HOW THIS REP TURNED THINGS AROUND TO BECOME GREAT IN B2B SALES

There's this interesting word that salespeople use for people that have dramatically affected their career, helped them out. And that word is not manager. It's not even leader. It's mentor. It comes up quite often. And what is a mentor? I think a mentor, instead of somebody who tells you what to do, shows you The right way. I think it's somebody who talks you through it, listens to you, understands what your motives and why do you think this is the thing to do, and helps you find out what the right thing to do. Have you look at it from the client's perspective, from the competitor's perspective, and come up with something that will work, will hopefully work. And this is something that I've learned through coaching salespeople is most of the time, there isn't a single right answer. We're guessing. Of course, we're guessing because we don't know what the future will hold. But we know, I hate to use the word best practices, but we know what's worked more often than not. We can ask ourselves the question, what do you think will happen if you do this? What do you think they will do? What do you think your competitor will do? This discussion, this debating the issues is insanely productive. It gets you thinking. It gets you projecting. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. This rep and leader found a mentor early in his career, and it really helps because once you go through that exercise, You can do it a little bit on your own. You can take a pad of paper or your smartphone or whatever you record things on and talk through the issues. What do you think will happen? It's insanely powerful. But before we get into it, make sure you're checking out our friends over at Covideo. Video email is crushing it. Are you trying it? Got to give it a shot. Uh, video and video email is breaking through. Some people are using it for the first one. Whatever works for you. If you've got the personality, if you've got the desire to connect with somebody and you want to push through the noise, try out video email. Covideo.com. Also, check out their content. They do excellent work on what makes a good video and teaches you how to make a good video without spending a lot of time on it. Doesn't take extra time.

Here we go. Hey Scott, thanks for joining us today. As a way of getting started, give us a little background on yourself.

Yeah, sure, Brian. Thanks for inviting me.

Um, been in sales well over 25 years. Uh, started as a manufacturer's rep, uh, then developed onto a distributor rep, uh, and, uh, now I'm a sales director.

Cool. What's that like? Are you leading people or—

Say again, I'm sorry.

Are you a manager?

That's what they say.

No one does what you say, though.

I'm a manager when the numbers are below where they should be, and I'm a sales rep when things are going good. So that's sort of how that works. I do direct a team of sales reps, 6 individuals, as well as I handle key accounts myself. So the company I'm with, and I've always had the same philosophy, we believe that In order to be a good director or manager, you need to keep your feet on the ground and you need to be out there. We're out there as much as our reps are out there and sort of, I guess, feeling the pulse of the street, so to speak.

Cool. In the invite, you said you'd be more than happy to share what you've learned. Let's get into that.

Sure.

Because you're in a tough space.

Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say last year was extraordinary for us. We're in a business that we luckily had a commodity that people needed. We, we sell things like disinfectants and hand sanitizer and PPE and things along that line. So we had more orders than we could fill. Now, yes, maybe a good problem, but at the same token, you know, you need to prioritize. You need to manage that as much as managing I guess prospecting and developing the sale. So it, it was difficult in a different way.

Cool.

And you started off as a manufacturer's rep, which, you know, for people who don't know what that is, it's a 1099 essential salesperson, no base salary typically.

No, actually I was just the opposite. As a manufacturer's rep, I represented the factory.

So I worked with distributors.

Meaning that I went out there and promoted just our products with distributors that may have handled many products, and it was my job to sort of make one of our products the front line versus the plethora of other ones that they had to offer.

And how did you do that? Because they want to view you as a commodity, right?

Right, right.

A big part of that, I think, is not unlike other sales. It was relationship-driven. When I dealt with a certain distributorship, I would— and let me regress a little bit. When I went into distributors, and I don't care who it was or what they sold, you had that range of sales rep that you had the top performers, you had the middle-of-the-road folks, and you had your poor performers. And it was probably what I did was I would identify the top performers and the middle-of-the-road folks and really work with them, develop a relationship with them, and support them. Not that I wouldn't support anybody that came to me, but, you know, you get to know where you're going to get more mileage.

That's smart. A lot of people don't do that, right? They go to people who are willing to talk with them versus the people that they want to talk to.

Correct, correct.

Yeah.

And again, too, you need to I guess, show the value of your product to the rep that's representing your line, not unlike showing the value of your product when you go to the end user or the customer. It's the same theory, I guess you could say.

What motivates you?

It's a combination of winning. It's a combination of success. It's a combination of reputation. I've been in this business long enough, and I'm still happy to say I'm one of the top performers in the company. I'm not at the point in my career where I sit back and go, I've done this long enough and I can just coast. I still like to, I hate to say it, I still like to try and beat the sales reps that work for me and not in a bad way, but in a competitive way.

Yeah.

I like to give them an example, I guess a live example of a leader that is still succeeding every day, every month, every year, and not just sitting back and resting on their laurels. And, you know, as a sales manager or a sales director, you're constantly preaching to your folks that, you know, don't rest even if you hit your quota numbers for the month, keep going, things along that line. And that's something that I like to live, not just preach.

And do you look for that in people you hire?

Absolutely. You know, again, the people we hire, I believe it's more what's in here than product knowledge. Anybody can learn product knowledge.

Yeah.

And you need the gumption inside, and you try and recognize that in people.

And how do you find that out? Do you look for competitive backgrounds? Do you look for just The emotional attachment to winning?

Yeah, that's a good question because obviously emotional attachment is way different than, you know, what's on a resume and what's on paper. You know, they're 2 different things and you can try and, I guess, background check or check references of anybody that comes across. But until you get into a real honest conversation with somebody and it takes 2 or 3 meetings. One interview doesn't do it.

Right.

You know, and I find that after 2 or 3 meetings, people start to loosen up a little bit. They start to talk to you just like a human to human, not, you know, boss to worker, not interviewer to interviewee. And you start recognizing little tidbits of what makes them who they are. And I believe after 2 or 3 meetings of some good in-depth conversation, Unless they're really good actors, you can tell, you know, sort of somewhat what they're, what they're made out of.

Yeah.

And but, but still, you're looking for that kind of competitiveness.

Yeah, I mean, you know, our, our business is, is the, the winners are the hunters, obviously. And, um, I owned a business in one of my previous lives, and I was the sales manager, the key account develop person, the, the purchasing agent, the accountant, pretty well everything. But my main role was to hunt for new business, and unfortunately I didn't have another hunter that worked with me at the time, but I had some great maintainers. So I was the guy that went out and hunted the new business and passed over that business to these maintainers. And being a maintainer is not a bad thing either if that's the type of territory you have. But it really, I guess, depends on what your goals are as a company. Are your goals to maintain your account base? And believe me, I've worked for those companies. I, I worked for a company that did not want to grow, um, which flabbergasted me. I actually brought in, uh, some really big automotive business that required a fair amount of work, but I knew that we could have attained it. But the ownership basically said, yeah, you know what, it's a little too big for us right now, we're, we're not interested.

And, and that blew me away.

But that— every company has their own direction, right?

And it has a culture. And I've had clients where they, they didn't pay commission And they were wondering why people weren't emotionally attached to winning.

Correct.

I mean, they're emotionally attached to keeping their job, yes, but not, not to growing.

Yep, yep.

As they're— commission or a bonus or whatever you want to call it, there has to be an incentive of some sort, you know. And, and again, I'm sure you've worked with companies that that have very strong incentives, meaning if you don't hit your quotas, you don't have your job. And that's a really strong incentive. But there are other companies, again, I'm sure you've encountered that their incentives are so, I guess, meek or mild that it's really not even worth going after.

True. And what you end up getting is people smiling and nodding, Kind of, yes. Oh, this— yes, whatever you say, boss. You're a genius, boss.

Exactly, exactly. Why, why should I, why should I work that extra 10 hours if I'm only going to get another half a percent? And, and, you know, otherwise I can go golfing on Friday and make the same amount of money, right?

Because I always had this analogy when people say, well, why should we pay commission? It's like, well, you realize, like, at the end of the quarter, someone's getting up at 4 in the morning to get a flight to be somewhere else at 10 in the morning to try and win a deal. Now, if they're not on commission, what time do they want to get up?

Yep.

They'll get up at 7:30. They'll call them.

Exactly.

Exactly. That's correct.

That's correct.

I mean, it's hard enough to weed out that type, even with commission, never mind not having a commission or an incentive program.

What else either helped you become great at sales or you've seen other people become great at sales?

I guess a few things. Number one, listening skills and learning when to shut up and listen and let the customer talk and take it in. I believe that's the biggest mistake of younger salespeople is they are so anxious and so stressed that they just want to regurgitate what they've learned about their product or about their company or who they're at, and they need to just back up, smell the roses a little bit, listen to their customer, and sort of take their direction. That was a big thing that I had to learn, you know, as a younger person developing in sales. I guess the other thing was my organizational skills. And, you know, meaning, um, it's the long-term planning and being proactive instead of reactive. Um, you know, so, so many, again, young salespeople or newer salespeople fall into that trap that they, you know, do the reports that are needed to be done on a daily basis or a weekly basis for your company, but there's really nothing beyond that. And they hit the street on Monday morning, not quite sure what they're going to do.

Yeah.

And they basically waste half a day or a day to figure out the rest of their week. And, you know, and that's the first hurdle. The second hurdle is, you know, are you in a seasonal business that maybe you need to start planning for a winter product run or a spring product run? Or are your customers in a seasonal business where their busy period is the summer or it's the winter or whatever the case is? And you need to recognize those trends and plan long-term for those trends and have a little bit of foresight.

I think that is critical because I don't think people really think beyond today or now.

Right, right.

I mean, again, that's the society we live in, unfortunately. And there are so many people, you're right, that don't look beyond this week or next week or their next paycheck or whatever the case is. But the other thing thing I probably learned during our pandemic last year was flexibility and willingness to change. You have to, again, not only recognize the trends, but go with the trends, be flexible that you can change, you know, your direction if need be, and adapt to it. And that's something that, again, a lot of new salespeople don't learn. They are taught a certain thing from either their, you know, their manager that they did orientation with or the coworkers that have done it for 15 years. And, you know, they're like, this is the way we've done it. This is the way you need to do it. This is what makes us successful. But sometimes you need to break that mold and go out into the real world and go, hey, you know, I'm having better success doing it this way. And, um, again, I guess that old, uh, saying, I'd rather ask for forgiveness than permission.

Well, that proactiveness is a rarity. And because, you know, we're— when we go through school and college, it's all reactive, you know, right? You show up at the time, you sit where you're told, you listen, you take notes, you study. You ask, what should I study?

Yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean, that's how we're raised. You're right. That's how we're taught and that's how our society is. And in many jobs outside of sales, we're pretty well told what to do, when to do it, how long to do it for, when to stop for a break, and then when to go back at it.

Yeah.

And, you know, as you know, sales is so flex— I guess sales has no parameters and You know, we, we could work 20 hours a day if we really wanted to, or we could work 3. And we need to be very self-disciplined in what we do and very self-aware, I guess you could say, of what we're doing and who we're dealing with and the times around us.

Right, because when you think about it, to be curious, that's a proactive thing.

Yes.

To memorize is reactive.

Correct, correct. Yes. I mean, yeah, the people that have that curious bug, so to speak, you're right, they were— they're the ones that will venture out into that dark forest and see what's out there. Well, the rest of us will be like, no, we're told not to go there. And it's not always a bad thing. Sometimes even making mistakes and learning from those mistakes is, is a very solid lesson that a lot of us just won't venture to do.

And your point about listening— listening is proactive, because the natural reactive is to talk. You feel the urge to say something, explain why your product is better, why it's more expensive, why it's worth it, instead of just Proactively designing some questions to get the other person talking.

Well, salespeople hate silence, don't they?

You have to proactively hold your tongue.

Yeah.

I mean, salespeople, I think, hate silence from themselves as much as they do from their customer.

Well, you know, every new person, well, how can I become great fast? I go, come up with 3 great curiosity questions And then learn how to say nothing.

That's a very good point. That's a very good point.

There's a point where there's a little bit of tension, enough that the other person talks.

Yes, yes, it makes them think, um, and, and not just regurgitate yes/no questions to you, or yes/no answers to you, I should say.

And what will end up happening is when you leave, that person will say, they were so informative.

Yes, and professional, don't forget that.

Yeah, and it's like they were reading my mind.

Yes, exactly, exactly. Yeah, and, and again, you know, trying not to be mechanical either. Talk to people like people, like, you know, you talk to a, a neighbor or talk to, you know, uh, somebody you see at the store. You know, it's— you need that comfort, that level of comfort that you're not grilling a customer. You're, you're talking to them, speaking to them, listening to them, hearing them, uh, processing that, and, and speaking back in a, in an intelligent way.

Because I've never found people not interested in sharing what they care about.

Can you expand on that? What do you mean by that?

Well, when you're talking about the other person, not about you and your product and the industry, when you're asking about, you know, what, what, what are you up against?

Right, right.

Yeah, you're trying to delve into their world.

Right. Because a lot, probably 1 out of 10 of those people pay somebody $200 an hour as a therapist because no one will listen to them.

I think we should lump ourselves in with therapists, bartenders, hairdressers, that whole lot. I think that's part of our job as well because it happens all too often.

Because one of the top professions that I found is hospitality and specifically bartender.

Yeah.

Got to be curious about what do they like, memorize it.

Right.

You don't say, hey, how was your day? You say, you want to watch the game or the news?

Right, right.

Yep, there's some great listening skills in a bartender. And on top of that, their memories are sharp. That fella walks in, that bartender has seen him before and knows that he wants a scotch on the rocks. That's what he's going to get. And as salespeople, same idea, we need to get to know our customer, what makes them tick, what, what their hot buttons, I guess you could say, are that makes them happy and pleasurable. And, and we need to remember those and, and keep, like you say, keep your ears open and your mouth shut sometimes.

And it's come— I've done a lot of research on bartenders. What the popular ones aren't the talkers, right? They're the listeners, right? Ask a question, dig into it, find out what you're doing this weekend. It's not the person who goes on and on and on and on. Those people don't usually—

aren't that popular.

No, no.

And, and again too, they let you do most of the talking and they do most of the listening and basically react on what you're saying to them and what you're telling them that you want or want to talk about.

And how did you develop these skills? Was it trial and error? It sounds like you might have had a process or a mentor or somebody, because you probably didn't come out of high school like this, right?

No, I joke, and I'll joke and I'll be serious. I joke and say I come from a very dysfunctional family, so it was my survival skills.

PTSD.

Yes. And seriously though, when I was young, I did have a very good mentor and he was a fellow that had a lot of corporate experience, was a great team builder, taught me a lot of team building skills, taught me a lot of people skills and really took me under his wing. I worked with him for a good 10 years and he groomed me. Actually, that was my first sales management job. He was a general manager of a distribution company and groomed me for that position. And he was fair but firm. He was very likable. He taught me a lot of really key skills, not just with customers, but with coworkers and with vendors. And he taught me that your customers always are not your most important people around you. That your vendors are key and they can make or break you and your coworkers, obviously the guy who's delivering the product that you need it to be there on time on a Friday afternoon. And he taught me how to take care of and communicate with and build relationships with all of those types of people, not just the customers.

And how did you know that what he was telling you was accurate versus what just worked for him?

I guess the results that he had shown in the past. He handled, again, he was a hands-on manager. He was not an armchair manager, I call it. And he handled some really major accounts. And just watching him move through these big accounts and manage these big accounts was, as a young person, almost awe-inspiring.

Yeah, and you emulated that, or you wanted to have that capability?

Well, it would—

he was great in a sense too that he would let me debate why he's doing what he's doing. And yes, yes, he let me challenge him. He let me challenge him.

And I think—

and yeah, and I was like, why are you doing this when you could be doing that? And he said, okay, If we do this, this, this, this, and this are gonna happen. If we do that, this, this, and this are gonna happen. And he even let me experience it in smaller scales, obviously that wouldn't let me damage any business to the company. So he was a hands-on leader that, again, led by letting people try things hands-on, not just telling you this is what you need to do, Because I know it. That was, you know, just, I think, invaluable experience.

Well, that is proactivity, the idea of saying, if we do this, what do you think will happen?

Right, right, exactly.

People are like, well, let's just call the CEO or do this or cut the price or something else. Okay, if we did that, Hypothetically, what do you think would happen?

Right.

And why?

Right, right.

Because he's, he's probably seen the movie 10, 15 years longer than you've seen it, right?

Yes, exactly. He's played chess one too many times and, and he knows the moves.

Yeah, I have a chess coach and that's the question he asks is like, well, what do you think I'm gonna do now and why?

Right. Right.

You always, you always need to look 3, 4, or 5 steps ahead, right?

Yeah. And, oh, well, let's see what happens is not a good strategy.

No, it's not.

That's the opposite of a strategy.

Yeah, exactly.

And, and when you kind of say, well, we've got, you know, let's say 3 options, what do you think is going to end up getting us closer to the deal?

Right.

And, and what is going to be the best deal for both the customer and the company? And, and where is that win-win situation that we need?

Now, a bad manager would have just either hammered you, say, oh, that's not going to work. But then you're like, well, why not?

You're—

that's what you're thinking, but you don't debate it.

Right, right.

You respect the position. But at the same token, like you said, a good manager is going to give some freedoms and some latitudes to, to their people and let them experience both good and bad experiences for themselves.

Because nobody's either right or wrong, because you'd have to play the game out to see.

Right, right. Good point.

But, but the, you know, the unemotional debating, the discussion The sharing experiences is critical.

Oh, it is. Absolutely, it is.

And when you talk to people who have that skill, that foresight, they usually got it early at the dinner table with their parents and stuff, where there was debating on current social, political, sports topics. It gets people to think like other people.

That's true. Yeah, correct. Yeah, that's sort of a well, I guess, well-balanced, um, you know, type of family atmosphere that you're right, that would, that would challenge you in a healthy way.

Yeah. And are you able to do that with your reps today?

Yeah, that's— I, I actually have a great following. I, I'm a regional sales director, so I, I direct basically half of the state, and there's another, uh, fellow that does the other half of the state, and My reps do not want to transfer out of my half of the state. They, they like our team, and I make sure that we keep a team atmosphere. We do more than, you know, just strategizing sales and doing things. We have, you know, little Friday afternoon barbecues sometimes at work that, that we bring the whole branch into. You know, we do a lot of personal support with each other. You know, somebody's car breaks down, hey, I'll pick you up at the mechanics tomorrow morning and drive you into the office. Um, we, we really act as a team, a cohesive team, not, not just in sales but even outside of sales.

Yeah, because I always tell people the best experts about selling what you're selling is that all those people in that room. If you could just take the best attributes of all of them Well, yeah, yeah.

And, you know, like I mentioned before, this mentor of mine, you know, taught me that your customer is not the number one on your list of people that you're dealing with. Your team members are your family and they're the people you're dealing with and they're the people you take care of and those people also take care of you.

Yeah.

And without that team, I guess, approach or that team spirit or team atmosphere. It can be a very lonely world that we live in, as, as you know, as a sales rep.

Right, because the competition doesn't— isn't the competition out in the marketplace, it's the competition next to you in the office. And, and that turns— that's the wrong game to play.

Correct, correct. I mean, yeah, you, you, you— I've seen those offices, as I'm sure you have, that You know, the reps are in competition with each other and they won't tell— help out each other. They won't tell them, hey, this worked for me, or that worked for me. They're like, no, I'm keeping this to myself. This is, this is my thing. And yeah, that's, that's a very unhealthy atmosphere.

Cool.

Hey Scott, I appreciate your time today. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

Um, my LinkedIn profile, scottbland@linkedin.com.

KSS Enterprises, sbland@kssenterprises.com.

So how do you find these mentors? Now, they can be participating in some level of your career, but they can just get you to think differently, think of things from different perspectives, push you, but that requires a little bit more interaction. I think that you have to be the new smart today. And I talked about this a little bit last week and on some videos on LinkedIn. The new smart is since all the information's out there that you no longer need access to the building. The books are everywhere. The information is everywhere. Now, is it curated in the process that you want? Probably not. So the new smart, are people who can seek out that information. Don't ask for links, go search. Watch, listen, join courses, hire coaches because they're at the cost 1/1,000th of a college degree. And it's not about cost. It's about effectiveness. And how do you get that level of achievement? The days of proof being a degree, I think, are over. Yes, it's always going to be on the website. It will be 100 years from now. But hiring managers want skill and talent. Now, we think of talent as innate. Skill, though, has to be developed, and you have to be able to show it. And that's where you want to be. You want to develop that sales skill. Do not get stuck in the product trap where it's all about the product or only about the relationship. Relationship's important, but it's not only a relationship. It's not just the economics. The economics are important, but it's not the only thing. It's not presenting or being a great personality and likable. Those are all important. Gotta have them. But you gotta have the whole package. And you got to understand the game that you're playing. I'd say less than 1/10 of 1% of the salespeople I talk to can describe their game. Meaning, how does their sale go down? What's the first step? What's the second step? What happens here? Where does it get stuck? How do you prevent that? What happens when they go radio silent? Why are they going radio silent? How do you get the technical win? How do you get them to be able to convey this to the people above them? Okay, everyone's playing the reactive game. If this happens, what do I do? Well, if that happens, you're stuck. The deal's dead. Can it be resurrected? Yeah, yeah, 1 out of 100, 1 out of 50 times, maybe, possibly. But is that the skill you want to develop, or is it you want the skill to prevent it? To get your close rate up into the 80% rate instead of the 20% rate, get your income A little doubling maybe? Or how about even 10%? Wouldn't that be great? 10%? How about 20%? Now, how about if this compounded over the remainder of your career? And think of the retirement, the lifestyle that you'd lead. Nah, Brian, I don't want all that. Check out the courses at b2brevenue.com. It's one way to add mentoring. Yesterday, we had this great office hours where Everybody was chiming in, trying to help this rep over a very particular problem at a startup. They haven't even proved that people will pay for this product yet. But we're trying to really develop a process to get people to pay for it. And it has some of the classic issues, some of the issues I always ran into. Is there one way of doing it?

No.

Because even when you describe that way, that way has so many ways of being implemented.

This—

they call it the complex sale for a good reason. It's complex. Let's simplify it. Let's break it down. Let's make it something that's manageable and understandable and something that you can think through. b2brevenue.com. Sign up today. Every day you wait, it's going to cost you money.

Money.

Here's some excerpts from a one-on-one that I did with one of the students in Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting course. Now, this person really embraced the course after a while. It took a couple of one-on-ones for him to try each step. He kind of fought it, tried to make it work within his current model. And that really didn't have this type of success. And then after he started, he started to get meetings. He started to get conversations. He started to get all the things that I was telling him about. And he started to get excited about it. He started to see the results that I tell you about where his week was full of meetings. Now, I'll let you hear this out. I deleted out kind of the specifics of the steps and the tools and the approach, but they're all in the course. If you're already in it, please listen to the full one-on-ones. When you hear the success that people are having, it's not just the steps. It's the matching of the steps with the appropriate actions and pacing And then you get people asking to talk with you, which is the goal, which is the fun. So let's listen to it and I'll sum it up at the end and give you kind of an idea and recommendation if you want to take advantage of this.

And it's crazy. This week, this week I'm full of meetings. I was like, what's happening? And like, I, what I did was I baked in like, I just, I'm very generic, and people are like, oh, like, like, tell me more about you. Like, immediately, I have like 3, 4 meetings. Like, I already had 2 this, and, and based on the, on the, on the parameters that you suggested for me, like, oh, go after these bigger companies, X amount of employees. So then By the time I'm talking to them, I already know that, okay, they typically have budget. I mean, assuming LinkedIn is correct with the employee size, some of it was off, but it's like, okay, there's still like a deal. It can still happen. And, but yeah, I was like, whoa, this is— I limited to like 30 connections a day. So then that way it's not like, it doesn't go crazy. Cause I remember one of the reps, So doing about 30 a day, like I said, like this week, like 4 or 5 meetings. And they're good meetings, and it's just conversations, like I say. It's not about pitching, but it's about working them up to that point where it's like, okay, yeah, we do need to advertise.

So after teaching this for quite a while, here's the steps that you should take. Take the course once quickly through it. Find both one-on-ones and office hours that speak to the persona that you want to talk with, whether it be the CEO, the CMO, CRO, developer, marketer, whoever it is that you want to talk to. Because we break it down in gory detail. We break down the persona and what they care about. And then try each step. Try it with your friends. Try it with your coworkers. And start to see the results. Now, most people will fight me on it. They'll spend the first month, 2 months trying to make the system fit into their pitchy email and cold calls. And it works a little better. But it works a whole lot better when you apply it because each step and each pause in between each step has been designed over time to be very effective. And then when you start to see the results, all of a sudden people are replying, people are asking you, people are wanting to talk with you, want to understand what you do. It's almost turning cold outbound into warm inbound. Now, are they in market? No, no, they're not. But they're a little curious. And it's up to us. And I show you in the course, how do you build off of that? Instead of us telling everybody how great we are and hoping they can understand why they need And instead of them arguing about why they don't need us, because until you have active pain, everyone's in denial. Think about going to the doctor. Okay, you kind of know you need an operation, but you're like, can I get a prescription? And the doctor's like, he has to ease you, or she has to ease you into the process. Well, let's take an x-ray. Let's see what we're working with here.

Oh, can I—

how about just a shot? Can I just get a shot till the next time I come in? Then he flips the x-ray up on the light and he points to something. He goes, that's what we're dealing with. That doesn't heal on its own. You have to have surgery for that. He has to build up to that. Until we build up that latent pain into active pain and properly diagnose it, And get people to think about what happens if they don't have that operation, they're going to avoid it at all costs. That's why the cold pitch doesn't work. You're just igniting the denial. You're not igniting interest or curiosity. It's just denial. So check out the course. Start the conversation. Get the meeting. It's all at b2brevenue.com. There's an overview video in the show notes on my YouTube channel and on my LinkedIn profile, pretty much everywhere I am, as well as the website b2brevenue.com. Check it out if this is what you need. You know, this student, zero sales experience, but really, you know, just gobbled up this. And The people who gobble it up the fastest and the best are people who try it and get success. It has nothing to do with knowledge. It's like learning how to do a sit-up doesn't give you a 6-pack. You have to do the sit-ups. They're not fun at first, but then you get used to them and you start to like appreciating them. And then you start to get the connection between how you look and what you do. And so you start doing The things that make you look better. This is what we have. It's not just knowledge. It is applying it, taking feedback, polishing it up, and applying the system to your clients.