DO YOU HAVE THE A-PLAYER MINDSET??? HERE IS HOW...

One of the big things that I learned last year was that at the core of all great salespeople is this strong sense of personal responsibility, this internal locus of control. And they think like entrepreneurs. They take that responsibility, not that they have control over the whole company, but they focus on the things that they do have control over. And they expand that to the point where they have influence over so many other things. Today's guest has taken that because one of the key things that we need to have is the ability to have a conversation about what our client cares about that isn't just about us and our product. We all can do that. But what a client is willing to do, wants to do, likes to do is talk about themselves. And to do that, we've got to know something about them, something about their job, something about what their persona does. It can be related to our product or adjacent to it. But if we only are able to talk about what we do, that's not really selling. That's order-taking. That's being reactive. Personal responsibility is all about proactivity. It's on you. And the thing about personal responsibility is that it's yours whether you accept it or not. It's not voluntary, meaning that if you don't take it, the consequences are on you regardless. And today, we're going to be talking about really building up that conversation, building up that knowledge and domain experience to be able to have That conversation about their industry and what they're facing. Now, this is only one way of doing it. There's lots of ways to skin this cat. But are you doing it? Are you proactively going about it, developing it, funding it, taking the initiative? Or are you reactive and waiting for it to be given to you? Oh, we're waiting for the sales-ready messaging, then we'll be all set. No, no, that's a C player. An A player takes ownership of it because they know no one else will. Let's get into the interview and I'll sum up how you can apply this and how it gives you power, not just extra work.

Here we go. Hey Nathan, thanks for joining us today. As a way of getting started, give us a little background on yourself. Great.

I'm Nathan Anderson. I'm a senior strategic consultant at a company called Success KPI. We do advanced analytics for the call center space. My background really is I've grown up in sales and especially around the contact center area where I did inside sales, ran large teams, and then converted over to enterprise sales. And that's where I'm at right now.

How do you like it?

It's great.

It's great.

It's, you know, it's been a very interesting time. last 20-some months. Um, but, uh, but, but overall it's been fantastic. And, you know, where we live is, is the customer experience world and really, um, meeting the customer where they want to be met. And, and that's been more important than ever lately. So, so it's been good.

And why sales for you? Was it on purpose? Was there a motive behind it?

Completely, completely by accident. Um, I, uh, Graduated college with a political science and speech communications major, and I had aspirations of being a lobbyist and actually got an inside sales, phone sales job to kind of tide me over out of college to do something and ended up being pretty good at it. And then got into leadership and then got into business development side. And so It just kind of happened, but, uh, wouldn't change any of it.

Yeah. And what do you like about it?

You know, I, I think probably the most important thing is probably the relationships, um, I've built, um, over the time. Uh, it's just been— it's been amazing, um, to be a part of so many different people's lives and businesses, whether it's leading teams and seeing them grow their career as well as Being a part of, of, of business cycles with companies where they have key initiatives and you can add a product or a service that makes them take that next level has been the— been probably the most exciting thing for me.

And what differentiates you as a salesperson?

You know, I, I think I, I look internally or at myself before I look externally. So I've really, you know, and especially probably over the last 4 or 5 years, really turned the focus in on like, what are people looking at when they are thinking about when they look at me? So I've done a lot of work on further education. I've done courses through like MIT on artificial intelligence and digital transformation, which is kind of the world I live in. So making sure that when I walk into the room, know, in many cases I'm still not the smartest person, but I don't want to be the dumbest person, right? And be able to speak to, you know, the things that I'm trying to get you interested in.

Well, that's a good point because, you know, they call that kind of business acumen or understanding your problem domain. And I think a lot of reps take it wrong. They either think they have to go back to school and get a master's degree in something And wait until they have the degree before they can go into that room.

Yep.

And I think what you're doing, you're kind of nibbling at it.

Yeah, I mean, I, I'm lucky enough that I have a good baseline in the fact that I grew up in the contact center space, which is kind of the area that I've lived in. And so when I'm, you know, I'm dealing with, you know, CCaaS and UCaaS vendors and, and, you know, dealing with those partnerships as well as the players that I know the moving parts of like, what are the challenges they're dealing with as a business? It's that blending that with the next level of technology that all of these businesses are trying to kind of take that jump to. That is where I've had to backfill my knowledge because, you know, I don't know if you know much about the contact center space, but we've kind of always been last to the trough in technology. So we've been very, very slow in adopting things that other industries have been, you know, we've been using in our old hand at. So, but yeah, that's— it's been fun though to kind of fill that knowledge gap.

And is that something that you think you do better than more reps or that's been your focus or your angle?

I think it's core to who I am. I kind of always want to learn. So, it's less of a task for me, I guess. So I think that may be a little bit of a separation where others kind of see that as like, oh gosh, I have to, I have to do this to understand my customer. And where I really look at it is like, this is actually really exciting because the world we live in, like I have, I have, you know, 2 young kids and, and they're on electronics and live in a virtual world. And, and it's just, you know, the stuff that they deal with on a day-to-day basis, whether it be education, interacting with their friends. You know, it's, it's different. It's completely different. So, you know, I know that I have to keep pace with that because the millennials are now in C-level positions. It's now— it's no longer like they're young. They're, they're, they're leaders. They're decision makers in a lot of these companies. And so if I'm not keeping pace and understanding how they use technology growing up, you know, I'm, I'm at a real disadvantage.

Yeah, because part of it's empathy. But another part of it is adding value to the conversation.

Yes, 100%. Yeah. And I think that's, that's such an important piece of any kind of sales process, right? Like, so I think one of the things that so many people have a misunderstanding of what we do as enterprise salespeople is they think it's just wining and dining. Right? And it's all fun. And the understanding of the details of how complex these cycles are and how many people and organizations that you need to navigate and understand and get their heads doing exactly what you're doing— nodding, right?

Yep.

Like, okay, I get it. Yep, makes sense. And so that's— again, that's one of those things that's super exciting and fun for me is to get that point of where People are nodding. I'm like, okay, yeah, I get it. You're— this is what you can do for me, you can do for my business, make me sleep better at night, you know, help my bottom line, all that good stuff.

Because clients pick up on the passion. Because if you have that passion for the technical topic, and it doesn't have to be about your product, it has to be something about them that they care about.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that's, that's, that's 100% true. That's, you know, and I've, I've definitely watched, uh, several of your little, little videos and things like that, but that's It is core to what we as professionals are trying to do, which is you have to be able to provide value, right? You're not selling a thing, you're not selling a widget, you're solving a problem, right? And as long as you can solve a problem, um, then, then you have value, right? And if you're not, you know, it's— you're in big trouble, right? Right.

Yeah, because, you know, they may not have formed questions, but we should have formed questions about the problem that we solve.

Yeah, part of that discovery process, right, is the question a lot of times doesn't exist in their brain. It's you asking the questions to find out why are they, you know, getting pressure from the board, right? Or what is the, you know, the market telling them? And, and how does that translate into an actual problem? And then what is that problem's core? And then is there a solution that I'm providing that can actually solve it, right? Like, you're absolutely right. As talented and as smart as many executives are, it's sometimes work to get to that question and that answer.

Well, especially when it's latent pain. Yeah, right, because they don't want to feel it.

No, right.

They kind of like— it's kind of nice over here, unfelt.

Yep, yep, yep.

They know it's there.

Yep, 100%, 100%. Yeah, and I think that's, that's, that's one of our jobs, right, is, is you do it without picking at the scab, so to speak. Like, you do it so that you don't want to make it, right, painful. But you do want to make it so that eventually, hopefully, you get that aha moment, like, yes, you learn from others' mistakes. Yeah, that is the— that is the problem, right? And, and okay, tell me more how you can solve that for me.

Yeah. And how do you go about learning this? Because you're not going to go on a sabbatical, learn it, and then come back, right? You got your job to do every day. Yep.

So So, you know, I use a bunch of different sources, I guess. So I think one of the key things is when I'm, say, at an event like a conference or whatever, and, you know, part of the time I'm sometimes standing at a booth, right? Or I'm at meetings. But, you know, every other moment that I have, I'm out there talking to other people in the industry. What are you seeing? What are you hearing? And then I'm taking that information and then getting kind of a, you know, a to-do list of like, okay, I've heard this from 4 or 5 different people. This is really interesting. And, and then I, you know, I'll use the other resources, whether it be, you know, just, just Googling it and finding some articles and reading up on it. Simple as that. And then some of the more broader kind of macro trends like artificial intelligence, digital transformation specifically, like I know I kind of need to have certification level stuff. Like, that's, that's what we do and that's what we enable. And so when I'm looking at more macro stuff, I really think, okay, I need, I need really targeted, very specific. I need to go to people that are, you know, known for being able to do that. But in that case, I still have to do my day job, to your point. So, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm doing those online courses. Right? So it's on my time. And, you know, that's part of kind of the investment, like, no sales job is 9 to 5.

Not anymore, because we have to add value. And value can be conversations about adjacent topics and technologies and trends. Because executives like to talk about that. They don't. How long do they want to talk about your product? Until there's a reason to talk about it, no one cares.

Yep.

You gotta create the reason.

Yep. And I'd even go another step, is it's— they— I don't think at any point in time they really want to talk about the product. They want to talk about what the product is going to do for them. Yeah, right. Like, you know, I've, I've had some very interesting, you know, meetings Where you're sitting down with the COO or CEO and before you say a word, the conversation starts as, I don't want to be sold. Don't sell me. The second you start selling me—

It sounds like an infomercial, right?

Yeah, this meeting's done. So tell me what you can do for me. So if you don't have a real deep understanding of what their business is, and what some of the challenges probably are that they're facing, whether that be because, you know, internally, or whether, you know, just industry-wide, it's a challenge everyone's having, um, you're in big trouble from, from, from the get-go.

Right, because you're naturally going to talk about what you do because that's what you know, but they don't want to hear that, or they want to hear about 5 minutes of it max. Yeah, commercial. Yeah, so you got to talk about their business and I always equated it to like a Rorschach. Remember, it's like, you show them this picture, and then you wait to hear what they say. What do they see in the picture?

Yeah, no, I see a rabbit.

You know what, we helped this person with this rabbit problem.

Yeah, no, that's a great point. And I, and I, and that's, you know, and I think that's a very interesting way to kind of look at the fact that Every single C-suite leader is still a person, and the way that they look at problems and, and want to solve problems is different regardless of what letters are in front of their name. So it's, it's, uh, it is absolutely so, so important to sometimes, like, have, have asked good questions, but at the same time, shut up. And listen.

Yeah. And what motivated you to take this approach? Sounds like— what, your own personal curiosity? Did you see it as a competitive advantage?

I think so. So part of my career was running kind of large inside sales teams. So I did both, you know, management sales, but also, you know, operations level stuff. And so I would get approached by people who are trying to sell technology to me and to better run, better run my business. And the ones that I ever gave any level of interest to were the ones that, number one, knew what the heck I did as a business, and then number two, didn't come in and just have a canned 15-20 slide spread or PowerPoint but was, you know, 2 or 3 high-level, here's what we do, but the rest is just conversation and confident enough to be able to have that conversation with me. And so the way that I always looked at this is when I made that kind of transition from, you know, the inside to pure enterprise where I kind of flipped roles was I had to be that person. If I wasn't the person that I wanted to talk to, then I wasn't— I wasn't going to be, I don't think, good at my job.

That's it, because everyone's looking for magic words and it's not. It's just good questions.

Yeah.

And I think genuine curiosity. Yeah.

And I think you said it before, is there's— there has to be an emotional connection and a passion behind it. Like, yeah, you can't fake that. I either care about your business and you as a person or I don't. And people are, you know, very, very clear knowing, do you actually care or not? And if you don't, I mean, again, flipping the script, I would have never bought from anyone that I didn't believe really cared about what I was trying to do.

And, and plus, having done the job gives you, you know, empathy for what they're going through. Yeah.

Absolutely! Absolutely!

And I was lucky enough to have had that experience and it is a game changer!

It is! It is! When you, when you look at it in a single-faceted way, it's very hard to get a grip on what's happening in that conversation. If you've actually sat in both seats, then it's— to your point, it's a game-changing situation because now you're like, you're asking questions in some cases I've done this before to myself. I've asked questions, I go, God, I shouldn't have asked that. Like, this is, this is not something that I would want to hear me asking. So, so, but yeah, it is, it's so important.

And what type of openers, or how do you start a meeting that will get them talking?

You know, um, I, I do— I am a firm believer in the kind of show me you know me thing. So I do like to kind of level set to some extent without being too, you know, talky. But I do like to, you know, kind of state like what I think I know and correct me where I'm wrong, right? But this is what I think is the problem. And then from there, you know, a lot of times and often actually something I'm thinking is wrong. And that's usually the greatest thing. I think that's one of the things where a lot of salespeople are always afraid to be wrong.

You want to be wrong.

Oh my gosh, yeah.

What? Because people love to correct you.

The moment someone says, no, that's not right, then I'm like, great, now we have a conversation.

Yes.

Now we have something going.

Now they're engaged.

Yeah.

Now, plus I'm learning, right? Plus I'm learning, which is that itch that I always want to scratch.

And from that, once you get them talking, that's, that's the, the classic pivot moment. Then you can start engaging in the questions to surface the things you want to talk about.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And that's, you know, you kind of talk about the, the, you know, or you think about the, the classic cycle, right, where you have You know, you have the discovery process and, you know, really great cycles should be so natural where it's very hard to discern.

Right, what stage you're at.

Stage 1, you're right, S1, S2, S3. It should, it should not like, okay, well, you know, and I've been on some conversations where it's opening demo and I'm really S4 by the end of that conversation. Like, I'm I've identified the problem. They agree that I can solve the problem, you know, and then now they're starting to ask buying questions like, okay, what does an implementation look like? Like, what's my timelines? You know, I have an initiative that I need to get done by X date. Is that something that you can realistically do? Like, and in that one conversation, so many people go into like an opening call, first call demo and go, okay, I just need to check off these 3 things.

Right.

And I need your proposal. And I need to get the second— I need to get the second meeting.

Yep.

And I can move S1 to S2 like great. And you miss so much, right? Because it should be—

You do, because it doesn't feel natural when, when they're dancing, then you know what they're going to do. Send me a proposal, then they never call you back.

Yep.

And that was a waste of time.

For both.

For both people. Yeah, because it is this communication and organic conversation back and forth. Let's make sure it works. Let's make sure it works here. Let's build a case for it.

Yeah.

How did you learn those enterprise-type sales skills? Because it sounds like you were more on the transactional stuff before.

Yeah, you know, I, I, I would, I would lend that to being Having, you know, a few really good mentors early on in my transition to enterprise. You know, I've, I've kind of always been a just a kind of rapport and people person, and the process itself was secondary to me early on. And that's why I kind of like say, like, you know, if there's one thing that I wish I could have done earlier is learn the process and, and understand that and not to be a prisoner to it. But to understand, like, sales are, are, are really never lost late in the game. They're lost early in the game, right? And because you, you did something, you missed a step, you, you didn't get the right person bought in, um, early on, um, you didn't know that someone's job was around the, the piece of technology you're replacing. And you didn't find a way to get them to see value in what you're doing for them. Like, there's so many different moving pieces.

And to know that, you have to be curious about it.

Yep. Yeah. So yeah, I just— I was really lucky early on to have people that were— I wouldn't call like the opposite of me, but were just really process.

Yeah.

Smart, like geniuses around, around that piece. And it was, it was important for me to know.

Especially when you're new, because it's nothing but a series of traps. Because the client doesn't really know how to change things internally at their company.

Yep.

They assume it's a lot easier than it is.

Yeah.

They assume, just send me a proposal, I'll recommend it, and they'll buy it.

Right.

Doesn't work that way.

No, no. No, right? Yeah, it's— I'm in the middle of— I'm in the middle of a few where it's, you know, the entire process has gone very, very smooth, and now it's the, the InfoSec, right, on one. And then, and the other one, on the other one, it's, it's a, you know, a vendor within the network that, that we have to integrate with, right?

Yeah.

And we have to jump through gates on that. So it's, it's Very often, some, you know, very often, and this is, I think, something that's surprising to people, is like getting executive level and board level sign-off is sometimes the easiest part because they know they have the problem. And when you know that you have something to solve it, like, done. It's the administrative stuff sometimes that can be, that can be, you know, or the stuff that's out of your control that can be challenging.

that requires action that you don't have control over, that you only have influence. Yeah, because they all have their priority list.

Yep.

And yours may not be on the top.

Yep.

And where did you get these internal skills? Sounds like you have high personal responsibility, that you took the initiative to learn all this stuff. No one told you to do it or mandated it or Paid for it, probably.

Yeah, you know, I think, I, I think, you know, well, one, I did have, um, you know, an employer that, that, that actually did really buy into the, the, the, the development piece of it. So some, some courses were definitely paid for by the company. Um, but with that being said, like, I was, you know, I and one another, another of my colleagues were the really the only ones that asked for it, which is surprising to me. Like, you know, you don't— sales 101, right? You don't, you don't get anything that you don't ask for.

Well, it's a performance profession.

Yep.

Right. You wouldn't say to a ball player or musician, okay, you took your lessons, you're all set.

Yeah.

Yeah. You don't have to rehearse. You don't have to practice. You don't have to get a coach. You don't have to evolve anymore. You're there.

You're a finished product.

Yeah, you just can't do that.

Yeah, yeah. Um, and I, I think the other piece is, you know, and this is going to sound kind of, you know, cliché, but it was the way I was brought up. Like, my, um, you know, everyone that I grew up around, including friends, were just that type of people. Um, and I'm a big, I'm a big advocate of like, you are who you surround yourself with. Um, and so, um, you know, and I've learned that in, in good and bad ways. So, you know—

That's true.

Yeah, you know, and, and so, you know, it's— it ultimately, it's up to you how, how you surround yourself. And, and, and so that was, you know, a, a big contributing factor because, like, you know, you, you see it and it keeps being drilled into your head whether you're trying to do it or not. It's happening!

The world waits for nobody! Yeah!

And that's good and bad, right? Like, if there's a bad person or people around you, like, that's— those same things are getting drilled into your head too whether you think it or not. So, being very selective and being very purposeful on that piece, you know, it's just one of those kind of osmosis thing. It just— it soaks into you and becomes a part of who you are and And, you know, I definitely wasn't always like— I mean, honestly, like in school, like I was not like the studious student. You know, I liked the social parts of college and high school more than I did the class things. But I think that, again, that was a product of who I surrounded myself with and I made that conscious decision.

So where did you get the personal responsibility? Was it from the work ethic of your family? Was it through your friends and sports or?

I think like you probably named the top 3.

Yeah!

So I played football through high school and college and that really helped me with the team aspect. My parents are both very, very hardworking, you know, retired people now but very, very hardworking. One was a teacher. So I saw this reality of like when school ended, work did not end for my mom. She was at the kitchen table grading papers and, you know, you know, doing things till, you know, late, late at night. So, and so it's definitely there. And then also with my friends where, you know, where we love the social part of college, when everyone kind of got into their professional world, like I look up to tons of my friends of like how successful and, you know, not all of them had like the silver spoon in their mouth. A lot of them came from very difficult situations and they just, Said, I'm gonna make it, and they did.

Well, and that's it. It's to balance the social skills with the professional. Because if you look at any of the huge milestones in your life, it usually involves somebody else. Somebody else gave you that opportunity or helped you or introduced you.

Yeah, yeah.

It wasn't submitting your stuff through a website. Yeah.

And I'll probably, like, just personally, like, the, the biggest kind of game-changing thing is I won't go into super detail, but like when, you know, about 5, 6 years ago, I became a single parent with full custody of, you know, 2 young kids.

Wow!

And so it's balancing, and you know the life of a salesperson, right? You're traveling and you're, you know, you don't have standard work hours and weekends are not always yours either. So, you know, making that decision of like, okay, well, this is it. This is the life I have. And I'm gonna figure out how to make it work. And so it's one of those things I think a lot of people— well, I know a lot of people have come up to you like, I don't know how you do it. Like, I don't know how you do all those things. And then my response always is, you would do it too. Like, you have to. If you had to, guess what? When there's not another choice, you'll do it. Yep. So, so yeah, that's, that's, that, that was, that was another builder of me.

Well, what did you learn along the way that you wish you learned a lot earlier? Whether it's some epiphanies, some real pivot points?

Yeah, I mean, I think the process piece definitely was— would be something that I wish I learned earlier. I think the other piece that I would probably have to say is like, I guess, really truly connecting emotion and passion with business. In the beginning, I was very just KPI-driven. Like, you know, what's my output? What's my input? What's my output? Yeah, what's the action? Just like a balance sheet approach to my career and to some extent life. And so when I realized like there can actually be real joy, but there's gonna be lows too, but there's gonna be real joy and fun and, You know, professionally, um, when you get invested at that level, then that— I think change— it changed a lot of things for me. So I wish I would have known that or figured that out or accepted that earlier.

Well, I think a lot of people, certainly managers, make that mistake. They want it to be a machine. The only problem is it's people selling to people.

Yep.

And when you say your clients sense how much you care. That's an emotion. That's not— you don't give 10 pounds of care. You show that interest and you take action and you do the things that they want. That shows you care.

Yeah. And it's one of those things, like I said before, you can't fake it. Like, I genuinely do care because it's part of my DNA. And in fact, of like, you know, not just the people that that I get to meet and be around, but also the industry that I've been able to kind of serve and be a part of is something that I want to get them moving forward. I want— I do a decent amount of speaking at events and things where my sessions are never about the product that I'm selling. My sessions are about, you know, the technology that's out there that we all need to be a part of. And, you know, know, to move our industry forward, right? And, um, I'm a big advocate of that. I sit on a couple different committees for different associations that I'm on, and they're all around the movement forward and innovation within our industry, which is exciting to me.

Cool. Hey, Nathan, appreciate your time today. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

Um, uh, Nathan Anderson on LinkedIn. Um, uh, you can search me and under the company SuccessKPI, all one word. Um, and if you want to check out my company, successkpi.com.

See, his big epiphany was that he learned that it wasn't all about him, that it was about the client. And that is something— it seems obvious, but are you taking action on it? Are you understanding what your client is going through? Are you teaching them how to buy? And are you taking ownership of you? You're the means of production, not your company. You may be an employee, but you're treated like a contractor. And it's been this way forever, but we tend to get comfortable with our base salary. And I called it a gilded cage because that comfort is keeping you distracted from what you need to do, which is take personal ownership of you, of your territory, of your skill set, of your ability, of the process. I see so many cases where a rep tells me, but Brian, my manager says do it this way. And I go, if you do it that way, will the deal close? And they go, no way. Then why would you do it that way? Yes, you will be compliant with your manager, but if you don't get the order, what's your manager going to do? They're going to blame you. This is what I got as a rep all the time. You go back for the QBR or the kickoff and they tell you how to do things and how it should be. And you look at it and you go, that'll never work. That'll never work. The leader up there is using their playbook from a place where they were taking orders, where they were the dominant player, where they had a brand name, where it was easier, where it was a different economy. And it didn't work. And this happened to me at one of the— I mentioned it in a book. They hired this sales leader to come in, and he was a good guy, but he was this hard-charging young guy, really high-energy, smart. He came in and he goes, you're doing it all wrong. You're taking too long to get the order. It should be like this, boom, boom, boom. And I go, well, that's not what we're selling. And I tried to converse with him. And it was like talking to someone who was brainwashed. The other company he worked for was the only company he ever worked for. And it was order-taking. It was demo, propose, close very fast. They were the dominant player. The other choice was years behind them. And it worked in that case. And all of a sudden, he hires an army of salespeople, arms them with this sales process, sends them to the four winds of the world, and nothing happened. It was a disaster. And I just sat back and I go, I'm going to do what I know works and I'm going to keep doing it. I'm not going to fight anybody. I'm not going to argue with anyone. I'm not going to prove anybody wrong. I'm just going to sell. My job is to sell. And I did it. I owned it at that time. And I hear a lot of reps waiting, gating action on someone else's action instead of taking responsibility for it themselves. Do you understand the complex sale and how to win it? It's not academic. It requires an enormous amount of understanding and open-mindedness and preparation because everyone comes to me with the reaction, oh, it's stalled. What do I do? Oh, they pushed it off. What do I do? Oh, they won't call me back. What do I do? Well, the easy Answer is get into a situation where that doesn't happen. I show you how to do that. How do you build up a conversation with somebody without getting a master's degree? How do you be able to start a conversation with any stranger about what they care about and get them to ask you about you? That is a skill. These are all advanced skills. They're not taught in books. You have to learn it from somebody who's done it or spend 5 to 10 years trying to figure it out on your own. It's up to you. The thing is, at the end of the year, when you get that final 1099 or W-2 or government income statement form, that is the result of how well you did. You can blame anybody you want, but the blame Doesn't increase the income. The blame only distracts you and gives you internal relinquish of responsibility. But the real responsibility is to that number. How well did you perform against that number? And it comes down to personal ownership. Everything keys off of this one attribute. Think about it. Can you be A good listener if you're not personally responsible for understanding? Are you a good communicator until you take personal responsibility for being understood? Are you taking personal responsibility for keeping the deal moving, for focusing on the people who are most likely to have the problem that you solve? Or are you comfortable being busy? Are you comfortable putting a good hard day's work in? And there's nothing wrong with that. But if you're not getting the result, you've got to look internally. You've got to own it. You've got to invest in it because it's you at the end of the day. When the company gets rid of you, when they dissolve, when they get acquired, they're not going to be thinking about you. They're not. They're not going to check on you. They're not going to elicit your opinion. They're going to do what's best for them. You have to do what's best for you. You have to win deals. You have to get into new accounts. If you're not, you're hiding. You're avoiding doing your job. You're not doing your job. Go to b2brevenue.com. Sign up for the course. There's 2 major ones. Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting. This course gets you the ability to have that conversation like we talked about in the interview. But it doesn't require you to take, you know, a master's degree. It takes a little effort, takes a little planning, it takes a little forethought. It does.

It's a skill.

And I can show you how to do it. I can give you hundreds of examples. I can walk you through it, but I can't do it for you. I can give you boilerplate, which I do, and you can modify it, but you still have to say the words. You still have to think about it. You still have to become empathetic. And how do you figure out that it's not all about you? That is proactivity. That is an internal locus of control that you have to remember that I have to be empathetic. And how do I do that? I have to be curious about them. I have to be interested in them. I have to ask myself, if I was them, what would I do? What is in their Best interest. That is how you develop that skill. Repetition, forethought, listen to other people, take a different angle on it. That is what's going to take you to the next level. And how long do you want to wait to get to that next level? Uh, the natural process is 5 or 10 years. Do you have that time? Or are you going to take the personal responsibility and develop it every day? And then all of a sudden you get the compounding. So the courses are, they're open for a year long. They start at any time you want. Uh, there's core lessons and then there's office hours and one-on-ones. Office hours is an hour meetup every other Friday. And guess what? If you miss it, it's all recorded. All of them have been recorded for the last 4 years. In the course. There's so many examples and discussions that it's always there on the topic that you want, that you want to care about, that you want to get better on. You listen to it on demand when you're ready, where you're ready. And if you have that open time, you show up and you ask your questions. You schedule a one-on-one, which is a 30-minute call with me where we apply the course to what you're facing. what you're up against and how to solve it. And let's make this year the best year ever. Go to b2brevenue.com. You can watch the video in the show notes on my LinkedIn profile. Everybody who's helped me tell somebody about the show, give me a little like, a little comment, a little share on LinkedIn. I certainly appreciate it. Check out the YouTube channel. Uh, follow me on LinkedIn. We'll see you next time.