhard. It's about relationships. Treat customers with respect and integrity, and success will follow.

Well, thank you so much, Mr. Patterson. We are all grateful for. For your contribution to the profession of selling.

Where would sales be without me? Goodbye, everyone.

What did you think, Gerhard?

Well, I was surprised that we actually got Mr. Patterson to spend time with us. I think we should advance and peek into the future. And maybe we invite Alex Nova, who is a sales expert from 2124. Alex Nova, a pleasure to meet you.

Hello.

What is this ancient technology we're using?

The ancient technology we are using is Zoom. How did you get to beam from the future to the present? What technology do you use?

Well, here in 2024, teleportation is something that exists in every home, like a bathroom.

I understand that you're a sales expert, is that correct?

Oh, yes. Oh yes. One of the greatest to live in this current era.

So let's talk about John Henry Patterson, who laid the foundation for professional selling over 100 years ago. How have those principles evolved in your time?

Patterson's principles were visionary and they stood the test of time. Though they've naturally evolved to suit the modern world in 2124, selling is a deeply human centered profession, even in a world supercharged by technology.

Wow. Well, let's look at the first principle. Know your product inside out is still going to be the case in 2124.

Great question. It has stood the test of time. Absolutely. But it's now about co creating product understanding. Buyers in 2124 are incredibly knowledgeable, thanks to their super agents. AI companions that analyze every detail of potential purchases will be as relevant and as normal as once again having a bathroom. Salespeople no longer just know the product they collaborate with. These agents and customers align products with personal and business goals.

Wow, that sounds fascinating. But how do you create those super agents?

Those. Those super agents are created by very smart people. As a matter of fact, in this age that you're living in now, in 2024, there are some brilliant people doing some amazing work to push this innovation forward. And you will see some amazing transformation over the next 48 months.

Is that, Is that Fuel Inc. Is that the company that you're talking about?

Fuel Inc. Was most definitely at the.

Edge of that spear, at the end of that spear in driving this sort of transformation forward. Their selfless approach to personal development was quite refreshing and transformed things.

That was the beginning of a massive change that started from your perspective 100 years ago, which is for me now.

It is built this city behind me that was built on Fuel.

Amazing. Let's talk about the second Patterson principle. Understanding your customer. How does that work in a world where you live in, where emotional intelligence is so advanced?

Well, this here, Gerhard and everyone that's listening a hundred years from now, this may be at the core of the transformation that is occurring. Emotional intelligence is truly the heart of sales in 2124. In our era, it's called emotional resonance mapping. We use technology and innate skills to tune into not just what customers say, but what they feel and need. Beneath the surface, people are more attuned to their emotions and motivations, which makes trust and authenticity paramount. A sale today feels more like a partnership than a transaction. And salespeople understand themselves as much as they work to understand their customer. That is the major shift that is happening in your world right now.

So is that a change in education, public education, or is private education.

More important in the future?

No, you see, education itself completely transformed. People understood that they can get access to the things that are relevant to them and drive them forward and excite them and make them want to learn more. So the entire public education system, even the private education system, does not exist in the way that you see it today.

As a matter of fact, kids, every new generation, you'll find, understands things faster and is more in tune with self growth, which is what's responsible for creating such a beautiful place to live in the future.

Principle of practicing relentlessly, is that still the case? Is that still essential?

More than ever. But it's something different now. It's not about practicing. It's. We call it immersing in your mastery. As people start to discover the things that they truly love and believe in for themselves and want to see themselves grow for themselves, they're immersing themselves in that mastery and everyone around them benefits. Their families, their co workers, everyone. When you show up as a master of self, every part of your life continues to grow and evolve only to the level that you want. So platforms like what you mentioned earlier, platforms like fuel are now holographic and multi sensory. They've taken their performance methodology to a whole new level, which enables people now to practice complex scenarios and fully simulated environments. These tools combine neuroscience and hyper realistic role playing, helping us refine our emotional value creation and relationship skills. The FUEL methodology of performance over knowledge.

Gathering, that is truly amazing. When did that become the standard? About how many years ago?

So about 50 years ago it became the standard, but the transformation started happening in 2024. The the idea of.

Practicing what it is that you want to get better at, but truly fully immersive holographic experiences, which everyone is working on, started 100 years ago where you are right now.

Are there any overarching lessons from John Henry Patterson that resonate most with you as a sales expert of the future?

Oh yes. Patterson understood that selling is fundamentally about people. People. Despite all our advancements, the truth hasn't changed what's different is our ability to deeply connect and align on emotional and practical levels. Selling in 2124 is a celebration of relationships and shared growth.

Unfortunately, we are pressed by time. We have another guest, Alex Kotichin, who is the founder of Fuel, who has enabled all those transformations. Thank you so much. Stephanie, can you come back? What do you think of Alex Nova?

I love seeing the insights of what we think or what we are seeing happening in the future. What did you think?

The basic fundamentals of selling will never change. We always need to learn more to earn our future. The CEO of Fuel Inc. Alex Khutichin. Thank you for visiting with us.

Oh my goodness. You have a lot of visitors. There's some kind of smoke coming around. People were teleporting in and out of places. It's wild.

That's what happens at Fuel every day.

Every day we visit the future, come back, deliver some things, and here we are.

What made you decide to start Fuel, Inc. And what does Fueling do?

Well, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Thanks for allowing us to have a little fun with all of you today.

So Fuel is exactly as you heard the two gentlemen just talking about.

We started Fuel because there is a just major shift in.

Knowledge and learning and understanding and, and, and what we do with that. And there's also a major shift in personal development. Okay. More and more we're seeing the need for more access to personal development. We know now that there is no professional growth without personal growth. Right. It is the Fuel that gets you the professional growth, but it all starts with personal growth. And so Fuel was, was really designed to create a brand new learning platform that focuses on performance over knowledge gathering. Can you do the thing you learn versus understand and just remember the thing you learned? What we want to be able to do is do the things we learn. We all want the people around us that if they're learning something, that if they're knowledge gathering, we want them to be able to implement it. So especially if we're on teams and we're talking to sales professionals. And so if you run a sales team, you want your salespeople to grow in their role. But it starts with growing themselves and it starts with giving you the leaders, by the way. Right?

The simplicity of leadership falls in one simple understanding of your job is to grow the people around you. That's it. Talent development is your only job. If you're a leader and you're in sales, you're a leader in general. Your job is to grow people's talents. That's it. And so Fuel is that kind of library of personal professional development that's designed to be as binge worthy as Netflix. Right? Just beautifully done content, exciting content, interesting content, all designed to improve skills of any level at people's personal time with of course, if you do it as there's individuals and then you can do it as a team, your team, your leader is equipped to then help you use those tools, use that library. Just like, you know, coaches in sports use the bench press to build up the strength of their team. These courses, these lessons are designed to be like that. They're designed to be tools to use to build personal and professional skills. So that's what Fuel was designed for.

Who are some of the experts on, on the Fuel platform right now that everybody can learn from?

So we have altogether there's almost 100, maybe a little over 100 experts that we've engaged with. Okay. We've started projects with 62 of them. And these experts have combined between them have written 3, 309 books. Let me see if I have a slide. This might be even easier to just show it if I have it here.

No, I didn't have it handy right here. But 309 books, 45,000 keynotes have literally helped every Fortune 500 company in the last three decades in some capacity. Spoken on their stages, leadership development, people development, whatever. And so people like me, John Murphy, who's got incredible courseware inside Fuel, Creative problem solving is a course I have taken now, I don't know, three times. And utilize those lessons all the time because they're easy. It's all micro lessons. 100% of this is microlearning. Brian Biro is on there. Todd Duncan, the co founder, has many, many lessons in there. Gloria Mayfield Banks. It's really, really, really impressive group of people that have come together to do this. And what's interesting, because you're asking about the instructors, I think it's very important for people to understand there was two pieces of criteria that we used, two to decide the instructors that were going to join Fuel. Number one, a giver's heart. That was number one. You have to be someone that wants to give this wisdom. You want to share it. Number two is that your wisdom, your content is proven, it's been out there, it works and it's something you can replicate if you teach others how to do it, those two things. And so what you get is this very positive, very optimistic lesson after lesson courseware that is designed truly. We have a member saying, I call it the Pump I get the pump in the morning before I start doom scrolling and being distracted by some other media. I get myself a little fuel that's positive and I move on. And then, you know, at their leisure, of course, because it's, it's microlearning. One more thing about microlearning and then Gerhardt, I know you have another question you want to throw, throw at me. I encourage everyone on this call because I can tell you.

Fact after fact after fact about the powers of microlearning. But do your own research because often when you hear people talk about on stage like, oh, how much of that is true? Do your own research and find out the power, the absolute power of microlearning and what it's doing for people. That is why the entire platform is microlearning everything. Two minutes to ten minutes. That's it. It's designed for you to be able to take what you learned and implement it rather than gather it. Just hold on to it.

Now I went through the lesson from Brian Biro where he talks about breakthrough leadership and the information is so compelling, it's visually presented in a unique way. And I don't have the words to describe it. Can you describe it for me? But it means to read a binge worthy video.

I mean, I could share something on screen if that would help or, and I'll share the most recent one. This is, this is phenomenal. It just went live yesterday. So, so first of all, one of the things to understand about fuel is our understanding of human nature as well and what we found about human nature recently. And this is why you all need to do your research about microlearning. Because what we found about human nature right now is that we get things faster than we ever got them before. Okay. And so it's just retainable. Okay. And so.

We release content every single week. We're working towards releasing content every single day. Why? Because one of the things human nature has created for us is curiosity and ability to have access to a variety of content that we may need at any given moment. And so the release of new content creates engagement from you and your team. Right? Because what we hear about a lot of learning platforms is it's stale or it's, it's, it's, it's not, it's not fun. It's whatever it may be, let me make sure the sound is on and I can share this with you. So two, we talked about this Gearhart before. To combat the effectiveness, the effectiveness of social media, we took their ideas completely, we said okay, if this is what gets people's attention, if this is what gets people engaged, this is what makes people want to receive content this way, then let's battle that with their own medicine. Right? Let's come there and give people something you want to engage with that constantly has something new to offer. Here's an example. This lesson is from Neuro Priming for Peak Performance. This is lesson number one. This is Angie Nowak. Okay, let's do it.

You are a sales athlete and you are here on Fuel to help you get the learning and the reps that you need to increase your performance. Much like a professional athlete, your job is not only to learn the plays and the practice so that you're ready come game day. It's also your job to take care of your machine so that you can give it your best as a sales athlete. The same thinking applies to your brain. While it isn't a muscle, it's an organ. It does need stretching and priming in order to help you get the most out of your learning. You can do all of these lessons on fuel without priming your brain. But if you train your brain even for just a few minutes before starting a lesson, you'll be more likely to absorb the information and retain it. My name is Angie Nowak and I'm a licensed professional counselor, neurofeedback specialist and the VP of business development at Braincode Centers. And I've helped thousands of people transform their lives through drug free treatment options, all focused on improving neuroplasticity and brain health. Almost 90% of sales employees feel burned out by their job at some point. At Brain Code Centers, we're looking to optimize the entire sales industry through neuroscience.

This is a very unique course because you don't have to follow it in order. You go to the part of how you're feeling. So if you're feeling over, over stimulated, there's a lesson for that. Under motivated lesson for that feeling neutral lesson for that you're feeling pretty good lesson for that, right? And how to get yourself in peak performance for consuming information and then acting going forward. You can do every. She talks about every single lesson as doing this on fuel. But everything she teaches you, you can do before any situation that you go into. And you want to be at that peak level of observation, your peak level of listening, your peak level of communication. Because remember, when you're stressed, there are certain parts of your brain that will not fire off communication. You will not say the words and the sequences and the beautiful flow that you can say them if you are confident. She talks about box breathing in here about tapping. How do certain tapping exercises you do that completely calm you down. It's incredible. And so FUEL is a performance library. Every single thing inside Fuel is about improving performance in an area of your life.

What does it cost to sign up for fuel?

So actually something very interesting that we're doing in December. It's called dollar December. This is the fuel for.

New Year's resolutions. This is fueling your New Year's resolution. How do you get to your resolutions? Right. What's going to be different? This. So the. The dollar December is a. Is a special promotion for the month of December to give anyone and everyone a chance who wants to see New Year feel maybe a little different, maybe a new level. You can put your entire team, each individual $1 for the month of December for unlimited access to all of the library and all the live events we're doing which like we have an event tomorrow, Leadership Live for the FUEL members that can attend with our instructors. It's really, really special. After that it depends on the access. If you want access to performance analytics by uploading certain data and the system will start providing performance analytics for your teams. That's A$22 a month, month per user. If you don't want that, it's half price, it's 11. If you just want access to the Library, it's just $11 per user per month. That's it. Nice and simple. And we have special programs. We're working with some very large institutions with tens of thousands of people. So of course, you know, we customize programs as well.

We also collaborate on a side note with selling parts collaborating with Fuel Inc. And some of the. I found some of the Fuel instructors extraordinarily gifted in helping people transform in a very positive way in a short time. We are teaching a number of master classes starting January 15, one a week where you can participate. And that masterclass is free for the members of the Sales 3.0 community. And we will share a link with you after we have finished with our two days sales training and enablement summit. And I'm so impressed with. I've never seen anything like Fuel. That that is a Netflix style binge worthy video learning center that is so immersive. I've viewed a number of those sessions online and I enjoy learning a lot more because of Fuel.

And it's a community, right? This isn't just a situation where you're alone and in your books or in watching something on YouTube or this fuel is about Bringing people together, bringing teams together, bringing people together. And every time you engage with fuel, it recalibrates, just like your experience on social media recalibrates so that you can see the videos and images and pictures and stuff that you like from the people you follow. FUEL does the same thing. It recalibrates so that the learning is as unique as the learner, because we never learn the same way. If we follow peak performers in any industry, talking about any industry, what we'll find is you take a hundred of them and you follow them home. They don't do the same things. It's not. That's the, that's where in 21, 24, that uniqueness, that individuality and supporting the individual growth of people, instead of trying to get people to follow the exact same thing, the exact same way. That's, that's the beauty of, of the experience here. And I think it's important to note that the pillars that FUEL is built on and why you experienced this kind of the experience that you're having. Gerhard My wife, who has a master's degree, says, alex, I love FUEL because of how much learn. I actually get to do the things I implement them.

We talk about with our members. We have regular member advisory calls, and our members explain to us how their relationships at home have absolutely transformed, how their own confidence, relationships with their, with their kids. I don't know if I told you about this. We're on one call where one gentleman, you know, through tears, explained how fuel, which we do not have a course on saving a marriage, but he said, fuel, what it's done. The access to communication support that I get from this has saved my marriage. And it's like, what, how's this sales support? Well, if you aren't personally here, you will never be great on your job. If you're not personally great here, you'll never be great on a job. I'm going to give you one analogy, one example, and then I'll finish off with this. Okay? I was watching.

Djokovic, okay? This was, this was a while ago. This is a tennis match. And as they're introducing him and he's coming out, he's the girl, greatest player of all time, right on the courts.

The commentators are talking about some personal incident that happened in his life. Not a physical injury. No, something personal that's happening outside of tennis. And they said, let's see how that affects his performance today. Hold on a minute. You're telling me when the person's got something going on here or here, they can't physically Perform. That's right. The greatest athlete on the court, they questioned his performance because of what was going on off the court. And so that's why self mastery, life mastery comes first, leadership mastery next. And sales mastery, which is just communication.

So just read something yesterday. Research on emotional intelligence and the average person is in this world, their emotional intelligence level is about 36%. Meaning that 64% of their emotional experiences are oblivious to them. And there's another research that talks about that in order to flourish to be successful, you need an emotional intelligence level of 60%.

We can have an impact on your personal and your professional life. And I'm amazed how little emotional intelligence education sales people get. You know, because mentioned Dukovich being influenced by something that was an emotional experience that was not resolved. What a game. And whenever you are in the stadium and you want to perform at your peak level, you need to focus on the now. And you cannot have negative emotions interfere with your ability to be your best. And that's what that, that is pretty much the theme that we have discussed throughout the day so far. That emotions run interference and they inhibit the best version of you from coming out, from emerging and from doing a great job.

Well, it's spot on. And.

We talked about this for 2124. Right. It really is about understanding the self. It's a co creation which exists right here, right now in, in this world where the co creation is between leaders and their people. Right. And that you, you all need to understand that that is it. That is the cultivation of success is when leaders selflessly pour into their people to see them flourish. Right. Every conversation in. If you're, if you are sitting in a room with a leader and the leaders talking about themselves. I had a note. And the leaders talking about themselves. You need to ask a question about that leadership role for that person. Because leaders should not be talking about themselves. They are no longer responsible for any personal goal. Your goal is determined on success of your people. And so that's the challenging thing that I think we're going to see transforming now is one of the things we didn't talk about that, that you get is the understanding, the understanding of your. Like remember we talked about 2124. We understand each other more than we've ever understood. It begins now. How do you do that? Well, to understand your people is, is to understand what it is that they are spend time watching. Okay, so for instance, I'm going to share a screen. I'm not even going to share a name. Okay, watch this. I. You don't know this person, but you're about to know this person. This person has watched Embracing Acceptance four times, okay? They've watched Universal Retirement Tool four times.

The Michael Jordan approach three times. The secret of social media sustainability. Simplify your setup, okay? This. This person has. Is telling you about themselves just simply by choosing the things that mean something to them. And right now, when we approach people and ask them, what's going on? How can I help you? Often the easy answer is, I'm okay. But if I can come to this person and say, hey, I just finished watching Embracing Acceptance. What was. What was. What drove you to watch it four times? What was in it for you? This. Why that? Because of this reason. Oh, my gosh. Now that is where you start to build an understanding of your people. And guess what? You're teaching them. Teaching them how to understand your customer. That's all you're doing. You're demonstrating how to connect with your customer. Because that's what co creation is. 20, 20, 21, 24 is all about. Co creation. And so this is another element that has not existed with simplicity. There's no LinkedIn learning.

Masterclass.

None of those are designed for leaders to help their people grow and individuals to see how they're growing for themselves.

What drives your passion for me is.

It'S interesting because I didn't take the normal path of, you know, go to school, get a degree, go work somewhere, go start, you know, maybe start a business somewhere or just grow. And.

It'S always been about pushing the boundaries. Okay? Always about pushing limits. I share this story. It's silly. I bet you there are people on this call right now like, absolutely. I do this every time. It reminds me of being about 13 or 14, and my dad said, go clean up the leaves. It was fall in Maryland. Okay, go clean up the leaves. So I went to clean up the leaves, and for the first 10 minutes, I'm doing it one way. And within 10 minutes, I'm like, I bet you I can do it faster if I do it this way. Okay, I bet you I could do it faster if I do it that way. Now I bet you if I put this down first, grab that over there, do this, I could do it even faster. And it has always been about evolving and moving something forward. Forward, which is when I got into entrepreneurialism and building businesses, it was always the same kind of thing. How do you continue to improve? How do you never go back? How do you go forward and evolve? Which, by the way, is natural. It is. We are children of Earth and guess what happens on Earth? Guess what every living thing does on Earth? Evolve. Every single day. Never stops. Which is why retirement is a strange thing. Retirement is not natural because in nature, which is, we are part of it, there's no retirement. Continue to evolve until you can't evolve anymore. That's it. And so this is what. This is a representation, a reflection of that, giving people access to become the best version of themselves. How do we do it and not do it in a way that people can't enjoy? Right. And people can't take away and put into action? And it's just like, I'm getting smarter, I'm getting smarter, but I can't implement it. No, go ahead and do the thing you've learned so you can actually perform it. It's one of the reasons for learning things. So that's what drives. My passion, is just to create these tools, break down the barriers of access due to finances or travel. Oh, I don't have time to go see this person. I don't have the money to go see this person. I could never afford it. You know, I could never read this book. This book is too long. It's six hours. I don't have the concentration for six hours. Hours. Okay, that's. Here's. Here's an outlet. It shouldn't replace things completely. Might one day it should be an addition to. If you're a lifelong learner, if you're like, oh my gosh, I need to not find myself scrolling through one more thing. I wish I could find something more productive to do. I would like the experience of digital in my face, but I need to be more productive. There it is. There's no better solution. And then it's like it starts replacing those things. When you need a little bit a hit of that social media or something digital in your face, now you can get a little fuel and then fine, see if you still want that other stuff. But that's, that's what drives my passion, is this kind of creation, this kind of access for everyone.

Have teams, use fuel so that companies can have star in every position. And that's how you win more business.

That's it. That is it. That is it. You want to see a star in every position. And by the way, we didn't get into the science of this too much, but a star in every position means setting standards and never lowering the bar, always raising the bar, always, never stopping raising the bar, ever.

Great lessons. Alex, thank you so much for playing along with us and playing the role of John Henry Patterson. An Alex Nova.

What?

Why are you telling me?

I want to know. What is Gerhard watching?

What is he watching?

Oh, yeah. What's he consuming over there?

On.

On fuel.

On fuel.

Yeah. I mean, he's.

I. I just went through the. My. My favorite list is Brian Biro is. Is about breakthrough leadership. Gloria Mayfield Banks. She is. She has grown up in the multilevel marketing field, and she's such a super connector, Such a warm voice. I love listening to her. It's almost soothing. And her insights are uncanny. She reminds me of a mixture between Maya Angelou and Mary Kay.

Well, now everyone knows where to get started with their $1 December subscriptions there. And I think we are a little bit over. And so it's probably time to head over to some of those sponsor booths and set up those meetings.