DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO BECOME #1 IN B2B SALES AND SELLING

Today I'm going to give you one of my best-kept secrets that I've shared quite a few times, and very few people listen. Well, I think they listen, but since it goes against our instincts, our desires, our feelings, our ego, we don't take it. We don't do it. I've been doing this podcast now It's 15 years this month. Please don't send me a note about that. I've gotten too many from LinkedIn already. I appreciate it, but it's burying my inbox and I can't see the good stuff through the other stuff. We always talk about will. Will and skill. That's pretty much everyone can break it down to that. But everyone thinks the will is solely about the willingness to do the work, the willingness to stick through it, the grit, the David Goggins type stuff. And it's important, and it's hard to be successful without it. They're right. But there's another part of it that nobody talks about except for me, and very few people get or don't want To get or think they already got. And that's the willingness to get your sale out of your head and onto something else. A whiteboard, a mind map, an outline, a Word doc. The, the medium doesn't matter as much. Now, why do people not do this? It doesn't feel instinctual. It doesn't feel organic. It feels contrived. They don't know where to start. You give them an example. Well, I'll just use that. Well, that is not every sale, nor is it your sale and the way your sale works. So it's like taking someone else's outline and trying to apply it. You know, like those silly emails that you see on LinkedIn by people who have failed at sales and they now moved into marketing or selling their course of how to be a failed SDR in less than 5 years. They know how to do it. Go do it. Why is this so critical? Because sales, especially the complex sale, Is an analytical exercise. You may not think that way. Anyone can take an order. I don't— you don't need it for order taking. You need it for proactive outbound large deal selling. Large deal being like over $50K, where it involves more than one person, where it's a new customer, or it's a change within that organization. And why do people not write it down or have that willingness to analyze it? Lots of reasons. You tell yourself, oh, you can keep it in your head. Okay, that's the biggest lie in the history of time, and you're the only one that believes it. Now, you really want to go through life believing that myth?

No.

And most people think that sales is just a collection of platitudes. It's all about relationships. It's will and skill. If you can't analyze this, you have to look at it, not feel it. Because listen to another rep tell you about why a deal is stuck. What do you hear? You hear a story. You hear logic. You hear why they're the villain. I'm a genius. They're idiots. They're not getting it. But that doesn't close a deal. It feels good. That's why we do it. We got to make ourselves feel better. Have you ever done anything bad? Cut somebody off in traffic? You didn't mean to, but you had to hit that exit, or you didn't look. Or you didn't look long enough, or you were listening to the music, and they flip you off, and you flip them off. Why? Because you're hurt. Your feelings are hurt. You didn't mean to do it. It wasn't intentional. It wasn't malicious. It was simple human error. Instead of waving and saying, my bad, I messed up. Some of us do that. But in the large complex sale, they call it complex for a reason. And I lucked out on 2 sides of this. One, coming from a software background where you had to draw out everything before you spent a lot of time building it. And a lot of people looked at it. And it wasn't Ah, this well-organized thing. It was a whiteboard-type thing. And then when I got into sales, I had a manager who was a good 30 years older than me. And after every meeting that we would go to, we'd go in and do a postmortem on the meeting. We'd do an org chart, come up with different strategies, try and identify the personal wins. Now, can you do that in a conversation? You can try, but you tend to get pigeonholed until you have like an agenda or some type of visual that keeps everybody focused on the point. See where I'm going here? Now, if you have that willingness, are you doing it? Is it something you can show? When you talk to somebody about a deal, you can kind of show where it is in the process. Well, they're thinking it over. Well, where is that? Do you have— have they selected you? Are they— have they committed to doing anything? Who is thinking it over? How are they going to pay for it? See, what we do is we go from one problem To a next problem. We're on a treasure hunt, right? You go from clue to clue, trying to solve the clue. I'm on these calls all day. They're trying to tell me how they interpreted the clue. I don't care about their clues. It's interesting, but I want to see the map, the treasure map. Where are you and where's the treasure and what do we have to do to get the treasure? The standard things. They have to pick you. They have to decide to do something. The problem has to be big enough to pay for it and it has to be a big enough priority. And we have to get to the people who have the politics, the money, the administrative know-how to get it done. Internally? Oh, Brian, you're making it too complex. All you do— one guy on LinkedIn told me this— you make this too complex. All I do is hammer down the objections and close strong. I go, what are you selling, used cars? And of course, I go to his profile and he's an account manager. He's an order taker. He's not selling. He's expediting. Very different. So if you really want to become good at sales, get that willingness to develop a treasure map and quit being on a treasure hunt. Because here's the problem with the treasure hunt. You're misinterpreting the clues. We all are. Why? Because we see the clues we want to see, and we see them the way we want to see them. And we ignore the rest. We're going to be talking about will in this interview. And a little bonus, if you're ever thinking about getting into leadership, the key distinction is in this interview. Now, how do we become good at the hardest part of sales or the most critical part of sales when we're talking with the client, when we have The opportunity to influence them, to direct them, have direction, momentum, and control with them on the deal. Do we need to prepare? Do we need to practice? No, I've been doing this for 15 years. I've been doing this more than most of you have been alive, and I still do it. And I do it before the calls. I do it just to practice, to, to To hone my skills. I do it to develop my skills, to understand the alternatives, and the calls go a lot better. And why do people not want to do it? Do you think every athlete shows up to practice wanting to practice? No, they don't. They show up because they have to. Some of them like it. Some of them have built that connection. The best have. And they usually have a coach that keeps them honest. Because guess what happens? You've seen people at the gym, right? Doing these funky motions. They do that because it feels instinctual. That's what we're doing in sales. We're following our instincts instead of following the client's process and driving that process. But we have to know the game to play the game. To do that, Brevity Pitch, it's not just cold calling. It's not just the first call. We're working together to build it into a sales process. Performance conversation so that when you are on that call, you're ready instead of like, I wonder what they're gonna say. With Brevity Pitch, you have a pretty good idea about what they're gonna say. And it's not a toy. It is for the salesperson who wants to take their game to the next level because Reading all the books is nice. Listening to all the podcasts, especially mine, very nice. But until you're thinking and connecting it with your mouth, good luck. Because it's showtime and you don't get 2 tries. You get the one. Go to brevitypitch.com. Check it out. Bring your manager and tell them this is a product that increases revenue. not decreases it. It's not a sales estrangement or sales disablement. It's sales performance. brevitypitch.com.

Here we go.

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

Okay. Yeah, great to be here, Bryan. You know, after all this time watching you online, it's great to actually be a part of the show. You know, my name is Jim Rapp, and I'm 7 months retired at the moment. And, you know, trying to figure out what I want to do next with my life. But, you know, I studied mechanical engineering in college, moved straight from that into technical sales from day one. So I've been in some kinds of sales roles my entire career. I spent my first 2 years selling electrical components. That taught me what it was like to sell commodities that That everyone, you know, just thought the cheapest one is all I want. And then I moved into the plastics industry selling molded plastics, you know, sounds maybe, it might have sounded a little comedy commodity like as well. But in reality, you know, that was a fantastic, job as well as the first mentor in my career that really helped me get a lot better over time. But I did that for about 4 years and then a buddy pulled me into capital equipment sales in healthcare and I spent the next 27 years doing that. And I was with GE Healthcare. So like I almost know nothing but GE Healthcare. That's pretty much all I did. You know, I spent those, the first 17 years at GE in direct sales roles carrying the bag. You know, I was one of those sales reps that kind of had an aversion for management, you know, felt like if you're gonna get into management, you have to sell your soul or, you know, it must be awful to deal with the people drama all the time. Yeah. And then after 17 years of it, you know, I really was in need of a change, was just in a bit of a career rut. So my all-time best mentor in my career, she gave me an opportunity for a leadership role, and that was my first people leader role. So, you know, all told in my career, I'd gone, you know, 23 years of direct sales before I finally dipped my toe in the water of leadership. And then from that point, you know, I was in a region manager role running a sales team, then was in a zone leadership role running, you know, a collection of regions, then moved into a national role as a vice president running GE's interventional business. That was the last thing I did before I retired in January of this year. And so, been a great journey. You know, at this point, I've spent the last 7 months really enjoying time with my son. He's 11. And my wife. Do a little bit of consulting work. Joined the board of directors for a small software company in healthcare that I think is going to be a really big deal as they go through the commercialization process.

Good.

So, that's pretty much a summary of where I've been and where I'm at.

For a guy who didn't want to get into management, you sure skyrocketed your way up.

It was, it was really unique. It was, you know, I have so much to thank for that mentor as well. And I can never say enough about like having the right mentors in your life, you know, some coattails to grab and, and people to just round out different portions of your skill sets. This was one who gave me my first leadership role when I had no management experience. And I think most people would have asked me, you know, well, you don't have any management experience and look, you know, you've been selling for so long, why in the world would I hire you? She gave me that chance. And, you know, if I had it to do again, I've said this a lot, you know, to the people that I've mentored, you know, in the later stages of my career. And that is, I wish I didn't have that aversion to management when I was younger for a few reasons. You know, number one, you know, developing talent and watching people grow their careers and really come out and become great. It's way better than anything I ever accomplished as a sales rep by far. You know, the other thing is like all those years, I always felt like if I wanna make money, I gotta stay in sales and there was never a good year to take a pay cut for my first management role. But yeah, I look back at a lot of the friends that I worked with in my younger years, some of those that maybe spent 3 to 5 years in sales and then started moving up in their careers. And, you know, those are folks, you know, some of them have become, you know, CEOs of major corporations making 7 and 8-figure salaries. And so I've got a feeling they've probably made a little more than me. And so my, you know, that was a flawed belief on my side that there was never a good time to go ahead and make that move. But again, it was the part of it being so rewarding in terms of leading teams, developing talent and focusing on helping others rather than helping yourself. And that's a big change as salespeople. You know, we're often somewhat internal focused, right? We've got very strong self-centered personalities almost by nature, at least most do. And when you become a sales leader and you have to forget about yourself and then focus on that team. But it ended up being just incredibly rewarding for me.

Well, I mean, you must have been naturally a team player to, to stay at the same company for 17 years, right? Because I'm sure you got territory cuts and quota increases and your annual handicap, as I used to call it.

Yep. Yes, exactly right. The no good deed will go unpunished sort of sort of thing. Yeah, there's no doubt, you know, the, I mean, team, when you work in a big company like I did, you know, team is the only way. I mean, Yeah. Nobody is ever successful there without teams and those are very complex business, you know, medical imaging equipment, delivering great experiences to customers requires really a village, a village of people and in that business, You know, there would be in my company, I mean, there could be as many as 25 to 35 different people in commercial roles alone touching customers, not necessarily all the same call points, but touching that customer. You had service personnel in there working on equipment. You had finance people working, you know, on the financial side. You had clinical support people then there with their special skills and stuff. And so there were so many people that touched those customers. You know, I thought about like, who are the people that were the best sales reps? You know, a lot of them, not all, I mean, almost all of them had very strong teams. Like they knew all the members of their team, the team rallied around them, they all worked together. They made sure that collectively they were delivering a great experience for the customer. You know, and likewise, I think when you move into leadership, it's the same, but your team is a little different. You're still focused on customers, but you focus on that team that you support and all the different functions that come together on that team to collectively deliver great customer experiences.

And I got to believe selling into that field, medical, that and the dollar amounts that we're talking about is somewhat familiar with GE. It had to be a prioritization nightmare trying to figure out what will really happen in the timeframe that I anticipated happening. I can see it happening 5 years, but yeah, right now—

You mean like maybe in terms of like the deal cycle and forecasting and—

Right, because everybody wants the team, wants their attention and the resources, but is that deal this quarter or next year?

You know, that's, I mean, it was always so complicated and, and, you know, for me even, you know, I tried to use data to, to drive my forecasting because, you know, and I've heard you talk about this on your show sometimes, you know, about like managers that are obsessed with forecasting calls and forecasting calls take away from selling time. You know, I really tried to avoid that. So you had to find that middle balance between making sure we're checking all the boxes on the deal, like the forecast call front properly, but it can take a lot more time on complex deals. But it's, are we checking all the boxes? Where are we in the deal stages? You know, and let's make sure we're not trying to close when the customer hasn't chosen us as their vendor of choice yet, right?

Yeah.

And if you focus the discussion on that, they become strategy calls. I could derive my forecast from the information I'm getting from that. I'm like, ah, there's no way that deal's coming in this quarter, or I've known that customer for years. That one won't book for a year, even though they say it's gonna book this quarter. And then there are others that are just gonna move really fast. But you know, you're just, you're juggling a lot of balls and you know how they talk about whether it's 3x funnel or 5x funnel. And the best thing you can do is, is Just have a large funnel, hope you have a lot of forecasted deals with probabilities that you have upsides. And then, you know, I had this ops guy, man, he was the best. He developed a model that was so good they named it after him. I'll spare his name just in case he wouldn't want it disclosed.

Okay.

But he's a guy you should maybe talk to one day. But, you know, he went back and looked and in reverse, um, how our forecast evolved into, uh, actual orders results. And then he could apply probabilities. You have this much upside, you'll get, uh, in the first month of the quarter, the probability you'll book it is, you know, 18%. In the— by the third month of the quarter, if it's still there, that might be up to 33%. And we would just derive a forecast from that, and then I would just line the deals up As my— these are my most likelies so that, you know, I can meet the leadership requirement, you know, to which deals are in the mix, you know. And I— and so I had to have my list of deals that I managed. But, you know, I usually just built a financial model for the forecast because, again, I mean, sometimes one deal's $5 million plus. If it comes in, great, you beat your total forecast maybe. And if it doesn't, you're going to have a hard time making that up.

And I always wondered why leaders would let junior reps forecast as far as the actual percentages and everything.

Yeah.

I never let my reps do that because they had no interest in that. No, no skill at it either.

Yeah, it made them mad. In fact, they didn't want to do that. You know, I could only think of one advantage, and that was Once they sign up for it, they work a little bit harder to try to get it done. But, you know, some reps are better. Like there are some people that'll forecast everything and deliver nothing. And then there are reps that'll forecast nothing and then, you know, then deliver their stuff. And, you know, and there were great reps on both sides of that. You know, your eternal optimists, they'll just forecast everything. And then there's the one that, you know, Maybe plays a lot of chess. They like to, you know, keep their— keep the strategy to themselves. You know, if a guy's got a— I'm thinking of a guy and he was great. God, he was one of the best reps, but he'd have the PO in his hand. I'm like, so you're gonna forecast that this quarter or next?

Or wait to the last day of the quarter to fax it in so it didn't get bounced on some admin issue.

Yeah, well, we had a lot of that. I mean, in, in our business, you know, regulated, and for probably any publicly traded company, you know, you tend to build some pretty strong criteria around what consists of a good order.

And I bet you met a lot of great reps. What really differentiated the great ones from the middle of the pack?

Yeah, it's, uh, boy, I did. I mean, just, um, Really just some of the folks that I think of, but there are some things that they tend to have in common. I mean, first and foremost, I think the one thing you can't teach is you got to have that intense desire to win or maybe a fear of extreme fear of losing. I don't think I care which, they're not the same. And I think that's based on our individual personality. You know, early in my career, it was the intense fear of failure.

Yeah.

That drove me more than that intense desire to win. I always wondered, like, was Michael Jordan, which camp was he in? Was he just, was it desire to win or fear of losing? But, you know, I think we're all wired a little differently there, but driven the same either way. And, you know, the importance of that, number one, I don't think you can teach it, either have it or you don't. And number two, so many of the other behaviors behind success just follow that automatically. It's the, you know, taking the time to learn your skills and develop expertise. You know, it's, you know, learning, it's, you know, finding, developing a sales strategy. There's a lot of great sales strategy methodologies out there. I've learned so many over time that I'm not sure I know which one I used. Maybe a little bit of, you know, all of them, or maybe I had a blue sheet in my head. I could— I would often, you know, try to brag. But all of those things just be the— or the even just the working, you know, someone working 15 hours a day to be successful, or are they out, you know, playing a tremendous amount of golf? That's all driven by that intense desire to win. Also, I think the, you know, the, you know, building that strong team. I think that team, I always think of those best reps. Again, they had a very strong cohesive team and an intense focus on customers, making sure that that customer was getting the experience that they want. And if they're not, the proper escalation processes, just like the system worked really well when that rep was sort of calling the shots. And then I think, um, you know, last but not least, the really, really, really good reps mastered the art of listening and asking great questions, you know, because there were some people that I knew over my career that had all those prior things that I mentioned but maybe had very poor listening skills. They didn't ask questions, you know, the customer's not even in their seat yet and they're already selling, maybe even trying to close the deal. Um, uh, and instead, if you go into a meeting with well-thought-out questions that are insightful, let the customer do 70% of the talking. Um, by the end of that meeting, the customer feels that their time was well spent, uh, that you really understand what they want. You've built credibility with that customer, which is even more important than relationships. You know, credibility is critical. And those reps that master that are extremely successful. So I think that you can never ever stress that art of listening piece.

That's it.

Because— I mean, it's overall execution of meetings, you know, but that's a big part of it. It's planning the meeting. Walk in the meeting with well-thought-out questions. Ask those questions and really take a lot of notes and maybe try to go 3 deep on some of those questions to dig deep. Again, that I've never heard of a customer that felt bad about a meeting where you let them do all the talking.

And that's who you want talking.

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, you ever walk out of a meeting and, and you'd say, what did we learn about the customer in that meeting? Or what did we learn about the deal in that meeting? Not a thing, because we did all the talking.

Yeah. I'd always try and hand the marker to the customer to draw their architecture. Because that was the transfer of ownership in the meeting. I'd sit down and they'd draw the architecture and tell me what the problem was.

Yeah. No, that's great.

Where did you get your will to win or avoidance of losing? Did it, was it from sports? Was it from how you were raised or innate?

Yeah, I would say, yeah, I mean, I think usually I, would suppose these things come from our, our childhood. And I grew up in a very small Appalachian town in southern Ohio. My parents were teachers at my school. My grandfather was principal. I was— I could never get away with anything. I was, you know, they had eyes on me at all times. But, you know, my dad was coaching. He coached in baseball, basketball, football. So like I was a sports family 24/7, you know, big Cincinnati Reds fans, Bengals fans. And so it was always competition. It was always winning. That's just always the, you know, what we expected. So I think that was always there. I just saw myself as like, mom's like, you know, you're living in a small town, but you will go to college and you will make something of yourself and you will work hard and You know, I got straight A's in school because I, you know, getting a B would destroy me. And so, excuse me. So I was always driven by, you know, by those kinds of things. And I think that definitely comes from my parents and my upbringing.

And has your engineering background helped you in sales?

Yes, definitely. You know, I think from the jobs that I chose to be in, like being in technical sales. And so, you know, even when I was selling commodities like electrical components, you know, you still had to walk a customer through how these things work and some things like that or help them, you know, to design. In the plastics industry, it was intensely technical because you would, you know, I covered 7 states, practically lived in a minivan. So, and you carry plastic parts around to show as samples and stuff. But you, you look at their design, you look at their drawings and you read their drawings and you say, can I mold that? Can I take this cast cast iron metal piece and make that in plastic, in a, in these very special type plastics. They were actually non-melting type plastics. So you had to really be able to think critically and look at moldability. And would I have to change that design a lot in order to convert it and maybe save the customer money? You couldn't do that without some level of technical background. But even in healthcare, medical imaging, There were, you know, most of our sales reps were not engineers. A lot were. When I joined GE originally through their technical leadership program back way back then in the '90s, they only hired engineers, which they eventually found to be a mistake. And, you know, we would, they would flush out a lot of engineers who weren't quite cut out for sales. And to be frank, you know, For several years in my career, I didn't think I was cut out for sales. You know, I, when I would watch my first mentor, he was on that, in that plastics company and I'd watch him with customers and man, he, you know how they say it's not what you say, but how you say it. That guy was smooth. And I said, I'm an engineer. I can't talk like that. I can't articulate that way. And I'll never, I'll never be good at this. I mean, that was my negative self-talk going on there, right? But in reality, you know, practicing that over time, you can develop those skills. But maybe there were some engineers, a lot of engineers are introverts. Frankly, I'm an introvert who somehow conquered it and learned the gift of gab. But, you know, for me, the engineering help for GE, I think they, you know, they recognized that a lot of different disciplines make great you know, entrance into those leadership programs. And that program has been a best in class. You know, it was best in class back then. It's still considered a best in class today in terms of like if I were coming out of college and I want to go someplace where I'm going to be taught really good skills, it was a great program.

How about as far as the sales process itself? You know, because I think engineers have kind of a structured approach instead of Kind of the grind and eventually something happens approach.

Yeah. You know, when I first came out of college, I had 2 options when I joined GE's program. One was to join their electrical division, which I did. The other was to join the medical division. And I was afraid of exactly what you just said, that, oh, I don't think I have the patience for that long sales cycle. And, you know, if there's only a couple deals a year and I lose them, now I'm going to lose my job. I mean, it was just all kinds of stuff. Talked myself into the one where I didn't have a lot of growth and earning potential. Eventually made it back into that business. So, but, you know, I can tell you for sure, like engineers come out, can come out of college a little handicapped unless they take a few electives in their senior year to prepare them for it. We don't learn about much at all about financial management. We also learned, you know, when I was in college, I worked for— it's Lockheed Martin today, but it was General Dynamics at the time. And I was a structural design engineer on the F-16 fighter jets. And there was always, you know, we had like 20,000 engineers in one building in Texas. And there was always this joke where they said there comes a point in every project where you have to shoot the engineers and start production. And that was always my big challenge. And frankly, you know, I was just wired that way. Like engineers have to think through all the options before making a decision. And I would never have called me the most decisive person on earth. And, you know, there are a lot of people when I watch people that are really decisive, I really admire that. But like, you know, that's a hard one to develop if you're not wired that way.

And did that help or hurt in the medical sales, these long arduous sales processes involving a lot of politics?

And I think I was, I mean, it wasn't as, you know, the long sales cycle ended up being a non-issue because I had so many balls in the air at the same time than a ball representing a deal. There were so many going on at once that it's, that you've just got this big funnel. Like when I joined GE, it was just prior to this market, this outpatient imaging market. If you ever, you know, noticed instead of getting your imaging done at a hospital, suddenly you could get it done, you know, in a strip mall or standalone buildings.

Yeah.

And when that market exploded, you know, I had entered, you know, and I'd moved to Arizona at the time when that first started. I remember a project where I had equipment going into 4 different imaging centers on the same street corner at the very same time. The market was, it was just that crazy. And so there was never a shortage of deals. So the long sales cycle, you just, you're just trying to stay on top of every deal in that funnel and not, and not miss something in any of them was the more important thing. It wasn't around like waiting. for that PO to finally come in. Never a shortage there. And still today, if that were the case, they would just have fewer sales reps with bigger funnels.

And did you know this about yourself before you got into leadership, that you really like to see people around you succeed? Was that something you already knew about yourself, or was it kind of an epiphany?

I did, but I, I definitely knew that, like, You know, it was one of my reasons for going into sales to begin with was, oh, I love to help people. If you're selling, you're helping customers. Um, you know, I did a lot of mentoring. I wish I could count how many, you know, mentors, how many mentees, you know, that I worked with over my career. But I enjoyed those. I enjoyed working with those people, but I didn't view management as that. I like, I looked at it differently. And again, I I just, you know, I had the blinders on. You know, I just looked at management as you're dealing with people drama, like I'm dealing, there's always someone on the team that maybe shouldn't be there and the manager's having to deal with that drama, that trouble, whatever it is. Or even, you know, when the customer had an issue and it needed to be escalated, you had to pull in the manager. I was like, well, I don't wanna deal with that stuff. In reality, you know, once I got into management, I really had to work on the development of objection handling skills, you know, dealing with angry customers and conflict resolution because I used to, as a sales rep, I would escalate those and bring people in who were skilled at that. Well, you know, and that was one of those things I wish I'd done earlier in my career was to really just You know, run into the fire. I always admired the people that run straight for the fire instead of the ones that run away from it.

Yeah. And what advice would you have for people if they're curious about getting into leadership, especially on the sales side? Because it's very unique.

You know, I would say, I mean, right, first and foremost is if you think you would get pleasure from helping develop people, give them a chance, like see something in them and give them that opportunity, put them in it and then, you know, help them get there and watch them blossom like as they suddenly don't need you anymore. If you get enjoyment from that, it's a very good reason to go and do it. And You know, just, I think around that, I'd just say, you know, it was one of my biggest regrets was just not doing that earlier in the career. And look, it was a great career in sales, but again, 20+ years of direct selling before I did leadership. And then, you know, I'm in leadership going, man, I love this. This is awesome.

Right. Well, I really appreciate your time today, Jim. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

Uh, well, I can be found on, uh, on LinkedIn, of course, uh, at Jim Rapp. Um, uh, just— and, uh, recently launched, you know, a, uh, a consulting business. I've been asked to do some small gigs, so I thought, well, I'll just make that official and, uh, people could, uh, find me there.

Do you have that willingness? You probably have the willingness to work. You're listening to a sales podcast. You probably read a lot of sales books. You probably listen or watch sales videos.

Great.

That's the knowledge part. But the trap is you now think you have the knowledge. But is the knowledge accessible and polished when you need it? No, it's not. You think it is. You want to believe it is, but it isn't. I used to share this story about these pre-sales engineers that I used to work with, and I used to try and draw out where we were in the deal, what we want to accomplish in the meeting, where we're taking it. And I would ask them what, what their plan was, and they were like, oh, don't worry, I've got a photographic memory, Brian. They all had photographic memories. You know, like where they, they see the world in their head with their eyes closed, like, like it's a movie that they're watching. And I'd always test them once in a while after the meeting so I didn't embarrass them or crack their self-esteem before the meeting. I'd say, okay, close your eyes and turn around. What? Why? Tell me what color shirt I'm wearing. That was an easy one. Or tell me what's on the wall behind me. Or what's in the picture on the wall behind me. And they go, okay, well, I wasn't focusing on that. Well, you don't have to if you have a photographic memory. It's a picture in your head. Of course you remember the conversation because that's what you were focused on, or telling me your story about how great you are. The point is that we have these delusions in our mind, and in sales, they're insanely expensive. Everyone's an A-player, everyone's number one, and that confidence is helpful at times and insanely expensive at others. It's costing us our deals because we're unwilling to analyze the deal outside of the one factor in our head. And that factor is probably telling us that we're the hero. Very expensive. It's about winning deals. It's not about just feeling good. Because believe me, winning feels so much better than rationalizing in your head why you lost. How dumb they are, or how political it was, or how mixed up it was. Okay, well, why'd you work on it? Well, it was a trap. Yeah, it's a trap that you were aware of, or should have been aware of, or have seen countless times before. How many of us have seen the RFP trap? You know, the RFP that comes out and you're number 1 or number 2 or number 3. But they won't let you talk to anybody. They just want pricing and to fill out the paperwork. Or you get into a conversation with an executive and they go directly to price. Do you give them the price? Probably do. Worst thing you can do. Why'd you do it? Because you hadn't planned. Everyone runs into the commodity trap and then complains about being in it. I don't know what it is. Okay. Even if you know what it is, how do you prevent from running into it? We've got to understand our own psychology, all of us, me included, because what I've been doing is even writing down, you know, my running times, Marking the days that I work out, the days that I rest. It gives me a way of viewing it. I mean, even the silly little Oura Ring that I wear, I've been wearing it for 4 years now. I've started to learn my patterns. I've given up bad habits because I've seen the impact that they have on my health, my sleeping. I've seen how great I feel after a great night's sleep compared to an okay night's sleep. Oh, the impact of eating late on my sleep. We need the same type of visibility into our own deals. It's not in the CRM though. You know, part of it is if you're super honest with it and diligent and accurate with it, but that's self-reported. That's your opinion entered as a fact. It's still just an opinion. What we need to do is really control this, get it out of our heads, because our head is full of BS. All it is is processing our feelings, which are keeping us from feeling pain. So we make ourselves the hero, we make them the villain. But it doesn't pay. What we have to do is figure out how to win and have that willingness to analyze our sale. And this is what I do in the courses. And the hardest part is people sitting down and writing it down. Why do you have to write it down? You have to see it. You have to see it as a whole. You have to see it cold, or when you're hot and you see it and you go, okay, that's what it is. That's the game I'm playing. The game is not in your head. The game in your head is how to make you feel good, how to avoid pain and get pleasure. That's the game in your head. That's not the game you're playing in sales. We don't want to write it down because we don't want to face it. But how do you solve a problem that you can't face? And what other profession is there not a mean, a media to show where we are? It's not the CRM, not the stage of the deal. That's you reporting it. Nor does the customer care what's in your CRM. They don't change their Actions and states based off of what you put in your CRM. They don't care. They don't want to see it. Means nothing to them. What other profession? Think about architecture. You build a house. Do you do that from memory? You're really telling me that these carpenters don't memorize how to build a house? Well, they know they've got the tactical skills, but they have the drawings there because it's a precision profession, not a performance profession, a precision profession. Ours is a performance profession, but we still need to have the architecture of a deal, the basic process of a deal. The details of the customer and what they care about. Or we can ignore it and start hammering. That's what we do. And it's near impossible not to do it. You have to build that will, that habit, that skill. 1% will. Be that 1%, because that 1% makes more than the The other 50%. Be that 1%. That's the secret. And if you want to learn how, go to b2brevenue.com and learn how. If you don't want to learn how, keep blaming someone else. Feels good.