HAVE YOU LEARNED THE HARDEST LESSONS IN B2B SALES?

Hey, before we get into the interview, I want to make sure you're aware of the other podcasts I put out there. Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers. So if you're looking for more of a daily Q&A tips and tricks type of show, that's the show for you. Also, check out our friends over at brevitypitch.com. Brevity Pitch is an AI product that allows salespeople to practice their sales conversations without anybody eavesdropping. on you or judging you. It just lets you warm up and then develop your skills. Because we can think it, we can plan it, uh, but until we open our mouth and practice it, it's a different thing. It's like watching somebody play golf.

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Here we go. We know the easy lessons of sales, but what are the hard ones?

Too many to think of, but there's a lot of hard lessons in sales. There's probably 2 categories for it. There's the hard lessons when you lose deals, and then there's the hard lessons, just sales overall and, uh, You know, whether it be the types of roles that you have, industries, all those type of things. So I break it down in 2 buckets and both, both of them are painful, but ultimately if it's costing you money, time, whatever that may be, I, I would classify them as hard lessons. So.

Can you give us one?

Yeah. Well, yeah, so some of the bigger ones I think is maybe picking the right industry. I've, I've been one person that Has changed industries multiple times, and until you get into some of those industries and understand what's going on, it's tougher to to know if it's the right fit for you. So I've over the years realized where I am a better fit and what type of industries and roles I want, and all these different dynamics going to a big company startup, more autonomy, different type of leadership, and but picking the right industry and role is important earlier in your career. It's tougher because You just got to get some reps. You got to get some momentum, get some success. But then after that, you should be a little more picky and go down the path because once you get stuck somewhere, it's really hard to get out of it. So certain times I was stuck in an industry or I made the wrong decision going somewhere, and it's painful to get out of that from a variety of ways— time, financially. You got to start over depending on that. So that, that's something that I would definitely call out for sure at the top of the list for me.

Yeah, and it comes up to my number one thing about being proactive. I think everyone thinks they're proactive because they react to somebody requesting something, but that's not proactive. And I think for your career, an industry is like one of the, the choices, and How do you choose it? And who owns that choice? I think a lot of people ask for career advice just to disperse blame in case it doesn't work out.

Great point.

Because— and a lot of people don't take ownership of it, but it's your career. You know, you can blame the economy, which we have no control over, but we do pick— or maybe we don't have much choice at first, but then it's on us. It's always going to be on us whether we accept it or not. And I think in sales, a lot of people say they're proactive, but they're just reacting, right? They won't get the next meeting, but they will be hounding them Forever thinking that's proactive, but they won't do it during the call because it's— they said they would just call them in 2 weeks. And, you know, being proactive about your, your career and how deals go. I used to tell reps, it's like, how aren't there commonalities among these deals? No, no, no, they're all unique.

It's very different, very different.

Really?

It sounds like a lot like the deal he did last quarter that didn't close. And simply because they're reacting to somebody who might have interest, might be a false champion, might be curious but not interested, might appear 10 times more interested than they really are. But that's on us. You know, we can blame, but it doesn't matter. Oh, yeah.

I mean, the, the career side of it, the industry side of it, definitely got to have full accountability for that and be proactive. I mean, no one's going to be— you're going to have people, hopefully some mentors and some people that help you out, but no one's going to be looking out for you and saying, hey, Dustin, you need to change industries at this time. It's a perfect, perfect time to ride the wave and do that. So you have to Take ownership, get feedback from people you trust, and you're gonna have to take some risk. And I mean, I think you do have to take a certain level of risk, and it's not always going to work out, but the earlier you can start doing that, the better. And you got to have accountability too. That's another big thing I've learned, which goes hand in hand with being proactive and changing industries, is you got to have full accountability for your situation. There's going to be stuff out of your control for sure with the economy or whatever's going on with the company, but ultimately it comes back to you. And that's really what sales is all about and life for that matter. So the more I've been in sales, the more I've done some of these transitions, it's helped me just be way more accountable. I still complain about stuff and I catch myself, but it's, it's like this daily accountability thing is like, uh, because blaming other people isn't going to make you feel better. It will short term, but not long term. It's not going to help you. So. The more you take ownership. You know, for example, at one point I went to a startup that wasn't a good situation, and I should have done more research, all these different things. And it was easy to blame the economy, the company, whatever was going on, or my situation. But that felt good for a little bit. But then I was like, you know, no one forced me to make that decision. I decided to make that decision. And it wasn't probably the right one at the time, and I had to figure it out from there. But once I settled my mindset like that, I was in a way better spot moving forward. And, and, you know, you're not going to make those same mistakes again. Those are some tough ones to make, but you got to just move forward and not dwell so much. So accountability is a big one for sure. And that probably leads to the other one for me has probably just been the mindset side of it, because I think sales is so hard in general, and it will beat you up, and you're going to have a lot of ups and downs. It will never be completely linear. So those times where maybe you're plateauing more, you're not doing as well as you thought you could be doing, it can be really tough on the mindset. So investing in trying to improve, you know, being a student of the game, you know, I do morning routines, all these different stuff. Like, that was the big epiphany for me too, because that has a huge part of your success in sales. It's just hard to track it or hard to see the ROI. But in some ways, it's probably more impactful than some of the process side, in my opinion, at least. So there was times where I was super deep into that negative. I was still doing well. It's not like I was like a terrible person to be around, but you just find yourself complaining. I was like, oh, healthcare sucks. Like, this— it's all this stuff that was out of my control. And I'm like, Man, you're actually being pretty negative. You need to flip that mindset. And it's not— you can't just do that and just change your mind. You have to put some work into it. So that's another thing that I wish I would have started that earlier in my career. If I would have gone back, like if I would have been doing that in my early 20s, I just, you know, who knows where that could have compounded. But it's way better to start that now than it is at the end of your career where you realize, man, I should have focused on this type of stuff.

Well, because I think if you call it something different, it might connect better with some people, where it's really emotional regulation in sales. Because, you know, certainly the first 5 years, if you follow your instincts, you'll do terrible in sales. So you have to Be able to trust a process and develop your skills because your instincts are going to tell you to be a clerk. React.

Do what you're told.

Quick, easy. Offer a discount to try and get the deal. Get what you want. But that's all terrible selling that usually reduces revenue, not increases it. And you have to be able to manage your emotions because it is a roller coaster. And if you, if you go up and down on every call and email, your day is going to be quite bumpy. And that takes a lot. But in the same way, you have to care. If you don't care, you're not going to be thinking about the things that is going to Cause the deal to close. You're just going to be checking in, see how it's going, touching base. Any update? That might help or might hurt. And what I see a lot today is people don't zombies. No questions, no interests, no nothing. You know, it's flatline. Come on, what do you care about? What are you interested in? What's bugging you? What are you up against?

It's a paradox for sure, because you have to regulate both sides of it, and it's tough to grasp that. And but yeah, you need to have passion too. I mean, if you're not passionate about The company or what you're selling in some capacity, it's going to come across what you're talking about there, and you're just going to be robotic. And the way sales is now, there's probably a ton more than that than it used to be, unfortunately. So that's not good too, because if you're just— if you're just chasing the money, which is always going to be at the top, that's good. But at some point, if you don't really believe in the product or you don't like the company and whatever it is, it's going to come across. Not very genuine and authentic to the customer. So that's certainly a big thing as well. Another huge one that that I've learned that's a lifelong, it's a life sentence. I like to call it is just prioritizing and and judgment. I mean, it's so hard to focus and prioritize. Well, I think you just have you got to make it part of your daily routine, part of part of my weekly routine, daily routine. Quarterly is just being relentless with planning and prioritizing of what are the top 3 things I need to get done this week that are going to move the needle the most at work as well as outside of work. And the more you can do that, the better. And at times you just get so overwhelmed with all these different things going on. You got internal meetings, you have all these distractions, and you're treating everything, everything at the same priority level. Which is not a good thing in sales at all, especially if you have a bigger territory. And there was times where I didn't understand that, or I was just being a workhorse and doing as much as possible.

No, be truthful. Be truthful. You know why you were doing it. It feels good.

There you go. Feels good because you're busy. You're busy, right?

It feels identical to being successful, doesn't it?

Yeah, yeah, it does.

You're lying to yourself.

That's what you're doing.

Every sales rep I see, busy, busy, busy. What's closing this week? Next week? This month? What's that tell you?

They, they're not prioritizing.

Yeah, because that busyness Feels great. It's dopamine. And the judgment is— there's no judgment there. The judgment is pleasure versus money. It's hard to prioritize. What do people say? I don't know what's most important. Well, who does? If it's not you, I don't know. You're working though. When's it going to close? And what everyone tells me, I got 30 deals I'm working on.

How many could close?

When you really— this is why you got to be relentlessly focused. And I think this is what the CRM screwed us on because we got to fill it up. The more stuff, the better. The manager gets anxiety when there isn't a bunch of made-up stuff in there. Guys, go make some stuff up. I got to feel better. But why doesn't anyone do it?

Well, yeah, it is a dopamine thing. It feels good to be busy. Uh, there's Distract way more distractions in the world now than probably there was before with the CRM and just our cell phones and everything. So it's the it's not the environment's not helping our case with with the focus and prioritizing. So you got to take it upon yourself, and I mean most salespeople, sales leaders, really anybody in business that is doing well, they say no to a lot of stuff. They are very routine based, and they know. What what their priorities are. So over the years, I've gotten better and better at that. It's still a daily, weekly thing that you have to stay on top of, or you'll get get out of whack. But just you know a vision of where you want to go, goals for the year, and then just you have the big vision of what you're trying to do, whatever the number you're trying to hit, or if it's other things, and then you just start chopping away at that of okay, you know what can I do this quarter to move that deal to the finish line or whatever it is. And then this week, right, maybe it's not closing the deal this week, maybe it's getting that meeting booked with the business person that you haven't been able to meet yet, or whatever the case. But it's trying to map that out every week. So I just have a top 3 for the sales work side and then a top 3 for personal, like what I want to get done. That might be too much, but then if when I look at my schedule each day, I'm like, how much of my time is going to those activities versus just other stuff that's numbing my brain. And it gives me a way, a method, method to the madness. So, and then I plan my day too. I write out my day the evening before, typically. That way, when I wake up, it's not that I want to just be a robot, but I want to know that I'm already focused on the stuff that matters. And, you know, there's going to be fire drills, there's going to be stuff that distracts you, but at least you have a you know, a source of what you're trying to accomplish that day. And then maybe even just one big thing for the day. That's another good, good one that I've used is just, okay, if I, if nothing else went well and it was just a crappy shitshow day, if I got this one thing done, it's still a pretty, a good win for the day. And, and that helps me as well.

I think the hardest lesson, or one of the hardest lessons, is people put too much credit on their knowledge. I know this industry, and it's like, I know this product, this competitor, this detail, or it's all good. It's not bad. But are you really winning on product knowledge or industry knowledge? It's great content for conversations. But I think it's a symptom of a bigger problem. The bigger problem being That people look at sales as one skill, personality, or product knowledge, or industry experience. But that doesn't get the order done. That doesn't get it approved. That doesn't alienate your competitors. It's nice. So is your 20 years of experience. But no customer really cares. They care about them, which is kind of my next one is it's not about you or your product. It's about them and what they're going through. But you have to be curious to find out because what they're telling you is the surface level thing. It's not the real thing. They may not even know the real thing. It's our job to get them there. Get them thinking about the real, real thing. But if we're just being clerks and quoting and describing and answering questions, that's nice, but is that going to win the deal? The job is to win the deal, not to service the prospect. And I think that the service mindset is so deep today and it's kind of orthogonal to what we're going through. Sales is down, but everyone views it as a service. Maybe you should view it as a sale. It might, might be more effective.

That's true. I mean, the, the one good thing about the industry changes for me is that it taught another tough lesson, which goes hand in hand with what you're talking about, is that I thought I was way better than I probably was. The first company I was at, awesome company, ton of momentum, riding that wave. I was there at a really good time. Timing is a huge thing too, which is impossible to really judge. But I was there at a great time where the company had a ton of momentum and I benefited from that. I still did well, worked hard and did the right things and probably shined above other people and that helped me. But so I had that long, about 10 years doing that, and then I changed industries to more of a commission environment. And I was pretty confident going into it. And then I quickly learned a tough lesson that, okay, well, first off, this industry is really way— it's more complex. Healthcare is complex. Deal cycles are really long. I didn't understand how companies made decisions. I didn't understand all the moving parts. I was just going off my personality and hard work and doing the right things, which is good to a certain extent. But you got to really understand how companies make decisions, map it out, treat Treat it like the profession it should be, and so I started investing in coaching. Like I took took your course. I ended up doing a lot of other things, and that that was a big epiphany for me too—is that I wasn't as good as I thought I was, and that sales can be hard depending on which area you're in, especially if it's more commission environment. If you don't treat it like being very systematic with the process and mapping it out, understanding what they're going through, how do they get decisions done at the companies, then you're going to. Really struggle, probably if you're in a competitive industry, and and I just sort of ran with that. I mean, ever I can't imagine if I wouldn't have started paying out of out of my own pocket for some type of coaching and and just improvement. Who knows where I'd be now? I'm sure I'd be doing okay, but the fact that I started doing that, I think it just saved me years and accelerated years of my progress. And yeah, you were the first one I actually did, which is cool, but. I had to be real with myself on that one because I was lying to myself before that. And most people probably don't want to admit those things, that maybe the company was helping a lot of their sales, not, not just me.

Yeah. And I love talking to reps who was like, I think I already know this stuff. How much you making? Uh, $180,000. I go, you don't know this stuff. What's your calendar look like? How many new meetings do you have this week? Well, I should, but I was busy and Okay, tell yourself whatever you want. And this is where we are our worst enemies sometimes. We built the confidence complex, right? We build ourselves up, which we need to be able to do, but we need to be realistic as well at times, which can be very painful. And I never went to a company where they showed me the process. They didn't because they didn't know what it was. Like every company, we find a champion, we quote them, we discount them to get it in that quarter. We have an executive call their executive and magic happens. That's what they used to tell me. I had, I had that manager on my show, but that's not what it was. That's what it was for a handful of friends and family deals. Then they hire, you know, 10 of us to go out and scatter to the earth and come back with revenue. Nobody knows who you are, what you do. So you had to build a process. You got to be proactive. Like in the course, if you, if you don't have your process mapped out, how can you be proactive? Tell me. What do you mean? How do you know what to do next? Well, I asked them. Them, the people who don't know what they're doing, the people who are following you. Go to a restaurant and have the maître d' say like, you know, what are you? What are you here for? What should I do? The way the maître d's going to. What should I do?

Are you seated? Oh, here.

Someone's got to know what to do. The client thinks they know, which is insanely dangerous. They think they can get a quote and email it to procurement and something happens. Nothing happens. We think the same thing. We forecast it. Nothing happens. Okay, second quarter. Oh, we got to get somebody else involved. Who's going to figure that out? We don't know it, so I guess they'll have to figure it out. I hope they still want it because it's a lot of work now. And people— well, is that why we're not getting deals? Yeah, that's one of the big reasons you're not getting deals. Maybe you need a performance drill for that.

Maybe.

And what was interesting in doing the analysis from the calls, the managers made the same number of mistakes the reps made. But didn't think they did either. It's the confidence paradox, and we tell ourselves that.

Yeah, and it's not—it's not—it can come off as negative, but it's not negative. It's—it's being paranoid, as I think we—we talked about earlier. You're being paranoid about your deals because you want to make more money. You want to make more commission, and then. In turn, make the company more revenue. So it's, you have to, but it's not an easy thing to balance because you can be overconfident with the deals because you think you can just get it through. But that's a hard one, a hard lesson to learn. But the sooner you can, the better on that one. And, you know, it's just the other thing that comes to mind is just how do you, how do you manage the ups and downs, right? So it's sort of what we're talking about, but Like, 'cause you could have a period where maybe for a couple years it's not going as well as it was before. It's like never gonna be linear. So like, how are you responding when, uh, when the times are a little bit tougher? 'Cause you actually learn way more during the challenging times and just trying to, you know, see that. 'Cause there's certain times where that happened to me and it was tough, but like, I'm such a better salesperson now because I went through that. And it's like, how do you stay almost even keeled? I think you need to be a little even keeled Throughout, uh, is something that's, that's really helped me. And then I never— I, I did manage like 4 people, but the other hard lesson I didn't necessarily learn it myself, but I see a lot is just because you're a good, good rep doesn't mean you can be a good manager. And a lot of people make that mistake. And, and it could be the opposite too. Maybe you're not a good rep and you're a great manager potentially. So there, there's a lot of lessons learned there on, on the, on the— The manager side too.

Yeah, and it really goes back to you owning it, you understanding what you're good at. And I think the hardest thing to learn is quit focusing solely on transactions and trying to— and start focusing on compounding. This is what, you know, no, I never saw reps do. They looked at every deal as autonomous instead of pattern matching. They were reactive to every situation. Client wants to do this, and they just go chase that. And I go, you know, that's a trap, that's a rat hole. But they want to, so— And I think this ownership Takes confidence, and, and few reps get it. But if you don't get it, what do you have? You're really a reactive clerk. And I, I think you kind of have to go through that stage. But if it takes more than 6 months to a year, it might become a career. And I see a lot of reps are in that career of being a clerk, account manager, or reactive And it's not just the farmer-hunter thing, it's— but owning your career and building it, like your network. If you look at your network solely as a transaction— can somebody help me today? What happens when you need a job?

Crickets.

What you want is, how can I help you today? And that one time I need help, I get overwhelmed.

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, uh, the The misnomers, the mindset issues, all of this 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 is 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 you. 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? 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.