HOW THIS A-PLAYER MASTERED THE COMPLEX SALE AND YOU CAN TOO

History was made this week, actually just a few days ago. For the first time in history, a sales rep has been able to, on his drive alone to a meeting, been able to practice live interactively with his AI sales coach in his car, on his phone, hands-free. With the top down. That's possible now. And boy, does it help. And that person was me. I firsthand did it on a drive to a meeting, preparing with a performance drill, problem versus product, a classic sales challenge. What we've done at Brevity is put that into a performance drill. And you can play it, do it. It asks you questions, you ask it questions, you answer questions, it answers questions. Its job is to focus you on the product, which you don't want. Your job is to focus on the problem, which it tries to avoid, like clients. So it gives you the exact type of scenario for one of the hardest parts of a sales call. And guess what? Within days, you will be able to do this as well if you go to brevitypitch.com and add yourself to the waitlist. It's a free eval copy, eval version of Brevity Pitch. It's called Brevity Play. And if you're a sales manager and you happen to want revenue to go up instead of down, What do you have control over? Marketing?

Eh, nope.

The market? Nope. Salespeople? Maybe 5 minutes a day. Brevity pitches clients. Revenue's going up 20-30% when people use the product. Practice. Because sales is a performance profession. It's not a knowledge profession. You have to have lots of knowledge, but you have to be able to perform. It's that connection that we make with that client. And that connection has 2 major ingredients to be successful in sales. One is you got to sound authentic. You got to be natural. You can't be sounding like a sales rep. And the way to do that is to get comfortable In the context. The other is to have a great sales process. The problem is, I bet you have a great sales process, but it gets thrown out the window when the client asks a hard question or pushes back. It all caves. Or you forget it. Or you're too rigid with it. We got to practice the magic. Brevity pitch will get you there. Do you want to go there? Let's get into the interview, and today's topic is sales mastery, my favorite.

Here we go.

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

Morning. Yeah, I am Leo Lopez. I'm a practice growth director at Aluna. I've spent the last 13 years or so in tech. Born in Mexico, raised in California and Arizona, went to ASU. A big fan of your product, Bryan.

Great. And why sales for you?

Good question. In general, I believe in doing what you're good at and doing what you love, right? You put those 2 things together and then as a psychopath once said, if you're good at something, never do it for free. So sales pays, tends to pay very well. I don't know if quoting a psychopath is the first, is a good thing in the first 30 seconds. But yeah, that's, that's in general, that's why I got into sales.

Well, let's start with why you're good at it. How'd you get good at it?

Well, so in general, people always say you have to be really, have to have the gift for gab to do sales. I don't agree. I just don't agree. I'm a believer that anything can be taught. When I was young, I did have that tendency, that propensity towards speaking. But that doesn't necessarily mean I was good at sales. I became good at sales when I started listening, when I started adhering to a philosophy, a system, right? Creating your own system. So what I think made me good at sales is I'll use a comparison. I trained martial arts my whole life. I have several belts, right? The one I'm most proud of Is the believes in the philosophy that there's many ways to the top of the mountain. There's no one way, right? You might get there through taekwondo. Another one might get there through Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Krav Maga. There's a— I've trained like 20-something arts, not all of them black belts, right? But I've trained all of them enough to understand they're all good. If you find your way to the top, you have to have some sort of structure to get there. So what made me good is I applied the same philosophy to martial arts. Then I went to sales and inevitably, I think I got pretty solid at it, right?

I mean, every sales guy thinks they're amazing, but, you know, the W-2s may not reflect that amazement.

Everyone's, yeah, everyone was like, I'm amazing, right? It's like, are we all that good?

Well, I love that point because, you know, I've been on this journey for a couple of years now and every time I equate what I'm trying to do physically with what I'm trying to do in sales, it makes a lot more sense than when I do it in my head.

The, have you ever heard of like the comparison that I was in high school and I remember doing a class in math and then I went to my English class and the same concepts were being taught just from different angles. And I was like, this is the same two, you know, two negatives make a positive, right? Right, two negatives in language and in math. It's the same exact thing. And I remember just sitting there going, so they're just teaching us like five things, just from different angles, right? So it's the same thing happens in physical and in verbal, right? Your brain is still in control of everything. There's only a handful of things that control everything. It's just whether manifests through golf. Or sales, it's kind of up to you. Well, I don't know if I may—

Yeah, it does. And a lot of how you get better at both is pretty much you have to do the same things. Yeah, practice, deliberate practice, take some feedback, have the instructor show you, correct you, repeat, take that feedback. And a lot of people just want to— well, they see it in the movies. And that's how everyone gets into it, right?

Oh, you hit a soft spot, Brian. And I'm not pandering here. I'm a fan of your product, right? So the reason I took the time to do this, I really am a fan because— and I listen to your, to your, uh, to the podcast. You're 1,000% right. People in the movies, they watch it, they watch a movie, uh, Will Smith's kid has a problem, and then he does a montage and he's a karate master in like 6 months. And you're like, hold, stop everything. Stop everything. I once practiced one kick for 5 years straight, like every single time. And to this day, I've been training 25 years. To this day, I still practice the same exact kick over and over with a coach, with my, my sifu telling me, right, with somebody. I record it, I see what I do. I drop my left hand slightly, then I do it 1,000 times without dropping that left hand. And then I notice my right hand is telegraphing. So over and over, it's the same exact thing. So I agree wholeheartedly. I think Sandler called it reinforcement training that, you know, everyone's got their— everyone that knows what they're doing has their own verbiage for it. But 1000%, you need to have it reinforced. You need to have it trained properly.

Yeah. And how long did it take you to figure that out? Did somebody show you? Or did you just— your sheer determination and fortitude?

That's a really insightful question. So I was 18 years old, and I walked into this— my best friend is this great guy. I've known him since we were 13. He's still one of my best friends. He's a detective here in Scottsdale. He started at this martial arts school, didn't like it, but he paid a year in advance. So he's— for my 18th birthday, he's like, hey man, happy birthday, I got you a year of karate classes. I was like, all right, I've always wanted to train. When I was a kid, I'd read books, I'd watch Bruce Lee movies. So I walked in, I met this man named Alex Santa Maria. He's a grandmaster. He's in the International Hall of Fame. I didn't know it. I got very lucky, and I just started training with him. I didn't know how incredible he was until he started showing me things that defied logic to me that I'd never seen. Bruce Lee's one-inch punch, all that stuff that I thought was just movie stuff. And then he started— he basically showed me the cool stuff, and then he goes, let me show you how I got here. And then he broke it down into pieces, and he goes, this is how it works, right? I'll show you. I'll give you the tools. You got to still build the house. So to answer your question, I learned that very young. I was very fortunate to realize kind of what it takes to get great at something complicated. Yeah.

And how do you react when like the younger rookies come to you and they go, hey Leo, you know, you look like you know what you're doing. What's the secret to your success? Give me some tips and tricks.

I actually, I find that to be very fulfilling. Right? It's the, well, the hedonism paradox, I think it's called, right? The more you do for yourself, the less happy you are. And the more you do for others, the happier you become. So I find that extra— I still do it for free. I probably shouldn't. But whenever anyone I've worked with in the past reaches out, I'll gladly jump on calls and do trainings and coach them as to what I think it takes to be great. I give them advice in general. I actually guide them in certain directions, certain coaches that I think are really good. The other thing I ask, you have to be able to read. I mean, I know most people can read, but they choose not to read, right? So somebody once said the difference between an illiterate man and a man who chooses not to read is hard to spot, right? How do you— how can you tell the difference? Whether even if you were completely literate and choose never to read, you're basically illiterate. So I ask them, you have to read, and I guide them towards certain books. You know, I— Once again, there's no one way to the top. There's no one way to the top. But if you choose the Challenger method, Sandler methods, a variety of different methods, they all kind of get there. So what do I advise them? A, start reading. B, practice as close as possible to the real thing. So what— and I hate to go back to martial arts. I hate grandmasters who proclaim all these things, and it's all fake. It's useless. It doesn't do anything in the real. I always say, okay, do it on me. Hit me with it, and I've I've been hit very very hard. I have the entire left side of my rib cage broken. I've had stuff, but I learned all right now it works. I believe in you now. I've had grandmasters proclaim things and go and hit me, and then I just stand there. That is terrifying that they're teaching people. Same thing applies to sales. If you're I tell them get as close to humanly possible to what you're really gonna run into. So either like when one of your most recent podcasts, you said, how do you practice, right? How do you actually get good in front of people without being in front of people? You think one of your philosophies, don't practice in front of people, don't practice in front of your clients, something like that. I always say, try to mimic that as close as humanly possible without actually, obviously, you know, you're not in front of a prospect. Because the reality is when you're up there, when you're up on stage in comedy, when you're doing any sort of real sales in front of a group of people, nothing duplicates that. So you try as much as possible to duplicate it in real life.

But like martial arts, you prepare, so you train.

We train to an extreme sometimes. They accuse us of being abusive of our— our style does not make money. My grandmaster will never be rich because very few people want to get hit that hard, want to deal with that level, pushing the human body to a certain point. But you're right, we tell them, look, I love you. You're a friend of mine, but I'm gonna come at you now. And then it gets, it gets bloody. A lot of broken noses, a lot of, a lot of, sometimes it happens, right? The, the, the, the head bleeds a lot. The head bleeds a lot. People, people always think it's, yeah, it looks, it's a, it makes, it bleeds a lot. There's a lot of blood up there. It always looks worse than what it is, what we always say.

And who helped you get better or how did people help you get better at sales once, when you started?

Yeah. So my first mentor in sales would be a guy named Ted Moscaro, and I was at a company called Veracor. So I went to Veracor. It was commercial collections during the Great Recession. Can you imagine that? It was rough, right? So I actually did collections, then moved over to sales. Very similar collections and sales. You're selling, you're painting a picture with words. You're selling them on the idea as to why they should resolve something amicably outside of court. And it's commercial. It's not like, hey, your credit card's due. It's like, Hey, you owe $800,000 to my, you know, customer in the UK for product that they shipped to South America or something like that, right? So my first mentor was Ted Moscaro, brilliant man, high school educated. I mean, he always said, he goes, I'm high school educated and was very, became very wealthy off of a lot of hard work. And the way he put it is, he's like, you know, we give you a tool, it's up to you to sharpen it, right? If you just wanna bludgeon people to death with it, Okay, that's a lot of hard work. If you want to sharpen it, it makes your work a lot easier and you get a lot more work done. So that was his philosophy. I believe in it.

And what do you wish you knew back that first year that you know now about sales?

Yeah, I always like that question. Mostly discovery, right? Just asking the right questions. You can ask the right questions. And then everything gets laid out for you. It's a Socratic method of inquiry was what, what, 4,000 years ago, right? It worked for Socrates. It's, it, people forget that it works now. People think that selling is talking. And I'm actually not used to doing this much talking, right? Right now I'm doing almost most of the time. I don't know why. Oh, no, no, no. But I mean, this is the, this is the conversation, right? But in reality, you know this, when you're selling, if you're talking, you're losing.

Yeah. And why do you think people get that wrong? Because I see too many people getting into sales because they have that gift-of-gab personality, which can be a good start, but that's just a start.

Movies don't help us. Yeah, right. I mean, the movies, they always say, uh, the, uh, the Glengarry Glen Ross, right? The greatest move sales. It's not. It's, it's— I don't know about you, in consultative Yeah, consultative, complicated, complex sales, screaming at people, right? You know, you see this watch, you know, still a great scene. It's great acting. I don't basically know word for word because, you know, it's great, but it's not truly selling, right? That's just kind of yelling at somebody. Great selling has been said by somebody other than me, a greater sales trainer said great selling is, what is it, Black Sheep, right? Is that the one where he goes selling those, the The comedian, come on, he passed away way too young.

Pin Man, you mean?

No, no, no, it's a fat guy in a little coat.

Oh, Chris Farley.

Chris Farley. Yeah.

Yeah, Black Sheep and Tommy Boy.

Tommy Boy, right? When he's going selling those, those car parts. That is a sales job, right? Because he starts off— it's a sales— that's a sales movie. He starts off pretty bad. He keeps taking notes, right? All this stuff. He doesn't know how to explain the things. He overcomplicates. Remember, he takes the thing, cracks Crashes it and it lights on fire. Like, that's— everyone's had that type of moment in their career. And then he starts getting better at it when he starts talking to the waitress and he starts relating to people and asking right questions and getting right, seeing it from their perspective, right? Not confrontational, but side to side. I— so to answer your question, I think movies hurt us a lot. I think it's given us a bad name. And, and people come into sales with the wrong expectations thinking, hey, I can talk a lot. that makes me a good salesperson. That's not necessarily true. Yeah.

And what's your motivation? What's your why? Why are you so driven?

I actually, this one is pretty clear. So I have the world's most beautiful wife. If you don't believe me, just Google Alba Felix model or Alba Felix. That's my wife. People don't believe it. I've had people ask for photos because they wouldn't believe that that really was my wife. Side note, Ted Moscaro, my first mentor, said, if the guy that you're interviewing has a girlfriend or wife that's too good looking for him, hire him on the spot because he'll be the best sales guy you've ever had. And I was like, man, you're dumb, Ted. I was a young guy. I was like, that's stupid, man. You're overgeneralizing. And then the older I get, I'm like, well, I mean, it's not everything, but he's not wrong. He is not wrong because my best reps have been guys whose girlfriends or wives are too good looking. So what motivates me? I met my wife when we were young. I was broke. I had less than $20 to my name. And I once told her, I said, hey, I'm so broke. If you leave me now, I don't blame you. I said, there's the, you know, I love you. I adore you. If you leave, I'll never speak ill of you. I'll never say anything bad. I think you're fantastic, but I don't blame you for leaving me. And she looked at me dead in the eye and goes, it's me and you to the end of the earth, hon. So I said, all right. She was just my girlfriend at the time. And I said, all right, now forever and ever, I will work hard to make as much money as humanly possible to give us a very comfortable life. So that's what motivates me.

So you're driven by love and romance?

Very. Yeah, yeah, my pug. Yeah, my pug. I have a dog that I adore and my wife, and they are my life. And yes, that's what wakes me up. That's what gets me going. There's a certain amount of competitiveness, but it's competitive in a healthy way, right? You want to do better, but I never want to see others do poorly. I want everyone to do well. I just want to beat you by, you know, I hope I do $1 more, you know. But mostly my motivation is very internal, right? There are goals that I have for my family and I.

Yeah. And I take it there's a lifestyle that this partner would like to pursue?

Yeah. Yeah. It's mostly me actually. She's from very humble background. She's Mexican as well. And she's from a very humble background, didn't have a lot growing up. And so that's why we get along. I did, I have a, I'm a strange dichotomy. My father was a lawyer and my mother comes from a bunch of doctors. I'm actually Japanese Mexican. So on my mother's side, there's a lot of Japanese people, a lot of wealth, but then my family directly didn't because unfortunately my father chose to be the lawyer that represented the poorest people in the world. didn't take any of that, that, that, that, that illicit money. And he always represented poor people. So we didn't have a lot growing up for me, even though he was a lawyer. And then we, my friend, my mother brought me to America when I was very young. So there were some times when we didn't have a lot. We had a great family, just didn't have a lot of wealth. So I think that kind of creates in my culture a, an insecurity, right? Sometimes that we want to pretend to have more than what, than what we really have, right? There's this thing I hate to quote him because he's a madman, but he made a good point. Kanye West said only millionaires wear chains. He was talking about how the richest people on earth don't have gold chains. Don't— I've worked with a billionaire, right, at one of the companies I worked at, literal billionaire, one of the richest people on the planet. And he wore like New Balance shoes. And we were, you know, Brooks that were, you know, they cost like $90. He didn't wear $50, you know, $500 shoes, right? They weren't $5,000. They were just shoes, you know, the guy looked like he came from Walmart. And in my culture, unfortunately, a lot of times we start to wear flashy stuff because I think it's covering up insecurities, right, that we kind of grew up with. Kids that grew up with money say that money doesn't matter.

Well, I get that because like money means different things to different people, right? I mean, to me it means independence. I don't, need to kiss up to anybody and follow anyone else's rules, do what they say. I do what I think is right for me. And other people—

That is a great place to be, I think.

And it took a long time, right?

I had a mentor from my church when I was young, Joe. Joe was awesome. He goes, Leo, because we were getting into his, he and his wife did very well and they lived in Scottsdale. And I remember looking up to him. And he, we were getting into his Navigator, brand new Lincoln Navigator. And he goes, look, Leo, he goes, I know money isn't everything, but if you got a problem that money can't fix, you got a big problem. He goes, I'm talking health, death. He goes, it can fix a lot of problems, man. You know, he's like, I'm not saying it's everything, but it sure does help. So I do believe in that philosophy.

Yeah. And what do you feel is your sales superpower or strongest characteristic?

So in general, if I had to have one superpower, it's— there's a movie where the X-Men— I don't know how much of a nerd you are. I'm a big nerd, right? So there's a movie where the X-Men— you're aware of it. I don't know how much you like, but the first 5 minutes, most of the X-Men are killed off by this machine that essentially adapts to everything that it's attacked with. So the Iceman attacks it and it adapts and can now use ice. the fire guy that taps him, he's like, oh, I now have the power of fire. Everything that is used against it, it just adapts and becomes better. So if I had a superpower, I can listen in and steal, right? I'm the world's greatest thief. You've heard that from every salesperson. Anything. If it works, I will do it. If you tell me standing on my left hand while I play, you know, the harmonica with my right and making phone calls works, I will find a way. I will become world-class at it. So I got a superpower. I'll steal anything from anyone that works as long as it works.

And I think that's kind of the antithesis of a know-it-all.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. In a positive way, not—

In a positive way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been called a know-it-all, but not maybe not such a positive light.

Well, when I think of a know-it-all, I think of somebody who you can't really discuss anything with. If anything goes wrong, it's always somebody else or something else's fault. They've never made a mistake in their life as opposed to a sponge or I don't know what that characteristic was, but that person who will adapt and augment their skills to fit the fight they're in.

You should not be the same salesperson year 1 and year 7.

Yeah.

You should not be using the same tools, saying the same things. Let's hope not, right? Let's hope you're getting better and adapting.

And how do you keep your game at this level in sales?

So I do believe that, and the idea of, I think it's been called iron sharpens iron, steel sharpens steel, right? Being around other great people. Yeah, it just, there's, I just listen to so many podcasts that they all kind of mesh now, you know, but one of them, I don't know if it's Stephen Dubner, right, from Freakonomics. I think it's his philosophy is nobody's smarter than all of us combined, right? Nobody's smarter than all of us combined. So, and I met very smart people, right? And I don't care how smart you are, there's still a group of people who will always be smarter than that. So how do you, how do I stay sharp? Be around myself with elite people like Tyler Witt is actually the reason I found you was Tyler Witt on LinkedIn.

He's probably a great—

He's a great buddy of mine. We work together at Zocdoc. He's incredible. And a group of people like that, you share ideas, you share philosophies, you tend to live close together. There are certain things that you kind of share. That being said, I do believe in diversity because one of your most recent guests spoke about the role of women in his career. I believe in that. I believe just different views. That's the same concept, right? Nobody's smarter than all of us combined. You get different views from different backgrounds. There's always something you never even thought of. Happens to me almost every day. I'm like, ah, I never in 1,000 years would have thought of that. And now I have insight into it and I'll adapt it to what I do.

Yeah. And is there a reason that you haven't gone into leadership or?

So I did go into leadership early in my career, Veracruz. That's how I moved up when I had my mentor. I became a big fish in a small pond and then I wanted to get into tech. And I don't know if you know this, tech doesn't care if you were the president of a small country, if you've ever done it, right? They're like, okay, good for you. Ecuador? Never heard of Ecuador, right? They're like, good luck, right? Until you get into tech and then do sales in tech, then you have to move up, right? So I've become a viable candidate a few times. It's a good benefit. I did get into leadership, a couple other roles I was gonna move into. It's been fun carrying a bag too. There's the advantage to doing both. I do believe that I'm fortunate enough to have the skill sets to do both well. There are sometimes people are really good managers and not great salespeople. They're solid, right? And sometimes people are really, you see this a lot, great salespeople are just not good coaches and not good leaders, right? It's the Michael Jordan effect, they call it.

Well, you know, plus the motives are so orthogonal.

Yep.

Because if you're motivated by winning and money and success, then you become a manager and all of a sudden you have to do that through people that you haven't built that skill yet. You tend to just drag them along with you as opposed to supporting them.

Very, I couldn't agree more. And then unfortunately, I've actually contemplated, I drew an outline with a couple of my cohorts for a book that I think would be really interesting. It's about how sales leadership has failed corporate America and has failed a lot of organizations because we have a tendency to promote salespeople into leadership when they won't necessarily have the underlying characteristics needed be successful in sales, right?

Right.

I don't know how good of how Bill Belichick can throw a football. I don't, right? I don't know if you watch football, but I don't, I'm pretty sure he's pretty terrible as a quarterback, but he's a pretty dang good coach, right? And I love me some Tom Brady. I don't know if he's a good coach yet. He might be, but he has yet to prove that, right? So just because you were a really good player won't always mean that you're a good coach or a good leader, right? And Actually, most of the time, you know what they say, if you want to lead people, you know, walk behind them. Salespeople tend to want to go front and this is me, I'm amazing, right? You know, so.

And what skill or capability that if you really improved and focused on would take your game to the next level?

Direct skill that would actually get me somewhere else.

Get you, I mean, because you obviously went into tech for a reason.

Yeah.

And I think I know the reason is, right? It's great opportunities, millions of jobs, you know, unstoppable future. Totally get it.

And I love tech. I grew up with it, right? Tech is secondary to me. I'm just a tech nerd as well, right? So it's a passion of mine. But what skill would I actually keep developing? I mean, I don't wanna harp on discovery and asking the right questions, but that's big. The other one is the ability to empathize. There's a great writer. I think he was the editor of Fortune, wrote Humans Are Underrated, or is that— it's one of his books anyway. One of his books, he talks about how artificial intelligence is gonna take a— this is before even ChatGPT and all the things that came forward. This is 4 or 5 years ago. He talked about how artificial intelligence is gonna slowly start to creep into white-collar jobs, not just blue-collar jobs. And as it starts to creep in, The thing that's gonna allow people like you and I to stay employed is the ability to empathize and connect human to human because a computer can't do it no matter how much you teach it.

Well, this is the dichotomy that I'm frustrated with. Why did we hire salespeople? Because we sell to people.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. And I would say if engineers could do it, then you wouldn't need, or if it sells itself, It's one of my favorite things. It sells itself. I was like, then why am I here? Right. Then why are you paying? Because I'm not cheap. Right? You're paying me a good chunk of money. Why? If it really sells itself, you know, I hate to make the joke, but you know what sells itself? Drugs, you know, cocaine, whatever, heroin. I, I'm joking. I mean, I'm not trying to make light of addiction, but that sells itself. Everything else, like software, it's not. Come on.

Come on. Well, let's face it. When we really want to make a significant change in our life and our business and the way we work, We need to talk it through with an expert. We don't go on Amazon and just gamble hoping that it shows up and it does what we think it does.

And then you buy the shirt and it's so small, you're like, what is it? Did I get bigger? Does somebody—

I mean, how many times is that? I'm a big Amazon guy and 1 out of 10 purchases, I open the box and I honestly say, did I order this?

Was I drunk? How drunk was I? You're like, when did I order? Saturday night, 2 in the morning. There it is.

Because it doesn't even look like what I thought it would look like.

Yeah.

And I try and blame Amazon, but then I get in and I go, well, that's what I ordered.

That's what I ordered. I believe in the philosophy where people say people love to buy stuff, they just hate to be sold to. And so as salespeople, we're not necessarily, we're not always How do I— this is a personal thing of mine. I am close friends with one of my best friends in the world's military intelligence, highly elite, incredible what he does, does not do sales. And he always goes, why'd you get into sales? He's like, you could have gone into— because I mean, this guy's literally like a war hero, a literal war hero. God bless him, right? Incredible stuff that he's done all over the world for America. And he— we're close friends with a handful of pretty elite guys, right? People that I think think at a high level. And I'm the only sales one, and they always sales guy, and they always go, why do you do sales? They always kind of belittle it. So then I always go, stop your train, stop everything. First of all, without salespeople, all your businesses would come to a grinding halt, just a dead stop, right? There's always the argument, well, without operations, I go, yeah, but we're coin operated. You put the coin in first and then it starts to operate. So first, where everyone's coin operated, right? Second of all, what their perception of sales is buy, sell, trade, you know, Glengarry, all that stuff. That's not real stuff. I tell them all the time, the stuff you've seen, we have to bet they're salespeople. Great salespeople just have conversations with another human being about what they care about and what they're trying to achieve, and then we give them the best advice we can possibly give them. And sometimes it correlates with our product. Yeah, I mean, I mean, maybe I'm simplifying here, right? But that's That has done wonders for me.

Yeah. And what do you think managers get wrong about great salespeople?

Fantastic question. But I mean, I hate to keep thinking of it. I think you've done this once or twice. You're like Joe Rogan, right? You've done this a couple of times.

A couple of times.

Well, a couple of times. Yeah. Yeah. You've been doing it a while, right? Let's hope so. If you weren't asking good questions, I'd be concerned. Okay. So what do sales managers get wrong about salespeople?

Great salespeople.

About good salespeople? I think one of the big— what was it? Great salespeople?

Well, I think they get mediocre salespeople pretty well. I don't think they understand.

Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. And it goes to what I was thinking of is you can't just pretend to work. So once your KPIs become so tied to pretending to do things, They've gone off the rails. You're with me? Like mediocre people are great at pretending. Yeah, stuff that looks good, and they're like, "I always do that," you know, kind of banging away, banging away. I used to make this joke right when we'd be in the office. You're banging away, boss. Bang away. Yeah, just you know really getting after it, and you're like, "Stop pretending to work and actually work." If you spent that much effort actually working, the results would be. Incredible. So sometimes what they get wrong is they go, well, with some great salespeople, they go, you don't look like you're doing that much compared to Billy over there who's just beating his head against the wall. You're like, yeah, well, Billy doesn't understand sales. He's harassing people. I'm actually doing something on behalf of the company, protecting our brand at the same time and allowing us to scale like a muscle, right? Instead of like a tumor. Right? A tumor is still cell growth, but that'll kill you. Mine is gonna make us stronger and be able to defend ourselves when we need it. So yeah, you, you hit a soft spot there. That, that is such a common thing with, with, uh, especially green sales managers.

And, and it's not just green. I see it so often today and it, it's ruining because the great ones get annoyed by that. And the mediocre ones, well, I know how to game the system.

So there it is. There it is. And then you know what happens? You know who gets promoted?

Yeah, the mediocre one.

Mediocre one who's been playing the— right here, boss. I'm working real hard, boss. You're gonna end there. And you're like, is she? Is he? You know, you're going— juggling chainsaws is not easy. We just, great sales reps, make it look easy. That doesn't mean it is. So just because it looks easy doesn't mean I'm not working really, really hard. I'm getting the results. It's just pretending to work hard is, is not, who's it helping?

And I think your muscle tumor analogy is really accurate there because one is building muscle and the other is creating a cancer.

That's gonna kill you sooner or later. And it is gonna kill you. It's gonna kill the organization. And there, there's this whole The reason I came up with that concept for that book that I'm actually working on, right? It's a work. I actually wrote another. I wrote a book called How to Date Out of Your League, which is funny. And it's and then if you see the photo, it's just me and my wife, and it literally the COVID It's great marketing. It just says, "This really is me. This really is my wife. Give me $4.99, and I'll tell you how I did it." It's brilliant. Self-published. But but but you know, I took the time to do it right. But anyways, the other concept that I'm trying to work on is. This cancer that is destroying all these companies in corporate America is allowing, and Steve Jobs called it the bozo effect, right? Allowing B players in the room. And then once, and oversimplifying, but once you allow a B player in the room, a B player will never hire an A player. A B player will only hire other B and Cs and mostly Cs and Ds because he or she wants to feel better. They're intimidated. It's a manifestation of their own insecurities. And nothing makes you more insecure than standing next to an elite A, and then they go, I am very short. It's like standing— me standing next to a 6'6 basketball team. I'm like, I am very short. I did not realize these men are gigantic, right? So you feel insecure. That's not me. I have an odd sense of confidence for a guy my height. But that's what creates issues within corporate America because then those B players keep promoting Cs and Ds and perpetuating it. And it tends to alienate a lot of A people. It's very frustrating. It creates a difficult work environment for A players. So it's, it's, it's, it's a concept that I'm working on that is kind of close, near and dear to my heart. So.

Cool.

Hey, this has been a fun conversation, Leo. Where can people go to connect and follow you and buy your book?

Right now, just on my LinkedIn. I will publish it. I will, I will promote it on my LinkedIn, Leo Lopez. And I, I work at Luna Care, Luna Health, right? So because I'm sure there's a lot of Leo Lopez's. I thought I was a unique person until I tried to get an email with Leo Lopez. There's 14 billion of us apparently on Earth. There's more people, more emails than people with Leo Lopez. But—

I love that metaphor of using the martial arts training as a way of becoming great at sales. Because I think too much or too many people today look at sales as a collection of tips and tricks and that somebody has the right collection of tips and tricks to be successful. Now, it's a lot more than that. It's process, it's strategy, it's empathy, it's mindset, it's skill set. There's a lot to it. It's a performance profession. That's not just my take on it. That's a fact. Argue it with me. See how many accountants you see in sales. It's performance. How well you do it. Anyone can kick. Anyone can punch. But can you punch and kick enough to defend yourself against an attacker? Very different, isn't it? Now, if you can have this mindset of evolution, of becoming better, of the practice, and that there is no perfection, and you do it so that when you are in that battle, although it's not really a battle in sales, but it feels kind of like that because Here's the thing about our psychology is that when we're under pressure, the part of our brain that gets turned on is fight or flight. And if it isn't conditioned enough to know how to get your limbs to move and react in the right way from all that repetition and practice, it'll do what it— it'll panic and it'll just start flailing. Have you ever seen those crazy, Fights on airlines or in fast food places or in grocery stores that you see on YouTube. People just flail. There's no process or strategy to it. They're just flying their arms and legs and pulling hair, trying to just defend and survive. I think that's the way a lot of people are selling today, is they get into a conversation and they hear something about, oh, we're real busy, can you call back in 6 months, or we have no budget, We don't have the budget. Or, we're all set with that, thank you. Now, we think of those things as objections. The problem is we pushed for them. We didn't build rapport. We didn't do any real alignment and understanding of what they're going through. This is what I teach in Start the Conversation and Get the Meeting. I teach people exactly how to think like a client. And how they like to converse, like normal people, not like sales rep-client. They didn't come into your store. You basically called into their store and you're trying to start a conversation. And we're so focused on the outcome that we forget about the process, the empathy, the understanding of what they're going through. And we get these— Gaslighting objections, some people call it. I call it you didn't create any curiosity, any interest. You're trying to hammer them. And here's what I'm learning. Salespeople don't listen. I post videos on this topic and they say, great video. And then they go on to say, well, you could have constructed a well-thought-out message. They don't care about your message until they ask. Until they ask, they don't want to hear your message. I know you've rehearsed it. You did all your kick practicing on your message instead of on your questions, instead of on how to build rapport with them, get them to warm up to you, to break the ice, to get them conversing with you like a human being, not like a prospect. Let's take your game to another level. Let's get— start that conversation. Get that meeting. And if you've got enough meetings, let's win that complex sale. You want to win it. You just don't want to participate in it. Everybody's really comfortable. And this is one of the contradictions in sales. And I think why we have so many know-it-alls in sales is when you're doing a performance profession, you're uncomfortable. You're always Outside the comfort zone. So what do we do? We move the comfort zone in and we don't take the actions that we should, and we just constantly look for how we already know this. So we'll map it to something that we know and we'll parrot it back, even though it's not at all what is really being said. And in the comments, I see all kinds of people saying what they know instead of what I said in the video. They're not arguing with me. They think they're agreeing with me, but their comment is completely orthogonal to what I said. They didn't get it. They didn't want to get it. That's the dangerous part. If you don't even want to get it, that's a know-it-all. A know-it-all is basically saying, I already know it and I Don't want to get it. I'm not saying I don't get it. I'm saying I do, but I don't want to. So I'll just say anything that sounds like a sales platitude that usually covers a lot of things. It's all about relationships. People sell to people. People buy from people. Now, if you're in sales to be successful, that's a very different thing. To become successful in sales, you've got to become better at sales. And how do you do that? Constructive practice. I'll give you a story. I've been running for the last couple of years. And last season, a good 6 months, I ran pretty hard, 3, 4 times, maybe 5 times a week. I didn't super push myself, but I had the same course, the same workout, the same routine. And each time I'd start my timer on my iPhone and I'd go and I'd come back. And what I noticed is I got only marginally better, just a couple of minutes on a long run, 7 miles. You know, a couple of minutes, that's a rounding error. You know, if I hit a stoplight or I had to wait for traffic to cross the street, that was the minute. My point here is I didn't do deliberate practice. I was doing just practice. I was just doing the action, like what we do in sales. We come to work every day. I wasn't viewing it as a performance. I was just viewing it as an activity. What I now need to do is deliberate practice on my speed. I need to do speed and strength work. And stride and stretching.

Sounds like a lot.

This is why I didn't do it, is my little brain was like, well, you like those nice long runs, turn on a podcast, drift off into space, come home. And it's still a good workout, but I wanted to get that, you know, runner stride, get my pace to the next level, because I remember that pace as a young kid. That's where the running is fun. It's when you really— what I call gazelle running. You know, I got these gazelle legs attached to me. I got the legs of a 6'7 person and I'm only 6'3. So I've got these— I got the equipment. It's just, you know, needs to be trained properly. And when I say deliberate, I mean focusing on what you need to improve. Measure it. Take a little reflection from it. Get on YouTube. Check out some stretches, some different approaches to it. You know, get a treadmill for the garage so if it's a rainy day you can do some speed work. You see where I'm going here? Go to b2brevenue.com. Do deliberate practice to get better at sales. Don't just go on the merry-go-round taking the same ride every day for the rest of your life and wondering Why am I not getting better? Because what you're going to do is start blaming other things. And that's the know-it-all answer to it, is that you don't want to get the answer. Trust me, you do want to get the answer because the only way to get rich in sales is to get better at sales. Everyone thinks it's a better company, better product, better territory. That does help. But do you have control over that? How many times can you hop companies and still blame the company or the manager? Feels good though, doesn't it? Go to b2brevenue.com right now. Schedule a call if you need to. If you don't, just sign up. Watch the videos. Let's get into it. It's the price of a lunch or a dinner once a month, but it is a payment plan. So it's, it's a 12-month commitment. It doesn't auto-renew or any, any of that stuff. It's Straight up for you, the 12-month payment plan. If you don't want to do that, pay up all at once. It's up to you. Expense it.

You're all set.

We'll see you next time.