COULD THIS SIMPLE CHANGE INCREASE YOUR INCOME???

When I interview all these great salespeople, there's always a compelling why behind their success and a particular mindset that enables them to stay focused, stay excited, stay engaged, and figure out how to sell their product into their marketplace. And today's guest is no different. Uh, but This one, I think you're really going to enjoy because this rep, you know, had a hard beginning in sales, a call center and a reseller. And you gotta say, well, that's not what I do.

Okay.

It's not what we're going to be talking about today. What we're going to be talking about today is how he's been able to be successful at his current company, which is kind of a startup, a new idea. Into a very difficult market. And the differentiators and the technical sale are really hard. And he's come up with some creative ways of doing it. But I think what you'll get out of this more than anything is what if you had kind of that puzzle mindset where you looked at how to sell what you're selling into your market like a puzzle. And your job is to solve the puzzle. Now, this, it's a very empowering mindset because what it does is it takes it away from your identity as a person, whether they like you or not. And it turns into how do we do it? How do we solve it? And each deal is a little bit different of a puzzle. A lot of different variables in there. But that curiosity, that passion for solving that puzzle can be very empowering. And it gives you this kind of feeling that it's an intellectual challenge versus just a hustle and grind slog. Because in B2B, activity is one of the ingredients, but it's not the only ingredient.

Right.

And one of the key things I got out of this interview is become effective first, then efficient. Today, what I'm seeing is a lot of efficiently ineffective sales approaches. And what does everybody do? They try and become more and more efficient about it instead of effective. I really love that mindset. And I wish more leaders, sales leaders out there would take that. And I think you'd all get a lot more out of it. Update on the courses. If you're in them already, I just turned on the community capability of the learning management system. So when you log in, just go down to the 2nd chapter and it says, join the community. So just join it and see what questions are already out there. It's just started, so there's not much out there right now, but it'll be the centerpiece for any communication between people in the course, me, office hours, one-on-ones. All of that will be put in there.

Hey Alex, thanks for joining us today. As a way of getting started, give us a little background on yourself.

Absolutely. Thank you, Brian. And I have to say, I'm very excited and happy to be here. I'm a longtime listener, first-time caller, as they say. So very, very, very happy to be here. Thanks for the opportunity. And well, I can tell you about myself. I've been doing this in sales for the past 17 years now. And it's been quite a journey. I come from a very different background. And I actually got here as a visitor, and I just stayed. because I loved it so much. But yeah, I originally was an accountant, then I came and tried to get into marketing, of all things, because accounting was always just, to me, a technical foundation for business. It's like, know that stuff first, understand it, then you can learn other things easier. But I never really wanted to do that, so I headed into marketing. And when I was finishing my master's in that, I had a tremendous blessing, which was that the head of the marketing department, when I asked him, what should I do? to best position myself for a career in B2B marketing out of school? He said, well, you definitely need to get sales experience because you're going to be supporting those guys. And I mean, this coming from a marketing person, I'm telling you, it was— it changed my life because at first it humbled me that I had still a lot to learn. And then I really grabbed onto that and ran with it. And 17 years later, I wouldn't be doing anything else with my time. This is really— I found my calling. I feel I love doing this and well, it's going great. So yeah, that's a little bit about myself.

Sure.

What do you like about it?

Oh, there's many things. I mean, there's so many paths that can lead you into sales, as you know, but I think it also comes down to, in a way, to who you are. And I mean, I was always there in school, for example. I was a kid who would finish the assignment first and then we'll go help other people finish their assignment. That doesn't sound like a salesperson. Well, look, it doesn't, but just stay with me for a second. I guess I have this thing internally where I want to solve problems. I'm a problem solver. I like to tinker with things, to understand things, but I also like to get to the result and see it working again. So to me, that's great. And if you're somebody who knows me for many years, you know that I'm always trying to to get involved in some way. If there's a problem, I try to figure out how to help, right? So that drives me. But in sales, really what I found is that this is like a next level for that because you're doing this for other people in a scenario where they need to trust you. They need to trust you with their resources, not only that, but also with their results. And that's a really interesting situation if you're with that kind of mindset. But for me, that's the most important thing, right? I like to solve problems. I like to help people. Now, that needed a lot of other foundational stuff around it because if you don't know what you're doing, it doesn't matter what your motivations are. I mean, really, my second biggest blessing— I mean, I told you the first one. The second biggest blessing I had is that After this person told me that, I went to a career fair and I was like, okay, sales. All right. So how do I get into this? Right? I don't know, but I know what I like. I like computers. I've always liked technology, right? That's who I am. And they had this career fair and they had a channel reseller show up at that career fair and they were not looking for me. They were looking for the BCom guys, the bachelor students. coming out for an entry-level position, as they call it, in sales. But I took that opportunity. They liked my profile. They gave me an interview. The manager who interviewed me was in a different part of the company, the government education division. Because of my past experience, they put me there. And he said to me, you're overqualified for this. I don't know if I want to hire you. It was a call center.

Oh.

Call center, monthly goals, KPIs, the whole 9 yards. But he said, look, I'm going to take a chance on you because I think you want to do this. And basically, I wanted to learn. So that was my school, out of school.

That's the hardest, isn't it?

Yes, absolutely. There's so many things you have to unlearn in a way to get good at something. You have to really leave your assumptions at the door and be humble and just open up. Right? And try to take it in and understand it. And I had the tremendous luck of having 2 managers who were like that. They were people who cared about their team. They wanted to see you succeed. And also they were not afraid to share their secrets with you, right? What made them successful and what had been tried and tested. They wouldn't just push you in the deep end of the pool. Some other people did that and it didn't work that well, right?

I see that a lot today. Managers like, well, just let them do the 100 calls. A day and they just need, you know, reps. And it's like, yeah, they do need reps, but don't they need good reps?

Yeah.

Repetitions, meaning not representative.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, there's a difference between working hard and working smart, as they say, right? And I mean, to me, that mindset that you describe in terms of churn and burn, and, you know, they're like just manpower, almost like beasts of burden, right? I mean, that's—

Horsepower.

Yeah, horsepower, exactly.

Your sound went away.

Oh, there you go. I'm sorry. Can you hear? Okay, you're back now. Yeah, and the channel that we used to joke about, that, you know, the Ben-Hur galley. Yeah, they're just like rowing like that. I mean, that's one way to do it. The other way to do it is to really work with people to first share the knowledge and fundamentals that will make them successful and then help them implement that in a consistent way.

Yes.

And then support throughout because there will be always outliers that you never discussed in training, but that will come up. So that's a different kind of leadership and the results are what speaks for that, right? And is that where you got good or was that just a good start? Oh no, that was a great start. I did that for about 6 years. Like I said, monthly goals, KPIs, call pure cold calling. But it was great because I was able to just sell anything. We had thousands of products. You want a mouse all the way to a full data center with services? I could do that. So it was a great way to really learn to learn as well.

Yeah.

You had to understand different kinds of product families. You had to understand different kinds of solutions and all that. But more importantly, you had to learn to ask questions because you really had to first get them in and then build a little bit of rapport. But once you have that, you have to show value.

Yes.

And that's where it really made a difference. I mean, when I joined that industry, it was heavily commoditized already. The heavy hitters in the company that were making like 6 figures as a rep in a call center, they had been doing it for years when it was like the golden days of the call center. And I mean, when I joined in, it was just like, there's a dime a dozen of you, right? When you cold call somebody. So you really had to distinguish yourself in your work. And I mean, my biggest hit in that was I managed to take business away from an OEM at a big account in New York City. They were buying direct and they ended up giving me their business at a higher price, mind you. And I mean, I loved it, right? But one day when the IT director was retiring, we were just saying our goodbyes and wishing ourselves other luck. He said to me, do you know why I gave you my business, Alex? Do you know why I did that? I said, well, I loved it, but I never really knew the real reason. So why did you do it? He said to me, it's because when I called the OEM and I asked for information, pricing, whatever I needed, they got back to me in a day. You got back to me in an hour. That was very valuable to me because I could depend on you for that. Also, I mean, I love something that someone else said recently in your podcast about problems are opportunities. They're absolutely that. Absolutely.

Yes.

I mean, if you want to be like the dependable guy and you're consistent, that's absolutely great, but you will really shine when problems appear or things go south. It's really your response and commitment that makes a difference. That was my school.

Well, that's it, because what that person cared about was that responsiveness, and what it told them was that you cared.

Yes.

That you're bought into this.

Yes.

And the OEM told them that, ah, you're just another order to me.

Yeah.

So people will pay more.

Yes, yes, absolutely. There's, there's, there's a premium for service, but it's because when it's critical to you, when you need things to happen, that's when you go the extra length, right? Anyway, that was the channel. But after that, I wanted to really get into enterprise sales, right? I mean, I saw myself working for, I don't know, Lenovo or IBM or one of those big guys, and there wasn't really enough room to grow in the company. So after a brief stint at a bank where I found out that that was not for me, I got back into tech and now I got into software and I've been in software or SaaS ever since. It's the best in my opinion, but it was a different kind of game because in the channel, for example, one thing they would teach you to build rapport is, I mean, you're calling— I'm calling you, you're tech director for a school. I need to first get you to like me somehow, right? Like I'm not that other guy who just started pitching. No, no, no. Hey, what do you like? What's up with this? I read about this thing that you guys are doing. That's great. Hey, even the football team's doing great. Congrats, guys. Whatever. Whatever they care about. Whatever you get. But when you're doing an enterprise sale, a complex sale, you can't really just lean on that. I mean, that's very short-lived. You actually have to be more structured. You need to be more consultative. You need to be seen as a trusted advisor. I mean, I hate it when people throw that around because there's a lot of depth to it that I think is not captured In how they—

You just can't self-proclaim it.

That's right.

They care. They decide if you're a trusted advisor, not us.

Exactly. Exactly. Control what you can, obviously. Be prepared, show up, know your stuff, but it's up to them.

Yes.

So you need to always work with that. But I've been now in this enterprise sales game for a while, and this company I'm with now is absolutely probably the most interesting place I've been at. I'm the top performer here right now. I love what I do. And I get to work on very interesting projects. But it's something that I just never thought I would do. I'm in environmental technology. And I mean, I jumped from animation software, to identity and access management, to document automation, and nowadays, right, so—

Well, talk to us about that. Because a channel reseller sale Is very different than a— is your category defined? Do people know what you do when you talk to them, or is it a brand new thing, or in that it's a little different than something else?

Yes. Yeah, excellent question. Um, this thing I'm doing right now is so innovative that most of the people don't even— I speak with, uh, they, they, they try to put you in a box, but you have to really try and, and and just not fall into that.

Yes.

At the same time, there's a bit of an urge to not start talking about yourself because you really want to educate, right? Like, oh, please let me tell you this. No, no, no. You need to first understand that, right? Because the reality is that what we do here, even though it's applicable to an operation that is very low-tech today, it has more value if you've done certain things. So you need to first try and understand what has been happening and why, and also what the current challenges are today to see if there might be a fit. I mean, you also had recently a guest. I loved his interview with you, the fellow from ADP who said, I want to first make sure there's a fit. He said 3 sales, right?

Yeah.

Do you need technology? And is my company a good fit? And is this combination of elements solution the right thing? I mean, there's 3 key questions there, and that's the— that's core to it.

And how long did it take you to learn that? Because— oh boy, because nobody— not many people teach that, right? A lot of people just want you to make the calls like you did in the call center.

Yes, absolutely. Well, I think it took me a couple of companies to learn that, I think. And it was just coming out of the channel, you know what you know, and you're put in a position where you're given goals and you need to perform. And I mean, between trying to spend time learning new tricks and figuring it out to kind of applying what's worked for you and see if you can make it, then you probably gravitate towards the latter. But really, the most important thing is that you have to really look at yourself constantly. I mean, that's the thing that has worked for me is I'm a tweaker. I'm almost obsessively always trying to trim the fat of things. For that reason, I mean, after 1 year at my new company, then I looked back and I saw that certain things had worked, some others hadn't. Now, the training wasn't really there, Because unfortunately, a lot of organizations, they don't really understand how to help salespeople necessarily. This is a very different thing than some of the other roles in the organization because we're constantly measured, right? I mean, at my company, that's the thing right now. They want to implement OKRs, right? And measure things. And I get it. It's important. But at the same time, you do have to have a little bit of empathy and understanding with what's going on in other areas. And in sales, the pressure, the results, and all those things, they just make you think different. And for me, I had to find my own training. I love living in this day and age when you can go on YouTube and get access to expertise like yours or other folks who have an interest in sharing in helping, you know, other people progress and develop. So that has taken me to a few places, tried different approaches, you know, different types of training. The latest one I took is called MEDIC. It's an interesting framework for qualification, but very technical too. There's— all of that is there, but it's the feeling part and the empathy part that I think is hardest to develop too.

Right, because you're not calling up a robot.

Yeah.

And Amedic is great as far as it's a shopping list for a deal. It's not how to get a deal.

That's right.

You can't go into the kitchen with a shopping list and put it in the oven and take out a cake. You still have to learn how to make a cake.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And was it this problem-solution mindset what really helped you? Because A lot of the great salespeople that I interview have that.

Yes, I think that's like the fire that drives you. You're a problem solver, right? So when there's a challenge, you try to figure it out, right? You don't necessarily get the deer-in-the-headlights look, or, you know, so that does help.

The bull in the china shop, just go right through the wall.

For sure, but I mean, I said earlier, there's many paths that lead to the top of the mountain in sales. And I mean, that's another thing that I love about this profession is that we just take anybody. We will take anyone.

We have to.

In the sense of backgrounds, what you've done, where you come from, that's fine. We're not like, oh, you need to be like this, like this. No, no. I mean, a lot of people come into sales from different backgrounds. In the channel I used to work with, all kinds of people, doctors, engineers that had started a career in that sense as well for other reasons. But the most important thing is, I think, to be humble and to be open. And if you are humble and open, you will learn.

Yeah.

And also, you need to have a motivation, a personal motivation behind it. I mean, for some people it's financial, For some people, it's their family, what they want to accomplish, even just success. They like winning or they're very competitive, right? So those things need to be there. And then the rest you can learn, the technicals you can learn and practice.

Curious. And you have that curiosity.

Oh yeah.

Too curious.

Now, how did you avoid getting put in that box? Because that's the natural tendency when you're at an early-stage startup. that does something different, they've got to kind of relate it to something they already understand, which is good, but then you've got to very quickly build off of that and have them understand how it's different.

Yes, and I think your question, you're referring to the folks that I speak with, right?

Yes.

The clients I deal with? Yes. So, well, I think first you need to acknowledge their knowledge. You need to say, I understand that this is something that you are not necessarily completely alien to. I mean, this is something you know, you have heard, for example, about environmental monitoring. That's a thing.

Sure.

However, there are a lot of things that have changed in the past 10 years. I mean, let me ask you something. If you were a company in the 1980s or 1990s even, and you were in transportation, and then somebody came to you and said, look, I have this really cool thing called GPS navigation. Do you want to see it? I mean, you know maps and you know navigation. You get around town. That's what you do. But if somebody came in at that time and said, look, I can give you this, would you think it's interesting to know about that? I think you would.

Yeah.

And that's really what we're trying to do here is to show you what's possible now. But first, before we do that, we want to understand what you're doing. Because honestly, I mean, a phrase that I love now is prescription without diagnosis is malpractice, right? I have to understand you. I can't just give you things and let you figure it out, right?

Well, I love that analogy. Because it gets people curious and out of the commodity box.

Yes, yes. And that's actually an example I use in my presentations.

It's fantastic because now people pin you to like GPS. So now they're trying to— oh, this— something's really changed here.

Yeah.

And if we get into it, they could do great stuff for us.

Yeah. And there's another angle to it. I'll reveal it to you here between us and these 4 virtual walls. The GPS and driving analogy is something that most people understand.

Absolutely.

And it's related to an emotional pain that we all feel, right? Nobody likes to be stuck in traffic. Or lost.

Exactly.

But when I say this to people that I travel into a city I don't know, And now I have a way to tell this thing, hey, I need— at what time do I need to leave from this hotel I'm staying to make it to my meeting at this time? And it will tell me, at this time, leave. It doesn't give me any more work to do. It just gives me what I need. Yeah, it's beautiful. No, love living in the future.

And then how do you get the discovery or the diagnosis without Having it being engaging versus annoying.

Yes, that is a very good point. What I find is that it really has a lot to do with how you angle for it. You first really need to get their buy-in in terms of, yeah, this is a good thing we should explore. Once you get that buy-in, then you can go through it as a collaborative exercise and make them part of it, not necessarily you just like a laundry list of questions that you're like, okay, what's this and what's that and how do you do this and that? No, no, no, no. But for example, one thing I did here that was very new when they hired me, their way of selling was to go on site because we sell a solution that deploys IoT monitoring. around, say, a landfill. Well, you go inside, you do a survey. It's very like a consulting type situation.

Yeah.

And then you provide a scope of work and all these things. But then they hired me to do work from Canada into the United States. It was tough to just go inside, take a plane to go to do a scoping session, right? So I just leaned on Google Earth and I use Zoom and Google Earth with my clients, gave them control of the mouse, right? And show me, please tell me, I'm recording the session. They're telling me what's happening. But I also bring to that meeting, for example, information they don't have because I can pull wind data for their location and clean up the high speeds that are not relevant, leave the low-speed data that is relevant, show it on the map on their facility, geolocated. We can also pull, for example, GIS layers with other pollutant sources in the area to show you who's around you and what the distribution is. Let's talk about what we're trying to accomplish here. And when you go through a few of those and the client keeps saying, yeah, this is— yes, this is what I feel, this is— yeah, that's when it gets good because they participated in it. You didn't push it on them. You have all the information you need. And I mean, going to site afterwards is part of our process, but this is already very engaging. Interestingly enough, I mean, also a big thing is to target properly, right? Well, one thing I learned here in this particular company, Matt, is that a big predictor of success in these conversations is how close people are to you. if you're a landfill or one of these facilities. So I use GIS software to find the highest density areas where these things are nearby and then proper targeting, call those people first. All these things are out there. We live in an age where there's so much information at your fingertips. You just need to be curious.

Curious and do a little bit of homework.

Yeah.

Right. Because what you did there is, you know, because everyone's talking about like product-led growth today, you know, have a free version and people kind of use it, but that's change. What we as salespeople can do is if you can use their data, their world, how they view the world, like you did with Google Earth, you're showing them their site.

Mm-hmm.

And you're talking about their world. That's where the magic happens.

Yeah, that's, that's all that matters. And, and I mean, this company is— this company is a SaaS company, right? So subscription. Yeah, you— it needs to be a properly done solution. If not, you won't have a renewal. So very important.

Because somebody has to bridge, meaning the bridge between where they are and where you are. So either they do it with like product-led growth or in eval, or we do it by showing them with their stuff and then being able to give the mouse to them, take it back, show them something else, get them used to it. That's that transfer of ownership.

Yes, it's, it's a very, it's a very important thing. Um, but that, that's what I find really leads to good results for everybody, right? So you need to put them first. And it's sometimes it's a little bit counterintuitive when you're constantly under pressure to deliver the results to the organization, right? So, yeah.

Right, but the results that your organization wants is an order, not all the activity that builds up to the order.

Yes, exactly.

That's all nice, and they assume that drives— in a sense it does, but not completely. It's that magic between you and the client.

Yeah, it's an interesting point you're making there because, I mean, recently we hired somebody who had worked with me in the past and he's very good at what he does. So we hired him for an SDR role here in our company and we were just talking about, you know, we have these weekly sessions, him and me, where we discuss strategy, what we're doing. And he— we were talking about tweaking his approach to calling. He said, I first want to get Effective, then I want to get efficient. Yes. And I said this, I love it.

Doesn't work the other way around.

No, it does not. But that's exactly right, right? First, first, you need to really hone it, get your, get your, your priorities straight, your focus straight, and then you need to really start tweaking at it. And getting much better at it. And there's so many tools out there now that can help you do that. By the way, I've tried Scratchpad. I think it's great. It really takes the noise away.

Yeah.

That's a very Zen way of doing calls. So it's great. But for example, one thing that really changed the way we do things here is, for example, just having a dialer. Avoid Tyler that can help you also log things and keep it fluid. I mean, those are important things, but first get effective.

Get effective first. Yeah. And people think that the activity will help you get there, and it does a little bit, but it can also get you in the wrong direction.

Yes. And bad activity is terrible for your motivation.

Nothing. Because when does a salesperson get excited? When there's a little bit of success.

That's right.

When does a salesperson get burnt out? When there's no success.

Yes, absolutely. It's funny now when, you know, years ago, I had people tell me, oh, I know what I'm doing. I've been doing this for 10 years. I said, those are 2 different statements.

Very different. I see it on LinkedIn all the time. Everyone starts with the number of years and it's like, so what?

Yeah.

You know, does Tiger Woods say, well, I've been golfing since I was 2? No. They go, let me practice my swing for 2 hours today.

Yes. Yes. And it's interesting because everyone that we admire and that lives in a very results-oriented world, they have to be humble and learn.

Yes.

Right? Doing the right adjustments at the right time makes a world of difference. In the channel, I saw nervous breakdowns like 3 desks away because people were just taking so much rejection, but management's response to that was to put more pressure or put you on a plan. Oh my God, That was like, that's helpful. Yeah, that's not going to do anything.

Well, and that's it. And they don't understand simple human nature.

Yes.

Right.

Because then that—

because I always say you're either on a spiral down or spiral up in sales.

Yes.

And the easiest way to get on a spiral down is get put on a plan and more pressure without any little success.

Yes.

Spiral up is a little bit of success every day, just a little bit, a little bit more, a little bit more.

Yeah, just progress, not perfection. Yes. Cool.

Hey, Alex, I really appreciate your time today. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

Oh, thank you, Brian. And well, I'm on LinkedIn, definitely, like most people. You can find me there if you look for Alex Zamudio. That's spelled Z like zebra, A-M-U-D-I-O.

What I also like about the puzzle mindset is that it takes the view of selling in B2B. We have many calls. It's hard to get in. It's hard to stay in. The natural progression is lots of excitement and interest at first. They try it out, but trying to get the value communicated properly throughout the organization who's buying It's really hard. And too many people just try and get more stuff in the funnel and hopefully more stuff will come out. And that, that seems to make sense logically, but in practicality, eh, not so much because all of these deals take handholding through the whole process. And did you listen to how he used analogies? In there about like the GPS. It's brilliant because what, what you need is that ability to have people understand based off of what they already know and then leap to something new. And you always got to teach them how things have changed. Get people uncomfortable in the state that they're in, a little curious about how they could possibly do it better, a little fear of missing out or not knowing about what's currently going on. Very powerful. You get people to open up about that. And if you're looking for a systemized process for doing this, Start the Conversation, Get the Meetings is the course for you. And I teach you exactly how to get people aware and curious and a little bit of interest and move it into action with that. And you get to learn— it's a skill. Now, you could try and figure it out on your own, and you can. It'll take years, but it's up to you. Do you want to be rich today, or do you want to be rich 5 years from now? Ah, take your time. There's no hurry. But I really enjoyed that interview, the kind of passion about solving the problem of how to sell this product. Too many of us think, oh, it's just more dials, more spam, more this, more that. And that distracts us from thinking. Sales is a thinking I had one sales leader comment on my thinking video and said, well, you can think all day unless you take action. And it's like, yes, it's not you only think. You have to think and take action. And you can take action all day and not think and get nothing except for tired. People in sales— the real challenge and aggravation I have with sales is people view it like this political religious thing that once they have their set beliefs about sales, there's no changing them. There's no altering them. And they just kind of put out their platitudes. And I'm like, that's the B-player trap. That's where somebody got okay at sales, good enough in sales. And now they don't want to grow any further. But it's like playing a game or solving a puzzle. You can solve one puzzle and then see another puzzle and, oh man, it's all different. It's all a little bit of variables. I used to love doing Sudoku puzzles as a great way of, you know, being distracted or killing time. Like if you have nothing else to do or you just don't want to work for A few minutes. And okay, you do— I got pretty good at them, but the puzzles can keep getting harder and different. Does it mean I can't solve the puzzles? No, they're just different. That's the way our deals are. There's a lot of similarities and there's a few distinctions. And if we want to use the same answer for each puzzle, we get the puzzle wrong.

Wrong.

We have to understand the variations, the practice of it, the curiosity and emotional detachment at certain stages and attachment at other stages. It's a lot of very counterintuitive things about sales. Pretty much most of selling is counterintuitive. It's about giving, We think it's about taking. We all think it's about talking. It's really about asking and listening and understanding. It's about guiding, not pushing. It's about them, not us. You know, pretty much everything about it. And this is why it takes so long for us to become good at it because we're fighting our natural instincts. A lot of times our natural instincts are pretty much orthogonal, at a right angle, to selling. And we can hear it on podcasts and read books, but we have to build it into how we solve the puzzle. And if you really want to learn how to solve the puzzle of the complex sale, Closing the Complex Sale is the course for you. I'm sure you're just getting off of a quarter or going into a quarter. And did you notice the forecast meltdown? This is what I always used to see it. I'd go to the beginning QBR, the beginning of the quarter, all these deals, you know, 200%, 300%, 500% of quota in pipeline, never looked so good. And the person's patting themselves on the back and I'm looking at this and I'm like, eh. You know, do they— where are they in the deal? Oh, they love us. They can't live without us. They can't wait to get going. And then all of a sudden the end of the quarter comes and about 10% of that closes, 20% closes smaller, requires unnatural acts of business to get it done. There's a smarter way of solving that puzzle. Because what I used to view sales as, and I still do, it's a game. And you need the elements of a game. And is a puzzle different than a game? I don't know. You can debate that. But what it does is it allows you to take that mental model of what is it, where are we, where we have to go, what are the typical elements of this game puzzle, whatever you want to call it, And then how do we write it? And how do we prevent the bad things from happening and increase the likelihood that the good things are going to happen? Now, it's people, and it's a game, and it's a puzzle. But you're not going to get all of them. But what you want is to increase your likelihood, your awareness, to use that precious thing that we get that we can't get any more of. Time. Time's going on whether we like it or not. There's no way to slow it down or stop it. It just keeps going, doesn't it?

Hmm.

Look, I'm looking at my calendar right now.

It keeps going.

So our ability to utilize our time on the games that we're most likely to win and how to guide and play that game In the most effective way— effectiveness, then efficiency— and close it. On office hours yesterday, we were talking about first get effective at each stage before you start applying the technology to make it efficient or automating it or scaling it. Because you want to make sure that it is At some level of effectiveness first. So go check out the courses at b2brevenue.com. There's a video on the website where you can watch how the courses work. It's pretty easy website sign up. There's 2 options. There's a payment plan, not a subscription. Okay, so it's not like, oh yeah, I'll join for 1 month. No, it's a 12-month payment plan. So it is a commitment, but you can spread the payments out over 12 months so that it doesn't impact your, your income. And it's not expensive. It's a lunch or a dinner once a month. And what do you get in exchange for that? You get office hours, you get one-on-ones. They're all recorded and put back in the course. And everybody says, well, what time zone It's 2:00 PM Eastern time for the office hours. The one-on-ones are typically on Tuesday and Wednesday Eastern time in the midday. But that doesn't mean that you can't get tremendous value if that time zone doesn't work. They're all recorded. Anybody who wants to submit questions through text, video, audio can do that at any time throughout the year. And you got 4 years of office hours and one-on-ones that have been recorded in there. Everything from people selling copiers to law firms to selling, uh, what crazy stuff. We've got Uber for trucks, we've got payroll systems, we've got pretty much any, uh, business-to-business sale. And clearly, if you're not getting the success that you want, a little investment in yourself may be appropriate. And I've got vice presidents in this course who are like, okay, I get it now. Because this stuff, it's not just knowing it, it's playing the game. We all know how to play a puzzle or play some games, but do we know the nuances? The prevention, the process, how to scale it, and really what's going on on the other side to prevent your number one competitor. It's not who you think it is. It's doing nothing. More deals will be lost to do nothing than anything else combined. What you can call it and soften it up all you want, but it's not a deal. The commission is all the same. Big fat zero for all your work. So if you weren't going to put all that energy into it, you want to win. Go to b2brevenue.com, check it out. Everything's in the show notes below as well. Check out our friends over at Scratchpad. Give it a try. If you have to use Salesforce, you want to use Scratchpad. Give it a check. Uh, if there's somebody else in your life that is suffering, uh, also enable them with Scratchpad. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening. Check out the other podcasts.

I was just going to give a bit of a testimonial, if that's all right, just to kick it off.

Only if it's positive.

No, it is positive. It was a— yeah, um, just because I started the course, I think, in June of last year, 2021. I got a few more months left of access, which is good, um, but I feel like it's been a transformative experience in my own personal and professional life. I was able to go from a period of a low sales slump in the middle of last year, in the summer and early fall, and then really was able to then come back and exceed my target by the end of the, by the end of the 4th quarter. And so the only other thing I would say is that it's also really differentiated me amongst people on the sales team in terms of focus and clarity of what's important. And now I feel really good about what I'm doing in terms of the approach of reaching out to customers and having those conversations and being focused, as opposed to just doing a lot of the other busy work on the side, like organizing resources and doing business analytics and all this other stuff. And so it's really been a noticeable difference with our executive team at, at my company. And so I just want to thank you for the content and for the these opportunities. And so I hope that helps if there's anybody new. It's— I'm a work in progress, but it's getting better. Good. Yeah.

And you're selling pretty hard stuff.