HOW TO KEEP MAKING MORE MONEY IN B2B SALES AND SELLING

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. You don't ever notice any sales reps who seemed like they know everything, they've seen everything, they've done everything, and they have the answer for everything?

Come on. There's no way salespeople are know-it-alls. There's no way that would ever happen. But no, I've been there myself. I mean, it's so easy to fall into that trap where you just think you know everything. You've been there, you've done that, you've had a good couple of years. And next thing you know, you don't want to listen to anybody's feedback or opinion. So it's easy to fall into that know-it-all trap. And I heard something recently, I think it was the Microsoft CEO, and he basically was saying how he was trying to transform his team from a know-it-all mindset to a learn-it-all mindset and flip that script. And I think it's very true. And it certainly applies to salespeople because there's a lot of egos. And once you have a couple of good years or have success, it's easy to think that you know everything, but the reality is that things change pretty rapidly in sales. There's always something new you can do. There's always people out there that have accomplished more than you. So if you're not constantly trying to learn and get better, I think you're gonna fall behind.

And how are you gonna become better if you already know everything? You have to learn more, experience more, and get out of this knowledge mindset. Because if you know something, let's say you know a magic trick, does that mean you can do the magic trick? You just know how it works. You know where the rabbit is. Now, can you become a magician?

No.

Doubtful.

Doubtful. The same thing applies to selling. Just because you know how to ask questions You've heard how to listen, but you ever notice the know-it-alls aren't very good listeners?

Definitely.

So I think this becomes the death rattle in sales because once it starts, it's very hard to get out of it because it's so comfortable. It is the definition of the comfort zone, right?

Why would I seek—

I'm really nice here. And if you know it all, it's got to be someone else's fault. It can't be you. You know it all.

So definitely, it's the accountability part comes to mind out of the gates, because if you know it all, then you're certainly blaming everybody else for not hitting quota or not making that number that year. So It's a lack of accountability, most likely, and that victim's mentality, which is definitely not the place to be. And then once you get in that, it's really hard to get out of it if you're not accountable with yourself. So I think that's certainly a trap there. And then also, I mean, I, I think it just holds you back. Like, you're never gonna get to that next level. You're never gonna become an A-player. You're never gonna be that top 10%, top 10, make the President's Club if you think you know it all. You have to be— Humble. Even if you are successful, you have to be humble and always know that there's ways you can get better. There's ways you can tweak. You can do postmortems. So if you really want to take it to the next level, you're going to have to be accountable and you're going to have to learn more, learn from other people that have been there and done that. And I'm not sure when it— the light switched for me. I think it was when I got humbled a little bit, when I didn't do as well or I wasn't up to the same level that I thought I could be. And I realized that I can't do it all myself and I need to Invest in myself a little bit more and get some outside support and feedback. So I think for me, it was actually getting humbled helped me switch to having that learn-it-all mindset versus before I thought I could just get it done with with my work ethic and hard work. So it does help if you get kicked in the butt a little bit from my experience. Otherwise, I don't know what would would make people want to switch to that. more learning mentality versus thinking they know everything.

Yeah, probably the 3rd job they fail at.

So it takes a few.

Yeah. And think about it, if you've ever been a consumer and you dealt with a know-it-all salesperson, do you ever go buy a car and they talk about the engine? You know, most of us, and I'll admit I know nothing about engines. And I have no interest in the engine. I'd like to know, you know, roughly horsepower. I, I have a sense of what that means relative to low and high. But when a know-it-all sales rep starts telling about the engine and the evolution of the company and the brand, I'm like, is that what you're interested in talking about or what I'm interested in talking about? And the salesperson feels comfortable because they're rattling it off. And, uh, and I think salespeople go through this evolution. They go from kind of the rookie, know nothing, and then they know enough, then they get a little comfortable, and then they do pretty good, so they must know a lot. And then all of a sudden, learning more and just telling yourself you know enough or you know it all Knowing it all is easier than learning more. So you don't learn more. So this chasm between a know-it-all and wanting to learn it all, or just being curious, because everyone likes to talk to someone who's curious, right?

It's a great one. Yeah. The curiosity, if you're genuinely curious, You're certainly gonna keep learning. You're gonna ask questions. You're gonna make it about them, not about you, versus the other way is gonna be much, much tougher. So I, I don't know if it's a you have to focus more on getting better against your previous self and and not comparing yourself to others. I don't know if that's why maybe people are scared to do it, but that that comfort zone does keep coming to mind because. If eventually, if you keep staying in the comfort zone, it's going to cause issues for you, and it's going— things are going to get hard at some point. Because if you're just going by the status quo or not pushing yourself, at some point that's going to come back to bite you in the butt. So it's going to be hard for you later down the road, but if you are willing to push yourself out of that comfort zone in the short term, it's going to pay off down the road. So I think you have to have that long-term vision and patience and be willing to just Have that mentality of always being a student of the game, as you've said in the past, and getting better and humbling yourself. But curiosity has been a great one. I don't know where I originally got mine from, but I've always just liked talking to people and asking questions and getting to know them, and it's been pretty natural for me. And I think you can tell if it's genuine or not. I mean, there's that cookie-cutter rapport building at the beginning of meetings that you see all the time with salespeople, but when you're Genuinely doing the research, asking very specific questions about their background or the company, something that happened. I think people gravitate to that. And ultimately, if they're talking, if we're having a meeting, I'm the salesperson, you're the prospect, you should be talking 70% plus of the time about what you care about and what you have going on versus me. And that is how you get there. And it starts with curiosity. So that's a great one to help with this mindset.

Yeah, because I always used to use the question, what do I wish I knew that I don't know about the prospect, the market, uh, the company, the competitor? And what does everybody say? What I always used to hear is, I knew that was going to happen. Everyone used to tell me that. I knew it was going to happen. And then I'd flip it on them and I go, well, if you knew it was going to happen, Why'd you let it happen? Why don't you do something about it? Well, you know, I just recently knew it was going to happen. Oh, after it happened? That's when you knew it was going to happen? But because everyone does that, because that's the sign of a know-it-all. They tell you they knew it was going to happen after it happened. So like after the stock market crashes, you tell everybody you knew it was going to happen. Did you sell it short?

No.

Why not? You knew it was going to happen. Well, it's that rationalization that people pay themselves, that emotional commission instead of the real commission. And I think it goes back to the ego is more important than the income. You know, why aren't sales books flying off the shelves? Why aren't sales podcasts the top podcasts in the world? They all know it all. They don't need to learn this. They don't need a reminder or some polish on their game. They learned enough, then they learned it all. Stop it.

That's where it comes from. And I was, I was, I was looking at writing a book. So you don't think I should write, write another sales book? There's not enough out there already?

Well, the only people who buy it are people who are not in sales. If, if people not in sales didn't buy sales books, they, they'd all go out of business. And having written a sales book, I would never write another one again.

Good to know. Good to know. It's, it's true. I, I have to catch myself as well because I, I think sometimes, especially with whatever's happened outside of, in the world the last 5 or 10 years, it's so easy to be on one side or the other. And not have and not be open to different people's opinions and perspectives. So sometimes when I'm having conversations, it's easy for me to just think that I already know the solution. I know what's going to happen. I know how we close that deal. And then I shut off other people's feedback or opinions versus collaborating more, being open to that, hearing different perspectives. It's not just red and blue. There's purple in the middle sometimes, and you can get collaboration. So I think I struggle sometimes where I feel confident, and I've done the research, I've done the work, so I want to go a certain route. And then when you're collaborating with teammates or your manager, you need to at least be open to that feedback and perspective and not completely shut it down. And I've— I need to get better at that as we're talking here. That's something I need to work on. But at the same time, you have to— you don't want to take feedback from too many different people. But I think in general, when you're having conversations, people want to feel heard. They want to feel connection. They want to feel a part of something. So if you're not open to hearing those ideas, then you're certainly going to come off as a know-it-all. Because if I just shut down something and say like, oh no, that's not right. This is how we've done it. And it always works that way. It's not going to— whether that's right or wrong, it's still not going to come off the right way. So maybe sometimes, even though you do know quite a bit of stuff, you still need to be open. And let other people speak and be heard and share their advice with— doesn't mean you have to take their advice or feedback, but you can still do it the right way. And that might make it even worse where you come off as a know-it-all, even though maybe you weren't intending to do that necessarily.

Yeah. Being able to discuss and debate where a deal is, where it could go, what is most likely to go wrong, what the competition's going to do. Why it would slip, why it would close. Those are great conversations to have, and it doesn't mean anyone did anything wrong or anyone's stupid. It just—that's what you do in sales. You kind of analyze things, and I think today people are stuck in the fact-based selling. No one wants opinions anymore. Well. It's all opinions. What the customer says is their opinion. Is it their money? No, it's the company's money. Do they have influence? A little bit. Enough? Who knows? We'll find out, won't we? But no, we need facts, no opinions. Well, everything in that CRM is an opinion other than the phone numbers and the addresses. Everything's an opinion. And I think the know-it-all trap is natural in sales because how do you stay at this weird, curious state all the time? You have to make decisions. You have to forecast. You have to prioritize. You have to focus. And how do you do that? You can either let someone else decide, react, or be proactive and develop your judgment. And judgment is nothing but being curious. Otherwise, you work on what you feel like working on, what you enjoy working on, which is usually a distraction and not work at all. You call up your favorite client or your friend at another company that can act like a sales call. And if there's anything that Any— every rep should do is say, like, what are the red flags that I'm falling into the know-it-all trap? You've had some success. You're probably not failing in sales, or at least not at the same company. But if you're failing at a new company, it might be a sign. Do you use platitudes more than any other thing in form of language? If you ask or you talk about listening to anybody who's ever been in sales, what's the first thing that pops out of their mouth?

I don't know. What do you, what is it? What's the first thing?

Are you a good listener? Why is listening important in sales?

Well, everyone thinks they're a good listener, but they're really probably not and they don't really understand what listening means. But because the customer needs to be talking way more than you and it needs to be about them, not about yourself. But that's, people say that, but I don't know if they actually get through.

Somebody drops the good old grandpa told me 2 ears and 1 mouth, use them appropriately. You're like, oh, shut the hell up. Okay, now that you know that platitude, are you a good listener?

No.

No correlation or causation with being a good listener. Oh, you, you have a platitude that tells you you should listen twice as much as you talk. Does that affect how much you talk and listen?

Not at all.

No. But if you know the platitude, then you know what listening is. The more you make, the more you make. All the— all this bullshit platitudes that you hear in sales managers. And preparing for this podcast, I was thinking, I go, who really falls into this? Managers seem to fall into this really easily.

Hmm.

And it's one of the motives to become a manager. You hate it how the other person was doing it, and you know better. And I've got this one CRO who comments on pretty much every post I do, and he does the political comment, which is take the post and turn it into something that I can promote myself about.

There you go.

Yeah. So he always puts his content and tells me how I'm wrong. And his example of how I'm wrong has nothing to do with the video because my video is just They are for his advertising. It's not for him to learn or become better or see the world differently. Because so much of sales is just having you hear it in a way that you connect to it and all of a sudden it makes sense.

Going back to what you said at the beginning there, and this has happened to me, but so for example, I was doing medical device for a bigger company. It still was hard. There was no doubt because it was more commission focused. And that was a change for me. And then I went to a startup that had, let's say, lost some momentum in the marketplace. And I came at maybe not the best timing. And then I realized completely starting a territory from scratch versus what I was doing before, both were hard, but the latter was even harder. So the reality of that and having to be accountable to myself of, man, this is not, not easy when you have to start something from scratch. And you— it sounds good when you have a massive territory and you got the whole East Coast or whatever it may be, but the reality is that of actually executing and closing deals in a short time where you have pressure from private equity, all that stuff is, is a whole nother ballgame. So although I had been successful at that point in 2 industries, technically in a couple different types of situations and companies, I still was like, man, this is a whole nother animal with a startup and all this chaos, private equity. Unrealistic expectations. So that forced me to like, hey, I still can get better. I still can learn more. I can still be more focused. I need better judgment, even more relentless than I was before because I don't have much room for error. So that forced me into it. And there was times where I was complaining and blaming the situation or whatever it may be. But the more I became held myself accountable, the better I was able to. Get out of that in some form or fashion. So, but yeah, the, the, the manager thing, I guess, I guess you, you have to, and this is something I hear a lot about too, is everyone wants to be an expert. And I don't know what, how many hours it is supposedly to, to say that you're an expert, but I mean, how many actual experts are really out there? And just, just because you've worked for 20 years doesn't mean you're an expert. You could be making the same mistakes for 20 years and falling into the same traps we're talking about. But I think managers probably feel that they have to be an expert and know all the best solutions for the deals and point them in the right direction where they probably have imposter syndrome of their own and they're trying to figure out how to be a leader and do the right thing. But then they put this facade on the outside that they do know it all and it causes a lot of that. But I think the word I've liked recently that came up is practitioner. And it's actually, it's helped me when I'm trying to work with customers with what I do now is because I don't, I don't want to be an expert. Like, I could say I'm an expert in this or that or whatever accolades it may be, but I'm a practitioner. It's like what I'm trying to sell you guys, I actually do every day and try to hold myself accountable to, and it's helped me personally, and I think people relate to that. Um, but yeah, so a few things there. But I think the leaders, they probably get forced into it a little bit because they feel like they have to know it all. But I think if they were more, uh, authentic and actually flip the script a little bit, that would go over better with their team versus acting like they know everything.

Yeah, because if you go to your manager and you go, hey, I got this tough situation, we're competing and my champion said X. Now, if the manager just reacts, gives a platitude or, you know, call over their head, What I always used to hear from my manager, just call over his head. Okay, thanks. That was well thought out. That never crossed my mind. Is that the right thing to do? Or is that the right thing even in the manager's head? And it may work for their style, and it doesn't work for your style. And it's just this craziness of Here you have this most complex job where you're trying to sell something to another company. All these people involved, all this money, all these alternatives, and there's so much at stake that you're not going to sit down and think through it. Everyone wants to make up for it in numbers. Let's find out. Let's find more dumb people to buy our stuff. That, that's the management credo. Well, we ran out of those, so we have to go to the smarter people. And first of all, sales, it's the performance. It's not the knowledge. It's not knowing the magic trick. It's performing the magic trick. It's not knowing the joke. It's delivering the joke. It's not knowing about the products or the market or even the individual prospect. It's putting all that together so it works. So a change happens. It's not just knowing all the questions that the prospect asks about the car. You know, because if the engine wonk wants to talk about the engine, talk about the engine. But if Brian shows up, don't talk about the engine. Talk about the stereo, the heated seats, the steering wheel. That's what he wants to talk about. And how do you do that if you're not curious what that person cares about? And why does everybody have the, the confidence to become a know-it-all, which is insanely confident? And you see these people, they're beyond confident. They can't get enough confidence to be curious. Because curiosity takes confidence. Asking questions takes confidence. You're sticking your hand up in the air, sticking your nose in— into it. But guess what? The person presenting wants questions. The prospect wants questions. They want somebody to open them up. And that's why people go to a therapist. They can put a little app on their phone that says, how's that make you feel? And you answer it 20 times. But it's the therapist that pulls apart. So tell me about your childhood. How are things with Dad? You know, and all of a sudden someone starts crying, right? And that's our job as a salesperson. There's so many nuances with it that people could get to the point where they're a know-it-all. Seems almost impossible, yet it's natural in sales.

It's, it's definitely astonishing the way you put that. But there's a lot of experts, there's a lot of sales experts out there. So I, I don't know what they're doing and how they've learned everything over the years. But it's, it's funny you say that. But It's, for me, it's, I think, a mix of the preparation and the performance. Because I, for example, when I have these meetings with potential prospects, if I don't do my routine prior to the call, it's easy for me to potentially talk way more than I wanted to and not ask the right types of questions. Where if I do my routine, I usually am not, not going to be 100% perfect. Never, never will be. But I usually, the meetings go way Better. But because I've been in sales for whatever, 13 or 14 years now, it's easy for me to be like, I don't need to prepare for that meeting because I've done this a million times and I know what I'm doing. So there's no point to do my little routine. You know, it's just, it's easier. That's easier to do that. And it's, and of course, I'm sure I could get away with that at times and it would probably be okay. But going through that, because there's little things that happen.

Yeah.

The last week I had a call where they brought somebody else and I wasn't expecting that and it threw me off at the beginning because now I had 2 people and you have to hear both their stories, which adds another 5 or 7 minutes. And then I'm scrambling to get to the real stuff I want to talk about once I get through that. So I mean, if, if you don't have a plan, and obviously the higher priority, the more you're going to prep for it. It's, it's no matter how good you are, you can get off your game or if you're doing too many meetings in a day and you don't have the right capacity or the right energy and that type of thing. So this is stuff that's pretty, it's simple, but it takes time and thought and effort to really think about it and get better at it. But I think it's the mix of that preparation and performance and knowing every time you have a meeting or you have a deal, there's always things you can get better at too. So where did I make a mistake? Where did it slow down? Or where did I talk too much. So I record the calls with an AI tool. I mean, there's all these different things you can do to hold yourself accountable to get better and have people you trust that have been successful, that have done things that you want to do, hold you accountable too. I mean, that always resonates with me is if I have other people call me out on my BS and that gives me the kick in the butt where I don't think I know it all as much and I keep learning and getting better.

Right. Because how many people go on a diet or a fitness program without some type of wake-up call? They, they walk by a window and they say, who's that fat bastard? And it's you, right? Or some kid, you know, who doesn't know better says, boy, you've gained a lot of weight. There's some kind of thing that, oh, somebody calling me on my BS, because it's very easy to say, oh, just one more donut, one more beer, another rib, right? And that we do that same thing in sales. I don't need to prepare. I've given this presentation a million times. I closed. I was number one last year. And what was interesting When I used to take the calls for the courses, a lot of them would start off with a person telling me how great they were. And I'd say, well, sounds like you're all set. Why are we talking? And then they'd start to open up. Well, you know, I'm not making the money I want. I think it's my manager. Oh, your manager's screwing up a lot of deals for you? Well, I don't get the deals that I used to get. You know, you go through this therapy-type session and it's just human nature. You can't have 98% of the people falling into this trap and it not be natural. Because if you didn't fall in the trap, then you'd be working really hard, wouldn't you? You'd be like, okay, I got to learn about this and this and this, and I got to own when a deal falls through. Notice junior reps, all they care about is the deal being lost isn't their fault. That's all they care. I don't mind losing as long as it's not my fault. And I go, well, it doesn't matter because you get paid the same on it. But did you learn anything? Because you lost the tuition money, did you learn the lesson? And sometimes we don't really know why we lost. You know, we all try and pin it on stuff, but it's always politics, money, time. And then managers always use the same: it's not qualified. This one guy, I go, unless they come to you with a purchase order. What is, what else is qualified other than that? Oh, people in the enterprise, that change isn't a big issue. I go, yeah, it's the biggest issue. What do you think it is? You think it's money? You know they have the money. You know they have the problem that, you know, it can solve the problem. They know it can solve. Why didn't they buy it? Little change in there, isn't there? Oh, it's not qualified.

Change is hard. Yep.

And how much do you want to pay to be in this trap, and for how long? Because it's probably costing you 30% of your income, I would think.

Yeah, if you just— sounds about right.

Just ask yourself the question, what do I wish I knew That I don't know right now.

You always hear about the, if I could go back 10 years ago, I wish I knew this. I wish I knew that about the stock market or whatever it may be. So it's, it's so true. And I, I don't think the way sales is, your companies are going to promote the learn-it-all mindset. It's going to be just throw you out there and just expect you to figure it out. Unfortunately, that's just the reality of probably the how the sales profession is compared to other business units. So you really need to do this yourself. You need to get this mentality yourself to learn it all. Find somebody that is a good mentor that can hold you accountable and call you out on the BS. But you have to be proactive yourself because I don't think the companies are going to help you with this. So don't expect that. Some maybe are better than others for sure, obviously, but you have to do this yourself to go from the know-it-all to the learn-it-all.

And to become great at sales, the best way is to model somebody who already has become good at sales and to hear other people who have become great at sales and the journey that they're going through, the false beliefs, the misnomers, the mindset issues, all of the stuff that gets in our way between And where we are in the income that we want. Let's face it, we're in sales because we're money motivated, we're competitive, we want to be better every day than we were yesterday. And how do we do that? Hmm, just really, you know, read a book, listen to a podcast. That's good. Good start. I like it. But then you have to take action. And then you want both tactical and strategic. Ideas. You want mindset. You want strategy. You want to understand how companies buy. You want really deep content and examples, case studies, so that you can learn from other people's mistakes. That's what I'm here for.

I'm here for you to learn from my mistakes.

And boy, do I got a lot of them. So go to b2brevenue.com. Sign up for the courses. There's 2 major ones. Start the conversation, get the meeting, fills up your pipeline, gets rid of that problem of, oh, I don't have enough leads, I don't have enough meetings. It gets those conversations started with the people you want to talk to. Now, it's not about a pitch, it's about a conversation. Now, everybody thinks of conversations when you're talking or you're online at the same time, or you're on the phone or Zoom at the same time. That's not a conversation. A conversation's when the client is talking about what they care about, what they're interested in. And that is what we call qualification, where we can sense where are they and how do we build up that curiosity into interest, into urgency to get a deal. And these are skills that we need. They're lifelong skills that we need in sales. And then how do we get a deal closed? Yes, anyone can take an order, but what if they don't know how to get it done? You get a new account where you're trying to get a big change done internally. What are the issues? If you're not planning that through, odds are it's not going to get done no matter how much your champion wants it. So winning the complex sales solves that problem. for you. Why waste all your time on these false positives or these no decisions? Because they don't pay very well. They pay 0.0. What you want to do is pay a lot. So sign up today. Invest in yourself. You're the asset in sales. Quit waiting for somebody else to approve it or train you. See if you can get it expensed. That should be your first sales obstacle. Your first sales challenge is how do you get your company to pay for it? Just go down, tell your manager you want to do this. I put a little example email in the show notes right below here. Just swipe up and take a look at that. And if they won't, you got to ask yourself, why won't you? Why won't you? Oh, it takes time. Well, you work all day. You're working wrong all day. Why not improve that? There's the time right there. Oh, the money, Brian. It's money. Well, you make more money if you become better in sales. And Start the Conversation pays for itself the first week because you're going to get at least 2 meetings Just learning from the very basics of it. Closing the Complex Sale will pay for itself 100 times over. Students in it tell me it's the best money they ever spent because they now have control over their deals. And it doesn't end. Some give up. Some give up after they win their first deal and they think they've got enough. No, come back. Come back. Keep going. You can get even bigger deals, more deals, faster deals. That's what it's all about. Sign up today. Put the excuses away. Yeah, excuses feel good, but they're expensive. 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 $300K, $400K, $500K. 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, and 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.