HOW TO LEVERAGE YOUR UNIQUE STRENGTHS TO BECOME GREAT AT SALES

In sales, we all want to develop and perfect our superpower. Now, what superpower would you like in sales? Most people would probably think it's charm, where people come to you. That'd be nice. But if you can't have that, what else would you like? How about the ability to read someone else's mind, to connect with somebody else, to be an Empathetic, to understand where they are, what they're up against, what they're facing, what problems they have, and what they want to solve. Instead of expecting people to come to us— that'd be nice, but that's becoming increasingly harder. What we do have control over is meeting people where they are, what they're going through, what they're facing, and what they want to solve. That's what we're going to be talking about today. Empathy is that ability. And I think it's a skill that is advanced because we're not born with it. We have to develop it. It's one of the last skills that we learn. Everyone thinks they are.

Few are.

And it requires an enormous amount of prefrontal cortex It's an activity. It's not a reaction. Saying what we want is a reaction. We want something, we ask for it. But that's not what selling is. That's trying to get people to come to us. And so many people out there try and scream louder and louder, look at me, instead of, how can I help you? How can I give to you? And And we tend to think that we'll do that after someone gives to us. But that's not how the world works because everybody's at that— it's a stalemate. Everybody's waiting for somebody else to give. Nobody gives, nothing gets done. Today's interview, I think you're really going to enjoy it. Be open-minded. Ask yourself, how can I apply this to what I do? How can I learn how to do it? How can I become better at it? It is what I teach in a step-by-step process in Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting. And it— I show you exactly how to do it. I break it down into tiny little steps. And once you apply them, you get success and you get happy and you get meetings.

Hey, Nathan, thanks for joining us today. As a way of getting started, give us a little background on yourself.

Yeah, sure, Brian. Thanks so much. So I'm Nathan Foreman. I live in— I do not live in a cathedral, Brian. I live in Brooklyn, New York, and I'm currently an account director at a company called FinalSight. FinalSight is the preferred digital communications firm for public school districts, private faith-based schools. So we build websites, we do marketing communications, and so forth. And I actually work in the School Admin division. So School Admin is the kind of the leading enrollment management solution for private K-12 schools. So we handle inquiries and the application process and the whole enrollment process. And we actually just joined the Final Site family. We're super excited about it. We joined in March, and now we've got really an amazing solution that takes kind of the whole marketing journey of driving traffic for our school customers. And then once they have families that want to inquire and want to apply for their kids, they move into that school admin environment. So we're really just that whole front-end piece, funnel management, as you would say. You know, it's amazing that, you know, admissions directors and marketing communication folks at at private schools and school districts, you know, they're sales folks like us. So it's kind of nice to— they're doing it, they have a different customer, but it's nice to work with those partners of ours because they can really relate to what we do because they do the same thing, but they're just trying to get parents.

That's kind of a tough space though, isn't it?

Because of budgets and timeframes and—

It is. And particularly where I come from, you know, I've been at School Admin for about 2 years. Previously, I worked mostly in sales management. So, I worked for, you know, larger education technology companies, been doing it for, you know, over, you know, 10 years. And when I joined School Admin, I actually said, you know what, I need to get back to basics. Like, I went back, now I'm a field rep, right? And I'm loving it. You know, it's like, so kind of, it's kind of neat to kind of go back from like, you know, coaching and helping a team to like just kind of owning my own number. And in particular, you mentioned the tough time, you know, it is tough. It got tougher with COVID I bet. For sure. Because there was just so much uncertainty, are the kids going back? You know, for private schools, their budgets were tight, particularly Catholic schools, which are the ones that I work with in Catholic dioceses. You know, there was just so much uncertainty that it did get, you know, You know, it did get pretty tough there, even tougher than it was previously. Yeah.

And did you enjoy management, or was this just something you wanted to do different, or were you burnt out on the leadership side, or?

No, I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't say I was burned out. I was kind of looking for another opportunity. I knew school admin well from being in the industry. So I've been in education technology since 2007, I like to joke that I'm like Johnny Cash. I've been everywhere in the end. I've worked for a lot of different companies in that space. I've been everywhere. But no, an opportunity came through a former colleague of mine. He said, hey, would you ever consider this? And so, what I love about the management part is really the coaching part, and I love the process and the metrics. You really get a good feeling when you've got those metrics just the way you want them in terms of, you know, pipeline generate, you know, all the things that sales managers do. And I love that part. One of the things I was missing that I found when I was talking to my colleague who kind of brought me into the company was, you know, just that customer interaction, you know, getting in front of people. And I would go out with my reps and I would, you know, I'd meet with schools and, but I just wasn't doing it a lot. And now, you know, I have like, you know, 2 to 3 meetings a day and it's just Talking to people and, you know, what's going on, and especially in COVID, like, tell me everything. I want to know how things are going, you know. And so I've really been enjoying it. And it's— if I get into— back into sales management, I think, boy, I'll be just so set by kind of reminding myself, you know, what it's like boots on the ground carrying the bag, you know.

Because it is kind of easy to forget that after a while, isn't it?

Oh, yeah. Yep. Oh, yeah.

Especially in like your space where it's like, why aren't they doing it? You said they were gonna do this. Like that, right? Because I think the amount of things that you control in your space is less.

Yeah.

Because there's no profit motive. It's a lot of politics, a lot of consensus that has to take place. And—

Well, governance too, right? You're 100% right. You know, you've got— I think one of the things that I When I first came into the education technology space, I wasn't— the area that I came into, I wasn't familiar with at all. And one of the things I really loved about it is it was really high-tech. Like, education technology software is a very high-technology business. And even back in 2007 with the company I started with, I loved the high-tech aspect of it because I had owned and co-founded an internet company that built websites, and I'd worked in technology for a while. But the philanthropic nature of it, the fact we were on the finance side for private schools, and back in 2007, 2008, when the bubble— that was another really tough time on private schools. Families just didn't have enough money to send their kids there. So I took it upon it as my mission to help schools sustain themselves. Right. And so, but yeah, I mean, it was, you know, It is tough, but these folks are so mission-driven, right, that, you know, I almost had to kind of change my thinking. I've been in sales for nearly 30 years, but I almost had to kind of move to like empathy-based selling, you know, if you will, right? What, you know, tell me what's going on, you know, like really thinking of what's going on in these folks', you know, world. In their world. And so it really, I caught the bug and I haven't looked back since. I've definitely stayed in this industry because it's a fast-moving industry, it's very innovative, and it still has that kind of philanthropic bent to it, if you will.

Yeah, so I guess you get kind of that helper's high, that feeling like you're part of changing the world for the better.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

And when you were in sales leadership, what viewpoint did you have on salespeople? What made a great salesperson in your space?

You know, I think part of being a good sales leader is understanding that the sales process is an ongoing evolution, right? It's almost like science where you think something's one way one day, and then the next day you're like, oh, I just tweaked a number. And now I need— so I think the most successful sales folks that I worked with were always looking for help, right? Like always kind of hungry for like, tell me how I did, how did that go? What's your feedback? And I think that you have to have a lot of trust in that relationship to kind of bare yourself out there, right? And so, you know, creating as a responsibility of a sales leader is creating an amazing process that doesn't get in the way of the things they need to do, is easy to follow and easy to measure so that you both as a team can be evolving and improving over time. And so you have to have a certain willingness, trust, and openness as a rep to be able to enter into that kind of a relationship, right?

Yeah, because I always viewed it as it's this paradox, like when you're in front of the client, you can't have all this doubt. You can't be thinking to myself, what am I doing wrong? No, you have to be like very confident, well-thought-out process and execute it. But off-field, when you're not in front of a client, you should be questioning, where are you? Where to take it next? How could you have done it better? And kind of the game film, because we don't get that much practice like we do in other sports, other activities.

Right.

You know, it's like no one's, hey, I'm gonna go upstairs and practice selling.

Right. Yep.

You don't get that. And I even have a hard time trying to get reps to write stuff down.

Yeah.

And it's like, can you memorize a chessboard? You just, you just, how many squares are there? What do you mean? It's like, I don't need to, it's right there. It's like, yeah, but your sale is kind of in your head.

Right.

There's no sales board. You have your CRM, but it's not that detailed. In the process, are you a process person?

I'm a big process person. Yeah, for sure. And it's a combination. I know that you'll think this is just obvious, but I went to college for music. I studied jazz performance, trumpet, and music production. So of course, you As you can see, the straight line right to education technology sales was—

Obvious.

But I will say that one thing that being a budding jazz musician, I learned from it was just the improvisational aspects of that kind of career track. And so I think the best combination is a, like you said, having the confidence, doing your homework, to know the process well enough to when you're on your feet, you can improvise a little bit, you can ebb and flow and you can respond, but you've always gotta be kind of touching on those points of your process, right? You've always gotta be kind of, you know, what it— it doesn't matter how you say it, you do have to figure out what the compelling issue is.

Yep.

Or you're just having a nice conversation and you've made a new friend and there's nothing wrong with that. But ultimately what we have to do is figure out Is there a compelling issue, quantifying it for folks that never really thought of it that way, to quote the Challenger Selling methodology, and then understanding their willingness to make a change and wanting to actually use you to make that change right now. Those are easy things to memorize, but you're not going to have a very productive conversation unless you're willing to improvise around some of those things. And there's going to be different riffs in every meeting, and that's why different sets in jazz Are never going to be exactly the same, right?

Well, I love that background because sales is a performance, much like playing music is.

Yep.

You know, how well you think you're doing at it is one opinion. How well the audience thinks you're doing, that's the opinion that matters.

Yep.

And, and to become good at any music instrument, you've got to take feedback. A lot of it. Whether you record it and then listen to it later, or you have an instructor, which I'm sure you did for years.

Years. Oh yeah. Yep. Totally. Yep. And I, you know, it's funny too, when talking about this, like, I think I might have even commented on one of your posts. We were talking about how do you prepare for the performance of your, you know, of your next meeting or whatever. And I remember, I think it was on your blog on LinkedIn. I remember saying, you know, back in the day when it— early, my early sales years in like the early '90s, I'd be going up in the elevator to a client meeting and I would start humming to myself the old, you know, I don't know if I'm older than you, I might be aging myself, but the old Tonight Show theme, right? And so as I'm going in, you know, if there were other people in the elevator, I'd do it in my head. But if there weren't, I'd hum to myself or whatever. And then I'd almost view the elevator doors opening as the curtain Opening, right? I'd be like, duh duh duh duh duh, you know, and that would just kind of psych myself up and remind myself that hey, you know, you're there to do a job, and there's certain process that you're going to follow. But ultimately, this is about creating trust and a friendly environment, people liking you, and that only comes out when you're looking at this as like more of a performance in a lot of ways, right?

Well, it is whether you would accept it or not, right? You don't have to believe it, right? In the same way, when you do an audition, you don't have to. treat it like a performance.

Right.

But the people in the audience certainly do.

Yeah.

And our clients are like, you know, they'd be happy with a nice conversation.

Yeah, right.

That doesn't mean they're not going to buy anything. To buy something, you have to dig up a problem, talk about it, make them realize there's a solution that fits it. And this is how we can evaluate it and then justify it.

Yeah.

Yeah. And, and too many people, I think, today look at it as, oh, I just know that. Well, knowing it and doing it are huge.

Yeah.

I mean, think about like when you played a, a song, how many times did you practice it?

Oh yeah, hundreds. Oh, you would just, you know, you'd go into what we used to call the woodshed, right? Yep.

And then before the performance, Do you have a sound check or do you just get off the phone and walk out there? Right.

Yeah.

There's a sound check, there's a warm-up, there's a process, you know, and that we overlook in sales.

But the people who are really good at it have that musician performer mindset.

And then when you took feedback as a performer, as a musician, You didn't say, oh, Nathan's bad, or Nathan's good. It's, oh, this is how I become better.

Yeah. And for musicianship, that's 100% right, right? You know, I mean, there were certain times when John Coltrane would step off the stage and just be like, ugh, you know, and you're like, are you kidding? You know, it's just, it's not what he wanted to do, and he wanted to do more. And so you're chasing it a lot of the, you know, a lot of the time, um, by trying to get better and better and practicing more and more. I mean, you You brought up an analogy that I just think is so important, and that's like watching the film, right? And that's, I think, one thing, you know, COVID was pretty tough. It was tough on salespeople, particularly because we couldn't travel. And so this became the format where we had to kind of entertain, right, if you will, and really get to the bottom of pain and everything else. And it was challenging, but if you were to look at bright spots or silver linings, You know, many people use systems that take transcripts or video recordings of your meetings. And so I've just seen a substantial uptick. I mean, I used to feel so uncomfortable watching myself right back when we would record the Zoom meetings or whatever, you know, and they were few and far between. But I'm so used to it now. And I'm just, you know, I shoot it to my manager now and just say, hey, take a look. Where are the gaps? Right. Like, where could I have maybe been a little clearer? And, and that's almost becoming to a lot of folks like second nature, no matter what system you're using. If you're recording your meetings, you know, you— and again, this gets back to the vulnerability, right? You have to have a team that you trust to be able to open yourself up to that kind of, you know, feedback. And you got to just leave your ego at the door and know that, you know, if you trust the people you're working with and your managers, that they're ultimately just trying to make you better. And ultimately, you want to be better. And so we're looking at tape. We're looking at tape now, which is awesome, you know.

Yeah. And that's it.

I do it as soon as I And the interview, you know, I upload the video to YouTube, and I take the audio file and put it into otter.ai. And it'll take the audio and turn it into text and map the audio with it. And immediately, I'll see the talk-to-listen ratio, right, which I hope is much more leaning to the guests than to me.

Well, it's not a problem with me. I think you found out.

You're very good with it. And then I'll kind of see how the flow went. Was it too fast, too slow, or were I getting into kind of the distinctions that you have?

Yeah, yeah.

It's really powerful.

You know, and you also mentioned something, and we talked about the improvisation and the balancing act between process and just natural flow, right? And your instinctive, you know, way around certain objections, you know, or whatever. I do, though, feel that there are, you know, certain things that you really need to follow. You mentioned that, like, maybe the person you're meeting with the first time, just maybe their expectation is just having a conversation. They have no idea that they're gonna— this is gonna turn into any kind of evaluation whatsoever, right?

Yeah.

And so part of the process of, you know, you need to figure out a compelling reason why they should keep talking to you and maybe how you could help them. But they also need to be consistently reminded that they are entering an evaluation process, right? And so at the same time I'm trying to think nimbly on my feet, I'm also laying the groundwork for bringing them in and shepherding them in and guiding them, being their guided tour of an evaluation of a process that may lead to a no or not yet. Hopefully it'll lead to a yes. And so process is critically important, particularly around Evaluation plans, just being a good tour guide. Boy, I mean, you know, everybody watching would probably be like, oh yeah, well, duh. Next steps. I'm just so surprised at how little we focus on that. And my talk track for that is when I'm setting up— and this is very Sandler— but when I'm setting up my upfront contract, right? I'm saying, listen, you know, I'm going to have to ask a favor of you, and I hope you agree. But if I don't schedule my entire life, the whole thing unravels. And more times than not, the people I'm talking to, which are like school people, right? They're like, oh no, we get it. Like, they get the scheduling of their whole lives, right? I said, okay, so I'm going to ask that after every conversation we have, we just do a little check-in. And I'm not— it's going to be 5 to 10 minutes. And that's going to, you know, that's going to move us to the next step. And we'll be tracking our progress to the end of this evaluation and hopefully we'll become partners. But boy, scheduling those next steps according to an ironclad transparent evaluation plan, that's what gets you out of, I won't say bad deals, but deals that are going to go nowhere earlier. And that's really where you can have a very effortless, non-stress evaluation with a partner where at the end, I've had more people say, thank you, for keeping such an eye on this process because I've got so much going on. It was nice to know that you would just kind of run it for us, right?

And that's it.

And how you did that was so natural, and you didn't sound like a salesperson.

Excellent.

And that is the biggest compliment you can get as a salesperson.

Yeah. Oh no, I love it. Yep. Because you didn't see my light, if you might, if my lighting might have hid it, but I was blushing a little bit. No, I appreciate it. Yeah, I appreciate it.

Right. Because if you— it took you a while to work that flow up because you made it about your flaw that if I don't manage my calendar, this stuff will slip and I'll feel bad about it.

Yeah.

So they're kind of helping you. And most reps think, oh, I'll just follow up with them. Because I hate that word. Because it's like there's nothing there. You assume that they know what they're doing, that they have tons of stuff to do, but your stuff is so important.

And all you're doing is—

it's a cadence.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yep. It's the structure, right? I'm married to a private school teacher. She's a— so my life is definitely structured, and which I love. And but she's a theater director, so she talks about scaffolding, right? Scaffolding the whole thing. Now, that doesn't mean like you have to have scaffolding in, you know, to build a beautiful building. Just look behind me, my Zoom background, right? Like you have— there has to be some sort of foundation, and then you can kind of, you know, go from there. But there's, you know, there's definitely got to be some structure there. And then it's just a matter of, like I said, going back to the, like the empathetic, empathy-based sales of just, how would I be receiving this same message, right? And putting yourself in their shoes. And you said something really important, which is like, they've got 100 things going on. Like anybody you're talking to has 100 things going on. And I have a funny brief story if you don't mind, but I walked into a school 10, 15 years ago with one of my reps. And we were sitting there waiting. We were meeting with the principal from this private Catholic school. And We're just kind of wondering, like, he was about 5, 10 minutes late. And so we're sitting there and all of a sudden down the hall, we see this guy walking down the hall with like his shirt, you know, kind of like he had taken off his button-down, you know, he's in his undershirt, he's got an axe in his hand and he's walking down the hall and we're just like, well, this will be interesting, right?

Like, uh, you put the rep in front of you, right?

It's like, uh, Dennis, I think we need to get out of here. No, but he, you know, he said, uh, hey, he's like, hey, gentlemen, uh, You know, I'm so sorry, we had a storm yesterday, as you guys probably found, and we had one of the branches of our tree drop on the power line, so I had to go down and chop it down and make sure our power didn't go out. And I'm like, these people have so much more going on than you even realize. And so you always have to be thinking, and particularly like even callbacks, right? I've had people call me back and I've been kind of angry and like, why won't this guy call me back? And then like 2 weeks later, he's like, you know, I'm so sorry, we had someone pass away at the school. And then you feel like a total jerk because you should have been thinking about like, it's not just about you. Maybe there's other stuff, you know, going on. And if you've planned a good process and they're not responding, there probably is something else going on. So you just have to kind of cool your jets and keep filling your pipeline and keep moving it forward, right?

And what's kept you in this space? Because you're clearly talented and have abilities, and there's a lot of products out there that are probably easier to sell and customers that are more anxious to buy and well-funded.

Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say that I'm typecast per se, because I do love what I do and I love the company that I work for. But, you know, when you've got 20, you know, 30-plus years in sales, of which over a decade in education sales, I just know so many people. And so it is a little bit difficult to say, oh, now I'm going to go and sell this software that enables you to find the best restaurant in town, or what, you know what I mean? It just would be hard at the stage of my career to veer into other spaces, but I'm open to— It's so interesting because People say, well, you used to have the IBM, like the 30-year career at IBM, and now the average is like 6 years or something at the same company, or that's at the top level, right? And maybe more like 3. So, you know, I'm open to different challenges and experiences and what have you, but I do know a lot of people in the space. They're great people that I've met with. And then there is something about, you know, back when we were going into buildings and having meetings, you know, you know, going and meeting with a school that just, you know, desperately needs more enrollment, and you walk down the halls and it's recess time and the kids are kind of running down the halls and you're just like, I got to help this school. You know what I mean? Like, so there's also, you know, and I have a daughter, she just graduated Syracuse not too long, like a couple of weeks ago. And so her education to me at the time was the most important thing, right?

Absolutely.

And so, you know, helping schools with sustainability, And with marketing and with lead generation, they just don't know how to do this stuff. So like I said, going back to my original entry into edtech, it's like, it's almost philanthropic. And it's, so it does my heart good. And it's also high tech, you know, and I love that too. So I think I'm here for the long haul. Yeah.

And how have you coached reps on empathy-based selling? Because it is so critical because people, that's how you build trust. And that's how you get out of the rep zone and get into the, let's talk about fixing this zone.

Yeah, I mean, you're gonna think it's kind of funny. It's very, I'm gonna say something very mechanical and transactional. But if you don't have a full enough pipeline, You're going to fall back on bad desperate habits.

Naturally.

And so my advice is to almost not really teach empathy because I look at that as a quality in a person, no matter what. But it's almost like, what do we need to do? What are the types of conversations we need to have? How are we segmenting our customer base? And are we sending appropriate messages? Are we Are we providing appropriate social proof? Right? You don't want to— independent schools, Catholic schools, Christian schools, they all kind of look at— they're all in their different groups.

A lot of schools.

Right? So, social proofing a Catholic school with an elite independent school, it just doesn't— they're going to be like, we're not like that. We don't have a waitlist. What are you doing? So, that's important. So, the point is that like you need to really work on the fundamentals, right, of prospecting. What are you saying? Who are you targeting, right? How many touches are you completing? And so, when you have a full pipeline, listen, the best in the business have like, you know, at least the best in our business has about a 40% close rate, which is phenomenal. I mean, that's a huge close, you know, you'd be happy with 20%, 25% in a lot of different industries, but that still means that 60% of the people that you're talking to aren't going to buy from you.

Yep.

So, you need to have a full enough pipeline to where you feel confident you're going to hit your quotas and your goals. And if you feel confident, you're more relaxed, you're more thoughtful, you don't get into desperation mode, right? And so I like to do a lot of the pre-work of just making sure that we're doing the right things, hitting our numbers, hitting our goals mechanically, to where you can have the confidence to be like, you know what, I'm not going to go overboard pressuring this guy. He's just not ready. He's just not a buyer yet. So I'm going to build that relationship for the future, and I'm going to go on to the other 40, you know, prospects I have. And that's when you can kind of sit back and really analyze what's going on with this person. What are their challenges? What are they struggling with, if anything? And so I think that's the key, right, is the preparation.

Well, the abundance will certainly not keep you out of the desperation mode.

Yep.

Now, how about that win rate? How have you increased it? Is it by highly profiling the people who are most likely to buy?

Yeah.

I mean, it's— yes. I mean, you look at a number of different factors, right? So in our industry, we've got a couple of big players that are pretty dominant. And so you look at the— and also the competitors that we've had although probably don't have the sophistication of the solutions that we have, they've done a great job like marketing and creating long-term relationships to the point where like, you know, Sister Mary in the business office of a school has just worked for, you know, for company F, worked with them for so long, it's like, I don't care what you say, Nathan, I'm not leaving Nancy at the company, like, I've known her for 20 years, right? So, it's a matter of like really looking for those targets and then also just leveraging the relationships that you have. Hey, you know, Steve, I know you've been having a lot of success with your inbound applications. You know, would you mind anybody else in your network, you know, kind of, do you feel bad? Like Steve down the street, like, does Steve need some help? You know what I mean? And so, leverage providing not just name droppers, but social proofing, like, hey, schools come to us for this. I don't know your world. And so I don't know the challenges. If we could have maybe 15, 20 minutes just to get acquainted, worst case, we made a new friend.

Yeah.

Best case, maybe we identified a reason to continue with the conversation. And there's no guarantee of that. But if you've got 15 or 20 minutes, I'd love to hear how things went, particularly last year with COVID Were there challenges that you uncovered that you may not have? You know, change happened everywhere, whether we liked it or not. Right. And so I think also the close rate comes into effect when you can really be upfront about, like I called it, you know, empathy-based sales, but it's also reality-based sales. Right.

Yeah.

Am I just going to try to get this guy, right? Like, am I just trying to get this guy into my pipeline or is there a real opportunity for this? So leveraging the relationships, Looking for good opportunities with gaps and then just being natural and just not, not pressuring folks into a conversation, but just being like, hey, does it make sense for us to talk?

I don't think—

I don't know whether it does, but at the minimum we'll make a new friend.

Yeah.

And people like that. They're like, yeah, you know what? And I say, listen, I've been in— I've seen a ton of schools. If I have anything to share with you while we're talking, like, I'd love to like give you some perspective on what I'm seeing. And, you know, sometimes schools feel like they're out on an island alone, right? And they just don't You know, they talk to some of their colleagues, but some of their colleagues are competitors. So at that point, they're kind of looking for a sounding board, particularly when COVID hit. We stopped selling for 12 months. We were just helping.

Yeah.

We were out there helping. You know what? We hit our, we hit our year. And so we look back on that and we're like, wow, when we position ourselves as helpers and not just salespeople, we actually do a lot of sales. Right.

Cool. Hey, Nathan, it's been a great conversation. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

Yeah, so I am on LinkedIn. So, and then you can, you know, definitely, you know, find me on the school admin, you know, company website. I think I'm nathan.foreman at LinkedIn, if I'm not mistaken. But yeah, you can shoot me an email if you have any other questions, nathan.foreman, that's F-O-R-E-M-A-N, @finalsight.com.

Because when we communicate, we want to talk with people who do understand us. Being understood is psychological oxygen. And that is how we connect with other people by talking about what they care about. When we look at sales movies, all we hear about is people pounding their chests, bragging, yelling at us. But that's not what— how we want to communicate. We want to solve problems. We want to improve our lives. And that's what we have to learn. No one teaches us this. No one teaches us how to start conversations with strangers. But it is a critical element of sales. What happens if you don't get enough meetings? You don't get enough deals. Don't get enough deals, you don't get enough commission. Life is not pleasant. So we can either beat up marketing But we know how well that works. I talked about a survey that I did that— what was it? 70% get zero leads. 70%. So you gotta wonder, what's marketing doing? And the natural thing is, oh, we're developing the brand. Okay, when you talk to somebody, have they heard of your brand before? No? Then brand doesn't do you any good. So, and it's partially their fault, but B2B marketing is getting really hard because B2C is so loud. And now you try and put B2B onto it and the audiences are smaller, they're diverse, they're distributed, they're not on the same channel. Sometimes people don't want to hear about things. People are bombarded. With things they should buy, should solve. But we all want to talk to other people. We all want to be heard. We all want to be understood. And if you can converse with strangers, start conversations and turn them into meetings, what is more powerful than that? Only one thing— winning the complex sale. Now, you can go onto the internet and listen to a bunch of Fired SDRs or failed salespeople, or you can listen to somebody who's been doing it his entire life, who's been teaching it now for 10 years, and who loves doing it, and it works. That's the key difference. Now, the challenge is it still is work, meaning I can't put it into your head and I can't do it for you. So learning is hard. Learning requires effort, requires time, requires repetition, requires correction. But when you're done with it, you know it. It becomes part of you. It becomes a superpower of yours that no one can take away. So when you go to another job, you have it for the rest of your life. And it, it is a skill that you can scale. What I teach is not only how to do it, but how to scale it using technology today. Because the World Wide Web gives us enormous opportunities to scale things if you do it right. If you don't spam people. If you connect on the level That they're at now. And it requires some training, some practice, some development, and some polish. And you're not going to learn it in 2 hours. You're not going to learn it in a week. It takes a while to develop the skill. You know, I— people always ask, how long does it take? You know, I'd allocate at least an hour a week, and within a month or so, you'll see enormous results. Within a quarter, you'll be really happy. Within a year, it will be a superpower of yours if you do it. Now, if you sit back and listen to it and don't take action and say, oh, now I know it, doesn't do you any good. You got to apply it. You got to be sensitive to feedback. You got to correct the feedback. Try it again. Listen to how other people are doing it. Look for a solution. Don't look for a problem. Problems are easy to find. Solutions, a little harder. And then be open-minded because I've been doing this for a while and I still need to be open-minded about it. Still learning, still loving it because I know I'm getting better at it. And there is no best at it. We can always become better. So go to b2brevenue.com, check it out, uh, sign up. There's 2 videos. There's one, an overview on how the courses work, and then there's one on which course to pick. Uh, it's all on my YouTube channel. It's in the show notes right here. It's on my website at B2B Revenue. Uh, so pretty much everywhere you can find it. The 15-minute calls have been booked up all year. I'm sorry, I only have so much time for those. But the videos answer all the questions. So the links are in the show notes. They're on the YouTube channel, on my LinkedIn profile, and on the website, b2brevenue.com. And it's the letter B, the number 2, the letter B, and then revenue. My favorite word. Tell a friend about the show. If you see my stuff fly by on LinkedIn, give it a little like, a little comment, a little share. Check out the other podcasts, Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers. The Sales Leadership Show and B2B Revenue Leadership.

Better, and especially post-COVID, you gotta. be very creative in healthcare, that's for sure.

And, you know, for people who are wondering if it's right for them, what would you tell them?

Yeah, I mean, I think you kind of need to get over your own ego a little bit. I mean, a lot of people think they're really, really good at sales, and they probably are in some rights. But at the same time, like, I think you've mentioned it before, like professionals in whatever industry or athletics, whatever, You know, they're always getting better, they're practicing, they're continuing to improve. And, you know, I know beforehand I didn't necessarily think of sales like that as much, but kind of taking your course and doing that, like, even if I'm ranked at, you know, the very top 1%, I really should be doing stuff to get better. And of course, a lot of companies will provide great stuff, but you really kind of need stuff outside of work, whether that be mentors or classes like yourself. So yeah, I think regardless of how good you've been doing, I think you don't want to get complacent and you want to keep getting better. It's just my opinion.

And, you know, as far as, you know, getting better, do you see it as kind of a destination or a journey?

No, it's definitely a journey because I think most people in sales are competitive and, you know, even though once they win a deal, they want to keep moving forward. I don't see it as a final destination. I feel like it's something really you should be doing throughout your career, I guess, until you retire, hopefully sooner than later when you retire. But yeah, I think no matter if you're a sales rep or an executive vice president, you should be doing some type of coaching or training. And this kind of— I was doing a fair amount of stuff, but it was more company-driven things in the past. So I think expanding outside of that— I mean, nothing wrong with doing it within your company too, but Expanding outside of that and getting different opinions, I feel like, is a good thing. Perspectives.

And how much time per week did it take you?

Yeah, I had certain moments where I was binging some of your content quite a bit. The actual courses, like, I wanted to be sitting down, you know, at home, able to write down notes and put stuff in Word documents, just kind of how I was doing it. So I would say I probably knocked out the complex sale course in 6 weeks or so. I went after it pretty good. And then throughout that and afterwards, I would, you know, listen to the one-on-ones. I would listen to your every 2-week calls, kind of the open sessions. And I binge that a lot when I'm driving because I travel a lot for work. So I listen to those quite often, and I don't necessarily have to take notes on it, but it's just good to get those. those real-life examples from other people. But yeah, the course took about 6 weeks or so, but that was just the pace I did it at. I mean, the nice thing about it is that you can, can do it at your own pace, you know, throughout, you know, even a 12-month period, I guess, if you want to. So.