HOW TO DETERMINE IF YOU ARE MADE FOR SALES OR NOT

Hey, before we get into the interview, I want to make sure you're aware of our other podcasts, the Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers show, which is a very quick, under 5 minutes in most cases, sometimes just a few minutes where I answer your questions. You can just send me any question to my LinkedIn profile, Brian G. Burns, and I'll put it in the queue to answer. Also, the Sales Leadership Show. If you're looking to get into sales leadership or you want to hear from the world's best sales leaders, that's where I interview them. Check it out, the Sales Leadership Show. Also at b2brevenue.com, you can learn all about all the courses. Links are in the show notes below, as well as our link to our partners over at brevitypitch.com, the fastest, easiest way to become great at sales and practice.

Before it's showtime. Here we go. So everybody wants to get into sales, right? It's where the money is.

It's easy, right? I mean, sales is easy. You get, get all the money. It's, it's the place to be. But no, I, I remember in, in many different industries I've worked in, you'd always get the technical folks. Like, so if I was— when I was doing med device, I would be around a lot of nurses and what have you. And they always— it was classic. They'd always come up to the med device reps and be like, how do I work for you guys? Like, how do I do this? And they were all excited. And that's good. I think there's ways that people can transition into sales and it makes a ton of sense. But it's an interesting perspective because I think, like, for example, they're going from technical, the technical side to the sales side. It sounds glamorous. It's great. There's a lot of perks. why not just do it? But is it really as easy transition and does it work out well? I don't have experience going from that side to sales. I just went straight into sales out of the gates. But I know you, you were on the technical side, the engineering side, I believe, and then you went to the sales side. So I, what's your perspective on it?

Well, yeah, I was on the technical side. I was a developer that you know, got pulled out into the field with the salespeople because I was the only one of the few who was presentable physically. Most of them wore the same shirt every day.

Nice.

And not exactly presentable in front of a customer. You know, their use of the language wasn't really in flow, shall we say. And I had that feeling. Uh, the VP of sales drove a Porsche. Um, the salespeople were all women, very attractive, well-dressed, hardworking, and that they'd pull me out into the field and they didn't work past 5:30. Okay. I work 7 days a week. Um, They were on commission. They drove better cars than me, had a better lifestyle. And when one of them quit and went into chiropractor school for some reason, I don't know why.

Nice. Another transition there.

Yeah.

You know, I had become personally friendly with her and her boyfriend. I helped them move, and she was telling me that she was leaving. And I go, do you mind if I ask for your job after you resign? I don't care. So she resigned. Day later, I went in the VP sales office and go, hey, any openings in sales? And it was like he perked up. He was like, you want to be a sales rep?

Right.

So that transition was easy, but then you had to do it. You know, so I had to cut my ponytail off, had to drive into work instead of taking my bike, and I had to phone— a lot of phone work and a lot of traveling. And I went out by myself. What I noticed immediately was you go from being treated really well to being treated really bad internally.

Right?

Because before I was doing people a favor, now they acted like I was— they were doing me a favor until you sell something. And it wasn't that hard because I had built the product so I could talk about it real easy.

Hmm.

As opposed to your case with the nurses, they, they probably know the product, but the product doesn't take much description. You know, they know what it does. It does something like this, something like that. It's better because— so that was relatively well. And then I had to do it at my next company because they were selling a much more sophisticated product, very expensive. So I had to go back into the pre-sales area, and I liked it, but it had no variable. I wanted commission. I wanted control over my income. And it took a year and a half before they let me do it. And it was the same feeling. It went from, you know, me staying at the office, being taken out to dinner by the VP of sales. He wanted to learn about the accounts and stuff. I got into sales. He never took me to dinner again. It was, what have you done for me lately? Because I was at risk. They're paying me, there's nothing coming in, so it's all outbound for them. But even when you do really well, within a year and a half I became the top rep, was doing 30% of the company's number, and I still got treated poorly. You know, the founder liked me, the co-founder liked me, but me, me doing well made other people look bad. So they had to come up with an explanation. It's like, what, you think I'm pulling this out of the air? You know, they buy it, they pay for it. What am I doing wrong? Well, they had to find something or point something out. It's the territory. He's got too many engineers. It's, it's too easy for him. Let's make it harder for him. So The transition isn't as easy as you think, and you don't get valued the way you do like other people, other employees. You have to treat it much more like a 1099 than a W-2. And the next company, they had the classic pool table and ping pong. I'm like, great, I like both of those games. First time I played, my manager came up to me. That's not for salespeople. It's like, what do you mean? I'm good. You want to play ping pong? I'm really good. No, you don't get it. It's not for salespeople. It's for engineers or everybody else but salespeople. And then you kind of learn what's really going on. You're a means of production. You're no longer part of the team. And you can do this well, but not this well and not this bad. You gotta stay in this zone of acceptable.

They'll just cut, cut your territory up or chop the territory up right at some point. But yeah, I think it's, you mentioned some things that are hard about the transition. I think People underestimate you. You're probably an exception because you really thrived and you crushed it. And I'm sure there's a, there's a lot of reasons behind that, but I think people think they can just do what you did, right? So it's, oh yeah, just walk right in. I could be really good because I know the technical side. And that could be the case at some points, but I think they underestimate how hard sales is and that it is a true profession and you have to treat it the same way you would as an engineer or whatever the case. And They don't, they just take sales for granted. They see the reps and they're like, oh, this is a great life. These people are doing well financially. And, you know, who knows how they got to that? Maybe it took them years. Maybe they had a great account package. You know, who knows? And then they come in and they see the reality of it and then getting treated like that. And it's like, oh, wow, this is a lot of, a lot of pressure. I don't have a ton of guaranteed money. So then they realize either they sink or swim probably, or they go back to where they were before. So I think there's that part. I think also sometimes Maybe they're not as comfortable putting themselves out there. Like, they may be more potentially introverted compared to some of the traditional salespeople that you might find. So they have to be open to getting rejected, speaking in front of people, all these things that might be foreign if you're on the technical side. And I think that can be a really hard transition. And you're Somewhat self-sufficient. I guess it depends on the situation, but you might have calls that they want you to make or how many dials, whatever it may be. But in general, you're not going to have a very structured week or day. So if, if you're on the technical side, it was probably very structured potentially, and you knew where you're going to be, what you were doing. Now it's sales and you're like, oh, you have the whole East Coast, go figure it out. And then it's like, okay, what? What? I don't, I don't even know where to start type thing. So I think There's some challenging things that people probably don't ask enough questions on before they make that transition. So I think talking to those top salespeople, if you really do want to make that transition, like really go deep on those questions because you want to understand all that stuff because it's not, not for everybody and it could be a good experience. But do you really, really need to go through all that painful moments and learnings if, if it's not a good fit for you?

Right. And people think that they're going to get a mentor. Oh, my manager will mentor me. Your manager's like sink or swim in most cases. And you're hoping that they know more about it than you do. Maybe they do. And if you're not used to working at whatever it takes to get something done as opposed to 9 to 5. If you want to see your kid's soccer game, forget that. If you're going to miss a birthday, sorry. If you're going to lose some sleep over a deal at the end of the quarter, sorry. If you're going to get blamed for things that are outside of your control, sorry, you're going to. If you share an optimistic view of the deal, you're going to get punished.

Right.

There's all these things that you never really thought of because it's much closer to entrepreneurship. And that's why I always say, don't think like an employee. That mindset will run you right into a trap. And you'll wonder, what did I do as they let you go? Because they want you to be successful to a certain extent. And it's up to you. You're responsible for your own training. You're responsible for figuring it out. The, I didn't get the things I needed— no one cares. There's no excuses. Sorry. And if you haven't been in that type of environment before, it might be a rude awakening. And I wouldn't disparage anybody from getting into sales, but you have to be money motivated. And you have to be really independent. You have to have that internal locus of control. And you think, oh well, the other salespeople will teach me. Well, you're assuming that they know how to verbalize what they're doing, you know. And having interviewed 1,100, 1,200 great sales reps, a lot of them don't know how to verbalize what they're doing differently. They're unconsciously competent at it through trial and error, pressure, motivation. So you go, oh, I'll read some book. Well, reading a book is helpful. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's not enough. You know, it's like reading a cookbook. Does it ever come out the same? No, I followed directions. And plus, you got to realize you're dealing with people. People don't tell the truth all the time. People exaggerate. People are optimistic. People change their minds and don't tell you. Isn't that inconsiderate? And they don't care that they're wasting your time. They think the company's paying you and it's up to you to figure it out.

Such a great point. I mean, it, it, because you, you might think that you can just, oh, well, I'll get trained. Uh, I'm gonna get trained. They're, they're gonna send me to training. We'll do all this stuff and then I'll, I'll be good to go. But most of the training usually is actually on the technical side. So that's probably not gonna help you very much. And then they're gonna give you something generic about a sales process that probably doesn't make any sense and it's 20 years old. And that's the thing that people don't realize. It's not just, reading the book or training or mentoring. All that stuff is good. It's part of it, but it's, it's how you perform. Like that, that cookbook reference that you made. It's, it's, it's how well you do it. It's how do you make it happen in front of the customers? How do you present? How do you get the next step? All these different parts that go into it. And it's a lot. And you— and a lot of people can't explain it. It's in their head that maybe they are good at it now, but they can't explain to other people how to do that. They just probably— Got beat up for years and finally figured it out. And so people think maybe they're going to get a bunch of training and mentoring and all that, and maybe they will a little bit, but it's not going to be probably what they need exactly. And they have to realize that it is a meritocracy in some situations, that it's survival of the fittest. If you do, you just got to keep performing, keep performing. And then once the new year starts next year, you have to start all over again, right? So you don't— you can keep building up your territory and you build momentum, but you still have to start at zero basically. Basically every year, which is a little defeating. It can be demoralizing. It's— it can be fun too. Some people enjoy that, but it also can be—

Absolutely.

Yeah, but it can be a little demoralizing that like, oh man, I gotta do this all over again. How's it gonna happen? And then you overcome that and it's, it's, it's usually a good, good experience. But, uh, the, the other thing, the one thing good about transitioning like the way you did is I think people don't think of you as a salesperson, which is potentially a good thing. They think of you as more of a peer because you've been there before. Maybe you have a network of people in that technical field. You can speak the same language. And that's where those folks can really thrive because the reality is no one wants to talk to salespeople. Let's just be honest. Unfortunately, that's the reality of it in most cases. So, but they do want to talk to people that know about the products, the innovation. They know the technical jargon within reason. So I think that can really help them get over some of the stuff we're talking about because you can get in the door and just have the conversations because they already don't see you as a salesperson, which is good.

Yeah. And, and you gotta get used to rejection, talking to strangers, starting conversations with people who don't wanna talk to you, learn about what they care about. You think it's the product, you quickly will find out it's not the product. The product is not that compelling enough to hold the deal together for 3 months. You've gotta figure it out. And I've seen too many people who like the professional structure, either they're coming out of the technical side or marketing, where they went and they got a degree and there's a process and lots of meetings and The pace is nice and methodical. That's not sales. The pace is kind of what you make of it, and it's herding cats, and people are not as predictable as you think they are, and there's all kinds of things going on at the companies. Priorities are shifting, and it's hard to adjust to that. And it wasn't that hard financially for me back then. The bases for the technical people were the starting bases for the salespeople, so it wasn't a step down. But I was selling a very expensive thing. I didn't sell anything for a year. Scary, because they don't want to put you back as a technical person. And you don't want to be put back as a technical person either. So where do you put all that stress? Kind of internally, right? You have to struggle through it. You don't know if you're— what you're doing is right. Management's like, oh God, did I make a mistake? We took a great technical person, made him a shitty salesperson. Perfect.

Right?

That's brain dead, right? And but you go, oh, they gotta figure it out. It's not easy, especially when you're not being treated well. Customers aren't treating you well, company's not treating you well. You're in the middle. Can you handle that? It's hard.

For sure. I think, I mean, sales is one of the best accountability tools for yourself. Entrepreneurship is probably the ultimate one, but it really does humble you for sure when you make those transitions because you're like, man, this is, this is hard. I'm getting beat up. I'm not making any money. What am I doing? You start questioning yourself a lot. The company's questioning you and you're— it's easy to want to throw in the towel. And sometimes maybe you should throw in the towel at some point if it's not a good fit. But I think it does It should force you to be accountable of like, hey, I am controlling my own destiny. I got to figure this out. Yeah, it's going to take some time. I got to be a little bit patient. How do I humble myself and admit that I need some help and get the right guidance? And it can really create a lot of lessons in life too. If you can figure out how to navigate that and you become more accountable with yourself, you're not lying to yourself. I feel like that just helps you so much. In a lot of areas of life. So there's, there's a lot of really good lessons if you can get through that. But it's going to take probably potentially 2 or 3 years to, to really hit your stride, depending on what type of sale you're doing or how complex it is. And that, that's a long time. I mean, that, that takes some patience, especially in our current society where everything want— or everyone wants stuff very quickly with the easy button. So it's also where you're at in your career and life. Like, if you have a family, kids, a lot of stuff you have to do and take care of, it can be a risky transition because you might not have a lot of guarantee coming in. So you, you need to factor all that stuff out. But I think it, it can really help you excel, not just financially, but also be real with yourself outside of work and probably make you better outside of work at a lot of things too. I know, I know it did for me for sure.

It, it does because you have to, you have to change you. I could not be the same person technically that I could be in sales. I knew I had to change, and that's hard, you know, because I, I had to be outgoing. I had to be able to talk to people about things that weren't the product. I didn't know how to do that. But I had to figure it out. I had to prioritize my time. What do most people do? I'm not going to change. I'll just be busy. What's the new tool? What's the new tip or trick? That's why the tips and tricks are so popular. So what do they do? They distract themselves. So they'll meet the KPIs and everything, everyone but revenue, everyone but what counts. And that's why I say on the podcast all the time, it's the resilience and the will to change yourself. Because if I did not change, no one was buying from me. I was selling to executives. I could get the engineers to say, yeah, we got to have it, we got to have it. But if the executive didn't know why, And how is different. They didn't know what to do. So I used to sit down and we had some business development people, ex-military, and I go, well, how does the government make these decisions? And the guy would map it out. Well, you got the contractors here, you got the program office over here, and you got the funding agency and the The purchasing vehicle. And all of a sudden, I draw it all out. I started talking to all of them, and all of a sudden we were getting deals. I got everyone who was bidding on that program to bid my product. I didn't care who won because whoever won bought my product. And all of a sudden, my manager was getting invited to these award Banquets because they'd win a $50 million project with the government and they'd have all their partners there. And my manager would be like, what the hell did you do? Every CEO's coming up shaking my hand because I'm talking to his customer about them. You know, I had to figure it out. And I could just sit back and go, I'll come up with a better demo. I'll come up with a better proof of concept. What I figured out was that wasn't enough. It was nice, but it wasn't enough. I wanted to figure out the whole game and how do I wire the game so that I win? And everybody's probably, well, that's a lot of work. Believe me, it's a whole lot easier than failing.

Failing sucks.

That year of not selling anything. Whew. I mean, the stress I put myself under, I still remember it. You know, getting sick and not being able to sleep and all this rumination going on, self-doubt. But that's typically what happens when you change, right? It's not pleasant.

Hmm.

Anything but. And what I see today is a lot of people going from sales to marketing, and I'm like, what are you thinking? But they seem happy. I don't— it's no judgment, but I can't imagine anyone who's good at sales going into marketing. I'm sorry.

I—

that's— yeah, I haven't seen that as much, but the The one thing you mentioned is, so on the change thing, a lot of times people, people don't want to change, right? That's the hardest part of sales is getting companies to change. That's why everything gets stuck all the time. But people don't want to change either until a lot of times until you get forced to or something bad happens. Something bad happens. So sales basically does that for you because if you want to make money, because if you have those months and years you're not making money, it forces you to figure it out, hopefully. So you get backed into the corner and either you're going to figure it out or you're going to go back to where you came from or go to marketing, maybe like you were talking about. So I think sometimes you have to— something bad has to happen or you have to get put in that uncomfortable position to actually figure it out. Otherwise, you're just going to keep doing the same thing over and over again. And that's where when I changed industries and I realized some of the stuff we're talking about, I had to just humble myself and admit that, okay, I don't know everything, despite the fact that I thought I did. And that's the problem, I think, is a lot of people are know-it-alls and they don't want to be open or admit that they have failed or they don't know everything or they can't figure it out on their own. So I think people just have those egos and they think they know everything. And I've been guilty of that many times. And you have to have that open mind and find people that can help you because I'd rather learn from someone that's done it before and not make as many mistakes. I'll still make mistakes, but not make major mistakes. And then boom. And that might take effort. That might take money out of your pocket. That might take extra time. It probably will. But you have to be open to that because especially these days, I think things just keep getting harder. So if you're not trying to stand out and do stuff out of the box, you're probably not going to do very well in sales.

Yeah. And I had this inside manager, what we call today an SDR manager, and he was kind of a know-it-all. He felt very uncomfortable if he didn't have the answer. If I asked him something, he would pounce on me, he would give me some answer before I finished the question. And, and he asked me, he go, do you like me? And I go, I don't care about you, frankly. What I want you to do is put your income above your ego. Just try that. Instead of worrying about yourself, worry about your income, because that's all I care about. I'm not here to make friends. You and I may never meet or talk again after this. We still— we're still in touch today, 30 years later.

Nice.

Because he wanted to be successful. And he told me when I met him, he goes, finally someone told me what to do. Because he was the nice guy, you know, and his reps were all sending out proposals. And I'm like, no more proposals. You, you get between them and the proposal button. And don't let any proposals go out. Why? Because what happens? They don't call you back after you send the proposal.

How'd you know?

Oh, I've done this before. Right? I go, wallet or ego? Which do you want? We can't have both. And that's what I did to myself. You know, I wanted to make money. I saw this guy, the sales rep I worked with, he had a house I'm living in this crappy little efficiency apartment. He's living in the nicest part of town with this big-ass house. I'm working 80 hours a week. He's pushing 25 hours a week, right? And within 2 years, I beat him income-wise. And I was like, that is a good feeling when you get your first 6-figure check. And you're in your mid-20s, you know, which would be today multiple 6-figure check. You feel different. I still have it plastered in my room here. What a feeling. You know, something that's, you know, more than you made in a whole year, a year before. So you have to ask yourself, can I put my ego submissive to my wallet? If you can't do that, you probably don't have what it takes to be in sales, or you won't be happy. You'll be the service rep rationalizing why it's good to be a service rep, arguing with me on LinkedIn that anyone can be a service rep.

Yeah, and then the, um, I think the egos, the technical folks, do you, do you think that they have as big of egos going into it compared to the salespeople that have been doing it for 20 years? Because I feel like the people with the worst egos are the salespeople that have been doing it for a decade plus, and they think that technical folks might actually be a little more open-minded going into it, a little more humble, but I don't know.

Well, certainly you get the B-player know-it-all. You know, you see them in my comments. The comment has nothing to do with my video. They just want to talk and prove they know something. Okay, fine. But you know that their ego is much more important than their wallet, because if it was— if their ego or the wallet was more important, they'd memorize what I'm saying in my video, or they would build on it. This is what I do. But if your ego is more important than your wallet, why would you change? The world needs to change to fit me. That's what people do today. They say, I'm going to wait till the world changes to agree with me. And someone's going to tell them, the world's not going to change, buddy. The world's all set. And that's a hard pill to swallow.

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Excuse?

You know what the excuses are costing you? Tens, 50, maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in lost income.

Really? Yeah.

The difference between where you are today— let's say you're making $150,000, decent, decent income, but you know there's other people in your industry making $300,000, $400,000, $500,000. Well, how are you going to do that? You all think it's just about getting a better job, a better territory, a better manager. They can help. Go do that. Then what happens?

It's still you there with those leads trying to close those deals.

And do you have the game?

Few people do. Everyone thinks they do. Why not prove it?

The market tells you what you're worth. Accept it. Now become better. And the way to become better is to improve every day. Really make a daily routine of learning and developing because it's not at the knowledge level.

You have to become unconsciously competent at these skills, which takes time, repetition, an emotion.

And I show you how to do it, how I did it, how I've taught hundreds of people to do it.

But you have to want to, because I can't force you. A lot of people wish I could. So do I. But I can't.

So sign up today.

We'll see you next time.