HOW TO LEARN THE GAME OF SALES AND WIN MORE DEALS NOW

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. Do you think any of the sales training works?

Great question. I think there's a lot of factors that impact that, but I do— I know you believe as well that in sales you need to have that student of the game mentality where you're constantly learning, you're constantly getting better. Open to new ideas and perspectives. So I think you also want to make sure that you're learning from the right people and the right types of ideas and opportunities. So I'm a fan of sales training, but I think at times it can go one way or the other depending on the setting or what who's doing it and all these different things. But in general, I think you should be investing in yourself as a salesperson, or a company should be investing in their salespeople to make sure that they. Keep getting what they need to get to the next level and stay at the top. Otherwise, they're, you're gonna get left behind.

Yeah. Because having done it for quite a while now, it's not the how to sell, it's the how to get you to do it.

Yeah.

And then understand that the perform— how well you did it matters the most. Because you can— I can, I can teach somebody how to sell and they can take a test and they can, you know, get an A in it, but then they can go— can't close a deal because it's how well you do it. It's part of your personality. And, you know, even during office hours, I ask people, well, why wouldn't you do this, take a particular skill that's critical? And they go, well, I don't want to sound like a salesperson. Well, is— do you think there's a way to say it without sounding like it? Yeah, but I don't know how to do that. I can write the words down, but they— it's not them yet. It's not authentic and organic to them. That's the part that people have to get. And it requires this internal locus of control that I am responsible for me learning how to sell, you know, because the content is there, the examples are there, but it's up to you to consume it and integrate it into your personality and understand this is the game you're playing. And since it's counterintuitive, what does everybody do? That doesn't feel natural, so that doesn't work. They're just protecting themselves. And I've heard that more than anything. Or they say, I did that. And that's why I asked them, show your work. And they show it and they go, well, you didn't do that.

You did something like that.

And you added this. Oh, shouldn't add that? No, don't add that. Oh, but it feels organic to add that.

Right.

Because that's why you're not selling as much as what feels or what does feel organic in sales. Talking about yourself, talking about your product, closing. Where's the order? That feels organic, doesn't it?

Yep.

I just said it and felt great. Asking about them. Why would you do that? Oh, oh, why? Because you need to build rapport. You want them to want to talk to you. Well, I know the product better than anybody. Okay, well, does that matter? I think people don't understand what selling even is, and I think the stages that people go through— and the first stage is, you know, the product, you can Answer the questions, the service clerk, and then people can compete against other alternatives. That's where people most stop, and they think that's all I need to learn, because if I get the technical sale, I'll get the sale. But what if they don't buy anything from anyone? Did you win? What did you win? You didn't win any commission.

I think you, the more you have skin in the game, the more you're gonna try to figure this stuff out that we're talking about. So whether that be more commission-focused environment or taking ownership for yourself, I think sometimes with the sales training in general, like for example, if I work for a company and they're forcing it on me. You know, I didn't pay for it. I didn't really want to do it. So I'm going to be resistant to change, which that's the hardest thing in life and in sales is trying to get people to change. Right. So I think there's some of that side of it. So what I found is basically, and it's hard, you can't just replicate this, but my career path, it kept increasing to more challenging environments. Like I'd force myself to be in these more challenging environments, which isn't for everyone because I'd, Could have stayed in a more corporate, climb the ladder, high base bonus, upselling accounts, pretty good life, but it just felt like something was missing. And that's when I started making changes and I started to go into commission environments where I was like, okay, wait, this is a little bit, this isn't quite the same. There's something different here. And I knew that I was still doing pretty good, but it wasn't where I wanted to be. And that's where I started thinking different of Like I had to admit to myself, I had to get over my own ego of like, okay, you did well these past 10 years at the same company, blah, blah, blah. Now you gotta like step your game up and, and be open to new ideas or different processes, whatever it may be. And that's when I originally took your course, but I paid for that myself, you know, which looking back was a great investment, but I had to be willing to break, break the ice and actually pay for something to, to get better. And and do something different and actually do the work too. It's one thing to sign up for stuff, but you also have to actually do it and be accountable with yourself and be open to the coaching. If you're gonna, if you're gonna do something like you gotta be all in, in my opinion, otherwise, like, what's the point of doing it? And then I guess I took my, I guess I took my career seriously, my sales. Like, I see it as a profession. I see it as a career that I can keep building up. And then over the years, it kept progressing into more entrepreneurial type stuff, but That was the first thing is I had to get over my ego and I had to be open to coaching. I still struggle with some of that at times. I want, I'm, I'm more selective about who I take feedback from, but I, that was a stepping stone. And now since then, I probably had, I probably paid for 6 or 7 different type of coaches in different parts of my life since I did that. And I feel like I wouldn't be where I'm at, definitely mentally in other areas, if I wouldn't have started that process years ago. So, but I, I don't know if everyone has that same mindset as me. So even doing something small or maybe you as a, as a company leader, you can try to embrace that idea and, and, and get people bought in. It is possible. It's hard, but I think, you know, leaders should do more of that too and, and invest in their team if they really care about them. So, right.

Because most salespeople, what book should I read? It's like, okay, what, you play football, what football book is gonna take you to be a better football player?

None of them are. And then you're gonna get run over when you try to tackle somebody. Okay.

So you have the knowledge, right? Because every major athlete's probably written a book. Every major coach has written a book. We've all read them in sales. Maybe if you study it like a manual, you keep it with you and You, you really study it and you want to make it part of— maybe that'll work. But if you read it like a novel, it's entertainment. And especially in sales where it is 100% counterintuitive, right? Don't we all know that we shouldn't talk all the time and we should be better listeners? Anybody not know that? Is that a secret?

I think we're good on that one, supposedly.

Yeah. And how's that working for everybody?

Uh, I'm— it'd be shocking, I'm sure, if we, if we got the full stats. Yeah.

Yeah. And we ask about their decision criteria and there's decision-making pro— are you the decision maker? You are. Like, this guy today commented on one of my videos, it's like, just do a, a host a win-loss interview with them, then you'll find out if— why you lost. And I'm thinking to myself, okay, they lied through to you through the whole sales process. Then the, then the person would say, they didn't lie to you, then you didn't ask the right question. Are you going to buy my stuff? They're gonna say maybe. They're lying. Then you're assuming that they're going to tell you the truth when you do the interview. What if they tell you, we bought the other people because they were cheaper, but we were cheaper. Oh, it was because we don't like you. Maybe that's the reason. Are they gonna tell you? Doubt.

I doubt it. That would be, that'd be rare if someone would tell you that to your face, but it would be respected, I guess, if someone actually would do that.

And let's face it, it's essentially a committee. And do they know why they picked one over the other? Somebody wanted the other product for a reason. It might be a clandestine reason. There's a personal win in it. And they're— and you, you think that they're going to tell you, oh, it's because of this feature that you don't have. That's what a sales rep wants to hear. Because it—

why?

Why do they want to hear that?

It's not their fault. Yeah, yeah, that's why they want to hear that.

And that's what they will hear. Well, they will hear that the other people were cheaper, so they can go back to management. I told you they wanted more discount. Okay, so did you learn anything? It's the opposite of learning. And this is what we get in sales all the time.

Oh, it's political.

Well, it's B2B sales. They're all political. Because you got more than one person with conflicting interests. And if you're just the competitive sales rep, you got the technical win, but they pick the other company. How many times do we see that? Imagine competing against Salesforce, right? Oh, we got a better product.

Oh, we don't care.

You're not Salesforce.

Right.

We see it all the time.

Mm-hmm.

And what, what I find interesting today is that probably the 2 hottest companies are these AI power dialers, which allow you to do more dumb things faster, and these AI-based spam tools that allow you to send more spam. And why are these popular?

Well, I think the company you mentioned probably made that concept popular back years ago when it maybe had a little more effectiveness, but then it got ruined for everybody. And now everyone thinks they're Salesforce, but they can't, and they don't have that, that aura, that brand, all that, that background that, that you mentioned. So Everybody's trying to act like the big dog, the unicorn of all unicorns, but that doesn't actually work. And because pressing a button and hitting you 15 times through emails and all these different touchpoints, it's way easier than me to try to actually think and try to figure out how do I close Brian. Instead, I just press the button and boom, it's gonna happen. And then you know what? There's 100 more Brians out there, so we'll figure it out, right?

Right. And every time you talk to a CEO who doesn't understand sales, what do they say?

It's a numbers game.

Yeah. Or I just want it done. Just, yeah, I want a sales machine. And anytime somebody writes a book like Predictable Revenue, oh, it's predictable now. Before it was unpredictable. Now it's predictable if you're at Salesforce and it's 2003. That's all, that's all you have to do. Get a time machine, go back 20 years and be this company. Then it'll work. And this is what people think sales is— more dumb things faster.

Why?

Because doing something smart or selling is a skill. Oh, we don't want that. Then they have power, those salespeople. They have power now. If it's not a skill, we have all the power. We don't need them. We can just put someone else in. But wait a second, we have Corey selling 3 times as much as Jerry. We need Corey, but we don't like him. We like Jerry. Why don't we get more Jerrys? Well, you can, but you lose the revenue. Oh, that doesn't feel good, does it?

So you're telling me if I hire 10 salespeople, they're not all gonna each get $1 million in revenue? It doesn't work like that. I thought it did. That seems to be the typical private equity playbook when that happens.

Yeah, believe me, I was one of those 10 several times. And I'd look around and you could just tell who wasn't going to make it. You know, the people from the big companies, people who have never prospected, people who've never guerrilla sold, people who were managing accounts, not creating and getting into accounts. And having trained salespeople, they don't want to learn how to sell. They want to learn how to take orders. Brian, teach me how to get the order. Teach me how to get the meeting. You gotta do this, this, and this. No, no, no. Where's the button?

Yeah.

What's the hack? They want the hack, right?

The hack. Why? Because it serves them. What's the hack to any other profession? What's the hack to marketing? What's the hack to engineering? What's the hack to accounting?

Doesn't exist. They, they have to keep Upskilling every year and get recertified and all these different things. And then somehow sales gets looked at completely the opposite, or maybe it gets looked at from an academic setting. I know we've talked about that at some points, but everyone's acting like they have inbound coming in left and right. And that is easier typically when you got inbound, you can do a little more gimmicky type stuff potentially depending on the company. But Most people are not getting inbound, especially these days. Like it's, I feel like things have changed substantially the last few years and it's much harder to get in front of people. So you can't just press a button or take the magic pill and it's not going to work, right? It's, uh, the reality is you have to know how to sell. And I think a lot of people are learning the hard lessons right now or this past couple of years that, man, or maybe they're getting humbled. Maybe they either they're going to admit or realize, man, I need to step my game up or they're gonna flame out and probably go to another profession or they're gonna keep hopping around aimlessly to company to company and never really achieve what they wanted to because you have to, I feel like you, it's more important now than it was a few years ago in my opinion.

Yeah. Because they look at the other companies, companies that are succeeding and they say, well, it must be the reps. Let's hire those reps. But, you know, the companies that are succeeding, Maybe they got product market fit at the right time. They had the right product at the right time, great marketing, lots of money to spend to get the word out there. You don't know what they have or don't have, but when you're out there trying to build a conversation with somebody to start a deal, you know, you got to know how to do that, but there's the art part of it as well. You know, when you look at analogies like comedy, right? You look at Jerry Seinfeld, been comedian his whole life. During COVID it was like 2 years off. He goes, I couldn't get back on the stage. I had to rebuild my comedy skills.

Yeah.

I had 40 years of doing it. And it was both innate and expressed talent, but it wasn't readily available. He had to rebuild that skill. And here at salespeople, you know, taking an order is one thing, but building a deal is a whole nother thing. And what do you have? Are you taking orders? I don't hear people taking orders. You know, these account managers maybe, but when you're in an order, you get somebody who has interest. Management's not approved anything, don't even know about it. What are you talking about? Now we've got to sell it inside. They haven't decided to buy something. You got one little rebel who wants to adopt your product for some personal reason. And you got to take that and turn it into a real deal. Most reps think that is a real deal.

It's already, it's already in the CRM for a million bucks for sure.

Yeah, it's just, I put the quote at the end of the quarter, it's going to happen. If it doesn't, what, it's no decision, it's political? Let's do a post-loss interview with them and find out what happened. And this is the problem. So if you want to learn just enough to get the deal, you'll never be good at sales because just enough might be just enough in one situation, which probably isn't just enough in the rest. And that's what drove me, was because nobody taught the complex sale when I started. There was a couple books out there, but it was top-down, you know, really personality-driven, not process-driven. I needed something that a mere mortal could do. You know, I wasn't going to spend 5 years on the golf course learning how to talk CEO, you know, get an MBA. But even then, you talk about one, is that enough? Probably not enough. And I think too many people think it's like, well, it sounds like a lot of work. Well, think of the alternative, losing. How's that feel? Getting another job?

Yeah, that's not fun. I mean, we're pain avoidance machines. So I think it's like the path of least resistance. It feels easier to to not do the work now, but then later, 3 months from now, when you don't close the deal, you don't get the commission check, you're gonna be in a tailspin way worse than spending a few hours prepping for, you know, what that deal looks like over time. And that, yeah, that's why I liked your stuff the most because there's some of the stuff I was taught before, like I was at a great company that had a ton of momentum, was crushing it, and I was able to ride that roller coaster and that wave up. But there was no real formal sales training because they didn't necessarily need it because they had so much stuff coming in and it was upselling, etc. And then when I went to medical device, it was like, oh, this is like a 12 or 18 month deal cycle, sometimes more, sometimes less. There's all these clinical people that are worried about patients and people's lives. And then there's these procurement people on the other side that are mysterious. I don't really know where they're coming from. And it was, if you're just winging it, I mean, maybe you can get away with it if you have that product market fit and the right place, right time. And are you inherited a territory that already had some stuff built up? But otherwise, I mean, you would get crushed by those committees and all these things going on. So I knew something was off. Like I couldn't remember everything in my head essentially, as you've mentioned in the past. And if I didn't document it somehow, if I didn't write it out, And think ahead, I was gonna get eaten alive. It's like, how do you expect to win these big deals without doing the work on the front end? You can get away with it with a great product sometimes, but you still need to do the work. It's like if you wanna, I like football a lot. So Georgia's done really well the last few years. Alabama is still our kryptonite. Like we cannot beat Alabama and Nick Saban. But the one time we did, I'm sure we were planning ahead. Like we made adjustments at halftime. We were playing like all things were clicking and we were doing every little thing right. But that took months of preparation and then adjustments during it and planning ahead. It's the same thing if you want to win a million-dollar enterprise deal that you get some crazy commission on, you, you gotta treat it like that. And I think the people that really treat it and maybe have the opportunity, sometimes maybe they don't have the opportunities at that company, so they need to figure out Okay, am I in the right place or should I go somewhere else? But I, we need more people like that. But they seem to be a dying breed, at least when I'm, when I'm out there sometimes of those people that really want to take it seriously and want to take, take it to the next level. There's more of that, that middle of the road thing, which is fine. You know, you need people that are performing, that are cheerleaders for the company. You need some of that for sure. But I think we need more of those salespreneurs that want to get out there and take it seriously.

Yeah, because what does a football coach do? Do they say just, okay, to win the game, we've got to stay positive and go out there and do a bunch of stuff? No, he takes the game, he breaks it down into tiny little things, and he makes you do them until you're sick of doing them. And then he makes you do some more of them. Why? Because he needs it to be unconscious. He can't have you out there thinking. It's gotta be ingrained in you. It's gotta be intuitive to you. And sales, uh, what do we do? Oh, gimme a template to get me a meeting. And you get the influencers send out their templates and you're like, everybody puts their comments, send me that template. It must be gold. Trust me, if it was gold, they wouldn't be on LinkedIn sharing it. They'd be getting meetings and deals with it. But you're the deal for it. They tricked you, not a client. And if you tell people what you really have to do to learn to sell, well, that doesn't sound interesting. That's why my pro— my programs are a year long. And the hardest part people have is accepting What they're doing isn't working and they have to do something different. But the difference requires change, requires discomfort. But they feel comfortable doing what doesn't work.

Yeah.

So they'll continue doing what doesn't work because it's more comfortable, you know, sending their spam, cold calling all day. And I, I tell them all the same thing: if it's working, continue doing it. Don't switch over 100%, maybe 10% at first. Get comfortable with it, get some success, and see it work. Then all of a sudden, you'll naturally go that progression. And let's face it, if you're out in the woods, you might find your way back home. But if you had a map, you'd know where you are and you know where to go, regardless of what your instincts tell you. You look at the compass and then you look at the map. How many people throw the map out and say, I know better? I've heard about this couple in Maine that went out for a hike. The husband passed out and died, and the wife never found her way home.

Hmm.

Just following your instincts, which are probably panicking, trying to get help out with no cell coverage. That's what we're like in sales. Instead of hunting and pecking, we take someone else's compass that worked for them. But does it work for you? And why doesn't it work? Because it's just an ad. It's not persuasive. And does it work on you?

No.

So you're trying to find— it becomes, you know, Darwinian. It only works on dumb people. Well, guess what? Dumb people tend not to buy stuff, but they do engage. So it's false positive.

And the ego Is definitely a huge part of it. And that was what I probably struggled with the most. I was overconfident, borderline cocky when I changed industries, but then I got humbled pretty quickly because I had— it was out of my control. I lost 40% of my territory, which had nothing to do with me. It was some contract thing that I didn't even know about. Of course, you get there and then you find out and then boom, you lose all this stuff. Then COVID happened pretty soon after, which did not accelerate what I was doing. It decelerated it. So I'm like, Man, I'm my back's against the wall here. So either I go running back where I came from, or I try to figure it out. So, but I also had a the ego helped me in the other way is that I had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder that I wanted to show that I could be successful in another industry. So that part helped me, but it took me a minute to admit to myself that I needed to do something different. And that's you know what made me stumble across your stuff. And then once you can't just you know, sign up for something, whether it's yours or whatever it is, you have to do the work, you know, invest in it, you know, do the extra office hours, like listen to it when you're driving. I mean, I would listen to stuff when I was going to hospitals, whatever it may be. And then you actually have to write it out and get it out of your head and do it because you can't remember all that stuff. So it took, you know, it takes a little bit of time with anything. You can't expect anything to happen overnight in B2B sales, especially These days. So, so it took, took some triggers for me to admit to myself and the ego hurt me, but then it helped me because I was trying to prove, you know, to myself and maybe others that I could be successful. It wasn't just where I was before. I could do stuff in another way. So everyone might not be like that, but I think there are a lot of people that are very competitive in sales. So if you're competitive in sales, you need to be able to get over that other ego and use it to your advantage to compete and be, be the best or be at the top.

Even bigger deals, more deals, faster deals—that's what it's all about. Sign up today. Put the excuses away. Excuses feel good, but they're expensive. Excuse—you know what the excuses are costing you? Tens, fifty, maybe. 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, 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.