DO YOU HAVE THIS SUPERPOWER???

One of the things that we need in sales that takes a while to develop, but if we focus on it, can be cut short dramatically, and that's judgment. Judgment is getting kind of an internal feeling about what is most important, what is going to happen next, how is this going to turn out. And it can be based off of your experience of things that looked and felt and sounded much like this before? Or you can kind of talk it over with other people. Look for signals. Look for signs. What is your sense about people? And if you spend time developing this, this will save you an enormous amount of time. In prospecting, we get it all the time. Is it worth spending time on this type of account or that type of account? When you talk to somebody, did you sense some interest, some curiosity, some urgency about doing something? If you take notes and you look and you compare and you ask yourself, am I hearing what I want to hear or am I hearing what is really being said, what is really being meant? Are their actions consistent with their words? Are they overly enthusiastic or am I overly enthusiastic?

Enthusiastic.

This is what we're going to be talking about today. I think you're really going to enjoy this. This is something I really build into both Start the Conversation and Winning the Complex Sale. So what other— whatever problem you're facing in sales, whether your pipeline is too thin or your deals are taking too long and getting minimized, those are the courses for you. Check them out at b2brevenue.com. Here we go.

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

Yeah, absolutely. So, born in Dallas, Texas, many years in sales, obviously sales management, ownership in companies, scaling organizations. And, you know, it's interesting how this all came about. It was just one of my old employees that said I was the best sales guy and taught him everything he knew. So, I was excited about that. It's fun how you can impact people in their careers and their lives, and that's what makes this worth doing, to be honest.

Cool. Well, let's get into that. What did you teach him?

You know, absolutely. Actually, the first thing was just learning how to talk to the client, right? You know, he had never done sales. He was a claims adjuster. So, as you can imagine, you know, picking up a phone and calling somebody and you've never done any type of sales or appointment setting or anything like that is more or less just having confidence in himself. And the first thing I told him, I said, hey, you know, talk to him like you talk to your friends, right? I said, when you pick up the phone, I said, I remember he made a bet, really, it was a tough call he had. And I said, you talk to your buddies like that? He's like, no. I said, you know, you're almost robotic. I said, just talk to him like you're gonna talk to your friends. And, you know, to be honest, it's probably one of the best advice I gave him because after that, he read the script with conviction and determination and excitement and he was kind of off to the races from there. So, that was my advice to him at the beginning is just speak to him like he's your buddy.

Yeah. Was that something you struggled with at first or was it?

No. It was interesting how I got into sales is, I've always had, I guess, the ability just to kind of relate to folks and articulate, you know, my ideas and never been scared to walk up into a crowd. Basically, you know, I went to Texas A&M and a lot of my friends, I look around and these guys are gonna be engineers and doctors and lawyers and I'm sitting there going, man, I ain't this smart. I better figure this out. And I'd actually responded to a Cutco jobs ad. If you remember Cutco knives, it was hilarious. And I went in there, it was a big cattle call interview, and they're just running massive amounts of kids in there and see who could sell. And I got in there and they said, we need $134. And obviously, you know, I was born, raised by a single mother. So, you know, $134, I went to my mom, I said, hey, look, I promise I'll pay you back. And it's one of the best investments that she ever made as far as in my future because I ended up making $7,000. in the summertime selling Cutco knives door-to-door to lonely housewives and a few restaurants. And that's kind of how I cut my teeth was figuring out, hey, man, I'm 20 years old. I've got no future. I don't know what I want to do. I'm going to college. And as you know, there's kind of that debate on, is college even helping you right now? And it's getting into $200,000 worth of debt and does it even do anything? And so, you know, in my experience, that really set off a course of You know, hey, I've got the knack for doing this and I have never looked back.

And where did you get that confidence to be able to knock on a door with your mom's money?

Right. You know, I think it goes back to my sports background. You know, I played football in college. I played rugby in college and I grew up playing sports and I think it was just more or less the confidence of, hey, I can do this, man. If I can run 200 wind sprints after practice. I can do this. And, you know, but I'd always, as a kid, I had lemonade stands. You know, I remember I used to pay this, the bigger kid in the neighborhood, to carry my tables around the neighborhood for me. I'd pay him $5 if he'd move them from location to location. I think it's just always, you know, it may be in my DNA. You know, my dad was a sales guy and, you know, the life of the party. And so, I think that more or less, it was just me, right? And then, obviously, you built that confidence as you go and You try to care about what your appearance looks like. And obviously, always through school, I teach that with my kids. Hey, you know, your appearance means everything, right? So, and it gives you confidence and, you know, walk with your shoulders back and your chest out and your head up. And, and, and so I guess I, you know, more or less, it just kind of morphed into it.

I mean, that's, that's great. How about the skills, though? Because, you know, football doesn't teach you how to talk, do Right. It kind of, it's pretty primitive. I mean, it's great training. You get coaching, discipline, structure.

Right. You know, your thoughts are everything. You know, by yourself, when you're— that's what people don't really, you know, I spend a lot of time just by myself thinking, right? Thinking about my next move, thinking about my company I own now, thinking about what makes us different. And then, as far as Cutco, I always had the ability to look outside the box. You know, I had everybody was going after their family and friends and what that looked like. And I said, you know, let me expand this. So, I started going into restaurants. I started going into just knocking on random doors because nobody was doing that. You know, Cutco's motto was, go get your family and friends. And for me, it's just developing your thoughts and thinking, man, how can I do this differently? And I've always had the ability to do that. And going into my later years in the credit card processing merchant service industry, It was a company, it was 5 of us, we started it. We grew it to over 200 employees and after 7 years, we sold it to another organization and I got a golden parachute from that. But one of the biggest things that scaled that organization was, once again, my thoughts, just sitting back and listening and thinking and how do we become different? And that's a very competitive industry. And so, what was happening is we were going in going, hey, I can save you money and save you money and save you money. Well, that's what everybody was doing, right? So, you go talk to a mom-and-pop business and he's like, hey, I just talked to John Smith yesterday from another company.

Right.

He told me he could save me money, save me $5, and now, why am I talking to you? So, I was at Bed Bath Beyond with my wife on a weekend. I looked at the receipts that printed out. It was laundry list of advertisement, 20% off, and I'm going, man, why isn't— why can't we get the mom-and-pop shop to do this? So, sure enough, I went in Monday morning, walked in the owner's office. I said, bro, we gotta do this. And we went from being a credit card merchant service rep to, hey, look at the windows, 10% off, buy one, get one free, $19.99 oil change. And so, we went from being a credit card processing rep to a consultant to more or less, you know, hey, how do I help you get people back through the door? Because the more people that come back to the door, the more times they use their credit card. So, I think honestly, it's just always thinking about the next step. And I always had the ability to do that even as a young kid. And I remember lemonade stands, I would say, hey, look, okay, if you drink the lemonade here, I'll give you 50% off. Because then, I would take the cup and reuse it and wash it and cut back on my expenses. Which now I look back on, it was kind of gross because who knows if I was even, I was a COVID spreader in 1988.

That explains what was going on.

But anyway, that's kind of just, it's always, you've got to be thinking and you always got to, you know, a lot of people waste time listening to music or they waste time and it's not a waste. It's just maybe what they love to do. But for me, I always think about, okay, how can I better myself? How can I make more money? How can I get more sales? And because that's my craft, right?

So, well, that's proactive.

Yeah, right.

Because most people are like listening to the internal, uh, subconscious saying, ah, take the rest of the day off, or, you know, it's raining out, who's going to buy knives when it's raining out, or I can't do this, this is too hard. Um, how did you develop that habit? Was it just natural, or?

You know, I think it was, you know, for me, I was raised by a single mother. My mom was a flight attendant. And so, she constantly was working, right? Out of town. She'd be in a completely separate city. I'm 7, 8, 9 years old and my brother staying at home by ourselves. And, you know, so I was always having to think ahead, right?

Yeah.

And so, even though I was at school, 6 and 7 years old, I'm going, man, I got to figure out what I'm going to do for dinner because my mom's not home. So, you know, there's a lot of that and then life experiences and And, but I think more or less, it was my childhood and upbringing. A lot of people can look at those things as negative and I did for many years, right? And they dwell on that and why didn't I get this hand and why didn't I have this and why didn't I have that? For me, now I look back and go, man, those experiences, every experience that you have, you've got to look as a learning experience and go, okay, yeah, that was bad but how did I make, how could I make this better? And I think that was just my ability to think ahead as a young kid and try to figure out and problem solve. And so—

And what motivates you?

You know, it's, there's a lot of things, right? So, obviously, I got a family, 4 kids, wife, married almost 17 years.

That's motivation.

Failure motivates me because, you know, growing up, it was always people going, Well, you know, back in the '80s, you know, having a single parent was kind of taboo, right? Now, it's everywhere and it's accepted. Back then, it was like, yeah, it was like— Oh my gosh. And so, for me, failure was everything because everybody always told me, oh, she can't raise those 2 kids. She can't do this. She can't do that. And I'm sitting there going, and I kind of maybe chased that demon a little bit where it's like, I don't wanna go backwards. You know, I've established myself. I've done very well successfully in business. I just opened a company in 2016 and I've been somewhat growing it. Now, here we are, we're starting to hit another level. And it's the fear of going backwards or the fear of people telling me they were correct. Oh, I was right. They are, you know, failures. But more or less, it's, you know, the money comes. If you're chasing money, then it's the wrong way to do it, I think. I mean, when you get salespeople that are money motivated, they never work.

Yeah. So, yeah. And, you know, as you developed, how did you keep yourself getting better and better?

You know, once again, I think private thoughts, listening to yourself and, you know, self-awareness and, okay, I screwed that up and how do I not do that again? And, you know, I listen to a lot of podcasts and I just constantly try to better myself and keeping a positive attitude. I think that's another deal which You know, I deal with sales reps all the time on my team now, in my company, where it's, life is half empty, not half full, right? The glass. It's like, come on, man. You know, and there's a lot of that negativity going around in your head, a lot of self-doubt. I mean, you have more conversations in your head on a daily basis, I read in an article, than you do with anybody out in public. And so, you spend majority of your time, even if you're an outgoing person, the majority of your day is spent to talking to yourself, right? And so I always tell folks, it's all self-talk. It could be bad or it could be good. And so you got to determine what that conversation is going to be every single day. And if you start slipping into a negative and, you know this, I mean running a business and owning a business, it ain't easy. And every day is a grind. And the emotional roller coaster is unbelievable. And I'm just now figuring this out. You know, I've always been a part of organizations where I was the, you know, 3rd or 4th guy on the totem pole. And, you know, obviously had stock options in those companies, but now I'm doing this on my own, man. It's victories and it's failures, and it could turn on a dime. You know, Monday's a great day and then Tuesday stinks and you're going, God, what's Wednesday gonna look like? So, self-talk is everything.

So, what I heard, you ask yourselves particular questions. How can I do this better? How can I build this? Getting yourself out of the box of what you're doing today. Is that kind of what you do?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And being ahead of competition and what that looks like. And, you know, I named my new company Rev Tax Group. It's revolutionized because I think we're gonna revolutionize this tax industry that's historically been controlled by, you know, tax guys. And there's nothing wrong with the way they think. It's just not the way I think. It's more number motivated to where I'm more Wolf of Wall Street type motivated. But you've always got to constantly stay ahead of the competition. You got to stay ahead of yourself, right? You can't get complacent because tomorrow could be another bad day and today's going to be a good day. And so, you've got to constantly have that battle with yourself.

And the competitiveness. So, I heard you want to prove people wrong or you don't want to live in their frame. You want to create your own. And Do looking at your competitors motivate you?

If you see—

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Because I think they're doing the client a disservice, right? So, my business is, is we protest people's property taxes in the state of Texas and then we also pay their property taxes and we lend them the money. So, at the end of the year, if they can't afford to pay it, the county will seize the property. And so, all my competitors, all they've done for years and years and years is just loan them the money. And so, what I looked at is I saw an opportunity. Well, just because they're debtor doesn't mean they're not a consumer, right? Just because they're in debt doesn't mean you should shame them and just pay them the money and just disappear on them. What else can you do to help them in their situation? So, we started protesting their taxes as well. So, we're gonna loan you the money and then I'm gonna fight for you. And nobody else is doing that. And so, for me, it's all about what can I do because I'm a consumer. Right? You go to restaurants or you go anywhere else and if it's bad service, like, man, I just spent money and it was awful. Like, seriously. And so, that's personal to me sometimes because it drives me nuts when you go somewhere and you don't get the service that you deserve, right? And so, I think that for my competitors in my business looking at it, it's like, no, I'm gonna serve the client better. And therefore, when I do that, I've got a client for life and they'll never leave me.

Yeah.

And when you I take it you hire salespeople, right? What do you look for?

You know, it's interesting because a lot of organizations will find salespeople with the big decorated resumes and everything else. I find that those guys are just, they're stuck in their ways. They're kind of a pain in the neck and they say they're gonna do all these things and they never do anything. I hired a lady the other day that was a bartender.

Yeah.

And the reason I did that is because I worked in restaurants, you know, growing up as a kid and going, man, if you can deal with, you know, drunk guys at 12 o'clock at night in a restaurant and cleaning cups and everything bartenders put up with, man, you can do this and you can make cold calls. And sure enough, she had a little bit of sales experience, not a lot, and she's doing great. And it's, once again, it's the work ethic. You're looking for that work ethic because Ultimately, when you start doing something over and over and over, you're gonna create a habit. And so, whether it's making 100 calls a day, if you do that for 10, 15 days straight and you survive it, you're gonna eventually get good at it, right? Because we all started somewhere. I never knocked on a door in my life selling Cutco knives until I started selling Cutco knives. And, you know, you sell, you know, lemonade stands and things like that. But in general, you know, there's the rejection where you fear that. But once you do it over and over and over, it You just desensitize to it. So I look for folks that are willing to learn and worth that thing. You know, can I coach you? And, uh, and will you do the job?

Because you have kind of the 2 of the things that are very consistent in great salespeople: sports, where you have a coach, it's competitive, you have to get feedback, you kind of know where you stand; and then hospitality, where you have to deal with people And handle problems that a lot of times you didn't cause.

Right. Yeah.

Right? Because you can't just say, not my problem. It's like, no, I'm the face of the problem. I'll go fix it. I'll make it right. Which is a lot of sales, right? It's kind of understanding the other person, where they are and what they want.

Right.

Yeah.

How complex is your sale? Is it like a one-call type thing, or is it building a relationship and closing later?

You know, it's, our industry's a little interesting because they can't tell me they're not interested. And that's because they don't have any other options really, right? When you owe the county money, they're gonna seize the property. It's not like we're buying a house, or a car, or a television, or a vacuum cleaner. If I call you on the phone and, hey, I'm gonna sell you a vacuum cleaner, you tell me no, yeah, no. Okay. I get it. I'm moving on. But in this business, what we do is, we struggle with folks putting their head back in the sand and not wanting to approach their problems. You know, it is a one-call close. Anything, to be honest, except for your high complex sales, should be a one-call close because you as a salesperson should have the ability to connect with this person extremely fast, get them to like you and trust you. And I believe that anything after a one-call close, unless it's some complex $300,000 software system that needs to go up the ladder, which, you know, we've sold that type of stuff before, but in general, I think you should be able to connect with the client as fast as possible. And get a one-call close. And if you can't, you know, then you need to do a better job connecting.

And how did you, what was it like that first year you started your own company? Because you got a high burn rate with a big family.

Yeah.

It was, you know, I did it a little differently than most folks. So, I still had an income coming in. I was in the tax business, which is where I met the gentleman who said the nice kind words about me on LinkedIn. And at night, I'd sit down. So, I bought a list of delinquent property taxpayers. Unfortunately, they didn't have the phone numbers. So, I'm on the internet in the middle of the night hunting and pecking and looking up phone numbers. And, you know, I did it with a list and a cell phone to see if it was a scalable business. And I just worked it and worked it and worked it. And the next thing you know, I said, wow, this is a scalable business. Nobody is making outbound calls to these people. We're the only firm. And I said, then, okay. So, I brought in another person and then they had success. And I'm going, wow. Okay. If they had success and then it just started building from there. And then, about a year ago to 2 years ago, I, yeah, that's about 2 years ago, I finally said, let's go. And so, that was kind of the first time where I sat down with the team and I said, let's do this. And so, I knew I didn't, I had anxieties. You're obviously gonna have anxieties when you're You got a family and everything's coming up. But in general, I had already kind of proven it. And so, my confidence level was way up here because I knew that I did it, I had another person did it, and then I brought in 2 other ladies, a lady named Carla and Wanda, and then they did it. And then, all of a sudden, now we've got a viable business and we're now backed by a hedge fund which is really cool. They reached out to us and found us. So, we're, it's fun. It's fun. See where it's grown. I got interviewed by the Los Angeles Tribune the other day, about 3 weeks ago, about property taxes with all the Californians moving to Texas. And I went to my wife, I go, can you believe this? 5 years ago, 4 years ago, never a thought. Now, I got Los Angeles Tribune, I'm doing a podcast here with you. It's like, this is crazy. But once again, it's just hard work, dedication, and seeing it through, and self-talk, which just means, if you speak it into existence, it will happen. It's, people fail because they doubt themselves. And I've doubted myself many a times, but you've gotta continue to go back to, no, you got this, Reeves. You got this, Riz. You got this. And you just keep grinding and speak it into existence. And my goal is, in the next 5 to 7 years, I'll have about $90 million of loans on the books. And I think I can take the, you know, the organization as far as the portfolio and flip it. And I've done that 2 other times for other companies and they've walked away with millions and millions of dollars and I did very well but I'm sitting there going, no, no, this is my turn. I've got all the skills. I've got the sales leadership. I can, you know, and here we are. So.

Well, let's talk about those times that you doubted yourself. Was there any long slump?

Like more than—

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It's, I'm telling you, And you know this, and other people know this who've started their business. But then again, you've also got to have good people around you that talk you out of that stuff. So, you know, I got a girl on my team named Carla. Every time I turn around, she's like, Mike, we didn't come this far to come this far. Let's go. We got this. You know, and I'll call her and not complain or vent. And then, you get very successful people around you. Like, I'm gonna go here in the next couple weeks. I became good friends with the CEO and founder of of Nextdoor, which is an app, you know, that— Yep. Social media. Yeah. Social media. Very, very wealthy individual. Very, very entrepreneur. Started that company at the bottom and, you know, we're gonna sit down and we're gonna talk and you gotta lean on people to continue to keep your self-talk going. Because if you're in your— I always said at the beginning, I said, you know, you're in your own mind. You're having those conversations. But sometimes also, you've gotta get those out and you gotta talk to people that have been successful. Talk to people that are in the trenches with you that are gonna continue to go, Mike, let's go. Mike, let's go. Mike, let's go. Because if you don't, that week of just, you know, can I call it poopy pants where you're down in the dumps? It's like, if you just keep going, it'll last for a month. It'll last for 3 months and then ultimately, you'll lose your company. Right.

Because your subconscious is kind of trying to protect you.

Absolutely.

You're making excuses.

Yes. You're making me freak now.

Yeah. It's okay. You know, you tried it. It failed. It's all right. Let's move on and go back and get a base salary job. And I always tell myself—

It'll be fine.

Yeah. You know what I mean? And just live your life and it'll be fine. But I always tell myself that, you know, and I'm just an entrepreneur at heart. It's just that the base salaries, the guy on Shark Tank with the bald head, he said, a base salary is the drug they give you to get you to forget about your dreams. And I keep telling myself that in my mind every time I saw that quote a couple years ago. And every time, you know, you just gotta have those mental battles and you've gotta win and you've gotta get those thoughts out and you've gotta lean on people that are extremely successful, more successful than you. You've gotta learn from them and you gotta keep pushing forward.

And do you have either a physical routine every day? To kind of get your body moving, to get the mind moving?

Every day.

You know, I go to the gym every day. Every day in the morning I get up, I go to the gym, I put in that work because that gets your mind flowing. It gets your confidence level. If you feel like you look good, you feel like you're healthy, your mind's healthy. And then, I get, you know, I get home, I get my kids to school, and then I'm on my computer about 9 o'clock and I still cold call with my team. And I'll hit the phones from like 9 to 1 of just, leave me alone, don't bother me, I've got this, I'm doing this. And when you think about it, you got 4 to 5 hours where nobody's bothering you because if you're going to an office, we used to have an office and we closed it down because we don't need it anymore because COVID. You go to an office and you're working 10-hour days. Half the, I mean, 3 hours a year in those worthless meetings that mean nothing. And then, you're talking about the Cowboys winning the Super Bowl at the water cooler for an hour or the coffee machine and then you're, you know, talking nonsense with your employees or your coworkers. And so, how much time are you really working at an office? Maybe 4 to 5 hours and don't forget your 1-hour lunch break in there. So, I come on, I work from 9 to 1. My wife and I go to lunch every day together. I come back, get ready. By the time we're back home, it's 2:30. Get ready to go pick up my kids from school, bring them back home, get them situated, and then I'm back on my computer about 3:30, 4:00. And I go to about 5:00, 5:30. And when you think about it, I'm very, very productive. And the majority of my day, I was able to do and take care of my responsibilities, which is my wife and my kids, as well as my company.

Well, what's great about— you get those time blocks, you get the, you know, the personal win, hit the gym. Okay, your physical body is now in rhythm. You get a nice time block to get on the phone, accomplish a lot. Take a break and then do it again, but not do it all day because that would burn you out.

Burn you out.

Yeah.

And I tell my team that. I go, look, just get— if you're working this, get our company and our leads 8 to 5, you're doing it wrong. You're doing it way wrong. You literally should go 4 to 5 hours and then the rest of your day you got nothing going on.

Have you gotten to the point where you like crave getting on the phone?

Yes. You know, it's interesting because I haven't been on the phone in about 2 weeks because obviously I'm running the companies. And trying to move it forward different directions and different things. And I got on yesterday, we hired 2 new folks and we got on, and they're 1099s, they're full commission. So, there's a little bit of a turnover. So, I'm constantly training and mentoring. And I got on yesterday so they could hear me making phone calls and I closed 2 sales and I'm going, and Jill, who's my Director of Operations, calls me and goes, you gotta get back on the phones. This is, you know, this is unreal. I'm like, I love it. Right? Some days, you, once again, self-talk. You question, am I, you Can I still do it? Can I still, you know, and then, so, you know, but then when you get on there and you make those calls, it's like, oh, this is easy. So.

Yeah, because I think a lot of sales reps think that, that self-doubt goes away completely. It just gets dormant for a while.

Yeah, it just sits there until you let it creep in. You have a bad day on something, somebody hangs up on you, and then you question yourself. Maybe I'm not good at this.

So.

And have you had a hard time Getting a 1099 sales rep versus a base salary plus commission rep?

It's tough. It's a different animal, right? So, but I'm used to it because in the merchant service industry, that's all we dealt with was 1099 full commission salespeople. If you've never dealt with them before, I could see how you'd be like, no, this is never gonna work. But then again, my team is making a tremendous amount of money if they try. I mean, making $10,000 to $20,000 a month. I had a lady the other day that she'd been with me for years and she called thanking me because of how much money she's been making and she was selling roofing appointments prior to this, right? And it's like, you know, now she feels like she's in the tax business. It's a prestigious position. But yeah, it is difficult because most people don't wanna work anymore. And I tell my kids all the time is that, you know, opportunity is missed because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work. And everybody on my team that's worked hard, I'm giving them equity in the company. So, when we go to flip it, they'll partake in that windfall, which is unbelievable. And they should do that. We should partake in that. They should be attached to the organization. And that's where corporate America's got it wrong, where if you die tomorrow, they'll replace you, right?

Right.

They give you a little base salary and the next thing you know, you know, get rid of that person. You're a line item on a financial statement. And if I can build a team, which I have, that we love each other, we take care of each other, You know, because listen, if Carla or Jill quit tomorrow on my team, I'm done. And then, if I fail as an owner, they're done. They got to get back on indeed.com or ZipRecruiter and, you know, get back and, you know, and try to find a job where they're driving to every day and they're miserable. So, anyway.

Well, I think that's it. Corporate America is making the mistake of increasing the base to control people, get people to enter the CRM in a pretty document, attend the meeting, smile and nod. But that's not increasing revenue.

No.

That's increasing control.

Yeah, that, and you're enabling them, right? Because all you're really doing is you're just patting their pockets more. And in general, most people, when you give them more money, they don't do more work.

Yeah, I mean, they're looking to get the money the easiest way possible, which is pretty much smiling and nodding versus selling.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and going through the motions, because the other thing is they're most likely not emotionally invested in what they're doing either.

Because you have to have that part, the caring.

Yeah, sure. And that's why I love my business because ultimately, when we pay people's property taxes, you know, you feel good about that. Now, are they gonna be able to pay us back?

I don't know.

Maybe. We give them a 10-year chance to do that. But ultimately, I'm helping them because if they don't take the loan, the county's gonna seize their property and they're gonna be homeless, you know, or their business is gonna get shut down because that's where their their businesses. So, it feels good to do that for folks. I had a lady the other day called me a godsend. I said, well, ma'am, I don't want to go that far. We're making money too. So, you know, this is a mutual transaction here. But yeah, it's better to do business with me than to try to do business with a government entity who doesn't care about you.

Right. Cool.

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

Well, revtaxgroup.com is our website. And then, we've got our Instagram and Facebook up on that. So, it's rev, like revolutionized, taxgroup.com. And then, my LinkedIn profile is Michael Reeves. And you'll see us on there, I guess. Social media, I don't do much of it, but I probably should. That's my next big deal. I've done it for my son who's 7 years old and he's got 22,000 Instagram followers. He plays football.

Wow!

Yeah. It's crazy, but I've never done it for myself. And maybe I probably should, but, you know, he's He's kind of been my, uh, my focus.

Well, you might give him an offer. He could be your social— Yeah, yeah, your manager.

Yeah, maybe you need to do that. So, well, good. Thank you. I appreciate it. This was fun. Um, thanks for everything.

So why is judgment so critical? If you don't have good judgment, you're going to waste your time on false positives, deals that really aren't deals, people who, you know, are friendly But not really friendly. People who smile and nod but don't really take action, don't follow through on what they do. So here's some techniques to develop your judgment. I would take your pipeline and put it in chronological order of closure. Now, a lot of people have a hard time with this because they spend a lot of time on a big deal, a deal that's so big and it's going to change the company. And most of the time that deal never closes, or it takes a lot longer than it should, so it moves into next year, or it's a lot smaller than that big deal you hope for. I've seen that a lot. That might be a great strategy for keeping your manager off your back and keeping the resources on your plate instead of someone else's. But you still have to eat. By following this rule, it'll not only test your awareness of the deal, you can test it. You can see at the end of the month or quarter how well you did. Keep track or print out or take a picture of that list at different times during the month, quarter, and see how it changes. And why did it change? What was the lesson there? And write that lesson down. Don't, don't think you're going to memorize it. Every sales rep I talk to has a photographic memory, and none of them do, including me. One of the favorite tools on my phone is the camera. I just take pictures of stuff all the time. Screenshot, take a picture of my computer at a certain state, and then I compare it. Maybe do it at the beginning of the month, And the end of the month, beginning of the week, end of the week. What it'll do is really keep you even-keeled because we have this paradox when we're in front of clients. Yes, we have to be confident, but when we're not in front of our clients, we should be a little insecure about our deals. We should have a little bit of fear, wonder what could go wrong, because sometimes it does. And the time to plan for it is soon as possible, not after it goes wrong.

After it goes wrong, it's in the repair category, which is insanely hard.

Prevention, hard but not insanely hard.

Repair, really hard.

So develop this judgment skill. Ask yourself at the end of the day, what was the best use of my time this day? What was the biggest waste of my time this day? Have you ever noticed how fast time goes by even when you're doing unproductive stuff? It may not go— you may not feel like it goes by fast, but it goes by fast and you can't use that time for anything else. So how are you using your time? Who are you spending your time with? What deals do you feel are real and what deals are less real? What are those signals? What are the asset tests that you can put into your process along the way To give validation because we naturally don't see it until it's too late. We push it off. We have happy ears or we just don't want to face it. We don't want to face bad news and nobody wants to give us bad news. Developing judgment where you take the emotion out of it, where you can maybe even talk to a friend about the deals. You know, that person doesn't really even need to know about sales. They can just ask simple questions. Well, what makes you think it's going to happen? Why would it happen this month versus a year from now? And all of a sudden, you start to think about where it is and what can go wrong and how to prevent it. Because the default is for it to go wrong.

Change—

and we're all selling change— is really hard. And usually it is that emotional thing at the end that slows down and kills our deal. How do you prevent that? If you really want to become great at winning the complex sale, sign up for the course. It's a year-long access to the content. It has 4 years of one-on-ones, office hours. The challenge is applying it. Over that year.

Engage with the community.

Share your situations. No one needs to know the account name, what you're selling, what your name is. People are there to help, and it's all about prevention, understanding how companies buy and how you can teach them how to get it done faster and easier. It's a skill that will stick with you the rest of your life. And, you know, a lot of the people in it say it's, you know, 40, 50, 100% increase in their income. It's not the cost. The cost is noise. The effort, well, you know, you're listening to a podcast, you put the same amount of time into that and you get better. You open your mind to what can go wrong and how to prevent it and how other people are handling this similar type of situation. From the very best salespeople in the world. Come on, do it. Make it your present to you this year because you are the means of production. It's not— it's nothing that's written in a book. There's nothing that you're going to learn from your manager. This is gold and lots of it. Think about it. 4 years of office hours, it's almost 200 hours of office hours and another 100 hours or so of One-on-ones, and you get one-on-ones. You get office hours every other Friday for a whole hour. Submit your case study, your questions, your typical challenges, and we work on them and solve them so you can make more money. That's what it's all about, baby. Thanks for listening. If you see my content fly by on LinkedIn, give it a little like, a little comment, a little share. That would be appreciated. Tell a friend about the show. Check out the other sales Podcasts, Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers, The Sales Leadership Show, and The B2B Revenue Leadership Show.

We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening.

Here's some excerpts from a one-on-one that I did with one of the students in Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting course.

Now, this person really embraced the course after a while.

It took a couple of one-on-ones for him to try each step.

He kind of fought it, tried to make it work within his current model.

And that really didn't have this type of success.

And then after he started, he started to get meetings. He started to get conversations. He started to get all the things that I was telling him about.

And he started to get excited about it.

He started to see the results that I tell you about where his week was full of meetings.

Now, I'll let you hear this out.

I deleted out kind of the specifics of the steps and the tools and the approach, but they're all in the course. If you're already in it, please listen to the full one-on-ones.

When you hear the success that people are having, it's not just the steps.

It's the matching of the steps with the appropriate Actions and pacing. And then you get people asking to talk with you, which is the goal, which is the fun. So let's listen to it and I'll sum it up at the end and give you kind of an idea and recommendation if you want to take advantage of this.

And it's crazy. This week, this week I'm full of meetings. I was like, what's happening? And like, I, what I did was I baked in, like, I just, I'm very generic and people are like, oh, like, like, tell me more about you. Like, immediately I have like 3, 4 meetings. Like, I already had 2 this, and, and based on the, on the, on the parameters that you suggested for me, like, oh, go after these bigger companies. X amount of employees. So then by the time I'm talking to them, I already know that, okay, they, they typically have budget. I mean, assuming LinkedIn is correct with the employee size, some of it was, was off, but it's like, okay, there's still like a deal. It can, it can still happen. And, um, but yeah, I was like, whoa, this is— I limited to like 30 connections a day. So then that way it's not like, it doesn't go crazy. Because I remember one of the reps. So do about 30 a day. Uh, like I said, like this week, like 4 or 5 meetings, and, and, and they're good meetings, you know, and it's just conversations. Like I say, it's not about like pitching, but it's about working them up to that point where it's like, okay, yeah, we do need to advertise.

So after teaching this for quite a while, here's the steps that you should take. Take the course once Quickly through it. Find both one-on-ones and office hours that speak to the persona that you want to talk with, whether it be the CEO, the CMO, CRO, developer, marketer, whoever it is that you want to talk to, because we break it down in gory detail. We break down the persona and what they care about. And then try each step. Try it with your friends. Try it with your coworkers and start to see the results. Now, most people will fight me on it. They'll spend the first month, 2 months, uh, trying to make the system fit into their pitchy email and cold calls. And it works a little better, but it works a whole lot better when you apply it because each step and each pause in between each step has been designed over time to be very effective. And then when you start to see the results, all of a sudden people are replying, people are asking you, people are wanting to talk with you, want to understand what you do. It's almost turning cold outbound into warm inbound. Now, are they in market?

No, no, they're not.

But they're a little curious, and it's up to us. And I show you in the course how do you build off of that. Instead of us telling everybody how great we are and hoping they can understand why they need us. And instead of them arguing about why they don't need us. Because until you have active pain, everyone's in denial. Think about going to the doctor. Okay, you kind of know you need an operation, but you're like, can I get a prescription? And the doctor's like, he has to ease you, or she has to ease you into the process. Well, let's take an x-ray. Let's see what we're working with here.

Oh, can I—

how about just a shot? Can I just get a shot till the next time I come in?

Then he flips the x-ray up on the light and he points to something. He goes, that's what we're dealing with. That doesn't heal on its own. You have to have surgery for that. He has to build up To that. Until we build up that latent pain into active pain and properly diagnose it and get people to think about what happens if they don't have that operation, they're going to avoid it at all costs. That's why the cold pitch doesn't work. You're just igniting the denial. You're not igniting interest or curiosity. It's just denial. So check out the course. Start the conversation. Get the meeting. It's all at b2brevenue.com. There's an overview video in the show notes on my YouTube channel and on my LinkedIn profile. Pretty much everywhere I am, as well as the website b2brevenue.com. Check it out if this is what you need. You know, this student, zero sales experience, but really, you know, just gobbled up this. And the people who gobble it up the fastest and the best are people who try it and get success. It has nothing to do with knowledge. It's like learning how to do a sit-up doesn't give you a 6-pack.

You have to do the sit-ups.

They're not fun at first.

But then you get used to them and you start to like appreciating them. And then you start to get the connection between how you look and what you do. And so you start doing the things that make you look better.

This is what we have.

It's not just knowledge. It is applying it, taking feedback, polishing it up, and applying the system to your clients.