HOW THINKING LIKE AN EMPLOYEE IS COSTING YOUR FINANCIAL GOAL

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. Now, if you think like an employee in sales, is there any downside?

I definitely think there is. I mean, when I came right out of school, the first company I worked for, it was easy to get straight into that employee mindset. Always go above and beyond, do everything you're told. And just keep reacting to everything based off what was going on. So I certainly understand it when you're coming new into a new business or new into sales. But I think what I've seen recently is that if you get stuck in that employee mindset as a salesperson, you're just constantly reacting to everything and eventually you're probably not gonna be able to even just know how to sell or know how to go out there and get new business. So I think instead of having that employee mindset, it's better to have more of that salespreneur type mindset where you're being proactive, you're going after new opportunities versus just getting told what to do, because I don't think companies want to hire the employee mindset for, for sales folks. But for some reason, I think a lot of the sales teams out there that I've been around recently, it seems like there is a lot of that employee mindset going on. So I'm not sure where it went off the rails or where that happened, but there's a lot of employee mindsets out there, it seems.

Yeah. And it's natural. Let's say you, you go through high school, college most likely, and then you get a job. You know, the student mindset is you work for a grade. Okay. And so it's a pretty simple leap to you work for a paycheck by doing what your teacher tells you. Oh, I mean your manager. So it's natural. It's just part of life. But the rub happens when it doesn't work. And in sales, it's almost set up not to work because the quota is really high. And if it just naturally worked, would they really need somebody of your skill?

No.

They could hire anybody, right? They don't need Dustin for that. And, and then there's this kind of thing, well, This works in the manager's mindset. But what does the manager really want at the end of the quarter?

They just want to hit the revenue numbers.

They don't want a pretty CRM and somebody who attended all the enablement meetings and gave marketing feedback on the fonts they used.

Some may want that. Actually, now that you say that, they get pretty consumed with those dashboards. They love the dashboards.

They care about that until they have to care about survival. And I've been a sales manager, and the dream is to have a team where everybody's crushing it. That never happens. You get 10 people, uh, one's crushing it, 3 are suffering, don't know what they're doing, and the rest are okay. You know, if something comes in, they, they're great with it. If it's difficult, it's touch and go. So what do you do as a manager? You know, you kind of tell people what you've seen work before, and what you always know works is be busy. You gotta work hard. Okay, but that might not be enough. So should I go dig a hole in the backyard or just send a bunch of email? I think if you think like an employee, it's naturally reactive. You wait to be told what to do. You do what you're assigned. But is that really what employee managers want out of employees? They want that person crushing it, and they're willing to put up with maybe some broken eggs along the way.

But that's life, isn't it?

Definitely, definitely. I completely agree. It's that perfect situation is where you're hiring people smarter than you, more talented than you, and they're just crushing it. And then, I mean, that puts so much less stress on you as a manager, but not easy to find that. But it's exactly everything you're talking about. I mean, it's like whether it's internal or when you're having prospect meetings, if they say jump, you say how high, and you're just constantly doing whatever the customer says or potential client or whatever the internal says. And early on, you have to navigate some of that. And probably follow more directions. But I think the longer you're in sales, the more success you have, you start looking at it a little bit differently. And you may want to push back on certain things and focus on— at the end of the day, it's not about being busy and just completing aimless tasks. It's about closing deals and doing the things that are going to drive revenue for you, especially as you get more commission focused. So, uh, You know those internal meetings about a meeting to get ready for another meeting that can just suck your life away. Again, you could show face early on, but after a while, I would try to avoid as many of those meetings as possible, and then really figure out hey what is driving the needle in my territory? How am I closing these deals? What does that look like? How many meetings type of customers? And spending more of your time thinking and strategy around that versus just aimlessly doing things that feel good to to be busy. So I think it depends on how much your salary versus commission probably as well and how long you've been doing it potentially. But I think, you know, the ones that are really good, they get to a point where they're, they say no to a lot of stuff that isn't going to drive the needle and they're more worried about closing deals because at the end of the day, that's all that matters. If your CRM looks like crap, but you're 40% over your number, everybody's Brian's best friend. It doesn't matter what the rest of the stuff looks like.

Yeah. And I think You gotta— the number one thing that I got out of sales managers and what they look for in great salespeople is an internal locus of control, meaning that I take responsibility for things even if I don't have control over them. I take responsibility for leads. And I listened to this podcast this week, uh, how to incentivize AEs account execs to do prospecting? It's like they're on a comp plan, right? That's how you incentivize them to do it. If they're not doing it, maybe it's obviously because they don't need to. Are they just order taking? And then managers, well, what we should do is come up with separating net new from inbound. And I'm like, set up more games to play. So they just bribe the person who decides what type of deal it is? No, no, this was a different type of deal. Instead of the person who, if they have an internal locus of control and they're money motivated, boom, that's half the problem right there. They don't have enough leads, they go out and prospect. If they have enough, and why don't they want more? I'm making too much money. And if you hire for somebody with an internal locus of control, why don't you leverage that? They're not gonna wait to be told what to do. They're not going to wait for someone to give them feedback, wait for someone to hire a trainer for them to get them their skills up. They're not gonna take Being stuck in the Dunning-Kruger effect, they're going to change. They're going to find a way. And if you hire those types of people, let them sell. You know the number of reps who have told me I got to do it my manager's way. Okay, and if your managers if you do that and it doesn't work, what happens?

Sales promotion. No, you probably might get fired.

And who do they blame?

The salesperson, right? Yeah.

And what does a sales manager say? One of two things. You didn't do enough of it, so do more faster. More dumb things faster, because that's sales logic. If it's not working, you got to do more of it. What? Okay. And then the other is you didn't do it right. Now, you— not doing it right is a judgment call. It's subjective. But did they do it that wrong that it didn't work? Or are you not giving somebody enough freedom to figure out what will work? So you are an employee, but if you think like an employee, I think you're working yourself into a trap. Where you're blaming somebody who's firing you.

Definitely. It's how do you think of it as your own business, your own territory, that entrepreneurial mindset is how I always tried to look at it because nobody's gonna come and save you most of the time. It's like you gotta do that yourself and the sooner you can figure out that, the better. Otherwise you're gonna get bit in the ass like what you were talking about. So I have many examples of Trying to figure that out. I love that internal locus of control. The one that stands out the most was when I changed industries and I was overconfident going into it. I was resting on what I did before, all this credibility from a different industry and relationships, my personality, all these different things. And then I quickly realized that, man, I was a little— I was still doing well, but I wanted to be at the top. So I was like, how do I understand all this chaos in healthcare and all this stuff that's going on? So I ended up investing in myself and that wasn't like company I worked for, they didn't tell me I needed to do that. I just decided to do that because I could see if I wanted to get where I wanted to go the next couple years, I, I had to start looking at things differently and, and be open to feedback and different perspectives. Like, admitting that you don't know everything, that, uh, you can get better, I think is something that goes hand in hand with that. But ultimately, I looked at it as my own business, and that's what always helped me with the different roles that I've had at, at companies. And the more commission-focused, the, the easier it is to do that. But I think the sooner you can look at it like your own business, the sooner you're going to have this more— not have the employee mindset. So that's, that's been a big one. And then also the, the sort of fixed mindset mentality that tends to come up is that, that victim's mentality you talked about where you're blaming everybody else for, for what's going on, for the issues in your territory, for not having the right Accounts that you want to be in front of. I, I've also found times where I was blaming the company, blaming my manager, blaming all that stuff. And, and that could be the reality. That could be a lot of stuff that you got dealt a bad hand, but nobody cares is, is the problem. So if you don't do something about that, if you don't focus on what you can control and not think of yourself as just an employee all the time, then you're gonna get sucked into that pointing fingers game of— because if, if you have the employee mindset, There's really no ownership for you. You, you can blame the company, you can blame the manager, but that's not gonna help you in the long term, and you're still gonna get let go if you're not hitting your numbers. So I think not blaming everyone else and having more of that growth mindset also can be really helpful in this situation. And the sooner that you take ownership and you take accountability, whether you got dealt a bad hand or not, this— the better you're gonna feel and the more progress you're gonna make, most likely.

Right. Because let's take like a 100% commission type, just as an analogy where— and I've hired people 1099. So if I want a meeting, I got to pay them to go to the meeting.

Understood.

But I don't have to pay them for anything else either. They want to go on a vacation, I don't get— I don't pay them. But when you're an employee, You know, you think— now let's just take it like a realtor. The realtor can blame the, the agency that they, they split the commission with, but they're not an employee of that agency. They're like a 1099, like an independent contractor, but they don't get paid and the agency doesn't get paid. So the blame game, they don't— probably don't play because it doesn't— there's no fun. It's only fun when you get— don't get paid or you do get paid. And what is the benefit of thinking like an employee? It just feels good, right? It feels good to be a victim.

It does.

It does.

Doesn't it? Yeah. Because when you lose a deal, Do you think of the 10 things or the 5 things or the 3 things you could have done better? Or is it just easier to say it was politics? Or that was somebody on the board, you know, was on the other board and decided for them. I couldn't have done anything about it. Okay, that feels good. That's emotional commission. You can do nothing with it other than feel better. Real commission feels a whole lot better. And did you learn anything when you have the victim mentality?

No, you're just going to keep doing that over and over again, right?

So your comfort zone's gone smaller and smaller and smaller. And I mean, you went out on your own. Did the blame game really help in any way?

Did it—

was it even worth playing?

There's certainly moments where you feel sorry for yourself and you wanna point fingers and all that different stuff, the economy, the market services, whatever, whatever's going on with a variety of things. Again, some of that may be true, but the reality is nobody cares and you have to look back at what, what can I do to get better? How can I be more focused on my ideal customer profile? Where, where did I make a misstep? Where was I wasting time? That's the biggest thing probably. when you're on the, like a realtor or anything commission focused is you can waste, you can get away with wasting time when you're an employee and maybe your salary's higher. Yeah. Yeah. That's easy. It's like, oh, it's Thursday, Friday. I'm just going to coast and do all that stuff. And that's, that's fine. That can be a good life for many people. That's what you want. That's, that's great. But if you're really trying to move up, make some things happen, make money, you probably need to be more of that commission type environment because that's how you do it. But you— I can't afford to waste time at this point. So I look at time way so much differently than I have in the past because I can't spend 2 or 3 hours a day talking with people that aren't qualified or just people that want to catch up or take my brain. As much as I'd love to talk to all those people, I can't do it because it sucks the energy out of me and I know it's not gonna get me where I need to go. And then early on when you're doing what I'm doing, I mean, you got to get momentum because it's just very important. So I think the time side of it, like being relentless with your time and protecting it and trying to— you get way more focused on what gives you energy, what takes energy away, what deals are more like— you can see some of those red flags earlier on. And it's judgment. A lot of it is judgment on that. You have to— there's no specific exact science, but I think that the more you are relentless with that, the better. But I remember back in the day when I had a really big salary, I had a bonus, I had a company vehicle, I had all this different stuff. I, I was more in that— I was a little bit of both, but it was nice, you know, it's— I didn't have to worry about some of that stuff. But I think if you want to make the elite money, if you want to do really big things, you're going to have to take more risks with these commission-type environments. And that's why you can make uncapped commission and you see people making, you know, half, half a million plus in these type of roles. But it's Not for the faint of heart. It's not easy and you have to be way more relentless with your time and energy and focus, which is a good thing ultimately. But a lot of people don't wanna go into that route, which I can understand.

Yeah. And what is the initiative to do the things that will make you a salespreneur so that you are this asset, this capability that's not just dependent on that one product and company? Because I've seen people go from being very successful at one company to a startup and just flop because they were very good at that system, that product, that problem, but they were employees. They were cogs in the wheel. They weren't an independent wheel as well. I think we all have to be these little independent wheel. You know, call it personal branding, but I think that deflects you from the real point, is that you should be valuable independent of the company, independent of the product. And that focuses you on becoming a better salesperson, because if you can't talk to the client about something other than your product, And your company and yourself, right? They don't, they wanna talk a little bit about that, but they have more important topics and that's where the money is.

I agree. I think it goes back to being different. So, I mean, I took your course years ago and that was a game changer for me as far as, because most salespeople typically If you ask them in an interview or something to explain a competitive deal or some situation, they will probably struggle to tell you how they actually go through that process. But when I took your course, for example, it just helped me understand that entire picture, that map and that blueprint of where I was trying to go, especially the more complex deals are. If you're talking 6+ months, there's just so many things that can go wrong. So if you don't have a system, it's Really tough. So that, that's something that's unique for me right now. I'm a little more on that architectural mindset. So I'm more analytical. So I'm better at that, that process part, but it helps me stand out because most salespeople hate that type of stuff or they ignore it or they just wing it. And that's something that, that makes me stand out. The, the personal branding, I do quite a bit on LinkedIn, but that's taken years to really build up momentum, but that is something now that I can use as something that makes me different. And I know how to navigate that. I'm not like some top 1%, uh, influencer necessarily, but I'm, you know, definitely stand out from that. And a lot of people recognize me when I go to events because I use it strategically to help me out with that. So those are a couple of things. I think being different because there's so much sea of sameness now in sales, especially everyone's doing the same stuff. Everyone's sending spam, everyone's cold calling, everyone's scratching their head, just trying to take the easy route. And most all that's never gonna work unless if you're in a very unique situation with the unicorn company. Otherwise, you have to be different. Some of it, it's not like this is rocket science necessarily. It's stuff that's been around for generations probably, but it's no one wants to put in the work necessarily. So I think for me, that's how I look at just being different. You have to figure out a way to be different and You're not going to be different being in the employee mindset, that's for sure.

Well, also think about how do you sell if you think like an employee? You sell like a clerk, right? You walk hand in hand with the prospect into the commodity trap and set your deal up to be price only.

Why?

Because it's reactive. The prospect's leading, so the prospect doesn't know what they're doing, and they're assuming you do. But you don't know what you're doing, and you assume the prospect does, and you wonder why the deals stall, right? Because you're not being proactive. External locus of control, uh, wrong assumptions. Boom! It doesn't work. Now think if you have an Internal locus of control. You don't let the prospect lead you. You lead the prospect because the prospect needs to be led. If you don't lead them, it's, what's it do? How's it compare to the competition? And what's it cost? Send me a proposal. Deal over. You go, well, it does a lot of things. Help me understand why we're talking. What are you up against right now? How do you do it right now? What's on your mind about it? What's the biggest concern here? You get into a dialogue with them. That's proactive selling. Everybody's like, how do I answer this question? How do I handle this objection? Like a clerk. And everyone's trying to be a better clerk, but being a better clerk doesn't sell more. You're just liked more when you lose. So if you want to be— participate and be liked, be a clerk. If you want to sell and make commission, you got to be proactive. And which one is more like that, an employee or a salespreneur?

Salespreneur for sure. And you made me think of just the customer's perspective, how many demos they're getting asked to do and all these different things. I mean, I feel like that's just the instant go-to, probably more of the employee mindset just to go straight to that demo and people, they have no idea what the company is, what the product is, what the service is, and they're just getting asked to do these demos left and right. And I feel like it's, it's gotta be Overwhelming.

Demo day. Here, come look at my thing. You don't know what it is.

Yeah, it's overwhelming. And that's, that's what they're getting. The leadership probably thinks the more demos they get, the higher percent of the close rate or whatever it is. And they're just, and then they start incentivizing people, probably the BDRs, SDRs to set up more dumb demos. So then they, This whole cycle continues. But for sure, yeah, the salespreneur mindset is gonna be the proactive. You're gonna be looking at things different. You're gonna tactfully push back on customers or potential prospects when it makes sense to have that dialogue. They look at you as a peer, not just a salesperson falling into the commodity trap. So you're, you're an industry leader, you're a thought leader, you're a peer, and you come off that way and present yourself that way. And that's how You're going to attract the right type of clients and at least have a chance at closing more deals if you do it that way. If you're just doing everything they say, not pushing back, not being creative, I feel like eventually that's going to be a red flag to the customer. If they're not going to spend hundreds of thousands or millions, if they think it's someone or a company that, that doesn't push back a little bit, uh, to some extent. So it's, uh, yeah, it's tough though. I will say, I mean, early on, I, I am an overachiever. I do. work hard. And there was times where I wanted to take on excess projects and I would do more for the company because I was trying to climb the ladder and all that. And that's, that's good to a certain extent. But if I wasn't getting paid like a salespreneur, it's not, not as good looking back to, to take on all that excess. So I think you got to understand if you're— what are you better at? Some people may want to do more of the service stuff and that's fine. Some people want to make the elite money, which means you got to be on the more commission focus. And some people might want to become leaders and they do want to take on excess stuff and climb the ladder. So I think you need a little bit of trial by error there, but you need to understand what, what you're best at and what you want to do. And that will help you waste less time when in some of these scenarios we're talking about.

Yeah, because a frontline rep can't make anything up. You know, management can make up stuff. Oh, the team that is the economy, the dollar transfer. Marketing can make up all kinds of things, right? They can just put out an ad to anybody who breathes and we get leads.

We can't.

We have to produce real green revenue. And if you act like an employee, is— are you producing anything that would happen otherwise?

Incremental.

That's the, the test. That's the measure. What would happen if you just put a good solid employee there versus putting a salespreneur there?

It's a tough question. It's a, it's a question that people don't want to have the answer to, probably.

Well, you know which one. That delta is pretty high. It's really the delta between the mean of your team and the top rep, which it's usually about 100 to 300%, but nobody wants to look at it that way. A lot of managers, they like that little even, but that's not life.

It's true. And then a lot of egos tend to get involved with all that type of stuff. But ultimately, I mean, if you have that salespreneur mindset versus the employee mindset, you're gonna take control of your own destiny a little bit more. You know where you're going. You're not just aimlessly drifting around. You have a road of what you're trying to accomplish and you're taking ownership. So seems like a no-brainer to me. And that's what most salespeople should be focused on.

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 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? There's really, you know, read a book, 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 Zero point zero. 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 $300,000, $400,000, $500,000. 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.