HOW TO DETERMINE THE PRECIOUS FEW DEALS THAT WILL CLOSE IN B2B SELLING

I have this term for deals I call the precious few. These are the precious few deals that will close in your unit of time, your quarter, your month, your year. And if you can tell which ones are those precious few and focus more energy, not all, just more energy on them, you can be really great and successful in sales. But the challenge is, how do we know who and which are the precious few? Well, that's a skill. It's a judgment call. It's pattern matching. Some people think it only comes from experience. Well, how do you get that experience? You do it. You do it with other people. You borrow or hijack other people's judgment, pattern matching skills, analytical skills. Because if you can tell which deals are likely, most likely to close, the precious few, then you know what to focus on. See, today what everyone's trying to do is make up for skill with volume, and it's not working. Yes, it works for people where there's already great product-market fit, great need, great demands, already been built. Works there. Congratulations. You and I are not there. You and I are over in the place where we have to create it, where we have to build it up over time. We start conversations, we get meetings, we learn how deals play out and how to guide them. Not control them in a controlling sense, but guide them. And this is what we're going to be talking about today because this is a skill. Everyone has it to some level— good, bad, or indifferent. But if you become great at it, then all of a sudden the leverage of your time and your energy is maximized. Today it's spread way too thin. And we're not going deep and broad enough with the precious few. We're trying to let the precious few do as they wish. And guess what happens? The precious few don't close. They go somewhere else or they push it off. Doesn't mean it wasn't closable. If you want to learn how to do this, this is how— what I teach, the smart way of selling, putting your energy and your time on the precious few. You'll get to the other ones when you get chance because they're not all equal. Think about how many deals are you chasing right now for this unit of time, this quarter, this month. How many of them will close? Just take a little picture of it and look at the following day after that unit of time, the first of the month, the first of the quarter, and see, ah, If, if 20% closed, you're doing great. And I'm not talking about just number of deals, I'm talking about volume as well. Are they closing at the number, or did you have to utilize discounting to accelerate them, or other concessions? These are all things that we can become better at every day without really lifting the phone or typing in an email. We can think through these deals. And how to do this. Get good at this because this is something that is— you don't have to read a book about. You can just compare deals. If you were forced to pick on one, which one would you pick and why? It does involve some thinking, which can feel like work at times. Let's get into the interview, but before we do— Grab your manager and go check out brevitypitch.com. Finally, technology's being used to help us sell more deals instead of more spam. Instead of doing more dumb things faster, we learn how to do sales great. We get the reps in without the cost of lost deals. See, right now you're practicing with live customers. Very expensive because that could have been one of the precious few. What we want to do is become great for the precious few. And to do that, we need reps. We need to experiment. We need to articulate, get it from our brain to our mouth and see how it sounds, get it graded, get a little feedback on it. That's what brevitypitch.com does for you. And what I'm hearing from the people who use it is that, hey, I was prepared for that meeting, a lot more prepared than I would have been otherwise. That meeting went exactly how Brevity Pitch did the meeting. Why? Because it uses AI and pattern matching. It's going to give you the most likely things. That's how you get better. Check it out, brevitypitch.com. Here we go. Hey James, thanks for joining us today. As a way of getting started, give us a little background on yourself.

Sure, absolutely. My name is James Michaels Ems. I've been in sales for, boy, going on about 28 years now. So I mean, I got into sales long ago, started in the wireless industry with Pacific Bell, which sort of went through its iterations, and then last 16 years working in SaaS, software as a service, with companies such as Teletrack, most recently Motive. And I just took a position with a great company called LogixBoard, which is a little bit of a shift from industry for me going into more of software for freight forwarding. But amazing group of people, really excited about sort of that shift and sort of a new path in my career, which is awesome.

And what do you like about sales?

I mean, I think sales is sort of the great equalizer, right? I think when I talk to my I talk to my kids about sort of what I do and sort of what sales is. The way that I sort of break it down is that in sales you can sort of do anything, right? I mean, you pick it, pick an industry, pick something you like to do. You like coffee, you like sports, you like whatever it is that you like. There's always a function for sales in whatever industry there is. And that's not the same with every position or with every sort of like there's specialties and there's engineering, there's different backgrounds and degrees. I think sales sort of transcends all that. And if you can learn to sell and you can learn to You know, convey this idea, be sort of this consultant for the customer. You can sort of work in any industry. Again, I mean, I'm switching after 16 years from one industry to another. It's a little bit adjacent, but it's different still. And I think that's what's amazing about sales is that it gives you that ability to do that over the course of your career.

Yeah. And how have you found it moving into another industry? Do you feel like a fish out of water or is it just learning new acronyms and new Protocols and new—

Yeah, I don't know yet. I have yet to sort of start and get my foot in the door. So I'll know about next month, you know, when I really start the onboarding process, you know, in the interview process and sort of talking with the new leaders. And they've been, again, I can't imagine, they've been amazing. And they sort of understand that, that I'm shifting from one industry to another industry. But again, it's similar, but they understand there's gonna be sort of a curve, right, coming in. And I'm actually, I think I'm very excited to sort of learn how, you know, people get stuff done, even if, even though it's software, it's still software sales, how they do things differently. And I'm excited to sort of be a different set of eyes to come in and I think look at problems differently than maybe they had looked at for a while.

And it sounds like you like this space because you've been in it a while, or is that true?

Yeah, I think software is again, sort of again, going back to sales, I think software is sort of that thing that's never gonna go away, even though, you know, software can be fickle at times. And again, it's not always the, you know, the most secure, you know, I mean, software. I mean, we read about tech layoffs, you know, every day. But I do feel it's a comfortable area. I know a lot about it and I love the sort of the prospects and I love the process of dealing with software and I love sort of being able to sort of attack those problems and find solutions.

And how would you describe your view on sales? You know, some people view it as relationships, some people view it like a puzzle, some people view it as A process?

Yeah, I view it as really it is being a paid consultant for the client. You know what I mean? It's a funny way to look at it.

Where's the pay come though?

That's right. Who's paying who? That's right. And I think the way I look at it is we all have a different view. When I was growing up, I had the used carsman, used car salesman view of sales, right? You know, the Kurt Russell movie, you know, used cars and The movie probably hasn't aged well, but it's, it was, that was my understanding of what salespeople do. And I've learned so much in getting like my first sales job out of, in high school when I was 16 was selling shoes. It's the only job that would hire me, you know what I mean? I, we, you know, I'm dating myself. We'd go back and grab these big stack of applications and fill them out and turn them all. The only one that called me back was a shoe store called Famous Footwear. And I'm 16 years old wearing, you know, a shirt and tie selling shoes for minimum wage. And this is in the mid-'90s, mind you. So the Al Bundy jokes were relentless, you know. So being 16 and selling shoes, but I, it was again the only one that called me back. And I can still remember, and this is sort of back to your question about sales and sort of how I look at it is I didn't know if I was going to be good at it. You know, I had never sold anything. And so the first customer I had, I remember like it was yesterday, a young lady came in to look for shoes and my managers were like, yep, go get them, champ. You know, good luck. You know, and so I walked up and I was, I was shaking, you know, visibly shaking and, you know, bless her heart. She was amazing. You know, she could see that I I was very nervous. And so she started asking me sort of these leading questions about these shoes. And at the end of it, you know, sold a pair of shoes and I felt like I did something. I took some knowledge that I had and I conveyed it and I made a sale. And I was like, wow, that was, that was kind of fun. I sort of liked sort of being an expert, a product expert in something and being able to convey this and sort of act as a consultant for this person and have them walk out of the store with, they had a problem. I offered a solution based on, you know, certain aspects and they're happy. And I was like, wow, this is— and that was sort of the aha light bulb moment. And, you know, from there went to, you know, Circuit City, if again aging myself. And if that was like my high school, the selling shoes of my high school, that definitely, you know, Circuit City was my college. And I mean, again, when I looked at sales, you know, some people look at it as everybody has their ideas of what a salesperson is. You know, they're, you know, you hear all the words, dishonest. So they're just out to make a buck and they're this and that. It's, it's that negative connotation that we've been fighting our entire careers. And one thing I think Circuit City taught me is like, no, we were, we really were there to take care of the customer and answer all the questions. I mean, at Circuit City, to go out and sell on the sales floor, they gave you textbooks. And if you were selling audio, you had to learn what an ohm was, you had to learn what watts were. They wouldn't let you even get close to a customer unless you were knowledgeable about what you were selling to them. And I was like, no, this is really a consultative type position. This is, you're bringing, you know, the customer.

Yeah.

And so I think that's my view on it is again, it's a consultative position. You're taking a solution. And what I would say is in not every situation is there going to be a solution to the problem. You know what I mean? Like that's, I think what probably separates good salesmen from great salespeople, I shouldn't say salesmen, salespeople is that I think great salespeople understand when they need to move on and there's not a benefit to themselves or the end user. I think some people just can just continue to go on this road of no, no, there's a solution, there's a solution, there's a solution. Well, sometimes there's not and you have to sort of understand that.

And that's okay.

Yeah.

As soon as you figure it out, people just won't figure it out though. They're like, as soon as, as long as they talk to me, there's a chance.

There's a chance as long as they're still answering my phone calls or texting me back. I, there's, that's it, you know? So yeah, absolutely.

And of the sales process, what's the strongest part for you?

For myself, as far as like my skill set?

Your skills.

Having a conversation. I think really it is just getting down and learning about the person that I'm talking to. I mean, really it is. And I think it all kind of starts from there is having an understanding of at the beginning of this, we're both just people. We're just having a conversation about what you're talking about. Let's take the product out of it. Let's take the solution out of it. What are you experiencing right now in your, in your, you know, what you're dealing with, you know, take our solution out of it as what are the problems? Give me the problems that you're experiencing right now and I'm gonna see if our solution's a fit. And if it's not, let's move on, shake hands and have a great day, you know, have lunch, have coffee, whatever it is. And I think more often than not, then you step away if you have that sort of mindset at looking at people that just look, they're a person, I'm a person, they have a solution, maybe they don't, or a problem that I can solve. At the end of it, let's just, you know, we can part as friends. And I still talk to people who I've lost to competitors, right? I mean, it's just, hey, how's everything going? How are you doing? Hey, your kids on that soccer team, how are they doing? You know, and I think that's sort of what's separated, I think, myself as a salesperson, as a sales leader even going forward.

Yeah, because I think it's a great way to avoid the commodity trap because if you're not talking about the product, you can't fall into the trap.

That's right. Yeah.

Talk about the product. It's how much does it cost? How's it different?

All the pigeonhole yourself pretty quickly. Yeah.

Yeah. But when you get to know the other person, what are they up against?

Right.

Not just in the context of your product. Right. See the whole picture. Yes. Did you get into sales leadership? Is that something that you've done?

Yeah. So, I mean, I got into sales leadership probably a decade ago, you know what I mean? I went from sales and then I've sort of had this I was in sales leadership for about 8 years, and then I actually went to go back to being an IC role about 5 years ago at an enterprise level. And that was sort of in this industry specifically in telematics, which is, you know, those who don't understand the nomenclature, what telematics is, it's, you know, essentially GPS fleet tracking, right? Tracking fleets with GPS and safety and all that kind of stuff. But what I did a few years ago was like, listen, you know, I remember my salespeople and this again, being in sales leadership, The difference between, again, good sales leaders and I think great sales leaders is people that have done it and have experience. They're willing to roll their sleeves up and sort of get down in the trenches with their people. I've had sales leaders in my career that have never sold anything. They just sort of bounced from one leadership position to another after college, and they never understood what the process of a sale was like. I wasn't at that level when I was in sales leadership, but in my industry, I hadn't really experienced being in the front lines. So I remember when the opportunity arose to go be an enterprise IC, I was like, you know, this is something I haven't done. I think I'd like to do this. I think I'd like to give it a try. And I did. I did it for about 2 years. And it was a lot of fun. And it was great to sort of experience, you know, what my salespeople have been experiencing, you know, a decade before. And I think that made me, definitely made me a better sales leader when I got back in the leadership position again and sort of saying, understood, I get what you're saying. I get the issues that you're having. Here's what I did to solve this. You know, let's learn from each other. I think sort of once you have that, it builds up credibility with your team and you're able to sort of go out there and say, I've experienced this before. Let's deal with this player. This is what helped me in the past.

Yeah.

So for sure.

And which role do you like best or is it just contextual?

It is contextual. I mean, I have been in leadership so long, it's sort of just very natural to me. I love leading people. Yeah, it's hard to get out of my own way though, because in leadership you really have to be willing to let your salespeople do that and fail on their own, if that makes any sense.

Sometimes, yeah.

You can't step in and do everything for them. And if that's the case, you're not a sales leader anymore, you're a salesperson. So I really love sort of, you know, seeing the same aha moments I had when I was a kid in sales and sort of, you know, letting them know, hey, this is what I did in the past and having that light bulb go off. That's fun. I love that, those teaching moments. At the same time, it does sort of keep me in the front lines. I am able to still go out on site and visit with prospects and customers and sort of, I get enough of it to where that sort of quenches my, you know, You know, hunger for the sale. So.

And did you enjoy the selling on the inside, trying to get the company to do the things it needs to do to sell more products?

100%. I mean, I love working cross-functionally with partnership teams and things like that. That's not always fun. And it's always the one good thing about it is it's a challenge, right? And it's definitely a challenge. So, and again, it's, that's where the sort of buffer between leadership and salespeople is like, it's always, they're not selling because we don't have this. And it's like, well, they're not selling because you don't have this. And it's always this struggle between operations and sales. That's always a struggle. It's always a push and a pull. And I sort of enjoy being that buffer. So.

Yeah, because I think that's one of the distinctions of great leaders is that they enjoy that inside sale.

Yeah.

Where a lot of the individual contributors kind of want just do it, right? Which doesn't work.

No, it does not. It doesn't have the same messaging. No.

And what do you think really distinguishes the A players from the B players in your experience? Doesn't matter what company or what people, just kind of in general.

Sure. I think going back to my original point of understanding when to walk away from a potential sale, knowing where to invest their time. I've had plenty of salespeople where, you know, I can see it from a leadership role and looking at the history of like the different prospects and the the actual situation and going, yeah, this one's a low percentage. You know, we should really probably invest more time in this. And that's where like sort of the pipeline meetings come in and sort of the leadership meetings come in. And all you can do is suggest, you know, you can't, you know, you can manage the best you can say, hey, go in. But if you do that, then you're no longer really leading. You're doing the sale, you're managing their pipeline for them, which that gets into a whole other arena of micromanagement. It's just not the type of person that I am. But yeah, I think the great ones, they understand like, this is where I'm good. They know enough to know what they don't know, if that makes sense. They understand where they excel and where to invest their time, and they don't pivot from that regardless of the industry or regardless of the company that they're working for. They understand what they're— where they're good. They understand the prospects that they're good at dealing with, and they're able to sort of drop the ball at, you know, I should say, drop ball, the drop of a hat. They're able to walk it, move forward, and go to the next sale. I think the ones that are the more B players Continue to look at themselves as, I shouldn't say better than they are, but they have this sort of, in sales we all have egos, right? We all have massive egos. We wouldn't be in sales if we didn't have massive egos. But they think, oh no, I can resuscitate this. I'm good enough to where I can get this one to move forward regardless of what they've told me, regardless of the barriers they put up in front of me. I'm gonna keep, you know, chugging on. Well, you could have made 3 sales in the time it's taken you to just, if you just would have dropped that one. So I think that's the number one thing that I've seen in my, you know, history of they know when to say when, I guess.

And that's a great point because it keeps coming up. But I don't think a lot of sales leaders talk about this. Yeah, because they see it as kind of weakness instead of a strength.

That's right.

But it is a strength.

Absolutely.

You don't have to walk away, but deprioritize, like you said.

Yeah. And I think there's been a shift recently too that I've noticed that there's not more of micromanaging, but there's been a shift towards activity and a lot of companies now are much more interested. And I've watched a couple of your videos about this. They're much more interested in the activity than the actual getting the sale to move forward.

Yeah.

And I remember telling some of my people back in the day, some of my salespeople back in the day, that didn't really have experience in sales. I said, hey, listen, we'd have these sort of discussions about where their pipeline was at and this and that. And they'd come back and say, well, I made 75 calls yesterday. And I said, okay, yeah, that's great. I'm very, very impressed. That's awesome. You know, your dialing finger works fantastic. And I said, unfortunately for you though, this job is not, it's not digging ditches. At the end of the day, I don't walk around and see who's got the biggest hole and say, wow, man, you just, what a great job you did. You dug the biggest hole. No, at the end of the month, at the end of the day, at the end of the quarter, we look at who's got the results. And unfortunately, phone calls are not gonna get you. It's, it's an important part of the position. It's certainly a part that, you know.

You have to do it.

Yeah, you're not gonna make a sale if you don't make a phone call, that's for sure. But if all you have is the phone calls, all you have is the meetings, and, you know, one of my oldest VPs said the only excuse for activity is results. So at the end of the day, you're making 100 phone calls and you didn't get one meeting out of it. Well, then why do we make the 100 phone calls? You'd have been better off making One and get one meeting, right? So there's been this shift I've noticed in the past few years towards just this, these different activities and like sort of this activity tracking, a very transactional mindset even in the enterprise.

Yeah.

Which is great, you know, hearing from this, this new company that I'm talking to them, maybe onboarding is like, no, this is much more about results than, you know, we still need the activity, but we're much more interested in how we're meeting the next person, adding the next contact, getting in front of the next you know, person that's going to help us make a decision. It's not about making 75 or 200 phone calls. It's about, hey, this person we've been trying to get a hold of for 2 months finally answered the phone. You know, that's what we're more interested in is moving the sale forward. And so I don't know why that has shifted. Maybe you have some insight into that.

Well, I think it came about because of the CRM because now we could track it and now we could have a dashboard to see it. And if you can look at the dashboard versus sitting down with a rep, what's easier?

100%. Yeah.

And then sales math, somebody who didn't go to real math came up with sales math.

This equals this equals this. Right.

And you're like, no, it doesn't.

Certainly does not. Yeah, that's right.

And how do you coach a rep out of that activity trap? Because they're doing it because it distracts them from what they should be doing. Sometimes it's easier.

It is. And I think a lot of reps, you know, they are, they're smart enough to know how to play the game, right? I mean, I've had reps in my past that they're, I would just say what you can do in 10 phone calls or 1 meeting, it's going to take another rep 100. Okay. At the end of the day, though, they have a mean that they want to get to. And if you're not there, regardless of your results, you're going to be on the radar. And it's not me doing this. It's not, you know, I don't have control over this. I'm delivering the news. So at the end of the day, you've got to sort of step up and they would understand and go, I got it. Okay, will do. I'll get it done. I'll get this done. I'll get the, you know, whatever it is done. Because again, it was very strange. You'd have some of the people that were in the top Chairman's Club and they would still look back and go, yeah, they got the Chairman's Club, but I'm very concerned about their Their lack of phone calls or their lack of meetings or lack of pipeline. I'm like, hold on a second. They made their goal in 2 months for the entire year and we're worried about the number 4. And I would do that to my own peril, by the way, because then everyone would sort of look at me and go, you know, we have a, we have a system of doing things here and don't, don't try and step out of that system. And so I would just say, got it. This is your company. It's not my name on the building. So understood. If this is what you want, then this is what we'll do. And within reason. And I would, so sort of the same thing is I will, guys, I will give you enough, you know, leeway to go and continue to sell the way that you're used to selling. But at the end of the day, I will be, you know, the buffer between you and executive management as long as you get the numbers and the activity done. That'll be the— I used to say this all the time. I would say, I will fight to the death for my entire team. I'll fight for all of you. But do not send me into the OK Corral with an empty pistol. Please don't do it because I— there's— I'm the only guy protecting you from what's, what's coming down. If you guys give me the ammunition, I'll be able to go and fight for you. But if you don't give me the ammunition and I go in there, unfortunately, they're coming for you next, and there's nothing to stand in between, you know, them and you. So the activity, the sort of the checking the boxes, the daily blocking and tackling, that's the ammunition I need to go and say, Hey, they're getting everything done. Let's just, you know, give them enough leeway to be able to do their job.

And when you're going through a forecast review, how can you tell like a committed deal or a deal that's forecasted to close that quarter is just not gonna close?

This is so great is we all have our, we all have our group of partners in sales that we talk to like on a daily basis. I talk to my buddy Brad like every day. I talk to my buddy Terry. They're all in sales leadership. We all talk and we talk about that all the time is how do we know when someone's forecasting a deal just to kind of stay off the radar? And we know that this deal is not coming in, but yet we sort of need that deal to hit the forecast or need to hit our projections. And so I'm, if anything, I'm very consistent and conservative with my forecasting. And so what I'll do, and I think what most good leaders do, is they say, listen, this deal has no shot of coming in. And the reason we know is because we go back and we look at the activity history. I think that's the— to answer your question, I think that's the easiest way is to look at. And that's where CRMs are great, right? We can go back, we can look at activity history and say, hold on a second. Is there something I'm not seeing here? Do you have a notepad outside of the CRM that you're keeping notes on where this thing is 90%? Because you got it at 90%. You haven't talked to them in 3 months. So what am I missing here? Fill in the gaps for me. And so that's sort of where we come out. And sometimes they just have a different idea of like, oh, well, no, no, it's gonna close. We just don't know when. They've told us they're giving us deal, but they just— okay, well, that's not 90%. That's at best, that's like a 25% that, yeah, it's going to close Sunday, but there's no next steps. We don't have the economic buyer. We don't have the pain. Again, a lot of that stuff is overrated, but at the end of the day, you still need a good— I think the one thing that I look for in a deal that let's say is 90% is a constant communication between both where it's not just always us calling them, it's them calling us. That's a huge Red flag. If you look at the CRM and it's a bunch of outbound and outbound phone calls, outbound emails, and there's nothing coming back from the prospect saying, hey, I need this question answered. Oh, I'm meeting with procurement tomorrow to get this thing done. And if that stuff isn't happening, then it's not a 90% because there's not a, there's no skin in the game from the prospect side. So I think that's hugely important when you're dealing with forecasts.

And what do you think an A-level first-line sales manager does that A B doesn't do?

Roll up their sleeves and really, and be willing to do everything the salesperson is willing to do. I mean, I, again, and this is just for my own opinion, right? It's probably, it may not be the right answer. My opinion is you should never be, you know, unwilling to do what a salesperson has to do on a day-to-day basis. If I have to get on a plane and travel to the prospect, to get a contract signed because my, my salesperson has a sick kid, then I'm not, then I'm, then I'm not, I'm not worth sitting in this seat. I have to be willing to do that. And I need, I need to also know how to do it. Again, I've had sales leaders in the past that didn't even know how to run an order through CPQ in Salesforce. They had no idea. And so if that salesperson was going on vacation, they said, well, hey, I got this deal coming on Thursday. Can you please do me a favor and send them the new order form in CPQ? They'd be like, I don't know how to do that. I don't— that's not what I do. I run forecasts, I run dashboards. I don't— so, and the same thing, like, with IT situations when they would say, hey, my Salesloft isn't working, I can't make outbound dials from my Salesloft. Well, I had my own Salesloft account, so I'd be able to get in there and sort of troubleshoot it for them and say, give me till the end of the day, I'll work with— I'll work with our IT team and see if I can get it fixed for you. That's the kind of stuff I think good sales leaders have to do. I think that's the difference between an A sales leader for this B sales player, and they're like, A B, you know, leader will say, I don't know, reach out to IT, give them a call. You need somebody to send your order form when you're on vacation? Well, have, you know, your peer, have them run your forecast for you, have them run your deals for you. Really? You want my peer who's my competitor who's not getting—

you want to really help me out?

Yeah. Like, isn't this what you're supposed to do as sales is kind of step in and fill in the gaps when I'm not here? Yes, that's exactly what we're supposed to do, but it's shocking how many sales leaders over the past, you know, 25-odd years. I had a sales leader that didn't know how to use email. They would literally send their emails to me and have me call them and read back to them what their email said. And I was just like, sure, we'll do, happy to do it. But you start to learn pretty quickly that some of the people that got the positions were, it wasn't because of them being able to roll their sleeves up and get in the trenches.

And what's the hardest part of the job?

Sales or sales leadership?

Sales leadership.

Honestly, it's the, I mean, and this is the easy answer, it's letting people go. That's a tough job. That's, and sometimes it's necessary and sometimes it's not. Even when it's necessary, it's still a really tough time because you're, especially when people aren't expecting it. I've been on that side, you know, I think everybody who's been in sales has been on One of the other sides of those, and you know when you're dealing with someone's livelihood and how they sort of provide for their family. But the one thing that we know about being in sales is that's always a that's that is always a possibility regardless of how well you're doing. And I've told my kids that. I've told my salespeople that is this is very much a mercenary type job. It's a real kind of crude way to put it. But again, going back to Circuit City, I remember reading a story in the paper when Circuit City brought in their top ten percent earners and. fired all of them because they were just costing too much money. And I thought to myself, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard. They're the top earners. Why would you get rid of those? But it continues to happen. It continues to where, you know, just because you're a top earner or you're, or you're, you know, top 10%, that's, that's not going to absolve you from, you know, potentially being a reduction in force, right? So that's, that's the toughest for sure. Toughest part of the job. I think everything else is sort of just expected. But yeah, that's, that's still to this day is tough.

And how about the hiring? Is that something you're good at?

Love hiring. Love hiring. I mean, like, I will say this, and I, again, I think I've watched a couple of your videos like this. The hiring, the hiring nowadays is so, and I know this from just going through the hiring process of, of getting with a new company, is so crazy now. They've turned this into, like, I mean, where it used to be you'd have a couple interviews, maybe you had 1 or 2 interviews, and then you'd have a presentation and you'd give the presentation. Now this has turned into where, like, some of these companies are interviewing you 12 times before they even narrow it down. And I'm like, well, I, I, I can see this coming out, especially I live in California. So I'm, I'm guessing this is gonna be because so many people have been complaining, especially in tech. Like, I bet there's gonna be something you watch if the government has anything to do about it. They're gonna be like, hey, listen, you can only interview them so many times before you have to start paying them for their time. Yeah. Like, you have to give them an hourly rate. But, I think they're just like, well, we now we just need to talk to this person, this person. And it's gotten so, it's like, well, listen, people, if we don't know after like the 5th interview that this is our person, then they're not our person. Like, that's, that's that. Let's just move on. But they're so, it's crazy now, these steps that we make these people go through. And I think we can, because I think there's a lot of disparity and I think there's a lot of, you know, the economy's not great right now and people really want jobs.

Of course.

And I think companies are taking full advantage of that. And unfortunately, Again, this last company I was— that was fantastic. I mean, it was— we were— I think we got through the process in, I think, like 2 weeks, which that's fantastic. I was interviewing with other companies that took, you know, they— we had been going for 2 and a half months and they still didn't have a next step, you know, in the process. And that's just crazy. It's not a good thing to do. But going back to your original, I love hiring. Yes. As long as we have— I think there needs to be some, some, some guardrails in place of what does this process look like? And let's make sure we're explaining that to the candidate. And I used to do that. At my previous company, I would hire, I'd say, listen, this is how the process goes. You're gonna meet with, you're met with a recruiter, you met with myself. Everything looks good on my end. We're gonna move you forward. You're gonna speak to the, you're gonna speak to my boss, and then we're gonna have you do a presentation. If the presentation goes well, regardless of whether it goes well or whether it goes not so well, we're gonna let you know that day. We're gonna have a decision. We're all gonna get together in a room. We're gonna let you know that day. And that was great. I think as long as you explain to them how the process looks, it's It's fine. It's when the process isn't explained that you sort of get into this, you know, weird, weird dynamic.

And what particular characteristic or thing have you noticed that tips it for you personally when hiring?

Having the ability to have an effortless conversation. I'm not having to crowbar a sentence out of a person, especially when you're dealing with sales, right? Because if I'm having to crowbar answers out of you or just for you to expand on answers, boy, you're gonna have a lot of trouble when it comes to conveying a message to a prospect to something with, with as complex as software, especially when dealing with like fleet software and our prospects, especially in, in, in the telematics realm because it was so different in telematics versus like wireless, right? Wireless, you're dealing with like CTOs, you're dealing with very, you know, people that understand sort of advanced technological concepts. In telematics, a lot of times you're dealing with like, you know, very blue-collar type of— they don't really understand or care what software is gonna do for their business. They've run it old school for 20 years. They really don't care. So you have to take something that's perceived to be like sort of complex and technological and convey it to someone who has really no interest in hearing anything complex or technological. And that's sort of the— what I would tell my candidates is like, how do you do that? How do you take something that's so complex, so technological and sort of make it palatable for a decision maker who, you know, he started out as a truck driver and now he owns a fleet of, you know, 500 vehicles and he's, you know, got this, you know, company worth hundreds of millions of dollars and he's run it the same way for the last 15, 20 years. How do you take something that he's never used and make it palatable? And that sort of then shut up and just let them, you know, answer. And if they had trouble answering that, then that usually would tip the scales for me.

Yeah, because a lot of people are used to just answering questions versus conveying value and communicating how things work in layman's terms.

Right. 100%. And yeah, anyway.

And if you had to do your career all over again, what would you have focused on differently?

Oh boy, that's a great one.

Oh yeah, that's good.

Yeah, I mean, I don't, you know, I never like to look in the rearview mirror. I don't think I would have done anything differently, quite honestly. I really like where I'm at. So I mean, is there, is there people that I liked working for less than other people? Sure. You know, is there, you know, but I remember, you know, going back and I was working for at the time Pacific Bell, which turned into AT&T. You know, there was this, it was singular then, AT&T. And I remember, you know, being there for so long. I was there for about 8 years and I just remember thinking, you know, this is just, I've been doing this for so long and I took a risk and went to go work for sort of a startup at that time in our space and it didn't even last a year and a half, you know. So I look back at that and go, geez, man, maybe I should have stayed at AT&T. So you gotta sort of go back and look. But if I didn't do that, then maybe I never would have got to where I am in leadership. So, but I took a couple risks, you know, with my career and going to smaller startup type companies. And I wouldn't say I regret it. But, you know, when you, you know, in those situations where you're uncertain and, you know, you have uncertainty with your family because you decided to, well, I'm gonna take a risk and go for this, you know, sort of company that didn't do so well. Those weren't always the most fun times. But again, I don't think I would change it. I think I had a good time doing that. I think I learned a lot in the process. And I think that's the worst part is having to go through something like that and not learn something from it. So.

Great. Appreciate your time today, James. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

Yeah, you can, you can find me on LinkedIn, and, uh, I'm happy to answer any questions. And this is, again, was just a pleasure. I'm a huge fan, and I hope we can talk again soon.

You see, reading a person or reading a deal, you know, it can be viewed as judgment or profiling, but we need to do it because the people who buy from us look a lot like the people who Previously bought from us. That's how the world works. And why they buy— probably similar reasons why they bought. This is why I call sales as much more detective work instead of census-taking. Census-taking, you have to talk to everybody. That's your job, is to query people. And that's how you should do it. But a detective doesn't want to talk to everybody because there'd be too much noise, false positives. What the detective wants to do is find out who is most likely have done the crime, who has the motive, the reason to do it, the opportunity, the availability, was at the place at that right time. That's what detective work is. Now, which one resembles sales better? Well, today everyone's doing census taking. What we need to be doing is detective work. Because how many people committed the crime? One. Census taking, you talk to everybody. If you think like a census taker, Because most managers do. Well, you'll find the criminal eventually. Well, eventually isn't this quarter. Eventually isn't this year. Eventually is a long time from now. What we want is someone to buy now. And to do that, we have to think like detectives. It's a proactive process. And you may say, duh, okay. Well, how you doing it? Do you have a close date for all your deals? Why? And I bet you do. It's the last month of the quarter. But any kind of analytic about the deal should tell you something about the deal. Now, this is where I actually like things like MedPic because they get you thinking about the deal. The only thing I What I don't like about it is they get you thinking about the deal in the wrong way. All of MedPic is all reactive to what the customer, or what you think the customer, is doing. But they're not doing it because they don't know what their process is. They don't have a process. It's random. And how often does something random come out in our favor?

That's gambling.

That's not selling. Selling is guiding them through the process. Because if you don't know the process and they don't know the process, nobody knows the process. It's up to us to guide them through that process. Now, I had to figure this out myself. No one told me. And once I did, I was like, well, let's see, the last 10 customers did this, this, and this. So they're going to probably need to do those steps. Why don't I guide them through those steps? Give them what they need for all those steps. Do it for them. And all of a sudden, deals were closing in a third of the time with little to no resistance. I anticipated the resistance because I seen it before and I had strategies around it. I'm not saying it was perfect. I'm not saying I won every deal, but I tripled my revenue. I was number one in my late 20s competing against guys in their 50s. I didn't know how to golf. I still don't know how to golf. Not one steak dinner. But I knew How companies bought, and I guided them through that process. I picked my precious few because that's what I get paid on. Pipeline is great if it's real, but how do you know if it's real? You don't until it closes or not. Anyone can make up pipeline. I love when people post, I made $500 million of pipeline this year. Really? Congratulations. Uh, why don't you just double it if you're making stuff up? It'd be even— why not a billion in pipeline? $100 billion? If you're making stuff up, make it up good. But sales, we don't get paid on make it up. We get paid on what closes. And this is what I mean by the precious few, because at best We're spending 70, 80% of our time on stuff that we are not getting paid for. Now, you probably have to spend at least 50% of your time on that, depending on how it's set up. But regardless, you want to sell more. And the way to sell more is focus, not activity. Everyone's got 24 hours in a day. No one can buy another second. So it's whoever uses that time most effectively— not efficiently, effectively— on the precious few. If you work at McDonald's, it's different. It's volume, volume, volume. But if you're in B2B sales, it's focus, focus, focus. Ask yourself, if you've got, you know, 50 deals a quarter, Yeah, maybe it's volume. Maybe you're more like McDonald's. I get it. It's okay. You're probably right. But if you're doing 25 deals a quarter, 10 deals a quarter, it's focus, isn't it? Because you're probably working on 3 times as many deals. And this is what I had against that 300% pipeline. You're diluting My focus. You're diluting my energy. You're diluting my skills by spreading them out over all these maybe deals. Focus on the precious few. If you can figure out which are the precious few, that's half the problem. Because now instead of looking at 100 deals, you're working on 50. Or 25. But if they close, it doesn't matter because you're going to get paid on them. If you have the type of manager who's just happy you're busy, that's not a leader. That's an administrator. A leader gets people focused on the precious few, teaches how to tell who are most likely to be the precious few and why. Debate it. Now, there's not a lot of scales for this where you can just put it on and measure it, but you can talk through it. Why does it look like a precious few versus why not? This is where you really find out the ingredients. You come up with a heuristic. A heuristic is like an algorithm, but it is not Absolute. Telling the weather or predicting the weather is a heuristic. They get it wrong 80% of the time. Minor differences, but they get it wrong. They're trying to predict the future. It's not easy. There's patterns and technology and everything, but here we are. It's still not easy. Same is true with picking the deals. What do most people do? They don't even try and pick them. They just work on all of them and they close whenever they feel like closing. Well, good luck with that strategy. I want to teach you how to pick the right ones, how to dig into them, because you only get paid on the closed deals. That base salary is just to keep you doing what they want you to do. The commission is for closing the deals. Let's get good at it together. Go to b2brevenue.com. Check out the courses. Sign up today. I also have 2 certified facilitators who can teach it on-site, customize it to your exact sale, and support your reps through that process. Teach them how to determine the precious few. Thanks for listening. Check out brevitypitch.com. Also, the other sales podcast, Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers. Thanks for listening. And the Sales Leadership Show. We'll see you next time.