HOW TO BUILD AN A-PLAYER MINDSET IN B2B SALES

In sales, we have challenges now, don't we? We have obstacles, both internal with the company and our customers, as well as ourselves. That's what we're going to be talking about today is how do you take these challenges and either ignore them or have them fuel our drive, our motivation, our determination, our resilience, our grit. A lot of us tend to do the opposite, and that's a big mistake because we all have them. You might be too old, you might be too young, you might be this or that, whatever it is. And I hear them all the time. And if you focus on them, they become bigger, not smaller. What we have to do is decide what we want And use everything that we have and don't have to drive us towards our goal. Now, I don't talk much about this on the podcast. I'm much more about strategy and process, attributes and skills to develop. And this kind of fits into it, but you also got to say, Wow, this guest today really had to overcome quite a bit. And instead of it being the reason not to do it, it became the reason to do it. And ask yourself, what am I putting in my own way? I hear it all the time. And it's not only in your way, but you're building it up instead of finding a way either around it and ignore it or have it drive you.

Have it—

you prove other people wrong. It's up to you. This mindset that we have needs to be developed Every day, almost all day, because as soon as we let one little thought of weakness, excuse, rationalization, false belief, or superstition to get into our head, it just expands and expands and expands because our little mammal brain just wants to survive. It doesn't really need to thrive. It just needs sleep, food, basic needs. It's that prefrontal cortex that says, no, I want to live my life. This is the one chance I've got. I want to make the best of it. And I know I've got obstacles. I see them. I can't avoid them. I hear them all day, but I'm not going to let them stop me. So I think you'll get a lot out of this episode. It's much more on the mindset, determination, and grit side than it is on the pure skill side. But the skills are there too. The skills to get into the most difficult of sales situations. With clients who are better educated, wealthier, higher status. They don't need us. They don't think they need us until they meet us. Hey, I just made that up on a whim. Hey, Johnny, thanks for joining us today.

As a way of getting started, give us a little background on yourself.

Yeah, Brian, thanks for having me. I mean, I've been in the medical industry my whole life. I was born with a hip disease like Perthes disease. And so, when people say, how long have you been in the medical industry, I can say my whole life. And so I had braces on my legs from kindergarten to 3rd grade, like Forrest Gump. And so I tried to run really fast. The braces never came off, unfortunately. But no, it kind of like set the mood for me to always never give up and make sure that like I never took no for an answer, right? It was just my next way to get to the next yes. And so, and then throughout the years I played football, college football, tried to play, just didn't work well with my hips. And so then served a church mission in Finland and it just destroyed my hip cartilage. Negative 40-degree weather, walking on cobblestone streets. It was rough.

I bet.

Then I came back and I got a first hip replacement called a PAO or periacetabular osteotomy, and it failed after 18 months. And so then I had to go back and get another hip replacement in the left hip, but the surgeon fractured my femur putting in the stem. So I was walking on a broken hip for about 9 months. Finally went to another surgeon in New York City. He said, your femur is lit like a Christmas tree in the MRI scan. He's like, we got to revise it. So within 4 years, I had 3 hip replacements and was in the industry now. So I'm selling for the industry, working and selling medical devices, selling hips and knees. And so it's kind of like full circle. I started off having hip issues as a child. Now I was a patient, and then I get to sell it and market it. So kind of that's my little— background history and how I got into medical.

And for the people who are only listening to the audio, you're what, 75, 80?

Yeah, I'm super old actually. No, I'm actually in my 30s, so I'm in my early 30s.

I was just trying to clarify that for the audience. They may not know.

I got a little bit more energy than a 75-year-old. Boy.

So I, I gotta imagine I know the harassment I got in school just being me. Yeah. But, you know, wearing braces, it must have been brutal.

I mean, it was tough, man. I mean, I got called Penguin Boy. I got so many different things, right? And then even one day, like, my mom tried to put them underneath my jeans so then people wouldn't see it or notice it, but it hurt. So I was like, Mom, it hurts. Like, I'm good. I don't need to hide it. Like, I'm okay. So I'm like confident in myself and like, of course, like sticks and stones will hurt and all that stuff. But like, I felt like I can own it and I got to be Forrest Gump. And Forrest Gump kind of broke out of it and played football at Alabama and just became a success story. And so I always had that back of my mind that I was always going to have a positive mental attitude about it.

And because that's it, because something like that either breaks people or makes them.

Yeah, there's not much in the middle there, is there?

There's not. And it's crazy because it actually made me who I am today. Because I could be super depressed, I could be super sad, I could be 300, 400— I mean, just the sky's the limit of how I could look. But I took this as an advantage where this wasn't going to break me, this was actually going to make me. And then I'd be able to work out and have that strength and the energy and be able to help people. So I tell my story on social media all the time. And people are like, thank you so much. I didn't think anybody else has gone through this and I'm so glad for your story.

So— And why sales?

Man, I have the gift of gab. I love to talk. I mean, if I wasn't going to be in sales, I was going to probably have to be a lawyer or something. But no, I just love being able to get like create an opportunity where somebody actually doesn't want something, but they actually at the end of it, they're going to buy it from you, right? Because you've sold them in a way where they have to have it. Or you— I love having no. I love getting told no, like I said earlier, because it gets me that much closer to the yes and gets me that much closer to get to know that person. And I have a gift to be able to read people and their tones and like I can match their tones and be like, okay, listen, find common ground. I found common ground with this person. So in college, I knocked door to door selling security systems and I would open— they would open the door and I'd hurry and peek through to try to find anything that I could find common ground with. Oh, you're a Broncos fan? I love sports. Let me tell you, I put quarterback, you know what I mean? And so I love being able to be relatable.

And there seems to be a high correlation between the people who go through that mission process and then go into sales because the call reluctance is gone.

Oh yeah.

I mean, knocking on someone's door, I mean, I was knocking on people's doors.

In a foreign country.

Right. That's what I was gonna say. In Finland, am I supposed to speak Finnish to somebody? I mean, I said one day I knocked on the door and I said like, Saammeeko sulle sisään? Like, can I come in? But I said, saammeeko? So basically I said, I'm gonna kill you if I come in. But then like after that, like it was easy. And so like I could come back and knock on people's door all day long because I got told no every single day knocking on doors in Finland. And so I'm like, but now I get to sell a product and get behind it and be able to make a little bit of money instead.

Yeah. And you chose medical because You had domain experience.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's— I mean, I could have gone into any sales just because anything's passion, right? Passion is sales. And but I had a passion for it because of my hips, and I wanted to sell product that I believed in that could actually help people along the way, just like it helped me. Because I wish I would have known things 12 years ago as a patient that I know now as a sales rep, right? And so it plays to my benefit that I can help family members and friends, like, hey, let me help you. I know it, I've sold it. Here's the right product.

But when you're going, because you're selling to physicians, right?

Doctors. Doctors, hospitals. Yep, absolutely. Okay.

So how do you go from door-to-door security mission work to selling to doctors?

Yeah, I mean, it's a big transition because, I mean, doctors are very smart. They've done a lot of schooling.

Really smart.

And they also have like—

Well, they're not waiting for a sales rep to come in.

No, they're not at all because they've learned in fellowship, they've been trained on one product. If it's not broke, don't fix it, right? And so this is how I got in. I mean, I got in and I started sitting at the hospitals waiting for reps to make mistakes, and I started bird-dogging accounts and making sure like, hey doc, I have actually the set here waiting for you. Do you want to try my stuff? Like, I would build that kind of rapport and make sure that they can rely on me because you're not going to just go knock on some physician's doctor's office and say, hey, I've got a product for you, let me show you. But you have to build that rapport, know like, hey, I'll be there for the hard times and the good times. And so that's how I started getting in and Talking to doctors, meeting them at scrub sinks. Hey, passing by, I saw that you have a hard, difficult case. I've never seen that before. Could you kind of give me an idea of what you're going to plan on using? And so then I go write it down, and then if another doctor has that, I'm like, hey doc, I got a solution for you. Let me tell you how I know. And so it's just like, that's how I started to build it. You build that rapport at the scrub sink, at lunch in the hospital cafeteria. I mean, you're never going to go in and get a surgeon to switch just on the first day of knocking.

Would you like to see a demo?

Exactly. 100%. I mean, those days are way gone.

And why do so many people fail in medical sales? Because it's a big, broad field. It's really hard. I've never done it. I got to imagine it's pretty hard.

Yeah, no, it's difficult. It's very difficult. You have to have that passion, that desire, because that first 18 months, it's a grind. You are an associate, you are basically getting beaten down. You have to go in and reset all the instrument trays, you have to go do every— all the grunt work, case planning, All this stuff, and you're not getting really the commissions that the senior rep is getting. You're just getting that base salary. And so with— if you can make it past those 18 months and get that solid grounding and solid training, and you have a great senior rep, the sky's the limit after that. Because you're learning all the technical basic things, and you're learning how to be able to be technical. Because medical sales is so different than SaaS, than any other industry, because within SaaS You have a person that's gonna find the account for you, then you have someone that's gonna close it, and then you have an account manager to pass it on onboarding, and then you have an account executive to manage it all. With medical, you have to go find the doctor, you have to train 'em on the product, you have to be in the OR and be technically sound to walk 'em through it, and then you have to do the follow-up cases. And so it's like all-encompassing in one. So it's a lot and it's a burnout if you don't have that passion or that desire for the medical industry.

Yeah, because the medical reps that I have talked to either came out of like nursing, or they didn't really have any other— they just fell into it.

Yeah.

But the nurses, they did really well.

Oh, yeah. I feel like nurses, scrub techs do really a phenomenal job. People that have played sports because they have the team camaraderie, because it is a team building, you have to make sure the whole hospital is on board everywhere from the janitor To the surgeon, to the hospital administrator. Everybody has to be on board. And then also people in the military, because it was very regimented. I think they do a really good job because you have to have case numbers. You have to know when cases are going to start. You have to be early. You have to be— you have to stay late. You have to continue it. Because some days, I mean, when I was full on into the rep and said I moved on, I was in the hospital for 48 hours straight covering trauma cases. Like, I slept in the bed in the hospital. Like, it was— it's fun. I like that stuff, but not a lot of people can handle that and do that.

Yeah. And where's all this energy come from, man? I—

they call me the Energizer Bunny. I mean, I've got my Smiling Johnny Ferro is my nickname. I mean, I just have a passion. I just have a passion for life, and I just want to succeed, right? And I want people to succeed with me. And so that's why I built such a great following on LinkedIn and all this stuff, because I believe LinkedIn is such a huge network to bring people along. And Instagram is like, look at me, look at me, look what I'm eating or look where I'm traveling to. But I feel like I just have a passion to help people. And then I get to wake up every day and be able to help somebody or help the surgeon help somebody or help a hospital member. It just gives me so much energy that I'm helping people and that my field of work is actually making healthcare better in a sense. Yeah.

And I got to imagine, you know, how do you get access internally to a hospital?

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's hard. I mean, you have to be able to make sure that you have a surgeon champion, right? Because you have contracts at so many different hospitals. So you have to work with your contract team. And you have to be able to make sure that your product is on contract. Then also, you have to work through the, their hospital contract system where we have rep vendor systems where you have to go in and pay like $1,000 to be a vendor rep. to go into their hospital to cover a case. I mean, and then you also have to pay for scrubs sometimes. And so it's like, it becomes a lot to even walk into a hospital. And then the people in Manhattan, they have to pay for going across the bridge if they don't live in the city, then they have to pay for $64 parking a day. Like, you have to get access. I mean, you have to have that drive because it's going to be expensive to even walk into the hospital, right? But you have a teamwork that's going to have national contracts. You're going to have your own self boots on the ground to be able to get in there. And then if surgeon champions say, hey, I want to use Johnny's product, let him into the hospital.

And how about as far as like the product depth and breadth? Because you're selling to, you know, probably the brightest people around, right? Went to school for 70,000 years and then they went through and then you get, you know, Johnny Big Smile comes in and tells you, oh, you get— there's a smarter way of doing it.

Yeah, exactly. No, so I always like to try to bring the walls down. So I have a persona. I don't know if you've seen the movie Point Break. So Johnny Utah. So I come in, I'm like, hey, I'm Johnny, I'm from Utah, just call me Johnny Utah. So then the whole mood just kind of goes down, right? Because everybody can relate to Point Break.

Break the ice.

Yeah, break the ice. And so then like there's so many products in depth that like surgeon companies have that we have. Like there's so many different hip designs, there's so many different knee designs. And so you gotta be able to do your research before you go in here and I'm like, okay, this surgeon A has an ML taper type style of stem. So you only pitch him that kind of style of stem. Or this surgeon has this type of knee. You only talk like, you're not gonna sell him oranges if he likes apples, right? And so, but there's always new and innovative product that comes out that people want to try. And so that's how you have to find is their hot buttons. Like what makes them happy? Do you want robotics? Okay, cool, we can make this a surgical smart case instead of just you using it manually. And so you just got to find those hot buttons and what they've trained on in fellowship and then go in there and don't pitch them something that they would never use.

Yeah. And how about if they— when you get the pushback because they're used to doing it a certain way and you're, you're selling change?

And you will. And that's the thing is like a life cycle of a sale for an orthopedic surgeon, for an ortho rep is about 12 months to 14 months if you can be able to continue it, because you're going in there and you're setting up, you're setting up lunches, and then you're showing him the product and instruments, and then you're going in there and then, all right, doc, we have sawbones, you can practice on the sawbones.

Cool.

Then the next month later or 2 months later because he goes on vacation, all right, I scheduled a cadaver lab, we can go practice on a cadaver so you can feel comfortable. And then you wait 2 to 3 months for him to even try one, or he forgets about it. So you have to be able to be like bird-dogging, like I was there. And then he just sees you at the hospital. He's like, all right, Johnny, you've been here, you've trained me up, you've done all this stuff. Let's just try it. Like, the guy's not here, your other rep's not here, he missed out. And then either one or two things are happening. The case is gonna go really well or really bad, right? And so you always hope that you trained him enough to be able to make it good, because then, then that's when they'll start switching. And then they're not gonna give you everything, right? Because some surgeons do 500 to 1,000 cases a year. Maybe they'll give you one a week, maybe they'll give you 2 a week, right? And then you start building up that rapport and then everything's good and then you got the cases. But then you got to make sure that you're not the rep that misses. And so the next one's up.

And has that happened?

And what causes that? Just a better salesperson or bad experience?

Oh, it has happened a lot. I mean, bad experience, right? I mean, you give a surgeon a left knee for a right knee, a left component for a right, or you give them a cement list with cement and you cement it like There's always things that happen, but like also you start building your business in your territory and you have to go cover the new doctor that you sold and you leave the old doctor hanging and he doesn't have a rep in his room. And then he'll be like, all right, I need a rep because I need to ask questions. Because a lot of people don't understand, like there's a sales rep in almost every OR, right?

Yeah.

And they know more about the product than the surgeon does. And so they should. And so when a surgeon turns around and says, hey, I'm tight in flexion, what do I need to do? Hey, Doc, cut 2 more millimeters off the tibia to be able to reach this size. Right. And that's what reps do. We give advice, we help out. I mean, of course the surgeon knows it all, but we're just helping with our product. And so that's, that's what happens is when you, when you are not at cases, you miss those.

That's a great point because I think a lot of reps, you know, think just because they're selling to somebody who might be a better education, more experience, broader experience, That, that your opinion isn't valuable.

Yeah, it's true.

It's very valuable.

It's extremely valuable because I've bailed out a lot of surgeons in a lot of cases over the years. I'm like, hey, don't do that cut right here. And he's like, thank you so much. I appreciate it. I wouldn't have seen that. Or I come— sometimes they're so tunnel vision that sometimes they don't see different perspective. And I can hurry and look on the X-ray and be like, okay, hey, listen, we don't want to cut here. We got to move over to centimeters over to the TFL. Thanks, Johnny, I appreciate that. Right, so we're an asset in the room, and a lot of people just think we're box openers, that we open the product and he— so here you go, Doc.

Business card shufflers, right?

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Well, how did you learn all of that?

Yeah, so I mean, the margins, all the technical stuff. Yeah, I mean, it's hard. I didn't go through school going through my pre-med. I didn't do any of that. I went for business management. I mean, just like a lot of people. And so I mean, they put you right into the job. So I started off the company with Stryker Orthopedics and I was a full-line rep. So doing trauma, total joints, knee and shoulders and hips. And so for the first 3, 4 months, I'm just with my senior rep every day covering cases, just being in the cases, being there, learning it, trying to write things down, doing all this stuff. And then they sent me out to, uh, school, sales school 101 and 201, back to Stryker corporate. And then I had to learn more stuff and You had to take a test once you got there, and if you didn't get an 85% once you walked in, you got sent home. Like, done. You don't have a job. Yeah, like, it's intense. And so, like, you got to make sure you know your stuff technically. And so then once you go out and do your training at Stryker, you go back into your field, and then you feel like you're on top of the world. You can cover every case. And then you get that phone call Friday morning, your senior rep, hey Johnny, I'm not going to be able to be there. You need to cover these 6 cases by yourself. I'm like, What? What? So I'm drinking out of a fire hose because I was being cocky, like, oh yeah, I could do this, I could do this. But I always had my senior rep there. And so I learned. I made mistakes those first 2 knees, but then the next 4 knees, I never had that same mistake again. And I learned trial by fire. And that's how I truly learned it. Just like how I learned Finnish in Finland, right? I just trialed, trialed, trialed. And someone speak English back to me, I'd speak Finnish back. I wouldn't speak English.

Yeah.

And why do so many people fail in medical sales? It seems to have a high turnover.

I mean, it's— you get burnt out. I mean, it is a burnout job. I mean, you are working almost 24/7 in a sense. You're— if you're on call, if you're on call with the surgeon— one of my buddies takes 18 days of call, and so his rep is going to take 18 days of call with him. And so then, like, They're gonna make good money, but they're gonna get burnt out. And if you don't have a good work-life balance already set up and you're just gonna go dive right into all medical, it's not gonna work. It's not gonna go well for you. I mean, I have a good work-life balance, but like at the same time, I travel almost weekly. And so it's like, how do I make sure that I find personal time for myself? But like the medical, for, like I said, your component, you're all 4 things. You're onboarding, you're selling, you're training, you're technical, and you're keeping the account. All the other industries, they only have really one, one aspect of sell, right? And so that's why people get burnt out.

Yeah. And who, who does really well in medical sales?

Like what industry or like what personality? Sales reps crush it, right?

Well, I don't mean financially. I mean, okay, well, I do kind of as the outcome, but who is able to survive a long period of time in medical sales?

Yeah, I mean, it's the type A personality, right? It's the people that are go-getter, the hungry, I mean, the energetic people with a smile on their face, ready to get kicked in the face and they're okay with it, right? Because you're going to get a lot of nos and you're going to get a lot of downs. But like, it's the people that are always going to fight back, that's going to fall, but they can fall forward and they can get back up. I mean, you know how many times I've failed within the medical field or I've done something wrong or I made a mistake, but I've never made the same mistake I've learned from my mistakes. So people that can learn, that are adaptable, that are quick on their feet, that can be able to, I mean, get things done and accomplished, activate. You have to be an activator. You can't just wait for things to sit back and wait to come to you. You have to be knocking on the door. You have to be able to have that go-getter mentality.

Yeah. And what advice would you give to somebody who is considering it?

Do it. I mean, come in. I mean, it's it's a fun, fun industry and it's really rewarding. I mean, the money is phenomenal. They get— you get paid really well, but at the same time, you're also making a difference. And I'm not saying other industries do, but like, you truly get to make a difference and see the outcome. Maybe you'll see the 6-week follow-up with that patient come back and say, thank you so much, doc. Like, I've never been in a better spot in my whole entire life. No pain, no nothing. And so I feel like you should do it.

Go after it.

Go find something that's passionate. Like, That I found a passion and a drive for me. So find that for yourself.

And I gotta believe that most complain about how hard it is to get in front of doctors.

Yeah.

Is that the number one problem?

Yeah, the number one problem is definitely getting in front of doctors, but I don't believe that's the case anymore 'cause LinkedIn has now had over, I don't even know this, there's 30,000 orthopedic surgeons in the world, right?

Yeah.

And so there's about 4 or 5 or 6,000 surgeons on LinkedIn now. If you start creating a presence for yourself and a personal brand, they're going to start trusting who you are and like, I probably want to work with this guy. So instead of trying to get office appointments, start doing posts on LinkedIn, start trying to do different ways of selling because it's a brand new thing and surgeons are trying to come on to the social platform. So it's, it's kind of not hard anymore, but it's, I guess in a sense it's hard to start posting, I guess.

Well, everyone's doing the pitch slap, right? It's like, let me connect to you and here's what I do. 10 seconds later.

Oh, it's the worst. You'll never see me do that. That's something that— it's not authentic, it's not true, you don't care about. So what I do, if I connect with the surgeon, I'm going to start looking at his content, and then I'm going to comment on his post and be like, hey, I really appreciate what you're offering, thank you so much. Sometimes he'll message me and say, hey, thanks for the support on my post, whatnot. And then we can start a conversation, because then you can be able to relate with that person instead of like Financial advisor. Hey, I see you're in the finance. Here's some financial advice, right?

Well, I think a lot of people think that their prospects aren't on LinkedIn or aren't on the internet. Yep. Not all of them are. Oh, some are.

And you don't need all of them.

You know, you just need 1 or 2 and then you'll be set, right? I mean, the 1 or 2 that you never would have gotten in front of, is it better than zero?

And I can't imagine a cold call on the phone gets you anywhere. No.

I mean, I've never— I've tried to call in doctors' offices and the front desk lady's like, who are you? Like, who are you with? I mean, I'm like, send me a brochure. You can set up a lunch or bring us coffee, but you're not getting an appointment.

And did you have any pushback from your manager about this?

With LinkedIn and stuff?

Yeah. Doing kind of non-conventional creative.

I mean, because that's what everybody is ever like, we don't do that this way, this is not how we do it. I'm like, well, how we've done change has got us to where we are today, but it's not going to get us where we're going. Yeah, you know what I mean? And so yeah, I've gotten pushback, but like the funny thing is, is like I'll push right back and say, look what I've done through— I've signed 4 distributors through LinkedIn alone. Like, this is helping and working. Maybe I'm overshadowing the company, or maybe I'm doing this, whatnot, but it's actually helping. We're branding for the company.

Well, that's it. I think people get stuck in what used to work, but when you have like a major pattern interrupt like we've had in the last year, couple years, yeah, people change their behavior.

So true.

Right?

Because I don't know how often you go to a trade show, but they've been shut down for a couple years. So that, that's, that option's gone.

Yep.

Networking events gone.

Yeah, gone. And so what else is there supposed to do? LinkedIn is the best next thing. And I always tell people I was LinkedIn before LinkedIn even became a thing Because I love networking and establishing connections and doing all those things. It's just doing it on LinkedIn now. It's networking on steroids.

Yeah. And how about your peers? Did they follow suit or did they call you silly and stupid or lazy or—

Yeah, I mean, all the above, right? I mean, they, they called me, what are you doing? Why are you causing attention to yourself? You're wasting your time. But then after I've done it for like 6 to 8 months, everyone's like, Johnny has something here. This is crazy. Like, so then I saw surgeons starting to post their cases and their surgeries and all this stuff. I'm like, oh my gosh, I started a kind of little trend movement. Like, people are starting to communicate with each other. Like, surgeons are asking advice from other surgeons what they would do for this case. Back in the day, like, you're so territorial that no one would ask advice and be able to do all this. But then, so now everyone's like patting me on the back like, hey, good job, Johnny. You were the first one to start in the medical field. with your social presence, like, good job. You created this whole tribe or community where everybody wants to help each other and be a part of it.

That's it. Because people think it's just salespeople and engineers or whatever. It's a lot of different people, not everybody. And people have a hard time if it's not everybody.

Yep, it's true, right? I mean, you get— like, the more you put yourself out there, you're going to get 50% of the people that like you and 50% of the people that don't like you or are jealous of you or don't want your success, right? But you're always going to have an opinion. And so it's like, I didn't mind. I have thick skin. I wanted to put myself out there and just have my own opinions and thoughts.

And clearly you have a great mindset. How do you keep it up? How do you keep it consistent? How do you not get burnt out or down or—

Yeah, no, so I mean, I have a schedule. I work out every morning, make sure that I get that endorphin rush or hit. And then I always make sure that I talk about my affirmations, my positivity, keeping stuff like, I am positive, I am happy, I am wealth, I am health, because those words are super powerful to me because I know I'm going to get kicked down throughout the day. But if I can stay positive and I know everything that I have accomplished, then I'll be okay. Because then I also want to make sure that I have time to myself. I love traveling, so I make sure that I go do a trip that I want to do instead of all the work trips, right? So Continue to make sure that you own your own voice and make sure that you do the things that you do want and don't want to do. Say yes and say no. Don't let people push you around because it gets exhausting. But like, to be— for me, like, I just love it because every step I take, I still feel pain in my hip, right? And so that also helps me remind me what I'm doing it for.

That's good. You got a little reminder built in, huh?

Exactly. It's nice.

So it sounds like you have the adventure gene. You like to travel to places you haven't been before.

Oh yeah. I mean, I love— I mean, I've skydived every island in Hawaii. I try to skydive everywhere I go. Bali, Iceland. I mean, Korea, Tokyo. Yep.

Well, you know, with nobody attached to you?

No, I have to have— I haven't got trained yet. I haven't done like 1,000 jumps yet. And so I have to still be attached with somebody.

Oh, you chicken.

Hey, I tried. They wouldn't let me.

I tried.

Trust me, I love that adrenaline rush.

What was it like the first time?

So scary. I mean, when you like put your legs over the airplane, they open the door and you look down and it's over the ocean, you're like, what am I doing?

Can I get my money back?

Is that a shark? Is that a shark down there? So—

But, but that probably broke your fear, right? The first time after you did it.

First time. Then I'm like, I want to do it again.

I need to do do it again.

I want to go right back up. And so then I'd look for higher jumps because the first jump was like 10,000 feet. So then my next one was 14,000 feet. I was like, this is getting better and better. And when, when other reps come to you and stuff— I mean, I go to Vegas a lot to be able to do the Speedway, this, the fast cars and all that, rent out the Ferraris.

Cool.

And when other reps come to you, what advice do you give them?

I mean, my biggest one is the bird-dogging one. I'm like, listen, it's going to be hard. If you can keep your head down and learn all the technical stuff, you already have the personal skills. They hired you for a reason.

Yeah.

If you can become super technical and bird-dog and be in presence where the surgeon needs you, you're gonna go a lot longer and a lot further than a lot most, because then people are— people usually wait for the surgeon to come to them, or— but I always sat there and waited for them. It's like, hey, Doc, hey, hey, hey, excuse me. And so that's what you need to do is bird dog and have that mentality to like keep going forward and look for the job, the deal, instead of waiting for you to come to them. Cool.

Hey, Johnny, this has been a fun talk. Uh, where can people go to connect and follow you?

Yeah, linkedin.com. I mean, I'm on there, Johnny Caffaro. We have our own shoe company, caffaroshoes.com, as well. Um, and so yeah, The Caffaro Way as well. So there's Just a couple of social media platforms.

I thought some of my sales situations were difficult. That's a pretty amazing story. And not only is it true and real, but I never got the sense that he was a victim. I never got the sense that it became overwhelming for him, nor did I hear the kind of the excuses. Now, look, we're human, right? And when we hit hard obstacles, especially today, we're kind of conditioned that, oh, something else, the world should be different. And it should be, but it isn't. We sell the product that we have to the market that we have. And we find a way. We create a way. We don't feed into the frame of how hard it is. And believe me, I spend my days talking to salespeople who have hard things to sell. I get it. But they're brave enough to invest in themselves and spend the time and a little bit of money To figure it out, to learn, to share, to ask for help, to get feedback. That's bravery, isn't it? Anyone can sit around the coffee machine and woe is me and oh, it's hard and get no leads. I get it. I did nothing but startups my whole life. None of them were as hard as Johnny's thing. I mean, honestly, I can't go into a hospital, never mind work in one or sell in one. Being in an OR would— I'd rather do almost anything else. So imagine taking all that crap as a kid through school, and I'm sure everyone has been bullied or ostracized. Or not invited to parties, but to get it every day, all day. And, you know, I hate to say, especially as a guy, because if you can't, you know, play sports or fight or run, you kind of aren't included. And being ostracized is, in our mind, next to—

Death.

You know, death. So, to come over, to build around that and over it, and to succeed against it and then leverage it, that's a great approach. Because we got to play the cards we're dealt and do the best we can with it. But if we can make something out of it, is even better. So maybe keep this episode on your playlist or download it to make sure you always have it for the times when you say, oh, you know, it might be because of my gender, my race, my age, my lack of education, or how am I going to learn all this new stuff? Am I good enough to talk with somebody who has a PhD or an MD or MBA, or can I talk to that C-level exec? If you don't think you can, you probably won't. And what you get out of this tactically— I know everybody likes their actionable insights— is that it's an everyday thing. He didn't do it on a weekend or a firewalk or a trust fall. Does it every day, gets up every morning, Gets his mindset right, works out, clears his head, and goes after the day every day because that's how you build it. Everybody thinks it's a weekend workshop that might spur— it might change your— the way you view things. But until you do it every day, because it's that consistency that really counts, and consistency is every day. Not just Monday through Friday. I'm not saying work the weekends. I'm saying build up that mindset, that belief system. Crack through the limiting, superstitious mindset that you might have about what you can and cannot do, what is possible and what's not possible, and dig into it. Too many people just go to the surface. What's the best way to do this? Well, the short answer isn't the answer. It's the long answer that's the answer. You gotta look at the problem, understand the problem, dissect the problem, take little baby steps, see how they work, and then compound on them every day. Yeah, it's work. That's why they call it a job. Now, the best way to save time with it is to make sure you have the best algorithm, the best heuristic, the best strategy that you possibly can. It can always become better, but if, if you're working off of folklore of what worked 5 years ago or even last year, And it's not working today, then you got to change it. Today everybody thinks, oh, you buy a list of people, you put it into your cadence machine, you shoot it all day long, you cold call them, you double tap them, you get 17 touches in 17 days. Guess what? Everyone's buying the same list. Everybody's got the same stupid cadence tool. Everybody's doing that. And all the people receiving it are sick of it because that's not how strangers talk. That's how you find interest. And if there isn't interest already, listen to the surgeons. Okay? They're not trying to find things. What they're doing is working for them. But yet there's a better thing. How do you get that? You got to build a know, like, and trust relationship with them. Maybe not in the OR. You can do it through email and LinkedIn. Hey, did you hear him talk about LinkedIn? I never— even me would have thought that they would be active on LinkedIn. Sure, they get on the internet, they do this, they do that, they search their things and those medical websites, but I never thought they'd go to LinkedIn. But they do. He's got 21,000 followers on LinkedIn. Sales rep. That's pretty good. I bet you're thinking, well, my rascals aren't on LinkedIn. They're not on the internet. They've got a network gap. They only talk to salespeople twice a year during an eclipse. That's what I hear most often. Impossible, Brian. It will never work.

Never.

Unless you're there by mule pack on midnight of March 23rd with a full moon, you'll never get the deal. That's, that's pretty much every conversation I have with salespeople. They think that there's this magical moment where the customer is open-minded. Nah, that's their frame, not yours. You need to build up a belief system that I can talk to strangers, that they are mammals and humans, and they do want to interact. But guess what? They don't want to hear your stupid commercial, your sales-ready messaging, your value proposition, your brilliant insights. Not that they're not good, and not that there's a good time for them, but you have to build up that skill, that resilience, that desire to do it. It's not a cadence button. Sorry. I wish it was. If it was, you probably wouldn't be here. You'd be very happy taking your orders and waiting for the new comm plan and territory. But if you want to get a backbone and learn how to sell, because this is what you're doing, it's not going to get easier. It's only going to get harder. The way it gets easier is you learning how. Your manager's not teaching you it. Uh, the guys on LinkedIn with their cute little jackets and hats and little TikTok videos. They don't know. They're in marketing now. They couldn't sell. If they could sell, why would they take a 50% pay cut to go into marketing? All these failed SDRs that are now in marketing, and everyone's listening to them because they're the only people out there. Oh, they may know what they do, and what they say, uh, is bland goodness. But why did they move into marketing? They took a 50% pay cut.

Why?

Because it's easier. Because it doesn't have that stress. It doesn't have that feedback. They can say what they want without it being pushed or tested. And they got a much better lifestyle, a lot less stress, but half the income. And I'm being generous with half. If they were really good at sales, who would give up half a million, a million dollars To make $100K as a brand ambassador or a little content creator for some do-dumb-things-faster company.

Why?

It's a better lifestyle. And that's okay. But marketers don't listen to this podcast. Salespeople listen to this podcast. And if you want to be a great salesperson, go to b2brevenue.com. Come on this journey with me because it's a journey. It's not a static course. It is a living journey with me and with thousands of other salespeople who want to become better. Nobody takes the course because I want to take an order faster, Brian. I want to make my orders more organized. No, they, they're not getting orders. They want to get more orders, bigger orders, faster orders. Is that what you want? Well, quit sitting around wasting time listening to people with nice jackets on. They haven't sold in 20 years. You think they know something? They've been saying the same stuff forever. And does it work?

It works.

And notice who they're training. They're training the people who are taking orders. They're not training the companies that have to create orders. We're in sales. We're not in administration. We got to create orders. So if you're serious, go to b2brevenue.com. There's 2 videos there, one on how the courses work. It's online training, videos, community, office hours, and one-on-ones. Now, here's where I really help people. Instead of just being all upfront payment, I broke it into, as an option, you can pay all at once as well, into 12 monthly payments. But it's not a membership, meaning that you commit to 12 monthly payments. That makes it incredibly affordable, meaning that anybody, uh, that I know of in B2B sales should be able to afford it. You may not want to, You may want to come up with your excuse, your rationalization, your superstition, your false belief of why you, you're the best you can be, but you're the only one that believes that. Nobody else does. And I don't want to hear it. So don't, don't, don't send me messages that I'm the best I could possibly be. I don't, I don't want to read it. I don't reply to them. I don't pay any attention to them. Sign up today. So the second video is on which course fits me best. It's pretty simple, but people struggle with this. If you can't— if you look at your pipeline, if your pipeline is empty, you need to start the conversation, get the meeting, because you got to get deals to work on deals. So you need to have conversations. If your pipeline Looks good, but it's not moving. It's stalled. People aren't calling you back. People aren't engaging. They say they're going to buy, but they don't. I got an InMail yesterday. Oh, I sent him the document. I got the verbal. I love this one. I got the verbal. So I sent him the document to sign, and I've reminded him. Every day for 2 weeks and I still haven't gotten it. Ah, it's because you don't know how to sell. You're an order taker. Guess what? The deal's dead. Sorry. A verbal is a wish. They're telling you what you want to hear, not what you need to hear. What you need to hear is, I like it as an option. I can afford it. I need it. I want it. But I, I need and want other stuff more. Guess what? Someone else got that money, not you. Zero commission, lots of work. How'd that feel? How would you like to put a little bit of money to get big commission and less work? Oh, now you're talking, Brian. Sign up today. No excuses, just do it. We'll see you next time. Tell a friend about the show. If you see my stuff fly by on LinkedIn, give it a little like, a little comment, a little share. We'll see you next time.