DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO BECOME GREAT AT B2B ENTERPRISE SALES

Hey, before we get into the interview, I want to make sure you're aware of our other podcasts, the Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers show, which is a very quick, under 5 minutes in most cases, sometimes just a few minutes where I answer your questions. You can just send me any question to my LinkedIn profile, Brian G. Burns, and I'll put it in the queue to answer. Also, the Sales Leadership Show. If you're looking to get into sales leadership or you want to hear from the world's best sales leaders, that's where I interview them. Check it out, the Sales Leadership Show. Also at b2brevenue.com, you can learn all about all the courses. Links are in the show notes below, as well as our link to our partners over at brevitypitch.com, the fastest, easiest way to become great at sales and practice.

Before it's showtime, here we go. So you've probably heard the old saying: It's a combination of will and skill.

Definitely, definitely, especially in in sales and business. But I guess working hard is definitely a good thing, and then you got to combine that with skill. But I don't think just working hard is going to get you over the finish line. Rarely do you see the the top reps, the ones that are. Working the most hours. And I think in sales, sometimes a lot of the stuff that makes us successful is kind of counterintuitive to what we do in our everyday life. So it can be really hard to flip that script and be willing to change and do some of those things. So I think working hard is definitely a good thing. I certainly done that my whole career and will continue to do that, but you have to combine it with some, some other things too, and be willing to kind of think different sometimes.

Yeah, I think people think that will— because when you hear will, you think of grit, resilience, determination, which it is. Those are all there. You need all them. But then people don't think about the internal ones, the, you know, confidence, empathy, creativity. All these blind spots that reps have, and I see if you look at those things, they have much more impact than just being gritty and resilient. Because, and no manager will tell you this because they see the classic will-oriented things—grit, determination, resilience—as wonderful because they still have the moronic view. It's a numbers game. You know, we're assembling widgets here. We're not talking to people. But when you look at a rep, and let's say they do all the grinding, all the grit and everything, but they're still a B player from a performance outcome standpoint. What's in the way?

Everything internal. It's everything internal.

Most likely.

Or They don't have confidence.

They sweat in front of customers, or they pounce on them. They don't listen and understand and have compassion, and they don't look at these things. And when you confront them, and it's obvious why they don't, it hurts. You know, how does it feel when somebody gives you feedback?

Not very good. It's easy to want to take it personally.

Yeah, because what do people do? It's like, well, you don't do it either. You know, they deflect, send it back to you. It's like, well, we're not talking about me at this point. We can do that at a later time. And I used to do this with my reps. It's like, look, you want to be rich or you want to be right? You can pretend you're right, but be poor. Would you rather do that?

No, no.

Well, I don't think it's it. Okay, you're not going to change. And people think, and I see this on LinkedIn all the time, and it's part of the B-player trap and how people get stuck in the B-player trap is that they do all the work, they become pretty good at it, they get pretty good results, but they never get the A-level results because they're not looking in the right place. They're looking to change the job. Change the manager, change the comp plan, change the product. It's like, okay, how many times do you do that before you realize it's not the product? You know, because the inverse happens at the company as well. I remember at a company, they were on their 4th rep in Atlanta. Now, I covered Atlanta when the company started. I had like the whole Mid-Atlantic and Atlanta. And after they took it away from me, it was 3 reps all failed, fired, transferred, whatever. And the company didn't realize it's the territory. It's like the territory either wasn't mature enough or they weren't hiring the right rep. So I had to get this grinder. And I think if people could really take a look at yourself And ask yourself, where am I on this? I keep getting this feedback. I keep losing deals. I'm not making the progress that I want. What do you look to fix? Is more dials gonna solve it?

Doubtful. And that's the easy choice, right? Whether it's the manager or the salesperson is just do more work, be busy, be productive, quote unquote, and keep kind of pounding the pavement and getting things done, but that's not going to solve the problem. And I think people just don't want to face reality, especially salespeople. It's, it's not fun to talk about, hey, I don't take feedback well. I don't really listen. I don't know. I don't even know what listening really means in some cases. It's, I mean, listening, there's so many different avenues there. So it's like, how do you actually think about yourself and try to, and some of that is kind of being a self-starter, being, having an entrepreneurial type mindset, maybe how you, your upbringing. But at the end of the day, do you really want to take it to the next level and get that A-player type money, be in the top 5 or 10%? And maybe, maybe some people are content being a B-player and that's what they want to do. They got other initiatives they don't want to work on themselves. But the thing is, if you work on these things, whether it's feedback, your mindset, curiosity, listening, whatever it may be, you're actually going to end up probably working less hours, getting more done and being more productive and closing more deals. So it At first, it's going to be a lot of work. It's going to be uncomfortable. You're going to have to really put in daily effort in small doses to fix whatever the issue is. But over the long term, if you can think long term, it's going to help you get there. I know there's several things that have held me back at certain points in my career, and mindset was probably one of the bigger ones. But, you know, I always thought I could just be determined. I could be gritty if I fell down, I get back up, which is good to a certain extent. But it was mindset, kind of how I was, you know, talking to myself or what I was doing in the morning to really get me ready for the day. And I started spending more time on that, and it helped me show up better when I had meetings and kind of think of things differently. But that was a process. I had to first admit to myself that, hey man, you got— you kind of have that fixed mindset going. You're talking negative to yourself all the time. Other people notice it here or there. So how do you kind of really work on that? And it's still It's still a daily thing. It's not, it just happens overnight. You have to keep working at it. But that's helped me focus better, be more prioritized effectively, and ultimately do, do things I didn't probably think was possible a few years ago. So, but you have to, you can't lie to yourself. I think that's the biggest thing. And, and it's so easy to do that, or you acknowledge it, but then you just go back to your bad habits right away and expect more work's gonna fix it, or that will is gonna fix it.

Yeah, because this is a lot harder than the hard work, you know, because if you looked at 100 reps, I bet 80% of them are really hard workers. That motivation, determination, grit, resilience is not the problem. The problem is there's no empathy, you know, they're pitching and hounding and then they go. And if you give them feedback, and I did this with a friend of mine, It's been a recruiter, good 30 years in the recruiting business, uh, called me up, asked for help. I made the introduction and the connection. And what did she do? Emailed the guy like 5 times in 5 hours. And the guy blew up and said, all set, thank you. And then, then she calls me. Hey, can you help me with this? They go, well, you copied me on— blind copied me on the emails or sent me the whole trail.

And I go, I don't blame them.

What? You like aggressive reps. It's like, well, there's aggressive and then there's hounding. None of these add any value. You're doing what your instincts tell you, which is I need an update, so I will hound. Instead of take a step back, give the person some time to process it, schedule the next meeting, add some value if you're going to send a message. This is what people don't get, this bumping, right? Did you not? How many times? Oh, please ignore this new version of the message. It's so careful. And people think of this as selling. So the things we're talking about now, are hard, and none of us have it down because it, it's a balance and it's a judgment call. And it's hard because our instincts tell us to do one thing, and if we don't put— pump the brakes on them, we do the dumb thing. And then since we did it, we've gotta rationalize why we did it instead of learn from it. And so, so she calls me. And I go through this, I try and give her feedback, and she argues with me. And I'm like, okay, I'm not doing this to degrade you or put you down. I'm doing it to help you. And still doesn't get it. And I'm like, okay, I got it. And it's like, no more help, because I get nothing out of this. This is a pure favor to favor. You asked, I helped. You could have got a placement and a lot of money. You blew it. And I got 100 cases like this. I've got this CRO on LinkedIn who always comments on my post, but it's not, he's not commenting for the audience or me. He's commenting for him. He doesn't listen to the video. He reads the title. Agrees with me and then tells me why I'm wrong and does a one-up, and then he puts a link to one of his posts in there. So he's using my post to advertise his future skills because he sent me email. I like to work on a book with you. You don't listen. You think you know it all, and you reframe everything to make you look better. I don't say give him any. He's not going to take the feedback. I know it. I don't even know the guy.

Brutal. Be brutal. I mean, and then to your point, I guess what we're talking about is harder for sure. But I think, I can't remember who said this, but it's like, choose your hard because if you do all the other stuff you're talking about, you're not going to be closing a lot of deals. You're not going to be making things happen. So that's going to be hard too in some ways because you're not going to make as much money. You're going to be trying to repair all these mistakes and issues. Yeah. And it's like, you know, you're going to be doing all this stuff. That you do. And what we're talking about is hard as well, but that's gonna get you to the next level. It's gonna take you where you want to go. So it's kind of like choose your hard, because both of them in a way, if you really do want to get to that A-player level, are gonna be hard in some capacity, and you're gonna be frustrated if you do what we're talking about. And I think, I know you've said this many times, but you have to kind of take a step back and actually think and be a little strategic and process-driven of, hey, where do you want to be? the next year, the next couple of years of this company? What do you need to do to get there? And then that's kind of more macro, but then micro with the deals thinking, okay, you know, how long is this deal gonna take to close? Do I really need— how can I space this out and keep the momentum and not just be hounding people as you put it and following up, following up? So you have to be a little kind of process analytical, which is counterintuitive to a lot of salespeople. I think it's trending a little bit more that way, but Those traditional rainmaker personalities don't always do well with the planning and the strategy and thinking long-term. So it's interesting to see that, but you really just have to think and not just do mindless activities. So it's easy if you don't know what to focus on or if you don't want to plan. It's hard to plan for a big meeting or for a deal. So instead, they just go back to what they've learned in the past and just follow up, follow up, send an email. text them, call them, like hit them 16 times until they respond. But really you should be kind of just setting time to think about that deal, think about where you want to go in the company and all these different things.

Yeah, because when I do a deal review, I'd always ask, you know, who are the players? And if they didn't know their names, I would have you talk to them. Usually it was, you get some excuse. Well, they were, they walked by the office while I was talking to this guy. Okay, so that's a no. And then I say, well, how do you think he's feeling or she's feeling about this? And I get this logical thing. Well, it makes perfect sense because they have this initiative. And what makes you think— is that a feeling or that's logic? Okay, now what are, what are they thinking? And You'd get this blank stare, or they would look at their coach, or tell that what their dialogue with the coach is. And I'd be like, well, the coach is nice, but they're not—they're making a recommendation; they're not making a decision. And what are we going to do with this? And and then all these excuses come up, and what they're really doing is just hoping because they don't want to face the pain of this. Big investment that they've made and it going south. And, well, you're being negative. I'm like, where's the negative? Now I'm asking. I didn't say— I didn't judge. I asked questions. You're getting the judgment feeling because you haven't thought about this, and you didn't think about it because you didn't want to think about it because it's painful. And what I'm trying to do is Let's let's face the pain now while we have time to close it. Let's not face it on the 31st at 5 p.m., where we find out he's never heard of this thing, and all of a sudden we're going to start the whole sales process over on the first. And now we just let's just move it 90 days forward, and people don't want to do this, and. You know, having now trained and helped coach reps, you know, I can tell when they— because I, every one-on-one, I look at how far they've gotten in the course because I know how the one-on-one's going to go. And a lot of times it's very skinny because they just want the result. They don't want to do the job. But that's not how it works. There's no magic words. If you skip steps, they come back to bite you. And they're like, okay, I guess I'll try that. And it's like, okay, this is the whole point, is to understand how it works. Anyone can take an order. That's not what you're doing though. And they don't want to do the work because they're facing what they're missing.

And I get it, it's not easy.

Or they say, can you send me a copy of one? I'm like, what's that gonna do? There's 100 copies in the course. And what, you just change the names and you think it's going to work? And then if it goes south, what are they going to do? Well, Brian said it would work and it doesn't work. It's like, I got to go try Joe's course. And if you look, this morning I looked at a book that had come out, and, and this is so common, especially with people early in sales, that if the title of the book is the outcome that they want, they'll buy the book thinking that they'll get the outcome. And it just doesn't work that way. Sorry. How long is it going to take before you face this fact?

So true. I was speaking with a company recently and they're in the kind of industrial space and they had really complex deals that are significant value. And there's a lot of moving parts with, with physical supplies and stuff that they have to get done for it. But they kept explaining this common theme that would happen where they had a lot of salespeople that had been, been around for a while. So they were tenured, probably been doing it for 10, 15, 20 years. So It's easy to get kind of comfortable at that point and assume that you remember everything that you need to do to kind of check off during these complex situations. But what they found kept happening was towards the end, there would always be some major fire drill to try to get the right proposal or the right bid in front of the potential customer. And it was cost, like literally costing time to the leadership to try to come and help and fix it. It was costing money. To try to figure out different situations to make it happen. And if they just would have, you know, kind of mapped it out or thought about this a while ago, it wouldn't have been happening months later. So it caused a ton of time pain, a ton of money and financial pain, and then leadership getting involved. And it's just a big kind of fire drill type thing. So I mean, the bigger the deals get, the harder it is in that situation. But if they just would explain on the front end with the salespeople or the leadership of Hey, here's what we have to look out for. Here's everything we have. They probably could have avoided a lot of that. So it comes up a lot. And I think it's just so easy to rest on how long you've been in sales or how long you've been successful and forget to actually go through the steps, go through what you need to do. And also just, I think, going back to taking the feedback as well. I think there's so much ego involved with salespeople and sales leaders that it's really Hard to admit, uh, when, when things aren't going your way and you have to look at yourself as well. So the whole prevention game that I know you talk about a ton is so true. And then also just taking feedback, whether it's the leadership that they, they need to admit that they need to fix some things with the process or the individual salespeople actually going through the steps that they have to, to close these complex deals. If it's taken 3, 6, 9 months, you just can't remember everything. during that time. And there's so many different things that can happen in between. So you have to map it out somehow, whatever, whatever your process is.

Yeah, because every time you get on a plane, what are the pilots doing before they take off? They have that checklist open. Well, they've been flying for 20 years. Don't they know how the plane works? But if you, if you skip a step just because you spilled your coffee, or you're tired, or it's the last flight of the day, people die.

Yeah.

And The Checklist Manifesto— there was this book that came out where they, they really, um, took down the amount of malpractice and operating room mishaps simply by having a checklist. And doctors didn't want to do it because they're doctors. I've been doing this for 20 years. Yeah, but that's a person's life in front of you. You know, you had your shoulder operated. They made you probably mark the shoulder, right?

Yeah. So they didn't operate on the wrong one.

Yeah. Why? Because it's pretty simple to operate on the wrong one.

Yep.

And you hear this on sales reps all the time. That's why they don't do pre-call planning. Oh, let's see how it goes. Let's wing it. And, and what naturally are you going by? Your instincts. And your instincts are like, do whatever the customer wants or whatever buying signal you get. It feels good. Tell them the price, give them a discount. How many people give discounts to the user buyer?

Happens all the time.

Right? Why? I'm not saying don't give discounts. Discount's a powerful tool. But what do you get?

They're probably not getting anything out of it. They just react and they use their instincts and they just reply immediately because they didn't think about it beforehand.

Yeah, because they think, oh, they're the decision maker, I'm going to get the decision. No. And then it goes to the economic buyer and guess what they say?

I need a discount.

Yeah, we need a discount. And now you're discounting off your discount. And okay, that's all preventable. And it's hard to teach this because people feel vulnerable. They're like, I know what I'm doing. You do if you plan, if you, if you really think it through. But everybody is very happy to try and clean it up when it goes south. The problem is when it goes south, it's south, it's done. They decided on something else. They decided to push it off. Reigniting it is starting the whole sales process over again, but with trash in front of you that you created by not doing it. And when you talk to reps, the number one thing I'd hear was like, I did everything perfectly. I go, then why are we talking? Well, it didn't close. So I can't improve from perfection. No, no. Tell me how to get it done. Well, it's perfect. What are we supposed to do? How do I upgrade perfect? And then, so you try and tell them and they get defensive, put up walls, deflect. And, and this is why it's so hard. It's not hard to understand. It's hard to do. It's hard to accept. And I have them, everyone has them. And even the managers, because I see the manager's comments on some of the videos, and it's half platitudes, half go read this book from 50 years ago that has nothing to do with the video, half you should have did this that has nothing to do with the video. No questions. No engagement, no how-tos. It's, I already know, I'm all set. Now guess why their reps don't plan or process? And the idea is to make money. It's not about your ego. And it's hard to, really hard to accept. And I think the point of this, this episode is really to open your mind to these things. And I bet when you're listening, you're like, oh, I'm pretty good at this. Yeah, I'm above average. And I used to do those polls to kind of like see how people felt. And it was always 70% plus were above average on these things. You know, creativity, even though they didn't know what it meant. Can you give me an example of creativity? Well, that would be me being creative, not you. Can you give me an example of being original or authentic? How do I be authentic?

Yeah, I, so I think you kind of have to recognize your blind spots and admit to your blind spots. And for me, I kind of challenged myself. I was doing uncomfortable things and moving to new industries, taking new roles, like doing things that were kind of A little aggressive, probably. So it kind of forced me into recognizing my blind spots because when I worked in the same place for a long time, it was, it was great. I have nothing against that, but it's easy. You kind of get in your little box and you don't get exposed to some of these other situations. Then when I started changing industries, more of that new business hunter type roles, and then what I'm doing now, it's like you get way more exposed with some of these blind spots. So I kind of got forced into it, whether it was You know, when I changed to Medvice and I knew I had to have a process mapped out and ended up doing your course at the time, whether it was not really taking feedback, I would maybe gloss over it and listen to people, but I didn't actually listen to it or do anything about it. I just kind of let it go and forgot about it. But now you really do have to improve if you're in that more commission environment. And then traditionally wasn't as good at empathy and something I still work on, but really just trying to put myself in the customer's shoes and Understand what they're what they're feeling, what they have to do to get something approved internally, like all the hoops that they have to go through to get stuff done. So I I put myself in positions where I had to recognize my blind spots. Otherwise, I wasn't going to be able to get through these new roles and new situations. So I kind of forced myself into it. But it's easy, I guess, if you're you know kind of just status quo to to kind of forget about these things. But most of us that are listening to your show, I'm sure, are trying to. Get to the next level, to get that A-player role and make that, you know, $500K plus, whatever the money is in sales, because you can make doctor and, uh, doctor-level money in sales, which is pretty crazy. So it makes sense to work on these things, to do the checklist, to do all the things to get better personally, because you can make that type of money and kind of create your own path. So I think if you kind of put yourself in a little more uncomfortable positions, you're going to have to recognize these and, and own up to them more. But if you, you know, don't do that, you can probably, you know, get away with it a little bit more, but eventually it's going to come back to bite you.

Yeah, I, I would sit down and ask somebody that you trust, that you feel has your back, and say, like, you know, what blind spot do I have? Am I creative enough? Am I proactive enough? Am I using empathy? And when I say empathy, I mean like mind reading, not feeling, just Mind reading. What's that person thinking and feeling right now? If you can't answer that question, you need more empathy. And wouldn't you like to know that? And say, okay, then, then put it in a priority list and say like, okay, how do I put this into action? How do I get a little bit better at it once a week, once a day? Because if you get better at these things, You don't have to grind as much. You don't have to, you know, put in as much effort of doing dumb things and getting all the rejection. You can work— because this is the working smarter. It's not coming up with a new cadence or a new subject line or call to action or buying another toy. This is what will get your game to the next level.

And to become great at sales, the best way is to model somebody who already has become good at sales and to hear other people who have become great at sales and the journey that they're going through, the false beliefs, the misnomers, the mindset issues, all of the stuff that gets in our way between Where we are and the income that we want. Let's face it, we're in sales because we're money motivated, we're competitive, we want to be better every day than we were yesterday. And how do we do that? Um, just really, you know, read a book, uh, listen to a podcast. That's good, good start. I like it. But then you have to take action, and then you want both tactical and strategic ideas. You want mindset. You want strategy. You want to understand how companies buy. You want really deep content and examples, case studies, so that you can learn from other people's mistakes.

That's what I'm here for.

I'm here for you to learn from my mistakes. And boy, do I got a lot of them. So go to b2brevenue.com. Sign up for the courses. There's 2 major ones. Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting fills up your pipeline. Gets rid of that problem of, oh, I don't have enough leads. I don't have enough meetings. It gets those conversations started with the people you want to talk to. Now, it's not about a pitch. It's about a conversation. Now, everybody thinks of conversations when you're talking or you're online at the same time or you're on the phone or Zoom at the same time. That's not a conversation. A conversation's when the client is talking about what they care about, what they're interested in. And that is what we call qualification, where we can sense where are they and how do we build up that curiosity into interest, into urgency to get a deal. And these are skills that we need. They're lifelong skills that we need in sales. And then how do we get a deal closed? Yes, anyone can take an order, but what if they don't know how to get it done? You got a new account where you're trying to get a big change done internally. What are the issues? If you're not planning that through, odds are it's not going to get done no matter how much your champion wants it. So winning the complex sale solves that problem for Why waste all your time on these false positives or these no decisions? Because they don't pay very well. They pay 0.0. What you want to do is pay a lot. So sign up today. Invest in yourself. You're the asset in sales. Quit waiting for somebody else to approve it or train you. See if you can get it expensed. That should be your first sales obstacle. Your first sales challenge is how do you get your company to pay for it? Just go down, tell your manager you want to do this. I put a little example email in the show notes right below here. Just swipe up and take a look at that. And if they won't, you got to ask yourself, why won't you?

Why won't you?

Why won't you? Oh, it takes time. Well, you work all day. You're working wrong all day. Why not improve that? There's the time right there. Oh, the money, Brian. It's money. Well, you make more money if you become better in sales. And Start the Conversation pays for itself the first week because you're going to get at least 2 meetings. Just learning from the very basics of it. Closing the Complex Sale will pay for itself 100 times over. Students in it tell me it's the best money they ever spent because they now have control over their deals. And it doesn't end. Some give up. Some give up after they win their first deal and they think they've got enough. No, come back. Come back. Keep going. You can get even bigger deals, more deals, faster deals. That's what it's all about. Sign up today. Put the excuses away. Yeah, excuses feel good, but they're expensive. Excuse— you know what the excuses are costing you? Tens, 50, maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in lost income.

Really?

Yeah. The difference between where you are today— let's say you're making $150,000. Decent, decent income. But you know, there's other people in your industry making $300K, $400K, $500K. Well, how are you going to do that? You all think it's just about getting a better job, a better territory, a better manager. They can help. Go do that. Then what happens? It's still you there with those leads, trying to close those deals. And Do you have the game? Few people do. Everyone thinks they do. Why not prove it? The market tells you what you're worth. Accept it. Now become better. And the way to become better is to improve every day. Really make a daily routine of learning and developing because it's not at the knowledge level. You have to become unconsciously competent at these skills, which takes time, repetition, and emotion. And I show you how to do it, how I did it, how I've taught hundreds of people to do it. But you have to want to because I can't force you. A lot of people wish I could. So do I, but I can't. So sign up today.

We'll see you next time.