DO KNOW THIS SECRET WEAPON TO GENERATE REVENUE

How do you feel about sales? What do you view it as? You may think it's— that's an academic question, but it's our career, isn't it? It's what we do all day. How do you feel about it? Is it a grind or is it a passion? Well, we all can choose that. We can develop it. And on the outro of this episode, I'll give you some ideas on how and what I've learned helping myself and a lot of reps become Good at sales and develop a passion for it. Because if you like it, it's good. If you love it, it's great. But if it's your passion, imagine how well you would become at it. So we're going to talk about that today. And we got a great rep on the line today who's developed it, grew up with it, and is going to share some of his analogies, stories, and his progress through it. I think you're really going to enjoy it.

Thanks, buddy.

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

Yeah, listen, first of all, Brian, thank you so much for your time. I got used to the walk and chat that you do, and it's incredible. So let's stay stationary, and I am thrilled to be here with you. So yeah, my name is Mike. Brian, just a little history. There's I am what I would deem the son of a salesman. So for better or for worse, I grew up in this small town about half an hour north, if you will, of Toronto, Canada. And it was this place where I guess what we would call back then in the '80s is sort of working professionals. So we had the doctors, we had the lawyers, we had the dentists, and I went home to the sales guy. And dinner table chat was a little bit different at my home. My father would entertain us and You know, tell me stories about, hey, you know, this time around I've got that 10-hour drive ahead of me. I'm going to jump into that station wagon with wood trim all around it and put all the product in the trunk. And the thing I'm going to do better, Mike, this time, he would tell me, is I'm going to leave at 2 in the morning. So I'll creep out of the house. You won't hear a thing. But I'm going to do this because if I do it properly, I will arrive outside of Alberta and I will be the first sales guy of all the competition calling on these accounts. to get to that payphone booth. Brian, his deal was when he got there, and I think you'll appreciate this, this was their CRM. This was the gold, right? So you got to the Yellow Pages, if you ripped them out quicker than your competitor, it was gold. So these are sort of the tales that I grew up with. And just stay on this track for a second. I remember my father asking me at a very young age, he said, son, is there anything that you want to be successful at in life? And I said, yeah, I love tennis. Maybe I'm going to be a successful tennis player. And he said to me this one thing that still resonates with me is, very basic question, but what is it, Mike, that you are willing to do? What lengths will you go to above and beyond the average person to receive that success, however you deem that success? I'm going to tie this into tennis these days. So let's stick with the tennis theme. Then it'll all come around, Brian, at the end. The idea in a nutshell here is that I watch tennis right now, right? The top 50 tennis players, men or women's, in the world right now, these folks, believe it or not, they're entering about 15 to 20 tournaments a year. All right. So let's say 20 tournaments. Let's give these people the fact that they're so talented that they're always going to get to at least the third round. By my math, that's 60 matches that they're playing. 60 days of the year, these people are under the camera, under the lights, playing their matches. That's what we see, Brian, obviously. So the question for me has always been, what the heck are these people doing the other 84% of the time? And that's sort of what I've brought into my sales career is that thing that my father asked me, you know, what are you doing to go above and beyond? And I think that's sort of how I've always looked at sales. I've had the opportunity to work in real estate. I carried a bag for a while and sold Went door to door, did my door knocking, cut my teeth on that for sure. Decided in about 2010, I had a little family at the time and decided that evenings and weekends were going to belong to me, not the career. So I left there, fell into software sales, did my first drill at a very large ERP. So we were competing against the likes of SAP and SharePoint, etc. And then it's just a story of, you know, a little bit of fortunate opportunities with startups. And I've always sort of enjoyed a career being the first sales rep into a startup, being the right-hand man to a CEO. And just came off an unbelievable chapter with a company called BrokerBay that actually was acquired. And I'm starting a new chapter, Brian, actually on Monday. So the guys would be thrilled if I name-drop, but it's a company called Willow. And Willow's out there democratizing investing in property. So no longer is this a game for the top 1% who have millions of dollars to invest in the likes of REITs and stuff like that. This is for the first time giving everybody a chance to actually own a slice of commercial real estate. So hyper-exciting stuff. And hopefully that answers your question, right?

Well, so what do you do when you're not on the court?

Yeah, no, I love that. That's great. So I do go back on the court. I play with the same guy weekly and Because I'm not following that advice, my game is terrible, frankly. So, you know, I go out, I hit a ball, and I get exactly what I put into it, which is relatively nothing. So, yeah, I love that question. I think, you know, when we look at sales, Brian, a lot of what I see out there today is exactly that. And then depending on your role, so let's go to, you know, the Salesforce analogy, for example. You know, you might have a lot of accounts accounts and people know the brand name and stuff. I like to talk through the lens of sort of this startup where you don't have any brand awareness and you're a true hunter, right? By definition, going out there, evangelizing some software, getting into the marketplace with no brand awareness, no marketing budget. That's the kind of gig that I've been doing. That to me is why I got involved in sales. So yes, you know, it's not every day that I'm on a call. It's not every day that the cameras are rolling and I'm selling something, I'm doing a demo. So, so great question. I think where I'm going with this, Bryan, is that there's a whole lot of preparation involved. If you're the guy playing tennis like I do today, you hit the courts as a weekend warrior kind of thing, but your game never elevates. So yeah, you know, I work with salespeople and, you know, I can give you some ideas right off the bat. But, you know, your value proposition, Bryan, for example, there's a lot of people out there who memorize a value prop and they go to the marketplace with that value prop. And yes, you know, that's, that's, um, that's something to do. I think, I think the top 1% of salespeople ingest what it is that they're doing, personalize that, wrap it up into a nice little package. And I always tell salespeople that are younger than I, you know, what about this, uh, this litmus test, Brian? If you were to throw on like a white t-shirt tomorrow and somebody gave you a pen and you were able to write on that t-shirt your value proposition, Here's the challenge with that. It's gotta fit neatly on the t-shirt. It's gotta be able to be read by a grade 4, grade 5, you know, kid. And that's when I believe you've nailed it. So I will do that ad nauseam. I will go through, hey, this is the value prop. Can I drop one more word? Can I make it even simpler? I'll challenge myself all the time to do stuff like that. A demo. We're in the world of software right now. You know, we're sitting there, we're giving demos. I always ask reps and myself, Can we drop a single click? Do we need 15 times clicking that? But let's get down to 13, and then let's get down to 10. But Brian, in order to do this stuff, you gotta really know your product. You gotta know your service. You gotta know the marketplace, because a lot of people stumble on, well, if I don't click that button, then— Okay, well, go back and understand what it is that you are bringing to the marketplace. And I like to help salespeople understand that, that perspective. So I can take you through a whole bunch of other sort of litmus test stuff I do, but I'm a practicer. I love the craft that we're in, and I practice that craft.

And that's it, because when we start as reps, marketing gives us this value property, our deck, and when we present it, people are like giving the dog watching TV the nodded head, and they're like, hmm. Not getting it. It's like you're speaking in foreign tongues. Yeah, yeah, I, uh, yeah, because we're trying to impress them on how powerful it is and how AI, you know, I love when people put AI in front of something that's really a spreadsheet in your life.

I got a good one about the AI thing. So I don't want to throw anybody under the bus here, but, uh, worked at an AI company at one point in, in my, uh, career selling software and, uh, we were selling to, let's say, to retail. In fact, the audience for this was grocery, the grocery business. So we had a deck when I got there, marketing reps and the folks put together, and first 16 slides told you the difference between predictive analytics and AI and gave you a whole bunch of— And so one day I just sort of looked at that and said, hey, this is not what we are bringing to the marketplace. We— AI, you know, leave that to be what it is, but what is the story around AI? So I'm really big on, you know, what is the story that you're telling? Why are you telling it? If tomorrow I went back to sell AI, Brian, I'd do it very differently than a lot of reps would do it, for better or for worse. AI is the mechanism, it's what's going on behind the scenes, but the story you need to tell and show is a whole lot different.

Well, that's it. Because, you know, the t-shirt I, I always use, it's like, can a civilian—

Yeah.

Understand this? Like, like with Willow, it's like, oh, you own part of Apple. You don't own the whole company. You own a couple of shares, right? Wouldn't you like to own a couple shares of a building?

And that's just it. And so we can— and again, Brian, we can do this in various ways, right? I can, I can talk ad nauseam around real estate investing and I talk about all that stuff. But the reality is, and I think, again, I'm starting this job on Monday, by the way. So the interesting part of this is that when you think about it, millennials are in this struggle today, right? Very, very expensive to own a property. Buying that first-time house is not likely when you and I bought our first house. So the story to me, and again, this is what you want to bring to the marketplace, is Millennials, for example, feel stranded in their ability to invest in real estate. Well, a company like Willow, what we're doing opens up the marketplace for millennials to actually own commercial real estate before they are ready to buy their first house.

Yeah.

That's the story, Brian. I mean, there's other stories to tell about Willow, but the reality is, is how do you bring this to the marketplace? I think that's what I've spent a lot of time ingesting and trying to help other people understand is that forget about your audience. Pretend your audience— I've got 2 children at home. I will tell you that I always make sure every time I start a new gig or I'm doing something different, if these 2 children at 11, 15 can't sell it back to me after the first time I pitch it to them, I haven't done my job yet and I'm going to keep working on it.

Well, that's it, because sales is about— it's about transfer of ownership, right? It's about getting the other person to understand it, and we try and over-impress them on how unique and powerful it is. But then if they don't get it, that they're not going to buy it.

No, no. And it's, you know, it's a lot of wasted breath. And I love that you just brought that up as well, because, uh, one of the things that I try and do myself and encourage others to do, and, um, is We get on these calls, for example, Brian, right? Like we find out that, you know, the decision makers are going to be on the call and it's a big deal and it's happening Monday at 2:30 and here's the Zoom link and we get on and, you know, as sales reps, we get on that call and we start this thing where it's like, you know, so I'm Mike and I represent this company and this is what I sell and, you know, you're here and why don't you all introduce yourself? Brian, you know how many times I've seen it fall flat where the prospect side of the bench on that call He says, we don't have time for intros. Ask questions ahead. Be the sales rep and say, are we going to be doing intros on this call? It's very simple. You know, you have to ask permission for stuff. And I find a lot of sales reps these days, and probably in the past, we have this thing where I'm going to deliver. And, you know, just sticking along these lines, Brian, what it's worth is that you have somebody going on the call and I'm Mike. And I'm in charge of sales for Company ABC. What value is that, frankly? They knew that going into the call. So if that's what you're using your intro for, rather go right into your product at that point. You're missing a really big opportunity. So this goes back to what a lot of people you interview and certainly you profess is this idea of we have to personalize, we have to be human beings first and foremost. I think, you know, with everything that's gone on inside the pandemic, If you can't emote and empathize and get on a call and ask somebody how they truly are these days, if that's not you, don't do intros, man. Go right into your product because you are missing an opportunity and you're wasting time. So I think there's a lot of stages in here to your point where I think we just gotta ask questions. We, you know, they, they, they have a responsibility to help guide you. And if they're not and you're asking these questions, It's probably not going anywhere.

But that's it, because that sales call is a lot like that tennis tournament. Okay, you may get— we may get, what, 5, 10 of them a week for totally 60 a year. But how long did it take to get that? It might have taken a couple weeks, a month maybe, to get that meeting.

Yeah, and 100% alongside. So, so I, you know, I, I like to preface that the way that I hopefully did is that, you know, maybe if you're with Salesforce, you have X number of meetings booked for the week and that's different, right? Yeah. But again, at the level that people like myself are doing it, you're absolutely bang on. If you have 5 meetings a week and they're legitimate meetings, you're not fudging the books or anything, you're going on to legitimate calls, what are you spending your 80% of the time doing? You know, and I've never had the fortune of working with a great marketing department. Sorry to anybody who's been in marketing in the companies I've worked at. You're all wonderful people, but you know, the reality is that they're startups and we're bootstrapped and we're out there trying to piece stuff together. And I think, you know, it's incumbent on you as a salesperson to get out there and what is the marketing and who are the thought leaders and who is it that I need to speak to and what is the messaging that I want to deliver and, you know, what's the problem that I'm trying to solve? I think that's another thing that I would just throw out there is I think a lot of sales reps are going out today and they're sort of having these conversations and they're arriving on the phone, Brian, and they're saying, they profess at the beginning of the call, reason why we're speaking today, Brian, is because you have this problem. And I hear it all the time and I think to myself, I'd rather you ask them, am I correct in that you have this problem? And if they were to say, No, that's wonderful news. So what is your problem? Because I've done the research. We are working with people like you today. Your counterparts at ABC have the problem that I theorized you might have. But now that you're telling me that's not your problem, let's work in real time. Let's— so preparation, you know, the rubber hits the road when you can get to a call. Know your service, know your product, know your offering, know your people. so well, as you know, Brian, that when you get there, we can pivot. And we're not giving ourselves the privilege of being so set up and so prepared, like my father would ask me at the time, that we can pivot. And I think that's a shame. And I think that's where I'd love to see sort of salespeople get to, is this point that, listen, it's a challenge for all of us. I've been involved in sales for 25 years in 2 or 3 different industries. And yeah, it's still something that I work on every single day is, you know, how much do you know? How much can you pivot? This is live. It's the tennis match. Nobody called ahead and told John McEnroe, McEnroe, they're going to hit to your forehand the whole time, right? The ball is live. As salespeople, if we have a one-track mind and we have our script, when the ball's hit to the backhand, The whole thing is done.

We fall apart.

We fall apart.

And we don't have that windshield time that we used to have where it was a great preparation, because if you have an hour drive to the account, right, you have an hour to think through the meeting.

I am, you know, I couldn't agree with you more than that. And, you know, so, so the other thing, uh, along with, I think, what we're talking about here is just, you know, let's get into sort of the discovery call, this idea You know, I'm gonna have this discovery call with a prospect. I speak to people out there, you're already laughing, but I speak to people that we've sold to in the past or accounts that we've won. And I say, how is our discovery call different than the others? It's like, you all are reading off the same script at the end of the day, you all ask the same 10 questions. What an unbelievable opportunity that is for somebody in sales today. You know, go ask them. a question like, which company out there do you really admire? Is there a competitor of yours that you would love to better be more like, for example? These kind of questions are, you know, get more intimate, get more into the weeds, but you need confidence to do this. And I think this goes back to that age-old problem where today the whole society, everything in sales is metric-driven, right? Did you make the call? Did you make the time? Beyond. Yeah, I mean, you know, you've done some great stuff.

You use that in tennis. If you put metrics on tennis, you would be—

I love it. I love it. There's—

you lost the game, but you— the serves, you need more serves than—

Right. And you serve like everybody else, right? You're using the same guidebook to hit that serve. Yeah. And I think that's, um, that's a big one over there is just trying to, you know, get into the weeds, get into your personality, Put all of this into a discovery call. You know, silly question, I'll throw it out there, Brian, but like at the end of the day, I'm amazed how few people will ask this. And I think it's a very reasonable question to ask. You know, Susan, thanks for getting on this call with me today. You know, I've got a couple of questions, want to learn more about you. Susan, tell me, what are the 3 things that I need to do? I'm in this for the long haul. I'm going to win your business, but I want to be useful to you from this phone call forward. So could you kindly let me know what are the 1, 2, or 3 things that I need to do for you, Susan, to help me win the business? Why don't we ask that? Why don't we ask that question?

Right.

Because we're too busy talking, making statements. And the first piece of advice I give to young salespeople, take every statement and turn it into a question. It forces your brain to kind of think about— think differently. Because a question is like, why would I ask that?

Yeah, yeah. No, you listen, I— the people who come on your show, you know, we sit here and we, we want to talk, we want to give everything. Put that, uh, prospect in that seat. Do what Brian does really, really well. Be Brian in these discovery calls. Let them talk. Forget about the mics, we're rambling right now, right? We want it— we want to get to the, the Brian sort of, here are the, you know, pertinent questions, I need some responses. People love to talk and we don't let people talk.

But my trick, like when you were on-prem, you know, the guy that comes down that picks you up, brings you up to the presentation room. Yeah, yeah. He always would say like, so what brought you here? Why did you Or I'd flatter them, and I'd say like, if it's a location, I'd always the biggest school in the area.

Yeah.

Did you graduate from Georgia Tech? Yeah.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden, that two minutes from the reception desk to they're talking ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba, and pretty by the time I get there, they're telling me what to do.

Brilliant. It's brilliant. And that's what it is. You're you're bang on, and in. You know, I don't know if these— this sort of what we're talking about right now, I don't know how trainable it is, but I can assure you— who am I to assure you, Brian? But, you know, I can certainly tell you that from my experience, the reality is, is that, you know, when we're going so heavy on metrics, we're missing so many opportunities of coaching moments. There is no real coaching anymore, as far as I'm concerned. The reality is that, you know, and there are great sales leaders who work at companies through and through. There's great Those great leadership teams, we're just missing out on. I worked at this company and one of the things that they did really well is, I don't know if you'll know this, but I don't know if it's a Canadian thing. Were you ever in school and heard something called a pop quiz?

Oh yeah.

All right.

Love the pop quiz.

I hated them as a student. There's nothing worse than coming into school and then finding out it's a pop quiz.

I always sat next to someone smart.

Well, you and me both. But pop quiz.

Wow.

Do pop quizzes at your office. Pop quiz a guy to stand in front of you in the moment and go ahead and do the demo. Why don't we do this? Well, we don't necessarily do it because we don't have the time. But more importantly, we're programmed as sales coaches or leaders or VPs to do the metrics thing. There are literally— the teaching moments have fallen apart completely. And I think that's a real shame. You know, as much as there's great technology that's around sales these days and listening to phone calls and, you know, I give everybody kudos. Yeah, listen, you know, I'm an old school guy at the end of the day. Talk to me, role play with me. Let me hammer out obstacles. Let me see how you work around those obstacles. Let me walk by your desk or call you up on the phone in this Zoom era and say to you, hey, you've got a demo on Tuesday. Last time I saw your demo was pretty good. Demo for me right now. I don't care if you have a meeting. I don't care if you have anything. Shut all that off. It's you and I for the next 25 minutes. Those are the coaching moments that actually will get salespeople to get to the next level. And it's pretty basic stuff.

Right.

And make it fun because totally, I've been in the same shoes as you, you know, startup.

Yeah.

You know, here's your laptop. Send me a forecast by Friday. And You have to start where the client is. The category isn't defined, the need isn't really articulated very well. They're, they're kind of wondering what it is. They hear willow, they don't know if it's a bird or a big bird. So you kind of got to start where they are and kind of build the conversation. That's a creative process, that's not a metric. You don't metric creativity. You don't go to an artist and you say, how many up brushes did you do this morning versus down brushes?

I laugh because I used to play guitar and it was how many downstrokes versus upstrokes. I quit the thing at the end of the day. The teacher was, you know, so involved in that.

Because you want to hear something.

You just want to hear some music.

Yeah, you want to be Jethro Tull or—

Neil Young in my case.

But yeah, you want to play Harvest, right?

Yeah.

So you have to, as a manager, or even as a rep, kind of figure it out. Talk to strangers about it. Okay, here, let me ask you some questions. What do you like to invest in? Isn't real estate like the bedrock of investments? It's real.

Yeah.

Solid.

Yeah.

Always needed.

What about the fact that this is— we've finally broken down the walls, right? So no longer is it the top 1% who can afford to invest in REITs and have their own tax planners inside of it. Holy moly, the world has changed. And this is— if you can't get excited by that, man, if that doesn't excite you and you can't bring that to the marketplace, And you're struggling to figure out the value proposition on the website says as follows, I'm going to ingest that and memorize that. Holy cow, I hope I don't slip when I'm regurgitating.

I don't know.

I, I don't know what to tell you. You're in the wrong business, frankly. You know, you're in the wrong business or you need to get that real coaching.

And when did you come to your own in sales? When did it become your bag?

Yeah.

Because you grew up with it, which kind of gives you A little bit of a head start, but you've got the mindset, you understand the lifestyle. And it's weird that a lot of us do go into it after seeing the lifestyle, because sometimes it's not pretty, right? Because you've got the ups and downs. And I'm sure your dad came home some days after he lost a deal, you didn't want to be there. You don't want to be there.

You didn't want to be—

time to go play tennis.

Or sleep over at a buddy's house. Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, you know, Brian, I've always been that guy who I think, you know, I want to tell you, 20 years ago, I joined this group of actors who were actually talented, making it places, and I was just the worst of the group. But I always had the sense of, you know, when you talk about, you know, intellectual curiosity and stuff like that, I always like to put myself in a situation where the chances are I'm going to suck at it. And there's no reason why I should be good at it, frankly. And I think that mindset is very cool so long as you're open to doing the work. If you go and get your first job and your reference point is the guy above me is going to coach me, he's going to train me, those days are long gone. I think that's what we've been talking about here. And the reality is, is that you've got to be a self-hustler. You got to want this thing. And I'll reference the acting thing. I remember one night after we did a play on stage, and man, oh man, I was terrible. And I got off stage and I started talking to these people. And these are actors, man. This is the salt of the earth kind of people, right? And I remember one person sitting back and saying to me as we were drinking our third beer, and this person looked at me and they're like, Mike, could you see yourself doing Anything else in this lifetime other than acting? And I wish I knew the right answer at the time. And I responded in front of 15 eager faces and I said, sure, sure. And they said, then go and do it. And that's the rule of thumb. Brian, I could not see myself doing anything else in life. So I behave as though every second, every minute, every hour, every day, I am fighting to stay in this career. And as soon as I think you lose that edge— I don't care who you are, and I don't care if you're name brand you yourself, but you know, at the end of the day, if you aren't fighting like hell to stay in this career, you're not going to make it.

It is a tough career, and it is a lot like acting and tennis, which are performance. It's how well you do it, right? It's not that you do it. Anyone can say they act, but few can get paid to be an actor. Well, few people can get an audience to watch them act.

For sure, for sure. I certainly couldn't. But, um, but yeah, and I think that's just it, is that that's the falling in love with the effort. Yeah, right. Like my father said to me, you know, and, and that analogy we kicked off your, your program with around the, the tennis— if 85% of the time the lights aren't on, these people aren't in match play, These people are the world's best, best athletes, right? So they must be doing a whole bunch of stuff to stay in that limelight. I challenge salespeople by and large to be the same way. If you're busy sending out a copy and paste email by day and you can go home and say, hey, I clocked in some time, again, I'd encourage you— and who am I? Who's Mike? Go find something else to do with your time, right? Like, there's other things that you can do. I think if you're, if you're a sales guy and you're sitting in the office and you say to yourself, hey, 85% of the time I'm training. Well, man, oh man, put together a training agenda.

Right.

Go to your sales leaders, go to your coaches. If they can't do it for you, find the likes of other people on LinkedIn, reach out, let them know that, hey, I wanna own my craft. I need to get better. Will you give me 15 minutes? What is the best advice you can offer me right now? If this that we're talking about right now, if this sounds like too big of a quest for you, find another career.

It might not be your bag because—

100%.

You know, you look at— you probably— what you follow in acting, I follow in comedians.

Yeah, great.

And comedians is a distinction because there's probably 100 comic writers for every comedian who makes a living. As a comedian. Yeah, because writing the joke is a whole lot easier than delivering the joke.

100%. It's a great analogy. That's—

We're the comedians of it. We're not the writers. We all can sit back and go, yeah, this is, this is a good script, right? This is a good discovery question. But it's the person who can connect with the other person, ask it in a genuine, authentic way, and get a unique An honest answer.

I really love analogies. I love that one so much that part of me is hoping you don't air this and I can steal that from you and run with that.

Who gets it on LinkedIn first?

I'm already on. But no, that's, yeah, I think that's just it. So, you know, from my perspective, you know, I love what it is we're doing. I don't hear passion around sales nearly enough. I hear it from you. I hear it from other sales leaders. Again, and I think even just when you watch interviews with different people who are salespeople, I think they come on with, this is sort of the gamut of my day. This is what I do. This is how I get through it. I'm not encouraged by that. I'm encouraged by people who approach this the same way as a tennis player or an actor, for God's sakes, a comedian will go out and approach this.

Right.

I want people to be passionate. This is a craft. It's a very, very hard way to make a living. It's a very difficult way to make a living. No?

I think so.

Well, to be good at it, you know, when you're great at it, it's fantastic. But if you're okay, it's not that much fun. You get beat up a lot.

Really badly.

You get judged a lot.

Yeah.

And, and too many people think it's, I know what comedy is, so I'm a good comedian. You go up in a bar, in a comic place, and you say, I know what comedy is, sit there and laugh, and they'll be like, see ya, right? It's not knowing it. Because I see, you know, because I put a lot of stuff on LinkedIn, you see the comments and it's all platitudes from all these people. It's like, no, you're not listening to the message.

Yeah.

You're, you're reacting to how it feels. The two— if I hear, you know, two ears and one mouth one more time, I'm gonna jump through the screen.

Well, listen, maybe stop, uh, stop advising people. I'll get kicked off. Get kicked off. Yeah, no, you know, I, I think that's the thing. I think, you know, I just went through an interview process, right, prior to Willow. I was talking to a whole bunch of different organizations out there. One thing that kept coming up, uh, from people is, wow, you know, you really tell a story and you really are passionate about what it is. And You know, on the one hand, I think, okay, great, that probably worked out fairly well. And they get off the call and they think, all right, I didn't bomb that call. But then I often follow that up with this immediate feeling of, are people not passionate? Like, if this stands out—

What crushes passion most? Micromanagement.

100%. Yes.

It's like being watched and checked on and listened to. You're like, yeah, because that's not to improve you, that's to spy on you to make sure you're working.

Yeah, I mean, the biggest trick out there is never, never take the company's computer, right? Buy your own.

I have my own, and when I leave, I send the brand new computer back. You know, because you know what they do today? They can just scrape your computer remotely and just shut it down and take all the data. And then now you have a piece of lead or iron.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, but so, Bryan, let me ask you, you know, in terms of your intelligence around sales, everything that you've done for salespeople out there today, what— how do you think that people can be passionate about what it is we're doing? Do they have to come to this with the passion? Do they have to be people who are passionate to begin with? Just curious what your take is.

Yeah, I think you have to have a why. Because, you know, I've been— I interview hundreds of salespeople, the best, and they always have a why. Some people, it's, you know, solving the puzzle of who needs this, why do they need it, how do I get them to buy it. Some people just love the product and they can convey and communicate that. Some people have 5 kids, they want them to go to private school. That's their why.

Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah.

And, and other people just want to prove that they're the best. They want— they're hypercompetitive.

Right, right.

I don't think it matters what it is, but you have to find it. You have to develop it and remember it.

Yeah, yep. No, it's, uh, you know, I, I think you're, you're absolutely right. And I think that's, um, that's, that's, I think, you know, my, my main thing. If you said to me, hey Mike, you know, break down what sales is and You know what it is that has kept you involved in this career for 25 years. It is the fear of being replaced. You know, if I'm not doing my job well, I'm gonna be kicked out of this and what the heck am I gonna do with my life? I think there's a piece of that. And I think the other piece of that is, you know, you have an opportunity as a salesperson to begin a conversation. I've seen you speak about this ad nauseam and You know, this is just it. It's not, it's not a call. It's not a sales call. It's a business conversation. For God's sakes, have that conversation. If you don't love that, if you can't take Willow's idea and have a conversation around that, again, I, I, you know, do it. Why do it?

Cool.

Why do it?

Hey, Michael, appreciate your time today. Where can people go to connect and follow you and watch your passion for the rest of their career?

I'm always on LinkedIn. I think that's a great place to try to post some of this and share as best I can, do a little bit of knowledge share with salespeople. Otherwise, check out willow.ca. For anybody out there who's ever had a dream of thinking to themselves, geez, I want to invest in real estate, this is your opportunity right now to own a slice of commercial real estate at a very cost-effective way. And it's the first time you'll have had that opportunity historically. So we're hyper excited about that. But Brian, when I say it's a pleasure, I truly mean that. I'm so pleased that you gave me some time this morning. I listen to all your stuff. I think you're wonderful and have yourself a wonderful rest of the day and thanks for your time.

So how do we get sales to become our passion? Because we probably don't start off that way. Certainly, I didn't because what can be so passionate about calling strangers all day? You know, being brushed off, being treated less than positively. Here's what I've learned helping reps, especially with that prospecting. We'll start the conversation, get the meeting. It's the speed to success. Small little win. You get a reply. You get an open. You get a thank you. Those little things, cherish them. That first hit of dopamine. Yesterday in office hours, we had— it was for Winning the Complex Sale, not Start the Conversation and Get the Meeting. But the first person to speak was talking about the other course and how they applied it and got a conversation started with the CEO and now has a deal.

So quick.

So, so I hate to say easy because it is work.

It is.

Even when you are good at it, even when you become the magician that you want to be, it's still a little bit of work. But her success with that fires her up, gets her excited, gets her to believe that this can work. And this is a first-time seller. This is somebody who, uh, Hasn't sold before, wants to become great, willing to do the work, because we have to take action. We know what's going to happen if we do nothing. Ah, pretty much nothing. So we have to take action. And when we don't get a positive result, we think