HOW TO MAKE BEING IN SALES YOUR DREAM JOB

We got a great story for you today. And what's ironic is as soon as I tell somebody on the podcast, you know, I've never noticed people with great degrees and education getting into sales, then all of a sudden I get a bunch of examples of it to prove me wrong. And I like to be proven wrong on these things. And today's guest certainly didn't have to get into sales. Got a great education, a very talented person. But happened to want the flexibility of sales, not just the income flexibility, but the geography flexibility. His partner, wife, needed to travel or be relocated, and his role as a researcher wasn't conducive to that, but sales was. So we kind of go through his journey. And for anybody who is kind of not a natural salesperson like yours truly will get a lot out of this interview because sales is— it has to grow on some of us. And the elements that we learn along the way are important that we have to kind of adapt to the world instead of asking the world to adapt to us and then learn how to sell. How to connect with other people. After we've been viewed as a valuable member of the team, all of a sudden now we're just another, another person looking for an order. Let's get into it. Hey, let me ask you a question. How's that pipeline looking?

Hmm?

Are you getting those leads? Are those coming in the way they used to? So anyone picking up the phone? No? You need to start the conversation, get the meeting. Check it out. I did a frequently asked questions video, and I'm recording an in-depth course description that I'll put out a video on, and I'll put it into both the show notes and the frequently asked questions video comments on YouTube. Should be out by the time you listen to this podcast on the YouTube channel, Brian Burns Sales on YouTube, or the Brutal Truth, uh, page on YouTube so you can get more detail. I know the 15-minute calls have been pretty full with not much availability. I apologize for that, but that's the high demand. So let's get into the interview and I'll sum it up at the end. Hey, Art, thanks for joining us today. As a way of getting started, give us a little background on yourself.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. My name's Art Cassin. I am the sales manager for a company called Magnitude Instruments. Magnitude is a manufacturer of transient absorption spectrometers based in State College, PA.

Yeah.

And what's interesting is that they've taken an approach where they would like to become the leaders in this specific field. And what's interesting for me is I have taken an approach where I've worked in different chemistry labs and worked in different biological research universities. And it's really helped me on my own path into sales.

Yeah, sounds like a pretty easy sale.

Yeah, I would say not really.

I misread that.

We're at the point right now where the sales cycle on an instrument like that might be anywhere from 12 to 18 months. So easy, not so much, but what it does get is us to a point where we're able to build the kinds of relationships that need to be built on an instrument that has a sales cycle along Those lines.

And what got a smart guy like you into sales?

That's a, that's a very interesting question. You know, I started out, my background was in environmental science. And so I had biology and chemistry degrees from a, from a small school in Pennsylvania, little shout out to Mansfield University. I ended up working in a environmental testing lab for about a year and then moved on to working in a lab at a bigger university. I'm sure everyone has heard of Cornell. And so the first job I got with them was actually to do fieldwork, and that eventually turned into a lab management job, and I worked at that for almost 10 years. Running the Cornell University Stable Isotope Laboratory. Yeah, my old job. It was really a great experience. I got to play a little bit with the instruments. I got to learn how to manage people. So the the people skills that went into that. It was really fun for me. That eventually turned into a second job in academia. I was following my wife around. She graduated with a PhD from the geology program at Cornell. And we moved down to Texas because that's where all the geology people go to in the gas and oil industry.

Yeah.

Eventually, we did make our way back here to Pennsylvania, which is where, where I'm based right now, just outside of Pittsburgh. And so it has been an interesting path for me because I started out working in managing instrumentation labs, and then eventually that turned into sales. And I would say a lot of that happened because I was trying to figure out my, my place in the world and having to move around all of these times. Finally, I threw my hands up in the air and said, you know, I need to find a job that if my wife moves again, I can move with that job. And sales was it. And I jumped into the deep end of the pool feet first.

And what was that like? Because it's— I'm speculating because I've done sales, I haven't done What you did?

For me, it was an adjustment. I probably did every single wrong thing that you can imagine when you first get into sales. And that, you know, the person that brought me into it said to me at one point, said, Art, you know, I know you would be good at this. I've seen you interact at different conferences and I've I've seen you talk to people, and I know that you know how to build relationships, and we can teach you, we can teach you everything technical about the product line. You already have some of those inherent baseline skills. And so it took a little bit of convincing, but I did it. And when I first got in there, I thought, you know what? I need to get around and see everyone. I need to be everyone's friend. And that was really, uh, an interesting point for me because the— now all of a sudden I'm the salesperson. And wait, the people that, that used to talk to me and knew me as the Art—

This guy.

The lab manager, now I'm Art, the guy trying to sell them something. And it really took me a little bit to come around to to understand what, what my role was and how that separated me from my, you know, personal identity and how they're two separate things. And I think that that's a hard thing for people who are new to sales to come around to. What really helped me get over that hump was that I had a great sales mentor. who I continue to have— she's— I could still consider her a mentor today. We talk very regularly. And at the time, she was just simply a colleague who had been in sales for 30-plus years and who was guiding me and trying to give me constructive criticism in my first 6 months, in my first year. And I look back and I can't thank her enough for pushing me in that direction. Because at first, I was hesitant to take the advice all the time. I already thought, well, you know what? There's enough people here that believe that I have these inherent skills and that I can jump right into this. You got them, you got them. Yeah, you know, I'll listen to it and I'll be polite. But then I realized she was really giving me the playbook for a successful career. And that's invaluable today. And I would recommend to anyone that's getting— just jumping into sales to find a good mentor or mentors. And even today, I still have— I have her as a mentor, but I also have other people that I talk to, to try and make sure that I'm doing things the right way and kind of just getting some of that critical feedback that I think is so important because it's really easy to have something go sideways, especially in capital equipment sales. We're talking about equipment that people aren't buying on Amazon. This is, again, equipment that has a 12 to 18 month sales cycle. And when something goes sideways, you can really start to doubt yourself. And, uh, having that support system, uh, has been incredible. Uh, I, I, I can't say it enough.

Because that transition, especially when you were very successful at something that was very hard to do, but both, you know, being smart at it and then managing smart people.

That's right. And, you know, the The, the, I would say that my movement into, into the, the sales arena was maybe, so it was a shock to the system, but it was also easy because I, I went from managing a particular type of equipment in a specific lab to also selling that same kind of equipment. And so I already knew what the instrument did. What it did. I knew who our basic customer was. I could write up that cookbook formula, if you will, and make the right kind of sales arguments. Now, a few years later, I joined a different company and was working with equipment that was completely different to me. And what had happened at that point was I already had developed some of these sales skills that were required that I also was like, you know what? Even though it's an instrument that I'm not that familiar with, I know enough about people and helping to build these relationships that I'm not going to feel uncomfortable diving into this, into this new company.

And I had a similar experience because I was a user of the first stuff I sold.

Okay.

And so getting the technical sale was not hard, but nobody taught me how to get the economic sale.

Right. And I'll tell you, it's, it's been interesting for me because when I first, when I first started in sales, I was mainly catering to academic labs, right? So my customers were universities and it was, it was easy enough because the The playbook was the same every time that we would, we would go in, we would, we sometimes, and this is where I feel like I was making mistakes, I would, I'm sure you've heard the term show up and throw up.

Yeah.

Right? And basically do a features and benefits talk instead of going in and being curious and asking customers what, you know, why was I there?

Yeah.

I just made the assumption they're just like me. They're here and if I was here, I would be here for this reason and I wasn't asking the right kinds of questions but we were still having some success so I thought I was doing things the right way and again, this is where that that mentorship played into the future direction of where I was going to go. The mantra of be curious, but be skeptical, I think holds very true even today. And that's how my approach has changed over the years. Instead of going in and Doing features and benefits now, it's just all about asking questions and also trying to understand how we can solve a problem, not sell an instrument.

Right.

And that was a huge shift for me and how I did things. And it it's resulted in some really nice relationship building that I've been able to do not only with our customers, but also with our, with my own colleagues over the past 10 years.

And was your mentor there to observe this? Or how did they discover what you were doing?

You know, I was originally brought on as sort of a hybrid role. I was going to be doing sales, but because I already had like this technical experience, I was also traveling around with the rest of the sales group as sort of a technical expert to help them.

Yeah.

And what ended up happening was they helped me. Because I would go in and do this, the features and benefits. Here's what you need. Here's what you need. Here's what you need. Instead, we would get out to the car after those meetings and they would give me a rundown of everything that I did incorrectly in a nice way. And I really appreciated that. I'm sure I could have taken the approach of—

What?

You know, I'm, I'm here to help you, uh, sell these instruments. I know everything about this instrument from a technical standpoint. That isn't what I did, and I, I'm better off for it. Um, and it's, it's been great.

But how did you humble yourself? Because I'm sure you were looking at them as like, look, I know this stuff so well, you know. I'm sure, you know, you, you know how to set up the meetings and get the purchase order through. But when it comes to equipment—

There was a little bit of butting heads. I will say that. And it really took them to make me look at my own self, kind of reflecting back. And I actually think that at one point, this woman who's my mentor, did a recording of me during one of these meetings and then said, here, I just want to— I'm not doing this to be critical. I just want to show you a couple of things. And that's when I guess that was my aha moment. I'm like, okay, I need to change how I'm doing this. And I think I just had the right mindset to make that change. And it worked. Worked out really well.

And clearly you could have done something else.

So why sales? Were you money motivated? Were you competitive?

What's the drive there?

For me, when I first got into sales, like I had mentioned, it was more of a hybrid sort of role. where I was gonna be this technical expert and I would have the flexibility to now move around. And for me, like I had said earlier, it was really, I was switching jobs every 2 or 3 years because of these moves. And I didn't want to keep doing that.

Yeah.

And so I really made it a point where I wanted to, get into an area where I could help people in the best possible way. And so jumping into a company that sold equipment that I had familiarity with worked really well. And all of a sudden, there was this competitiveness spark that I think—

Came out.

got fired up because I was watching and observing how my colleagues were doing sales and I was learning from them. I feel like that first year, I was just like a sponge that was just absorbing all of this knowledge and able to say to myself, yeah, you can hang with these guys. And they were a great sales group. That I worked with back then. That would have been, you know, 9, 10 years ago. Wow.

And I always said, you know, if somebody can get to that point where they crave feedback, not just are willing to take it, but crave it.

I also think that's what separates, you know, you've reached a higher level of clarity and you're able to separate yourself from maybe the rest of the pack because there's people that might be just financially motivated and they go in and they make a sale and that's that. They're on to the next one. I don't approach sales that way. I want to make sure that we're providing the right sort of solution in the right timeframe that, that can make everyone happy. And there are challenges, of course, of course, that go with that. But that's, that's what makes sales interesting to me. It's, it's almost like a puzzle. And It, it's just interesting to me, uh, just the different challenges that I can have from day to day and week to week. I, I really, uh, started off as being something I think I can do this to. Now I want to be the best at what I'm doing, uh, and do the best for, uh, the company that I'm working for. And I've kind of found that place here at Magnitude.

And was that a big transfer because you came out of kind of a knowledge profession? Knowing stuff was the asset test to where sales, it's much more, how well do you figure out that puzzle?

Right. That's a great question, and I think it's the heart of that challenge is how do you figure out different personalities? How do you figure out how those personalities play into their own purchasing departments? Do people understand their own company's process for buying capital equipment? That answer is mixed. So there's a lot of things that need to be fit together, but I feel like an area that I've gotten much better at is parsing out those details.

Yeah.

I used to never ask, you know, what does your purchasing process look like when I was first in sales? And these were the simple questions that I just didn't ask because I was just too naive at that point. So—

You didn't know to ask.

Right.

How about as far as the hump of when you're a knowledge worker, you're valued for knowledge. In sales, no one cares what you know. It's what you can do for the company.

Absolutely. I think that especially as you're looking at those sorts of relationships and trying to understand what different people think about you, this is where it's always good to understand your role as a salesperson and how it separates you from your identity as an individual because you can start second-guessing yourself. And especially now, I'll use my current company as an example. When it comes to the knowledge base and the knowledge base of my customers, I'm just trying to talk to them from a perspective of solving a problem. And often that conversation, if not checked correctly, can turn into a highly technical conversation. And there's nothing wrong with that. But understanding that there is a you know, a process that they have, and we don't often know what that process is. We don't know what their timeline is.

Yeah.

Often, you know, a lot of the money that they get is tied to grants or, you know, startup funding, and you don't know when that's going to be released, and it's on their timeframe. So understanding that sort of information becomes integral to that process. As it relates to the, the knowledge base, I feel like whatever company I've worked at where I'm doing sales, that I'm still learning stuff every day. One of the things that we do, which I think is great, is I set aside at least 2 to 3 hours a week just to read papers, just to look at different insights within certain industries and understand where the science, especially as it relates to this equipment, is heading. Because it's important for me to be able to stay on top of that for my own self. And then also, I know, and I always want to keep learning. And I think that's important, especially if someone is saying they're a curious salesperson. They should be bracketing time every week to do things like this extra learning that goes with whatever their craft is.

Other than the showing up and talking too much about the product. What is another epiphany that either your mentor gave you or you wish you learned a lot earlier?

You know, it's kind of like the saying with card players. They don't remember their big wins, but they can remember every single big loss that they've they've ever had. And I think that losses have been character building for me. I've already touched on it a couple of times, but trying to keep the sales role and the personal identity separated was a tough thing for me to be able to do in the beginning. It's not so hard now. But, you know, when you're working on something for 12 or 18 months, and at the end of that 18 months, someone says, hey, Art, it's been great working with you. We've enjoyed all of those conversations we've had, but we've decided to go in a different direction.

Yeah.

That's tough, no matter what. And being able to, you know, pull yourself back up. I used to— I'm trying to think of the year that it happened, but I had this string of losses. Must have been in like 2014. And it was just a string of losses over a period of like 6 weeks. And I wouldn't say I fell into a depression, but I was I was bummed out. I mean, I was just getting those calls every week and it really, I had to rethink, what am I doing here? And in some cases, you can't control that flow of information. In other cases, you can. And I would say a big difference between now versus then Is I don't have those surprises sneak up on me like that. The conversations are crafted and designed in a way to help disqualify people that were never going to be a customer anyway, right? We get our happy ears and we think this was a sale that should have been ours. And, you know, I look back and kind of back-engineered those, those losses and turn them into learning experiences. I didn't do that immediately. But I did it, you know, maybe a year and a half or 2 years later, I still had all of my notes. And I was able to go and say, hey, this is what I did wrong. And now I can understand that a little, a little bit better.

Yeah. And that's critical that you did that.

I think so. Yeah. And now I do that a lot sooner, right? So, uh, if, if there is a loss, and there, there always will be, right? Um, that you're able to look at it in a, in an honest and clarified way so that you can use that as a, as a learning experience and Just move on from there.

Especially when you're comfortable and even enjoy talking about the technology and they enjoy hearing about it.

That's right. I mean, it's, it's one of those things where I feel like, at least as it related to those losses back then, I was having conversations with those customers every couple of days because I knew we were at a certain point in their buying cycle. And it was just a really interesting time for me. And like I said, it got to be a little bit tricky just from the perspective of Taking— take— finally taking those calls and saying, hey Art, you know, we, we've decided to go in this, uh, other direction. We're going to be buying an instrument from, uh, from, from this person and this company. And yeah, it's— it really was a learning experience.

Were they not getting your, your value? Or were they just not— they would not buy from you no matter what? Or what was the—

Yeah, I would say that back then, we always talk about trying to pull different kinds of pain or pleasure from, uh, from a customer to, to try and understand where where that's at so you can add the value in based on what the need is. And I don't think back then I did the right kind of questioning. I would always get that surface pain.

Yeah.

But I never dug, I never took the shovel and dug down to the, you know, the second or third level to kind of understand what, what was really happening. And, and sometimes I was— I would look back and say, I, you know, I know I talked to them about that, and I don't— I didn't understand how that turned into, uh, a loss. What, what eventually happened was I learned how to, uh, ask the right questions to dig down a little bit deeper and, and understand that a little bit better so that I didn't run into that situation as often.

Yeah, cool.

Hey, Art, I really appreciate your time today.

Where can people go to connect and follow you?

Yeah, so you can follow me on LinkedIn. I'm under Arthur Kassin. I think I'm the only one on there. Or you can email me at art.kassin@ casson@magintrs.com. We, we have a webpage at www.magnitudeinstruments.com. I'd be happy to talk to anyone who's interested in getting into capital sales, capital equipment sales, or if someone would like more information on Mentoring, I'm certainly happy to, to give additional perspective for sure.

Getting into sales can be daunting. Becoming great at sales can take a long time.

Now, what if there was a different way of doing it?

We all kind of depend on our company to train us. Well, they train us on the product and the tools, the CRM. That's a lot of fun, isn't it? What we need is to distinguish what is great versus what is good. How to build these conversations with strangers at their pace, not ours. Getting them focused on what is going to cause them to change, to build urgency. All of these things are advanced skills that nobody really teaches. People teach the value proposition, but how about if you learned it from the client's perspective and built on it and had a system, a repeatable system? Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting is so powerful and such a game changer. I've taught it to people with zero sales experience, and sometimes they pick it up easier because they don't have bad habits From pitching, from years of pitching. The pitch only works in one of two cases. Either you're the master of it, and you know if you are already. Can you cold call somebody and start a conversation with them without a hangup, without talking about yourself? Or it works in the other case, what I call the 1 to 3% case, where you happen to find Demand. You didn't create it. They already had interest and you happened to find them. But 1 out of 3 is not really a great response rate. Imagine working, uh, 2 or 3 days, uh, to get a meeting. Early in my sales career, it used to take me a whole week to book the next week. And I quickly learned that that was not a scalable model. So I came up with a system. And that system, it took a long time because I had my interests in mind, my objectives, not necessarily theirs and what they cared about. And too many value propositions, insights, whatever you call it, is all about what you hope they have. Not what they do have. And how you do it is really sales-centric, not client or prospect-centric. Now, I recently taught a couple of people who English is not even their first language, and they have to do it in English. Meaning, imagine trying to sell and not your Predominant language. And guess what? They were able to pick it up and it made sense to them. It was a step-by-step process that gets you talking like a person. Because one of the biggest mistakes we make is we get put into the sales rep zone and nobody wants to talk to a sales rep. Go figure. You know, the person at the party who pulls out their business card, starts talking about life insurance. We stay as far away from that person. But you swap life insurance for SaaS software and the response is the same thing. Being able to do this is a talent that is learnable. We all learned how to talk. None of us came out of the womb chatting, screaming maybe, not chatting. And then we had to learn how to chat so that the person who was hearing it Wanted to hear it. And that took quite a while now, didn't it? We can all talk, but does anybody want to hear it is the critical element. Start the conversation, get the meeting develops that skill. It works in B2C as well. But in B2C, how much time do you have? Is it just a single call? Uh, may not be as effective. In B2B, when there's multiple calls, and you have to take somebody from an unknown state— you don't know if they know about you or your company or your product or even the problem it solves— all the way to urgency. How do you do that in a systematic step-by-step way the first time, not when you can muck it up and then go back and try and fix it? The other course, Winning the Complex Sale, This is the other half of selling. Let's say in the complex sale. Complex sale is business to business, many different people on the client side. We may think it's only one person, but, you know, do you realize most vice presidents have a $5,000 sign-off? That means if you're getting 2 layers above the person you're at, they still can only buy $5,000 without going higher. And how do you prevent it from just getting stuck, which is the default? That's winning the complex sale. When you work all that time on those deals and they don't close, and you say somehow you get satisfied with no decision, that's not satisfying. That's zero commission. The only deals we get comped on are deals that close, and winning the complex sale helps you with that. That. So check them out at b2brevenue.com. Check out the frequently asked questions video. And it's not your typical online course. You get unlimited one-on-ones, 30-minute Zoom calls with me. And every other week, there's an hour-long meetup on Zoom called office hours where any of your questions are answered and they're all recorded and put into the course. So this Almost 3 years of them already there. So there's enough examples to basically consume the whole year, but it's a skill. It's a skill we all have to become great at because the difference between good and great is a couple hundred thousand dollars. Would you like to have that or would you like to wish you had that? That's the only question. The question isn't, do you have time? You have time. You're already spending the time. The question isn't, do you have the money? You're already wasting the money by not closing the deals, not getting the meetings. So the only question is, are you willing to commit some of your time and some of your money to get the things that you want? And if you're not, just admit it to yourself and have it over with and then move on. Don't tell me. Because half of the 15-minute calls are people trying to tell me why they don't need the course. I don't care why you don't need it, and you shouldn't care. Are you making the money you want? No one's ever said yes, not one person on those 15-minute calls. They go, no, but I know it all. I'm stuck in the B-player trap and I'm happy. Okay, congratulations. Just don't waste my time about that. Okay? If you're happy being there, I'm not happy there. It's no fun being there. It's working just as hard for half as much. Let's get serious.

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