COULD THIS BE A GREAT TRAINING GROUNDS FOR SALES KILLERS

Hey, so this week we have a first. We have a salesperson who used to be a police officer. Now, this may seem a little weird, but I think the skill transfer is pretty good. We'll get into the exact elements of it, but you can classically see that police officers have to deal with people. Usually people at their worst. They're desperate, they're in bad situations, and you have to read them because usually what they're telling you may not be exactly the full and complete truth. Sound familiar? It sounds a lot like a sales call in a way. But you also have to use your time judiciously. You have to, if you're trying to find Uh, the criminal, the person who committed the crime. You can't just be a census taker and go door to door. And I did a video on this on the YouTube channel, why you have to sell like a detective, not a census taker. Judgment of how to spend your time and who is most likely to have committed this crime, who has the most to benefit from it. And to kind of work that circle out. So I think you're going to enjoy this interview. It's a great guest, great personality, lots of good energy. But what you see are these cognitive empathy skills, the ability to put yourself in the other person's place and try and understand what they're going through, because that's what we're doing as salespeople. Hey Josh, thanks for joining us today. As a way of getting started, give us a little background on yourself.

Uh, well, my name is Josh Franklin. I live in Fort Smith, Arkansas, basically Greenwood, a little town south of Fort Smith, but nobody knows where Greenwood is, so we'll just say Fort Smith. I say that and I'll preface that with saying I live in a motel room a lot, so my wife has a house here That you pay for. Let me visit. Yes, yes. From a small town, been in sales since 2012. Before that, I was in law enforcement from 1996 until 2012. 5 kids, some— and so nice little herd there. And I work for Evans Enterprises Incorporated out of Norman, Oklahoma, is our corporate office at this time.

Well, that's it. My next question was going to be what motivated you to get into sales, and then I heard the 5 kids and it became pretty obvious.

Well, yeah, I think— and I don't mind sharing this— I think when I started— well, I don't think, I know— when I started in '96, I made $12,500 a year as a deputy sheriff, uh, and I didn't make a lot more than that in 2012 as chief deputy sheriff. So, uh, that was one thing that got me Well, I would work— people think this is crazy, but I would work 4, 5 days a week for the state of Arkansas in the probation parole system. And then on Saturday and Sunday, I worked 32 hours at a juvenile prison to make ends meet because you couldn't make it on what I was doing. And then I took another gig as a— I'd always been interested in sales, but But, you know, being a law enforcement officer, you weren't selling a lot. Uh, so, uh, I took a side gig at a sporting goods store and, uh, got another jet and loved, loved the sporting goods store. Uh, loved working there. So I quit the, the juvenile detention facility on the weekends, and on the weekends I started working retail sales.

Yeah, and you liked it, I guess?

Oh no, loved it. Loved retail sales. Loved Love the interaction with the people. And, and, and, you know, when you sent me this invite, I was trying to, you know, there's a difference between what makes you successful and what you're doing, because that's a whole set of factors. But what makes you successful at being a salesperson or an account manager, which is the same thing to me, it's a fancy word for it, but, um, gotta love your job. You've got to love the sale. You've got to wake up craving the sale. Now, for me then, it was the point of sale on a gun or a bow or whatever, fishing lure, whatever. But I loved it. I love being a police deputy sheriff, but I loved sales. So I knew I loved it.

Now, I can see some overlap in law enforcement. You have to have control of the situation. You have to be on your toes. There's a lot of variety, hopefully. Hopefully not too much.

I have stories. We're not going to tell them, but I do have some.

And you have to be able to read people.

Absolutely.

And both people in general don't either know or share exactly their intentions or their situation.

Right. And I found in law enforcement And this, this does translate into what I'm doing now, and you hit it on the head. I haven't— I have an ability, whether I'm conscious of it or not, to understand where the conversation needs to be when it needs to be there and understand what my mannerisms, what my— how I need to be in the conversation. And, and I think the other side of that is when you're, when you're in this job or law enforcement. The other thing that carries over is brutal truth. And I— and when I was a police officer— I say police, I was a deputy sheriff for most part of my career, same difference— uh, brutally truthful with people. If they were going to jail, they were going to jail. There was no sugarcoating it. And, and, and, and that's the same in this, in this world.

Another jet.

But the ability to— and it's not an ability, it's a choice you make— that you're going to be 100% honest with your customer. And that goes for everything. That goes for all parts of the conversation, not just the technical side or the sales point. It goes for the honesty in your life and being Being someone who projects that you— they are dealing with Josh, not that version of me that walks in the office that day. That makes sense. It's, it's a total—

Yeah, it does. And how long did it take you to get comfortable in your current sale? Because it's very different than retail where people come to you, right?

Oh, well, I had to do it to, you You know, I made a decision. I got into a situation where I didn't know that I wanted to be a full-time account manager or salesperson. A customer at the retail sales store, a good customer of ours that came in a lot, actually worked with Evans Enterprises and kept telling me that I was wasting my time being a police officer or in retail sales, that I needed to be an account manager for this company. And I kept putting it off and, you know, just— I was very successful as a law enforcement officer, uh, very loved what I did and very, I thought, very good at it. Uh, I got into a real, uh, serious altercation with a guy. Uh, we were going in, me and my partner were going in, I was training a young man, we were going in to eat, uh, lunch. And I'd gotten to the point where I didn't wear my gun because my back hurt all the time. And we got in, we were going to eat lunch, and I look over at my partner and long story short, this very large gentleman who was not mentally stable picked him up and slammed him on the ground. And then we got into a physical altercation. And, uh, I remember I broke, uh, every finger on both hands striking the guy. And, uh, he was, he was, he was holding his own on me and this other deputy. We're both big men. I mean, I'm 6'2, 250, and the other deputy was my size. And this guy was pretty much whipping us. But anyway, we got the situation under control, and my sheriff walked up and said, Josh, are you okay? And I said, yeah, but you need to keep Because I'm gonna try something different. Yeah, I said life's too short for this. I'm done.

It's a young man's sport.

So to answer your question, to get you to where the answer is, did I feel comfortable? Absolutely, because I had to feed my family and I had to be successful. And I think that's a, that's an element in this. Uh, the guy that, that recruited me for my current company You know, he said, Josh, just do you. Just go in there, be you. You don't know crap about the product yet. You will, uh, but go in there and help people. You— that's what you do as a police officer. Go do it as an account manager. So, uh, successful, wildly successful very quickly, just because I approached it that way. I don't have the answers, but I'll help you find them.

And give us some examples of what you learned along the way, because You know, when you're a police officer, people have to listen to you. They know there's consequences of not listening.

They don't have to.

I just said they should.

I enjoyed it when they did. And you have leverage.

As a sales rep, it's almost the opposite. You have to earn it and coax it.

It's a lot of, you know, in the beginning, and I started with a very It's 2 kind of phases. I started— when I initially started, I didn't have a lot of existing customers. I had to go, and the brand had sort of slipped in the area. So I had to go fight through some, you know, A, what's Evans? They had no clue. And B was the perception they had of what we did, the quality that we did, that wasn't good. There'd just been some problems. Uh, So, I don't know, what did I learn in those initial stages was I very quickly figured out I needed to learn what the product was because I couldn't— you could be of service by, by sending these people more contacts or getting somebody on the phone, but being able to answer a question right there and having some knowledge of your product became very apparent that it was vital that I gain. Uh, so I spent a lot of time in the repair facilities, uh, just watching people do their job, just trying to figure it out because I'm— I don't learn well. I learn well by watching.

But yeah, watching, doing.

Yeah, yeah, watching and doing some, but they don't want me touching the product.

You don't be doing anything.

Franklin, keep your hands off. I get that.

Yeah. And what do you think separates you from other reps?

That's, that's a— I'm gonna outwork them, number one. I'm gonna outwork anybody in the business. I mean, if I think I'm getting outworked by somebody, I'm gonna get up a little earlier, you know, I'm gonna stay out a little later. Uh, I'm not, I'm not— and I'm gonna drop everything in my life, whether this is good or bad, I drop everything for my company. When I get a call at 10 o'clock at night, if I'm in a fishing tournament on Saturday, I will leave it, take a 2-horse motor 5 hours away to a customer. If that's what they need, that's what I'm gonna do.

Yeah.

I think that's a big separation. The little honesty thing we talked about, it's hard for people. A lot of people don't wanna be honest. They don't— I mean, it's not your— it's easier to conceal. It's hard to tell somebody when you—

Yeah.

Well, and it's hard to tell a customer when you put out a product because you never get a meeting with a GM or a maintenance supervisor. You never get a meeting when you've done a great job. You always get a meeting when it's a bad job. And to look at them, you know, and 90%— well, to look at them either way, let's take it 50/50, to look at that customer and say, Sir, the reason this piece of machinery did not work is because my technicians did a poor job. Your product, what we're putting to you is vitally important. We have all these things in place, but we didn't do as well as we could have. You know, that's tough to tell people. You know, it's easier to say, oh, you know, you had a bad bolt or you had your, you Whatever. You can blame it on whatever, but when it's, oh, you know, this is what it— and on the flip side, it's very hard to tell a customer, listen, you did this to your piece of equipment. Here's how you did it. Uh, you know, I'm— I can prove it to you. We can talk about it some more. I can show you how we can stop it. But it's hard to tell that customer, listen, you caused your own failure. Uh, you may fire me for telling you this, but my job's My job, uh, in, in this industry is not to sell product. My job is to, to help those people become the most reliable they can to make the most money for their company. Whether that's me getting fired in the end of the day by telling the truth, or I don't know, but, but you've got to be truthful. So, and that's a big deal.

And how do you handle the rejection side of sales?

Because people To be—

you have to have the drive, but you also have to have the resilience.

Sure. How do you handle it? Well, people say you don't take no for an answer. I don't, I don't know if that's a good statement. I think if you, if you've been rejected, if you didn't make that sale or that customer doesn't want to use you, in my mind, it's they don't know you well enough. Because I have the best product on the market. I've got the best people, the best product, and I've got the best quality control system in the market. I have the best product, and I know it, and I believe it. And I think one of the— I'll illustrate this. One of my customers, it's one of my bigger customers now, they literally kicked me out twice, and I just kept asking for meetings. And then on the third time, this This man, he looks at me and he's now one of my very good friends. He looked at me and he goes, you really believe what you're saying, don't you? I said, yeah, man. I said, I do. I said, why don't you just let me prove it? Uh, and, and, and that's when I, when I get flat out rejected somewhere, I go straight to— I understand that. And I really appreciate that you're, um, um, loyal to your current vendor. I just want to be another tool in your tool belt when things go real— tornado comes and it knocks 15 of your motors out and that other vendor's busy. I just need to be qualified. All I want is to be qualified by your company. And most people will give you a motor, give you a chance, a sale one time. And then my spiel is, if I do that one time good and I do it to meet your expectations, that, that I'm going to qualify and I'm going to list out and train my people on If I meet those qualifications, hey, give me another one. Yeah. And if I do that right, let's try 3. And if I do that right, why not 4? So, uh, rejections, I guess the answer is you don't— I mean, there isn't— there's no rejection. There's always a point of something you can do to help them do their job.

Yeah.

You just got to find it. Yep.

And do you think you can apply these selling skills to any company? Or have you found just like the perfect match for you?

This is a good match for me. But can this translate to anything? Absolutely. I did it in retail sales. I did it when I was a police officer. I used these same principles. It's all sale. When you talk somebody into your car with a pair of, you know, cuffs on and you don't have to fight them or shoot them with your taser, you made a sale. You know, and it's the worst product ever. But so, yes, it translates. I think, you know, if you— let's say, let's say you go to a place and, and they, they're like, I'm, I'm not going to do business with you. Well, did you— have you talked to everybody? Did you talk to the janitor? Did you talk to the guy serving food at the cafeteria? Did you— are you allowed in there? Can you keep talking? Because if you can keep talking, You're gonna find somebody that needs your service.

Yeah.

Or a service you can help them get. It might not even be what you sell. It might be something else. Trying to think of a good one. There's several, but, uh, there may be something else you can provide outside of your— that they— I went one time and bought a vacuum cleaner at an Ace Hardware because the customer, they were like, well, we don't need anything in motor repair. And it was one of these people that would And I was like, what do you need? And he goes, man, we need a vacuum cleaner. So I went down there and got a vacuum cleaner, put it on my credit card, had the office write me a quote and, you know, delivery ticket, and sold a vacuum cleaner.

That's creative.

Yeah, it was a sale.

So, and what was the hardest part of getting into sales?

Making that leap of leaving a career that was, uh, Successful and fun and stable for something that was not— the amount— there's no— there was no amount that I was going to make that was solid. It was all based off performance. And it's scary if you don't wake up in the mornings with a fear of failure. This is the way I work. I wake up every morning thinking I'm gonna get fired. You know, that's my internal motivation. That is get out there, get moving, get something done. And I think the philosophy that you're never as— I ran for political office one time and an elderly gentleman walked up to me, put his hand on my shoulder. He said, son, you're never as ahead as you think you are and you're never as behind as you think you are.

Right.

So, and that's always stuck with me. I'm never, you know, if I'm thinking I'm doing this right and things are— there's always something coming. You say you better work harder. Yeah.

And sales has that, right? It has that roller coaster where—

Absolutely.

You know, one of the— I'm sure you had a retirement plan when you were a police officer.

Yes, I did. Yeah.

So 20, 25, 30 years in, you then get something in return.

You do, you do. And your ex-wife gets half of that, unfortunately. Brutally truthful. You see, you see where that's brutally truthful? That's an example of that. You've got her now, don't you? And there you go. So, uh, so yeah, I've got half of a good retirement. So there you go.

And that fear, that fear motivates you. See, it can either motivate you or cripple you, right?

Right. Well, and you have to be You have to be— I don't know if afraid of failure is the right word. It has to— you— it should be like trying to bathe a cat. You should not want to fail, but you shouldn't— you shouldn't take that failure as a negative thing. You can learn a lot when you fail.

Yeah.

And, and if— and the ability to learn, uh, you know, I'm 47 years old and I'm learning every day, and I'm going to continue to learn because when you fail is when you learn. When you succeed, you What do you learn? You don't learn a lot. Yeah, so you can't be afraid to fail.

And well, let's talk about that. Is it the drive to win or the—

Drive to make— well, I love the sale. I loved— I love to catch a big bass on a topwater. It's awesome. I love to see a big buck walking through a field and get a shot at him with my bow. And I love to sell stuff. I love that PO. Yeah, well, I love it. I mean, there's no use trying to lie about it. I love it.

And what does it feel like? Or what is it? How long does it last for you?

Not long enough. I mean, you know, it's— you, you need to chase it all day long, you know, all day, every day. Yeah. Oh, and it's, it's, it's hard because you don't get a lot of Long-term satisfaction other than, you know, I do work for a great company that does appreciate me in many ways. And those ways are numerous, but they all— I take them heartfelt and I appreciate how they appreciate me. Let's say it that way. Yeah.

And I'm sure you see other reps at the company or competitors. What do you see them doing wrong?

jumping around thinking they're gonna move and it's gonna get better.

Yeah.

I mean, their product ultimately is them. And if they don't have a good product, it doesn't matter what you're selling. Your product's you. I mean, these people that in our business that I'm in, I mean, it's reliability-based. When they're down, they're losing tens of thousands a minute or an hour. And it's just a pressure cooker. And if you're not, If you're not happy with what you're doing, you're not going to be happy. You know, you ain't catching something in this pond, you're not going to be happy over at this other pond. It's not going to get that much better.

Right.

What I see a lot of them doing wrong is jumping around. And, uh, in the same analogy, if I'm fishing somewhere and I'm getting bites, why would I start my big motor and drive across the lake and fish somewhere else? Because if I'm catching fish, and, and that's the same with what we're doing, I see a lot of account managers in my industry, they'll go from place to place, they'll spend 5 days calling on people that, that, that are my customers that are not going to give them substantial work. Well, go find customers that, that are displeased with their current vendor that are going to buy. Spend your time with people that are doing business with you and find those areas inside that current business model you've got grow a different area in my industry. If I'm doing motor repair somewhere, well, am I getting pump repair? If I'm, if I'm getting motor and pump repair, am I getting the drive repair? If I'm getting those, can I get the switchgear repair? Because I'm supported technically with all these things. And, and so, and even I have customers where I'm just doing one thing, and that's where you grow. You're allowed in. That's half the battle, getting in somewhere.

Right.

Beating the guard. Once you get in, you know, go sell something and, and spend your time there.

So, and so do you think that they look at it as the situation's the problem? Where they are in the pond or lake is the problem?

It's like getting offended. It's like getting offended. If you've been offended by someone, is that their problem or yours? That's a you problem. Their attitude hasn't changed. And then that's the same way with the reps I see that are having problems, is they're— it's every— it's not— they're not looking at it as it's a them problem. Uh, it— most of the time it's, it's, it's the rep. It's, it's them internally. They're doing something, they have a mannerism or behavior, uh, that's not fitting where they're targeting. And, and that's a whole other conversation. That I found to be true. I'm not successful everywhere. Some people don't like me. Recognize that. If you love your company, send another account manager in there—one of yours, not the competitor. Send somebody else. Help them technically. Help them with names and stuff. But you know, you're not going to find places where you're liked, and in those places. You know, if you love your company, get somebody else in there that you think they will like. Yeah. Because everything's not a good fit.

And I gotta believe your judgment skills of how you allocate your time and your priorities.

Absolutely. That's got— that's big. That's big because, you know, you've got— and it's discipline to do that because in our profession, at least at my current company, You know, it's, it's, uh, you're, you're, you're not— you don't have a supervisor breathing down your neck. There's not a time clock. There's not a, you know, it's, it's, you know, here's what we want you to, you know, we'd like for you to produce a year, and here's your, here's your target. And, uh, you know, and, and you've got to get up on a, on a Thursday morning and, and, and find something to do like today. Uh, if you don't have it I, but this pre-COVID, I was 3 months out on booking. Like, if you wanted to see me, I either had to make a spot or I had to figure out in that 3 months that I'm booked up to how to fit that in because there's so much travel in what I'm doing.

Oh.

Now COVID, you know, there'll be days on my calendar that are empty, which is strange to me because, you know, we still have a lot of people that you can't go see. You're just not going to. So you gotta get on the phone, you gotta get on LinkedIn, you gotta get something productive out of your day. And I'm real good, I'm very coachable. And I had a boss who's still at the company, he's our COO. I'm gonna mention him, Dylan Ball, because I love him to death. He's great, he's a great COO. But Dylan walked into me one day and that's where my business acumen's not as high as it should be. I'm trying to learn because again, I didn't come from sales. I came from law enforcement. He says, you know, and I was in a different role at the time, and he said, Josh, what have you done for Evans today to add value? And that really stuck with me. I was like, man, that's a great question because I can't answer it. And I looked at him and told him that, you know, I told the CEO, I can't answer that today. He said, well, answer it tomorrow.

Well, and yeah, I don't know if you ever did any detective work as a police officer, but It's a lot like a sales rep. It's like, who is most likely to have done this? Who is most likely to buy?

That's right. That's right. And how— and you've got to figure things out because your maintenance manager, in my world, may not be making the decision. It may be this planner that's been there 20 years that although he doesn't have the rank, he's really got the rank. And you've got to figure all that out. I mean, you've got to be real quick at figuring that out because you'll spend a year calling on a maintenance manager and you're like, man, why am I not getting any work?

That's it. And I always have the analogy, a lot of people act like census takers. They go door to door asking questions, but the smart reps are like detectives. They sit down like, who has the motive, the means, the opportunity, and who's most likely to gain from doing this?

That's right. And ask questions. Ask the lady or guy at the front glass place that when you walk in you can't get past. Ma'am or sir, I'm gonna need to find a place for lunch today. Where's a great place to go eat lunch? And they'll tell you, well, we like this place over here. Well, where should you be at lunch? She just told you where everybody's gonna be, where all the maintenance guys are gonna be, you know, by answering your question. But but yeah, be inquisitive. Be you know, look for things that stand out. Yeah, go in there and hand your card out. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. Put your hands out in front of you and say, "I'm not trying to bother y'all's lunch." Here's my card. Do motor. I've had meetings, you know, hour-long meetings with, with, with, you know, big customers that I now do a lot of business with. I've had an hour-long meeting initially when I walked up and left, they stopped me and asked me what I did. I wasn't gonna talk about it.

Yeah.

I wasn't gonna tell 'em that we were a motor repair company. That wasn't— didn't fit the conversation. And by them asking that to me, That's, that's good. Now, now they're wanting to know a little bit more about what you do, you know. So, but you're right, thinking outside the box is very important.

Great. Hey, Josh, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

Well, I very— I had to ask one of my younger coworkers what a podcast was. So I don't know what following me would mean. But I'm on LinkedIn.

That's good enough.

I'm on Facebook, of course. Or you can pick up a telephone. I love this part about it. Pick up a telephone, give me a phone call and say, hey, Josh, you know, my phone number's on LinkedIn. It's on Facebook. But yeah, I like a good old-fashioned phone call.

Cool. Well, what I got out of that is that ability to connect with another human being, to be able to talk about what they care about and in the terms that they care about it. I think these things are so important because in sales, being able to read the situation, understand what the other person wants, and be able to communicate in the terms and the ways that they want to hear it is so critical. And that judgment of how to spend our time and who to spend it with and how to spend it in general, because time is the really the only asset that we have. And once it's gone, it's gone. We can't get it back. We can't buy more. We had a great office hours yesterday kind of talking about this and how to prevent these things from switching on us all the time. Because what we're trying to do with clients is always change things. We're really selling change. Pretty much every product, every service is all about improvement, making things better for them. And to do that requires change. So being able to do that and maintain it And have direction and momentum and control over our deal is so critical. And what we want to do is focus on how to do it best, how to do it consistently, repeatedly, and to do it before we're in game. And kind of another analogy of the police versus The salesperson is— when we're in game, when we're up against or engaged with a client, is not the time to prepare. That's the action time. Because when we're in that state, what we're relying on is all of our training, all of our preparation. And we have to regulate our emotions and be able to hear all at the same time and know where we are. It's complicated. It's not easy. But if we don't do it, we tend to mess up. And then we try and repair it later. And the problem is it's too late. Yeah, you can make it better. You can apologize. You can start over. Maybe. Maybe. And a lot— most of the people come to me and it's all about repair. Like somebody said, well, why don't we do a Slack channel where people have questions and stuff? And I go, you know what? I can anticipate that 99% of them will all be about repair. And people are disappointed with repair answers because there's no real good answers. It's, oh, you could try this and say this and do this. But the problem is none of them really are that effective. You would think if there was a way to repair deals easily, you know, we'd all know about it. But it's not. It's just not easy. Think about any type of human interaction. When things go awry, it takes a long time to get it back to where it was before. But if you put that preparation Preventing, anticipating what could go wrong, then you can prevent it from happening. And, you know, we're not all— and at least prevent it from happening again. You know, like I had something happen this week and I should have known. It happened last year. It happened the year before, but I didn't write it down. I did— I'm sure people We'll think it through. I'm doing it with the best, and now it still fell apart. So I wrote it down and I go, I'm not going to repeat this next year. I looked out through the rest of the year. How do I prevent this from happening again? And hopefully it'll get fixed because it just turned into an enormous waste of time for me, which is very expensive. Can't get that time back. So I'm taking— believe me, I'm not saying I'm perfect. I'm just sharing what I know to be true. And we're all human beings and we all fall into these traps. We all overcommit and underdeliver sometimes. We don't want to admit it. We don't want to face it, but we kind of do. And sales, it's a preparation profession. It's not a repair profession. It just isn't. I wish it was. If it was, then it would be a whole lot easier. We could run as fast as we could, then go back and fix things. But what we tend to do is run as fast as we can and we can't fix those things. So those deals tend to just drift away and go away instead of closing. So think about that. If you're having or you want to close more deals, Go to b2brevenue.com, Winning the Complex Sale. It's a year-long access. I, I don't— you know, the word course is probably an understatement for what it is, because now it's probably the largest library of content on the complex sale in the world, with case studies, office hours, one-on-ones where you can follow people's deals through a whole year and learn their lessons. Because it's not a— now think about the lesson, like the preparation. Do we not know it? We knew it. We didn't pay attention to it. But then it happens, and now we've got to pay for it. So let's try not to pay for it more than once. And winning the deals, you know, it's, it's just not what they teach you at your company. That, you know, because they're teaching you basically how to take an order. And that's great, but we don't have that many orders to take. We do that. And then what do we do the rest of the week? But we— and your quota is based off of you doing 3 to 10 times what the orders to take, the natural stuff. We— the gravy. And I did a survey this week on LinkedIn on the company, the podcast page. You can check it out. About, you know, who has the most likelihood, like out of— from a percentage-wise, of making over 7 figures. Now it gets really heated, but you can do your Google search. I've had, uh, what, close to 100 salespeople on the podcast over the years that have made over a million working for someone else. Employees, W-2s.

Wow.

With a good base salary and benefits, little downside. You know, people say, oh, business owners. Well, eventually, certainly they can. And I talk to a lot of business owners and it takes a while to get to that level. But this also takes a long time where you're making less than the base salary of a salesperson. Uh, and a lot of risk. If it doesn't work out, it's out of your pocket, not your employer's. So this profession— and I don't mean this to entice you just about the money, but it's to show you that without, you know, college education and years of experience, you can do really well. But you got to understand the game you're playing. People do not under— everyone tells me, how do I react to this Well, do you understand where you are and how companies buy? Because you don't know where you are. If I tell you where you are and where to go, you'd go and do that step and then you come back. You got to understand the full game of how companies buy, how to win deals, how to direct them, how to have control over them instead of just reacting to them and trying to repair them. The other part of sales today that's so hard is filling up your calendar with great opportunities. Now, how do you do that? It's not going to be through your messaging. Sorry. Your messaging is targeted at people in market, but 99.9% of your market is not in market. So you have to bring them into the market. You have to make them aware of the problem that you solve. Get them curious and interested in solving it. And that's a systematic way. It's not an email. It's not a cold call. That's why they get 1 to 3%. That's not a winning game. I don't want to play that game. That's the I bang my head against the wall game. And that's no fun. You know, there's a few people that do it. I talked to a guy the other day that does it. But, uh, that's not the way I want to play it, and it's not the way you're going to get to be super successful. It doesn't scale. Today we have the magic of technology and, uh, labor arbitrage. Do you know what that is? You should learn. It's very powerful. Hey, thanks for listening. Tell a friend about the show. Make sure you're checking out the other podcasts, Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers. The B2B Revenue Leadership Show and the Sales Leadership Show. We'll see you next time.