DO YOU HAVE THE A-PLAYER MINDSET TO CRUSH IT IN SALES

So have you noticed any differences being a salespreneur now versus an employee?

Definitely a lot of big lessons learned the last few years with some of the transitions I've had as a sales rep. And I think you have to kind of keep track of that and learn from them. And there's been several in this past couple of years for sure that I'd like to touch on. And Yeah, there's a big difference being a salespreneur, more commission focused versus working for a company. That's not for everybody, that's for sure. And I think you have to make sure you understand what your personality is and how you fit into one or the other, because it can be definitely a trap if you don't go the right way, if you don't know what you're getting into.

Well, I think you might be more comfortable thinking like an employee as a sales rep, but you won't be wealthier. Thinking like an employee as a sales rep. Definitely. I think a lot of people make the mistake that the comfort's, uh, equal to the, uh, the income. And I think that that's the big mistake— getting comfortable at these companies just because you're an employee. What have you noticed?

Well, if you're on that more mission-focused type job, I think you have to be able to balance patience a little bit, which is tough for me because I have a lot of ambition. But then you also have to balance patience because typically if you're going to a new company, new territory, it's going to take some time to build that up. And you can't expect this instant gratification and all of a sudden making $500K or whatever it may be. And I think from the outside looking in, a lot of people just assume it's easy and that you can just make stuff happen quickly. But most of the time in these companies, when you're trying to build up a territory, especially new business commission focus, it's going to take probably a couple years to really hit your stride, assuming you're doing a good job, and kind of planning for that. So I think it's tough because I'm very ambitious and I want to make things happen, I want to push, but I also need to know in my head long term, hey, that first year is probably going to be a little tougher to get some things going. Year 2 is going to pick up quite a bit, and then potentially year 3 could be that breakout year. So Having that patience and balancing ambition has been a constant thing I try to think about because it's easy to just with social media and everything you see out there, like people just want that instant gratification. And it's really tough sometimes in sales, especially if you're working on those longer deal cycles.

I think 2 of the biggest mistakes salespeople make in general, whether they work for themselves or they work for somebody else, is They're in a hurry, so they assume that the client's in a hurry. No, the client's going at their pace. We're always ready to take an order. We don't need much warmup to take an order.

Yeah.

But the client, you know, if they come to you, they might be ready. But if you're going to them, they have to go through a lot of stages, especially in B2B, because it's not just, The end user of the product. It's all the people that need to approve it and the people that it affects within the company. And if there was one thing that would probably increase everyone's income is to slow down. I know everyone is because quality and quantity do not go together. They're inverse. They're not correlated. High quality, you can't do with high quantity. Every manager thinks it can. That's why they do it. They keep increasing the quantity and thinking that the quality goes with it. No. High quantity is McDonald's. High quality is fine dining, which is your market. You're probably somewhere on that spectrum, but salespeople think it's always like McDonald's, but they're selling fine dining. So it's like moving, turning those tables as fast as you can. But if you've been a waiter at a fine dining restaurant, you don't want to turn it very fast. Because the longer they sit there, the more wine they drink, the more desserts they get, the more of a chance you get them to engage with the menu and see the possibilities. And I think this is what certainly today everybody thinks quality and quantity just go together. No, they're inversely correlated.

Then you start skipping steps too. If you're pushing it too fast, you're gonna skip steps. You're gonna just get those happy years and assume because they're telling you to do that, that you should. But sometimes you need to kind of crawl before you walk, walk before you run type thing. And when you skip those steps, it, it, it's like the mirage you were talking about. It, it internally, you feel like you're gonna get there faster, but you're actually getting further behind to, to getting that no. So patience is a big one. I mean, that's a constant thing in, in sales especially. the salespreneur. So I try to really be mindful of that as best I can. The other thing too is if you're going into a new market or new company is trying to learn from the people that have been successful there before, assuming there are some people. So I think trying to get feedback from those top reps or maybe leaders within the company that can kind of, you can just kind of see how they have won deals, how they've been successful. What are those kind of key characteristics in the past? And most people are pretty open to sharing that. So I love doing that. But the one thing I've learned too on that is don't get feedback from too many people or too many different salespeople, because make sure it's those kind of A-players or people that you want to emulate or be like. Because I've also, on the flip side, tried to take feedback from too many different folks, and that gets confusing, and you can maybe go the wrong direction. So I think that's, that's good to get advice and feedback from people too that have been there and done that before and have accomplished the things that you want to get to. And that's, that's been very helpful for me.

Yeah. And find the person who shouldn't have been successful. Not the person with the best territory, not the person who's the manager's college roommate or nephew. And don't just ask them what they do, ask them why they do it that way. How did they come to that conclusion? Because— and show them what you think the strategy you would pick and get feedback on what they think of it and why. You know, because too many people, you know, they take the idiot— what I call the idiot spreadsheet, where they, they go, okay, here's my quota, here's my close rate. So I got to do this number of calls and emails. And if I do that, then I'll get my quota. Okay, we're not in manufacturing. This is a creative profession. And that may work if you get tons of inbound, but if you get tons of inbound, they probably aren't hiring senior reps because they don't need senior reps. Anyone can take an order. They're hiring senior reps for us to go out and do the magic, take something that's of nothing and turn it into revenue. Not one manager is going to promote you or pay you for activity. They all say they do, but they never, I've never seen it done. Nobody says, you know what, you were so busy, we're going to get you on-target pay anyway. Doesn't happen. You think, you feel like you should because you're doing everything you're told. But, and everybody says, well, I can't go against what my manager says. Well, is your manager going to pay you if you don't have the success? No, they're going to blame you. And you think, why would they do that? Can't be their fault. Can't be the product, the process, or what they told you. It's got to be you because somebody else did it, even though they have a great territory or been there 3 years or whatever. The onus is still on us, and taking the company's framework is a good start. But if it's not working, it's up to us to figure out what would work.

That was a huge one for me because when I was in that more employee mindset, when I was climbing the corporate ladder, all that type of stuff, you could be busy doing internal meetings. It was all these meetings internally because I was dealing with a national account at the time. And it feels like you're getting a lot of stuff done, and it was, I'm sure, getting some things done. But that 80% of my time in meetings, great, you can get away with that if you have a higher base and bonus type situation. But when you're on commission, that stuff is probably not going to help you very much. So you really have to focus on what's going to be those revenue generating type of activities that are going to close the deal. So that was a big shift. And I couldn't be Mr. Corporate Hero, like going above and beyond on stuff anymore because I had to fend for myself and figure it out. And that was a big shift that I probably didn't understand, and I I, that it took me a little bit of time to kind of, to kind of get through that. So that, that's a huge one with employee versus kind of sales rep. The other thing too that I've wasted a lot of time on that I've learned is, especially when you go to these startups or newer companies, they might not fully understand who their customer target is or ICP, whatever, whatever you want to say the buzzword for that. But who, who are you trying to sell to? And I know for sure I've wasted a ton of time focused on all these different personas, wrong industries, type of companies that don't make sense. And it's surprising, actually, a lot of the startups and stuff I've worked with and what have you don't really know who that is because maybe they haven't had a ton of sales before. So really trying to figure that out can save you a lot of heartache and wasted time. And I've, I've been a culprit of that, uh, trying to figure it out.

Yeah. And I, I was doing a one-on-one Uh, with kind of more of a friend than somebody in the course. And he showed me his calendar and it was just packed. It was solid colors. There wasn't a white space on it. And I'm like, are those all A opportunities? And he was burnt out. He goes, what do I do? And I go, well, figure out how many A-level demos can you do in a day without going crazy. And he, he had tremendous inbound. His problem was things weren't closing, but he was insanely busy, but he felt comfortable being busy. I go, before anything gets on your calendar taking up a half hour, an hour, spend 5 minutes, go see, is the company qualified? Is the person at the right level? Are they just curious or there's some interest? Is a webinar better fit for them? And if it's an end user and you need the manager involved, say, okay, here's a link to the demo. If you think there's a match, let's schedule it with the manager. It's a low-cost product. It's not an enterprise-type sale. It's much more transactional. And It took a week, but then he texts me after a week. He goes, you were right. I was way too comfortable. The opium of busy blinded him from his wallet. All of a sudden, he cut off about a third of them, and now he was comfortable. He wasn't dead at, you know, 7 o'clock at night, you know, falling down on the stairs, just being like, oh. And now he's closing deals. And you got to think that 30% of the time, that was just waste. And what always got me about this was I'd always say, you know, because I always like, you push off vacations and stuff, but needed it. I'd be like, I just flew here, did this bonehead meeting that wasn't qualified. I'm home at 9 o'clock at night. I could have taken the whole day off and I would have been a better sales rep because the next day I've been rested, ready, ready to go. Now I'm like angry, depressed, burnt out, going to have a crummy night's sleep, and tomorrow I'm going to be mad that I did that.

It's a great point. I mean, when you're on that kind of commission lifestyle, you have to be laser-focused on who you're spending your time with, who you're taking meetings with. Definitely no exact art and science to figure that out, but the more you can kind of clean that up and say no to certain things that in the past maybe felt comfortable for you, the better it's going to be. And then also to your point, I mean, if you're a lot of times in sales, you're going to be running around like crazy, traveling, going to meetings, entertaining people. So the other thing that's really helped me, I think, is kind of investing in myself. So kind of having that mentality, even if you have a good year, it's really easy to get humbled pretty quickly in sales and most industries as a rep and what have you. So how are you kind of investing back into yourself. That could, you know, with your own money. So it could be taking courses like yours, which I, I know I did years ago and it paid off. And then also outside of that, whether it's the way you're working out or maybe it's some other things with your mindset. But I've been a huge proponent of kind of investing back in yourself because you have to kind of think of yourself as an athlete and trying to get better. And it's so easy to get overconfident after you have a good year. But then, you know, when I switched industries and went to different situations, like, oh shit, I need to kind of step up my game a little bit. So it depends on the situation you're in, but I think you have to have that mentality of investing in yourself outside of work and then also at work so that you're not burning the candle on all ends possible.

Yeah, because I, what I'm learning is that mastery mindset becomes a motive in and of itself as opposed to the kind of the B player. I want to learn just enough to accomplish the next hurdle. And then I'm going to take a nap. That may get you over the next hurdle, but you don't understand why it worked, how it worked. You kind of just did it. You know, it's kind of like the discounting at the end of the deal. It's the reason a lot of deals close. And I'm not against discounting. It's a great tool. But It's an expensive tool, right? Because you think it's coming out of the company's pocket, but you're on commission, so it's coming out of your pocket too. Why not become a master of the game to really understand what does work? What are those steps? How long does it really take with all the gotchas throughout? And how do you keep that Momentum going. And when you're an employee, you kind of think, oh, I got a nice juicy base, but that base is opium. It's just soothing you. It's comforting you to the reality that if you don't sell, you're out. There goes the base and you don't make money. And if, if base is really what you want, you can find an account manager role, customer success, marketing, Might be a better match. But most of us are in sales for the upside, and the upside comes from the marginal deals that are unexpected, that are big. And, you know, and we've talked about the comp plan is baked. They assume, you know, there's 20, 30% that's going to happen anyways. They don't either don't pay you on it or they pay you such a small amount, it's like not paying you. And they're so backend loaded. That's why the people over quota are so happy. Look at the comp plan. You know, it's usually 2, 3, 4x what the beginning rate is. And I went to a company once because they had this huge on-target earnings, but what they did was simply just, you know, Gave it to you in quota. What you usually at that time would've been a million and a half in quota, they'd say, well, quotas are three million here, but you make six hundred k if you make quota. Well, I would anyway at the if you did it this way too. But for a lot of people who don't think and don't understand math, that sounded very delicious. $600K OTE. So what? It doesn't matter what your OTE is. It matters how much you're gonna make with how much you can sell in that territory. And frankly, it looks a lot better on your resume if you're 200% of quota than 100%. It's a goal. Because people still think, yeah, the quota is made, that there's some real judgment that goes into quota. And I had this argument on LinkedIn with a sales ops guy. Well, we use this tool and stuff, and I go, where's it get its data? You know, from data source from 5 years ago. And does anyone talk to those customers? Well, you gotta start somewhere. That's a guess. It's a guess that you're blaming a tool for making instead of someone else making.

No, it's— I mean, you can get— if you don't plan ahead for this type of stuff, and it's a certain type of personality when you're on that commission focus. And I, I see a lot of reps kind of not do well when, when those leaders hire someone from a big company that's used to inbound and that base and stuff coming in, and they go to a job where it's all new business, there's no previous success, you have to find all these new customers, and it's just— it's, it's a huge change. And I, I went through that a couple times, and it was eye-opening for sure. I wasn't quite as good at sales as I thought I was until I went to that and I realized it's a whole different world out there. And I don't think a lot of people understand the differences between that. And then if you are changing jobs, you're going to these different roles, I think another thing that's— is you have to have some type of passion for what you're doing. I mean, obviously the financial part for sure is where a lot of us are trying to get the upside and have a comfortable life or retire early, whatever it may be. But you have to be somewhat passionate about what you're doing in sales, whether it's how you're helping people or the problem you're solving or why, you know, what's your why of doing it. Because if you don't, then you're bound to get kind of burnt out with these ups and downs. So it's trying to keep that top of mind for me is why am I doing this? You know, what's the end goal? I know there's going to be some struggles probably 30, 40% of the time throughout the year where it's— you're getting beat up a lot. But what is that long-term plan and why are you passionate about that company or whatever you're doing? I think that that's also helped me kind of get through some of those ups and downs and the tough times.

Yeah, because I think too many people, especially with the employee mindset, they put that on their manager and the company. Oh, my manager's not motivating me. It's not his job to motivate you. Your job is to motivate you. And our brain naturally, if you really try and train yourself, what do you forget? Do you forget the stuff you want to do or the stuff you don't want to do?

Don't want to do. Right. Yeah.

Nobody forgets to eat a cookie, right? Everyone forgets to eat their, drink their green juice or their salad or the thing that they should be doing, or they forget it at the grocery store. Oh, I forgot all those mix-ins for the salad. All I have is this steak. Go to a grocery store without a list. You will forget the things that you should be eating and you'll remember the things you shouldn't be eating. Same is true with sales. If you don't, your brain's going to go, why am I doing this? That's what's constantly going through it, whether you consciously know it or not. And your brain is a pain avoidance machine. That's why people get up, they start, get on LinkedIn, go to their CRM, time to prospect. Oh, look at this article on LinkedIn. I'll watch this. I'll read this for about a half hour. This is educational, very helpful. Oh, maybe I should make a list. I'll make this up. It's coming up on lunchtime. I should probably see what Dustin's doing. That's the employee mindset. There's always going to be an easier route. But if you say, ah, I got my— I have no meetings.

I'm going to get some meetings.

And if I don't get meetings, then next week's going to be pretty scary. That's why I got to do it. You've got to become your own motivation machine. And, you know, I think comp plans are going in the wrong direction. It's much more about control than enablement. I think the lower the base and the higher the commission, is best for everybody, even though both parties won't agree with me at first. Because I've gone into different accounts when I see either bonuses or no commission, I see great service people smiling. They go to lunch together, they play softball, but their manager's like, well, they don't sell any new accounts. I go, why would they? Who wants to go through all that when you can just do this? And if it's pure commission, you can't get them to come to a meeting. I've had a business where it was all 1099s and my partner would say, well, I want to have a team meeting. And I go, you got to pay them to come to the team meeting.

Why?

I go, why would they come to the team meeting if you're not paying them? Well, they want to learn what's new and stuff. Well, see how it works. No one showed up. So that's— you got to find how much control do you really need and how much empowerment do you really need the reps to have. Because I'll tell you right now, you go into any quarter and you want that following quarter to go up, Put a bogey there, double the commission for the next 60 days, 90 days, 120 days, and watch what happens. There's a behavior change. And if there isn't, it tells you a lot too, doesn't it?

Yeah. No, I mean, if something's way off, if, if you double the commission and no one's pushing for it, but then there's probably some other major issues going on at that point.

Yeah. And I've worked at companies where they come out with a new product and I'm like, I don't know anyone who needs that. You know? And then the CEO will call me, hey Brian, why aren't you selling this product? And I'm like, well, kind of focused over this. And I go, why don't you offer a bonus or something? He goes, well, that's selfish. And I'm like, well, isn't it selfish of you to want me to do something that doesn't benefit me? Why is it that I'm selfish and not you? It's really, they don't get it. And the big complaint internally at companies always, well, salespeople are so selfish. And it's like, well, if you put HR on commission and marketing on commission, watch what happens.

Yeah.

You know, if you put, you know, marketing, on commission. You just see the fights. And I've been at companies where they would do it for leads instead of revenue. You get nothing. All these contacts, Gmails, you would think that they were making them up. There were so many of them. Totally worthless. Incentives drive behavior. So, but You really, if you're not thinking like an entrepreneur, you're cheating yourself. People think you're cheating the company by goofing off or not doing the work or not caring. You're on commission. You can't get that time back. And I think the thing that I've learned the most as an entrepreneur is time is your thing. If you can't articulate how long something takes, what priorities are in what order, and you don't have a calendar that you're kind of spying on every day. Because the first thing I say in my journal, I say the date, even though the date's right in front of me on the phone and it's timestamped. I say that to remind me where I am in the month, the week, and the year. So that I don't forget. And I've, I've tried this little trick with people. Well, tell me what the date is today. And people are usually a day or two off one or the other. It's not a memory test. It's how well you understand where you are in time, because your brain is a pain avoidance machine. It's not thinking about December 31st right now. It's thinking about what do I have to do now today? Who am I going to lunch with? Who am I going to happy hour with? Pleasure seeking, pain avoidance. So it's up to us to redefine what pain and pleasure are.

You have to be a machine with, with your time. To your point, you have to have a lot of systems in place if you're on a commission type job or salespreneur, whether that be at work or outside of that. I mean, I'm, I'm huge on Every morning being consistent with my morning routine, doing prospecting for a certain amount of time, and I map out my day the night before pretty much every day of the week. And I also do that on Sunday leading up to the week. So you have to be maniacal to your point, have systems, do a lot of things personally and professionally to get there. But a lot of rewards, rewards too. It definitely can be some tough times and hard to get there, but there's a lot of benefits too.