HOW TO MAXIMIZE YOUR FOCUS AND ENERGY TO MAKE THE MOST MONEY IN B2B

One thing that I've learned working with tons and tons of salespeople is that the closer they are to the P&L, to the, you know, I do this, I get that, the more effective and focused they are. And I know you probably have a nice base salary, but enjoy it. It's nice. It's good. But don't let it distract you from why they hired you. They didn't hire you to sit in a meeting. They hired you to sell. They want revenue from you. And they give you a nice base salary to kind of keep a little handle on us. We're going to get into these issues today because we're going to talk to somebody who left a company and went out and did a startup. And into the interview, I find out his superpower, something that he does really well. That all of us can learn how to do really well, but very few of us ever get there. And this is something that I talked about yesterday in our office hours for closing the complex sale. Go back over the last quarter or even a month and look at how much time did you spend on non-revenue activity or false positive deals, deals that Sounded good, but didn't have the main ingredients. Then mark down what those ingredients that were missing were. And then look at the deals that did close during that time period and how much wall clock time did it take? Not calendar time, not start to finish, but actual your focus time, number of emails, phone calls, thinking, all of that. Put it all together. And I bet it was pretty surprisingly low. What my point here is that we're not utilizing our time to generate our income. We, we tend to get stuck feeling effective when we're just distracted, or it looks like work or selling, but it's really just Playing business. Let's get into this interview. This one is one that you're going to probably want to save and try and work into your daily routine, your, your strategy. I'll sum it up at the end and I'll give you some ideas, some output that came from the office hours yesterday. And make sure you're checking out the courses because the way to make more money in sales is being better at sales. Not knowing more, but becoming better at sales. And the way to do that is to stay highly focused. Just ask yourself, if I was more focused, would I sell more? Or is it just about doing a lot of stuff? Most of us in B2B, focus is the game. Yes, you gotta work, you gotta work hard, but you don't necessarily have to just focus on being busy. And I— today the focus is on busyness, not effectiveness. Also, how do you get to club? How do you really crush it? How do you get better at anything? It's the reps. No matter what you want to do in life, our brain works off of repetition Feedback and emotion. And if the tighter you keep that circle, the more effective you keep that circle, the more focused you are on that, the more money you're going to make. And in sales, we have these critical moments. Like I said in the intro, think about how much time you really are spending on the deals that close. It's not that much. We're spending too much time on deals that will never close or can't close now or are going to start over or stall, or there's missing ingredients. The timing isn't right. Some things we can influence, others are outside of our circle of control or influence. To get better at sales, to get those reps, we need to do them. That's how our brain works. Think about anything in your life. Look at golf. Doesn't it look simple? You swing a stick at a ball and you hit it. Try it. It's hard. But how do you get better at it? You do a lot of swings. You reflect on how that swing went. You get some feedback from somebody else who knows how it should look. And then you try it again. And I think what ends up happening in sales is we get comfortable in our head, but then when we open our mouths, something's lost because it's thinking about what we're going to say and saying it are 2 completely different skills. So, but only one of them matters because our clients can't read our minds. They can only listen to our words. And when we speak, we're not just saying words. We have inflection. We have tempo. We have timing. All of those things play into how our words are received. Brevity has given us— brevity pitch has given us a way of developing those skills on our timetable, without judgment, with constructive feedback, with repetition that isn't boring. There's a nice, easy way to develop this selling skill that I've never seen before. And it's something that I've always wanted my whole career was I always wanted to practice on my own. And that's maybe why I focus more on the strategy and the process side of it. Other than it's very important. Other than just the conversational side. Because it was always awkward. I don't know, you talk in the mirror, talk in the car. I've done it. It's boring. It's awkward. It helps, but it's not nearly as effective as giving feedback, interacting with another person. But you can't get that person. Where are they?

Check it out.

brevitypitch.com. Here we go with the interview. Hey, Doug, thanks for joining us today.

As a way of getting started, give us a little background on yourself.

Yeah, no, thanks. Thanks for having me. So Doug Murphy, a sales director over at Puzzle HR. So we do fractional HR outsourcing. So I'm out there in the trenches selling on my own, but then I also lead some of our sales force. So get to learn from their experiences as well. So big believer in how HR can help companies and always trying to find a way to help learn to improve my craft and also help improve others.

And why'd you get into sales? What was the motive?

Yeah, sales, like a lot of people, probably came, fell on my lap here. My first, I'll say, real job when I was in college, I met a gentleman starting a company and I I decided, you know, instead of just going to work at, you know, the grocery store or the mall, I'd take that risk and work with a startup company. And it was the best decision I ever made. I ended up learning, just me, him, and a dog in a warehouse, how much goes into operating a business. And with that, we were doing everything. I put on a nice shirt to talk to the client and then run in the warehouse to load a truck and then You know, had to do advertising and marketing. And I remember the owner of the company came to me and said, hey, we have a few interviews I need you to run. And he took off out the door. And I was sweating during the interviews more than the people I interviewed. I'm 20 years old and I've barely been on an interview before. So, um, really kind of just, just learned kind of a lot of what to do, but mostly what not to do. In business and ultimately had to become our salesperson at that company, train new people how to sell and really learn the impact of, you know, good solid sales strategy and how to help clients really not just try to sell them but try to help them and ultimately it helps you sell. So yeah, it kind of just fell into my lap with the first job I took.

Cool.

And then you went to sell at ADP. Nice easy job there, right? That was a piece of cake.

Yeah. So it was over at Paychex, right? Paychex, ADP, Coke and Pepsi of payroll there, the big guys. But yeah, after working for years at that startup company, I learned again what it takes to do that company. But we had turnover, we had some HR issues, you know, we had some employees who were looking back were great people, fit the culture. We had a good time together, but they didn't really help move the company forward. And if you're a small company or any size and you have an employee or 2 that aren't pulling their weight and you're spending $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 per person, you look back and say, well, over a few years we spent $300,000 on nothing. And ultimately at the end of the year, When we're breaking even or in the red, there are some ways we could have done that with human capital. So when I decided to move on, the company stalled and started getting married, having kids, and one of our best sales reps left us and went actually over to Paychex, the large payroll company. And when they went there, I remember speaking to our founder and he goes, you know, at least, you know, we saved that salary because she's not here anymore. And I'll never forget I'm saying that. I'm saying, well, whatever we paid her, she brought in 5 times that. But it was the mindset of a business owner.

Yeah.

And cost, not looking at the sales figures and income and profitability. And it, I'll never forget that moment and the feeling I had saying, sometimes people don't truly realize the importance of top salespeople and how hard they are to find. So I went over to Paychex. I followed her and we ended up working there. I got trained more professionally on how to sell. And run a sales process. And there I sold our HR solution over at Paychex. And really, that's where I really understood the value of how much you can help a business if you're selling a service or product they really need. And if you have belief in product and not a made-up belief, but you truly have belief and have seen the impact on what you can sell, it's more enjoyable. You come across more trustworthy and it really can help increase your sales.

And what made you go to your current company?

Yeah. So what happened was over the years at Paychex, we're selling the HR services and actually some of the directors and executives and so on, they actually broke away and started Puzzle HR. And what they did was they took the little bit of HR and services that we did at Paychex and they expanded upon it. So they created an organization that really was what I was most passionate about. I thought was the most beneficial part of what we sold. And I actually ended up bringing Puzzle HR into a sale when I was still at Paychex. I flew, I was down in Florida, flew up to Ohio in the winter. It was a few degrees and it was Super Bowl Sunday and it was a dry county. So that was fun. But we got up there and I saw firsthand what Puzzle did and what they delivered and I was blown away. And I was speaking with one of the reps at Puzzle and fell in love. So I called the CEO when I left and said, when can I start? And it's, it's been an incredible few years at Puzzle. I really enjoy it and we're helping a lot of businesses.

And what's the hardest part of that sale?

Yeah. So the hardest part about human resources is probably the different ideas of what it really means. HR in today's world is drastically different than it used to be. Right now you can probably rattle off 12, 13 positions that make up an HR department. And the smaller the company, typically it comes down to one person.

Yeah.

So when they're saying, I need to worry about doing performance and culture, but I need to be a recruiter, I need to be a payroll manager, a benefit manager, compensation analysis, projects, sticky situations, compliance. I need to learn how to train and develop leaders. I've never even had leadership development training. How am I supposed to do that? So Puzzle, when it came out, said, you know, let's tackle all the areas of HR, all the pieces of the puzzle. and let a business just tap into what they need. And it could change every week. We need a handbook this week. We need a survey this week. We need this this week. So the hardest thing is probably getting the leadership and executives and owners. If they don't have the mindset of HR deserves a seat at the table, yeah, they deserve to be in those C-suite meetings. It's getting them to realize the impact that The largest line item of most businesses is human capital and they don't really think, should we monitor our human resources? They don't think of HR as human resources, meaning your staff. They think of it as a PTO request and a handbook. So it's getting people to realize truly what human resources means. And if you can impact that, you can impact the whole company.

That's it because typically you see like the receptionist turns into the HR person eventually. You know, with no training or skill or ability and just kind of wings it.

It happens all the time. It's a relative, a friend. It's like you said, it's a person at the front desk who gets to wear that hat and they don't want that hat typically. And it's, they also don't realize a lot of times the responsibility of HR usually falls on, say, an office manager or receptionist, somebody not trained. But the liability of HR and the profitability of the company falls on the owner.

Yeah.

So one of the biggest risks to the company, but also one of the biggest revenue sources and driving factors of monitoring that human capital, a lot of times the owners and C-suite aren't even looking at it. They're not even the ones responsible. They threw it on the head of somebody who doesn't want it. So that's a really tough dynamic. I meet with HR people all the time. And they're almost in tears meeting with me. I'm working 80 hours a week. I'm so stressed. I don't know how to do this. I'm at home researching. Everyone's calling me. And then I may meet with an owner and he's like, yeah, I'm not really sure what she does here.

Yeah.

And it's the shift is incredible when you hear the 2 sides of it. So sometimes it's bridging the gap between HR and leadership to say, how do we get everyone rowing together? And this will be the biggest investment you can make to have ROI in your company.

Is it kind of like almost 100% outbound sales or do you get inbound?

Yeah.

So we do get some inbound now as we grow our name, right? So we're a little over 4 years old and a lot of it has become referral based. And one of the biggest things that I learned throughout my sales career is if a client asks you for a reference, If you can't rattle off 10, 20, 30 references and go back to your last 30 sales and 28 of them say, I'll be a reference, you're probably not selling the right product. So with that, with Puzzle, luckily we've had very great success. We've had a lot of good impact. So we get a lot of referrals from our current clients, from partners that may bring us in. You know, a health broker may say, "Hey, I have this company. Their HR manager left or is overwhelmed. They need help." And when we do a really nice job with that client, that broker now may bring us into more and more groups. So we do have some warm sales and introductions and things like that. But a lot of it is out there relationship drive, you know, driven and trying to use our partners and trusted advisors to get us into those accounts.

And is it? SMB or mom and pop or that kind of category or?

Yes, it does vary. So I would say on average our clients are in that 50 to a few hundred employees space. We do have a lot of companies that are startups that are 10, 20, 30 employees that they go, I'm not ready to hire an $80,000-$100,000 HR director. Could you come in for $20,000 or $30,000 and And it makes sense for them. And then we have some larger, you know, nationwide 5,000, 10,000 employee companies that it's stability for them. It's if they can hire us to be an in-house payroll manager, an in-house recruiter, an in-house check. We don't quit, we don't leave, we don't go on vacation. We don't roll our eyes at the business owner and storm out. So a lot of times they can say, you know what, you're the rock of this because my staff could leave, quit, win the lotto and move tomorrow. So we do have clients of all sizes, but I would say I think our average customer right now is somewhere in the 150-170 employee range.

And what type of pushback do you get from the owner about this?

Yeah.

So it depends on the situation as always. But typically a lot of people, depending on the owner and their mindset, a lot of the younger generation of owners, they're used to outsourcing. They're used to virtual. They're used to Zooms and podcasts and, and this. So they get it. They half the time don't even ask if we're gonna be on site or have an office. But a lot of times some businesses that haven't outsourced a lot or aren't really embracing the virtual world, they're saying, wait a minute, I'd love your service model, but you're not gonna be sitting at the desk next to me where I can say, hey Linda. So the biggest pushback typically is that we're not in-house sitting there every day with them.

Yeah.

Um, and when we try to educate them a little that you're paying for travel time and us talking about the TV shows that were on last night, you know, that we are very effective and driven and we don't want a line of employees at our door that we become friends with. We want to be that CHRO, that C-suite that says, hey, this leader is having a lot of struggles, it's costing you money. I know it's your best friend, Mr. Business Owner. I know you fish with them and golf with them. But he's actually the issue. So we want to be able to be transparent and honest and really help a company move forward, not be that traditional in-house face of HR. And that's where typically we partner with an HR team or maybe we partner with an office manager and then it's a really nice team together.

And is it an easier sale than paychecks or is it more difficult or just different?

Yeah, it's, it is definitely different. I believe that the services we have, the partners, the references, the track record, I think it's a much easier sale with Paychex or any of the payroll companies out there. It's not, I need to use just this and just this because you've got to switch your payroll. And we all know it's a big process of switching payroll companies and it's a big change to every employee and maybe you have to switch your benefits or your 401. With us, we, we more act as an in-house person. So if they say, I need you to be my HR manager, my payroll manager, there's no technology switch or benefits. We start tomorrow, we start working with them. And then a lot of times if they need to switch payroll providers or they need to make a change, then we can help facilitate that change. So a client that wants to go to Paychex, we could log into the current system, help move the data, help set up Paychex and really make that new payroll system work to the best of its ability. Because a lot of times a business sees a demo of a new payroll system and it's just like that car on the lot. It's— I got every feature. But then when they switch over, they're only running payroll. They didn't set up all the other features. So sometimes we can help set all those up. So we partner with a lot of the payroll companies because we can really help them shine and let a client utilize their full package.

And when you mentioned the lady that you worked with at the startup that went to Paychex, what did she do that you really admired? So it sounds like she was either a mentor or someone that you collaborated with and admired.

Sure.

Yeah.

So she actually was out of the sales professionals and young people we tried to turn into sales reps at that startup company. She came, she embraced it. She was our top sales rep at the organization that I helped train. We always had sales contests together. And when she decided to leave, at that point I was like, wait, she's selling outsourced HR? And like, it didn't even make sense to me because I was still in that small business role. And when I said, you know what, you know, I need to make a career change. I don't know where to go. I don't know what to do. Starting a family, need a stable paycheck and benefits and 401 and all these things we didn't have at our smaller startup. She already kind of blazed the trail and worked there for a year. She had a very successful year. She really enjoyed it. So I trusted her as working with her for a long time, knowing if she succeeded, then I thought I could succeed as well, and I'd have her to lean on to learn from. So yeah, we worked together for years there. She's still there and now I'm over at Puzzle and we can still partner if we need to on some businesses.

And what makes a great salesperson in this space? Because it seems hard when I, from the outside looking in.

Yeah, it's a lot of things and a lot of things we all know, right? So we don't probably need to repeat those. But I'm a big believer in a few things is a term I use sometimes is strategic efficiency. Is, is someone needs to be very, very strategic with their time. It's easy to waste time to be on too many networking groups and too many phone calls. And I went to coffee with this person 16 times and we haven't exchanged business yet.

It's gonna happen next quarter.

Yeah, yeah. Let's go for one more coffee and then maybe I'll get a lead. So I always like to kind of stay present, stay relative, And stay trusted with everybody that I meet with. But with that, there's not enough time in the day to have coffee with everybody every day. So I try to be very, very effective and efficient with my time. So, you know, there might be a networking event and I'm saying, well, I got my kids' sports and this and I don't have time to go all these. So it's, can I meet them before they go? Can I meet them when they get there? They walk into the event, I'm already going home. I met them, I was present, I was there, but I didn't waste 3 hours of my time. Is it I need to show up? They're gonna be in the suite at the football game. I'm gonna show up to that before kickoff and talk to them and then say, no, spend the rest of the night with your friends. And then I can move on to go talk to other people. So I need to stay present and relative and trusted. But the only way to do that is to be very, very efficient. So strategic efficiency is my go-to.

And what got you to that point? Because I see a lot of people, especially in sales, feeling comfortable if they're busy.

Yeah. And you'll still be busy and if you do it well enough, you'll be very busy. But yeah, I, the longer you're in sales and if you have a mentor and someone to learn from, you know, if you can be efficient, right, we, it's just gonna lead to more productivity. So if you're working 40 hours, but 30 of them are not efficient, you feel comfy and cozy, you're busy, but your sales don't represent that at the end of the month there. So if that real, I only had those 10 hours that you had of true efficiency, but I did that for all 40 that week.

Yeah.

It's gonna lead to 4 times the sales. So for me, I need to be very, very strategic. I need to make sure that everything I'm doing has purpose to it and that it's the best ROI for myself and the company that I'm representing. So I try to ingrain that in a lot of people's heads. A lot of people know the way I work. They joke on my inbox. An email comes in, I send it out and somebody writes back, thank you. And I'm like, please don't respond thank you anymore. It's a perfect— it's done. I know you're saying thank you. I don't need to clutter the inbox with another email that I— what am I gonna write back? You're welcome. So it's very, very strategic and efficient. And even our CEO will call me sometimes and he's like, Are you trying to get me off the phone? I'm like, I got stuff to do. This is though, yeah, it's trying to be as effective and efficient with your time as possible and it's just gonna naturally make you a more effective salesperson.

Well, let's dig into that because I think, well, would you call it focus or?

Focus is good. Focus and velocity are other big words we use a lot here.

And what I used to do is prioritization. I have my deals in chronological order of closure. Which kept me very focused because, you know, by the end of the day, I never got past number 10.

Yep.

But they closed.

Correct. Yeah. And that's focusing your attention to where it is. And I'm gonna quote Brian McVicker. He's one of the best salespeople slash business slash strategic minds I know. He's a VP at Paragon Payroll, a wonderful payroll company. And I remember calling Brian one of my first years. We worked together years ago at Paychex. And when I called him, he goes, this phone call closes at 0%. And I'll never forget it. It was an internal call between us and he had his list. I was not on it. And I'll never forget him saying that. And I've used that saying before of we have too much to do in today's world. Back-to-back Zooms, back-to-back phone calls. And if you accept everything, you're not gonna get to the priorities. So you need to say no, you need to control your calendar.

Yes.

And there's a lot of people that say, I gotta move this meeting around because the client can only meet me at 9 o'clock. I'm like, no, you don't have a gap until 10 on next Tuesday. The client can make that work or you find another time in the future. And it's controlling what you can control. And a lot of people lose control of things and that's where everything spirals. But to your point, Brian, it's we have to make sure that we prioritize what is the most effective use of our time, what is gonna lead to our ultimate goal. And if it is getting more sales in, then we need to prioritize. Is this deal from a trusted advisor that's gonna close at a very high rate? Is this some random message from, you know, LinkedIn that you can probably wait another week to get back to? So yeah, it's really, and I color code my calendar. So my Outlook calendar looks like a bag of Skittles blew up on it and everything's coded based upon close priority where it's gonna be. So if there's a red or a yellow and a green comes in, it's going right over it. Red or yellow moves to next week. And typically if something moves more than once, I probably never need to actually run that meeting. So it's really being realistic with yourself, looking at your pipeline. Reps tend to get these gigantic pipelines where 80% of it shouldn't be in there.

Yep.

But they don't want to no-sell them all because then they feel that scared sense of I have no pipeline. But that's the reality they need to then go out there and find new business.

And do you get scared when somebody comes in and goes, well, I got 50 deals?

That happens quite often. Is, is let's realistically go through pipeline and I say, oh yeah, 50 deals. I can almost promise at the end of the month you're still gonna have those same 50 and probably next month you're still gonna have those same 50 in your pipeline. So it's trying to really be honest with yourself. Honest with your opportunities. What I do a lot of times is if I have a pipeline forming, I will, I will put in bold if I in my head think it's at all not a great opportunity or shaky. So then if I write back in a week or 2 weeks and they say, well, I'm not sure, I'm like, yep, I already knew that, gone. So I try to be honest with myself from the moment a lead comes in to say, is this a good fit for us? Are we a good fit for them? Is this gonna be a wonderful relationship that will be a sale? Or are they not a fit for us or are we not a fit for them? Let's be realistic about that.

Yeah, because I think a lot of reps get too comfortable with anyone who will talk with them.

It feels good.

It has the same feeling as a deal, but it doesn't, never closes.

Correct. And sometimes we all know if you don't have the true decision maker influencer that you're meeting with, You're just having fun conversations with somebody talking about your product. And if you're just pitching a complete non-decision maker and putting all this time and effort in, you might as well have just said, here's a brochure, go hand it to the boss and see if he wants it because they're not gonna be able to position it as you would to that decision maker. So you're better off not positioning it than doing that because you're not gonna win that sale anyway.

And when a rep tells you, oh, this deal's a sure thing, what are the questions that you ask?

Yeah, you've heard people say that before, huh?

Once.

So yeah, typically when they come in immediately, this is a sure thing. My first thing, I'm a big believer of why, of, well, why are they moving forward with Puzzle? First thing I usually ask them, it's not when, it's not if they signed and all of those will generate the same answers. But Why are they moving forward? And if they end up saying, well, they just need our service.

They love us.

No, really, they just love you, right? They didn't tell you that they don't want this on the spot. So typically when I get into the whys behind it and they go, you know, this person's pay lead needs to step in to free the CFO up. We have the HR director that's overwhelmed and has a big task ahead of them that the owner is saying you need to get support and help this. I'm saying, okay, they've run effective discoveries, they've learned, they've positioned our product well, then I know that could be a yes. But I'm a big believer of, you know, why are they moving forward? And that can tell me a lot.

And if they don't have that why, or that why isn't quantifiable with either a number or a particular pain, What do you do?

Yep. So that's gonna be the follow-up question to the why. So say why they're not gonna come back with solutions. I'm gonna say we need to uncover that why to make sure they're truly moving forward with us. And then we'll strategize on what is the correspondence. Has there been email? Should it be a phone call? Should we write back and say, hey, there's a few other items that I wanna dive into a little bit before we move forward. And then we'll go ahead and try to take an advance to the next meeting. And go figure, half the time they're gonna write back and say, actually, we decided to go a different direction, right? Or hey, I'd love to hop back on. And typically there is when I would go on with my rep and we'd, we'd kind of reset expectations and dive in. And typically you're almost taking a few steps back to reset expectations, uncover a little bit more, and then we can try to get that sale moving in the right direction.

And how'd you come up with this system? Did you, were you one of the guys that were going to the coffee meetings and at the end of the quarter going, why'd I waste reviewing your time?

Yeah, it's, I remember this is probably 8 or 9 years ago. I remember the comment of, you know, I used to walk out of a meeting and I learned this from a mentor who was a very, very wonderful sales rep out of New Jersey. And I met with him and he was very blunt and to the point. And he used to say, you know, I close at 95%. And I was like, what? And he goes, yeah, I get a yes or no on every first meeting at 95%. And he didn't want a pending list. He didn't want to follow things up. He didn't want that pipeline. And once I realized, I said, tell me more. And once he started going through that, I adopted that mentality to some degree where when I left the meeting, I knew it was either a yes on the spot or a no on the spot. The yeses, you know, it's getting those nos out of people. So I really wanna challenge them at the end of the meeting. Is this make sense? Does this seem like a good fit for the organization? Is this something we can move forward with soon? Now again, a lot of times it's not a yes or no. Then you gotta get the next person involved and take that advance. But I wanna close for a no because if I can close for enough nos, It frees me up to be strategically efficient. It gives me all those extra hours back in my day and I can focus on the pipeline that will end up leading to a sale. So closing for a no is arguably more important than closing for a yes.

And have you developed, you know, kind of what I call a BS meter where you can, you know, because most people, oh yeah, sure, it makes sense, but then they won't schedule the next meeting. Which kind of tells you, well, it doesn't— if it made sense, then we would have another meeting, wouldn't we?

Yep. Yeah, it's always closing for that advance, right? That next step.

Yeah.

And if they're not willing to take it, you probably know where you're at in that sales process. But a lot of reps, they want to hang on to that. They want to cling to that, right? So that could be a close for the no situation to say, well, if you're not ready to book the next meeting, you got to think about it. You got to talk to your spouse, your boss, your cat, your dog, whatever your excuse is. Then what I'll do is I don't wanna bother you either. So, you know, we'll part ways today. Here's the information we talked about. Reach out to me when you're ready to book that next meeting. I'll no sale in the system and won't even talk to them.

Yeah.

And then if they reach out to me in a week or 2 to say, hey, I talked to the boss, we really wanna entertain this, great, then I can move on with my sales process. But I don't wanna waste my team or my rep's time on something that's not going anywhere.

Because I gotta imagine in your space, time is a critical element. They're not ready or something needs to happen or they gotta get used to the idea and then the pain isn't there yet.

Yep. There's a lot and sometimes there's the immediate need of an HR manager left, a payroll manager left. We were trying to find a recruiter, but I don't wanna pay a 20% or 30% placement fee, whatever it may be. And we're a natural fit. There's a need, there's a gap, and we fill it. But no, a lot of other times we meet with a company that's growing and they're saying, you know, I need to invest in HR and we'll open their eyes to what we can do and empower them. But that may not be the time today. It could be when their next round of funding comes. It could be once they buy their new building. It could be once they get a few more salespeople in. So yeah, a lot of it's timing. A lot of it's a lot of education on the power of how HR can help your business. And then that's the pipelines that we do need to keep intact. But it's not, I'm gonna talk to them every day. It's, hey, we know this is gonna be a great opportunity for you. You're planning on taking this next step 60 days and 90 days from now. So then we can, we can block time off in the future to talk.

Hey, it's been a great discussion, Doug. Where can people go to find you?

Yeah. So puzzlehr.com, right, is the easiest, but we're on all the social media platforms, right? The Facebooks, the Instagrams, the But a lot of people obviously go through LinkedIn and then people obviously can, can reach directly out to me on LinkedIn, Doug@puzzlehr.com. It's an easy enough email. So they're able to reach out. I love consulting with businesses, talking about them, even just giving them some ideas that they haven't thought about yet. And then who knows if we partner down the road.

Now, if you can't Really take control over your time because time is one of the few things that is equal among every salesperson on the planet. We all get the same 24 hours. How you utilize it, how you prioritize it, how you plan for it is up to us. Yeah, I know your company's got some requirements, but— I'll be doing an episode on that, on how to Stay focused. But your managers, they want you to sell. And if you are explaining to them why you need that time to sell, they're usually pretty accommodating if it's a real deal that's closing quickly. And they all are now, aren't they? Now, think about your week. What are the prime times to be talking Live interactively with your clients. Block them out. Don't take on new things during those time periods unless you don't have an appointment to talk with your clients. Remember, the time and energy are so correlated because you can have time, but if you don't have the energy to do anything, eh, That's called sleeping. That's sleepy time. So if you have time and energy, and you want a good amount of energy, not too much, but a good healthy amount of energy, you have to focus it on the things that are going to get you the most income. Now, that sounds obvious, and you're probably, duh, I know that. It's not about knowing it. It's about doing it. And where do we get stuck? Oh, somebody calls up and they— oh, we need to talk to you because we're thinking about doing this. Sounds like an opportunity, right?

And it may be.

But are you moving things around? Are you qualifying it? Are you thinking about it? Are they just looking at you for column fodder? Are they serious? That's a judgment call. And judgment is probably a very critical skill in sales because we've got infinite amount of noise, signals that look positive but tend to be misguided. I'm sure you get a lot of pick-your-brain requests or career advice requests or help-me-find-a-job requests. And yeah, we got to be friendly and giving and everything. But we can't forget to do our job and we only have certain amount of time to do our job. And we have names for these. We have days, weeks, months, and years. And what I've learned about time, because I've been, you know, when you work for yourself, there's no base salary. So, you have to really use your time to accomplish what you want. And, you know, I've tried to get my day down, my week, my month. And I think everybody notices time moves much faster, and it moves much faster year after year. It's just a perception. It's our ability to conceive of how long things take. And I found that things take longer than you anticipate. And not just 5 or 10% more. But 30, 50, 100% more. So when you're— and this is me after a career of judging a quarter and a year— I'm still way too optimistic. And the problem is in sales, you can't be too pessimistic because you're going to miss some opportunities. Oh, it's so hard. It's a judgment call, always. But what feeds into that judgment is your past perception. of how well you are at judging these things. Judge how long a deal takes. You're probably a little too optimistic. Work that into your algorithm. At the end of this year and every year, it's going to be how well did you invest that time. And think about it as an investment. And think about how much energy each of these things takes. Because it's up to us. What we have is our skill and our time to execute our skills. That's what we have. And if you're new to sales, you have the same amount of time as somebody with 20 years experience. And I've seen a lot of people with 20, 30 years experience who still can't use their time well. They'll take every coffee meeting with every Mutton Jeff there is out there. And yes, it could possibly turn into something someday. I get it. It's prioritization, and that takes a prefrontal cortex analysis, not a gut instinct. It's something that we really have to analyze, think through, not beat ourselves up, but just be cognizant.

of it.

Really look at your calendar and don't let other people dominate it. Control that process. Otherwise, you're going to look back and the month and the quarter is going to be gone, and where's the revenue? Did that happen at the end of last year, the year before, or did you just forget? And here's another thing that I learned Quite well this year, and you kind of know it, but it's not an epiphany until you change it. Kind of sensing it and being aware of it is valuable, but knowing it and doing something about it are two very different things. What I noticed, and I did something about, is Our brain naturally finds a way of forgetting about the things that we find painful or dislike doing. Yeah? Try a new habit and not write it down, not have a reminder. I bet you're gonna forget. Not forget like you didn't think about it at all. It's just that something else took your time. And you got distracted. This is what happens all the time, all day long with human beings. That's why some people are a little bit late. Some people forgot. Oh yeah. Oh, I knew I should have done that. That's how our brain works. So we have to have structure and reminders and more reminders. And checklists and a little bit of process. Otherwise, we go with what feels good at the moment, not what is right and most effective. This is something that I got to tell you, like, I've been doing all these habits and I still tend to fall into the trap of making them a little bit harder than I should. And then something else comes up that's more pleasant, and then the time goes by and I didn't do it. And then I look at it and I go, well, you know why? You didn't have that reminder. And that reminder that you do it and you do it immediately, or you reset the reminder to do it later, but you just don't move on. And just take a day. You know, take— I use my camera on my smartphone quite a bit to keep track of events. You know, if I go somewhere, I take a picture of my odometer, I take a picture of where I'm heading. I do it as just a, you know, a poor man's journal of just keeping track of what's going on each day. If I go running in the morning and it's beautiful out, I take a picture of the sky. Or something I find interesting that'll trigger a memory for me. Go back over the day and see what was the best use of your time and what turned out to be either false positive or just a real energy drain. Because if something takes a half hour but it's just such an energy drain and you're not getting much out of it, maybe it's not a good use of your time. And then what was fluff that took up time that was just a distraction? You know, some BS TV show or pod— oh, did I say podcast?

No, no, not that.

Someone else's podcast. Just as a way of focusing your time on the things that are important to you. Not me, you. And, but also the mistake that people make with really focusing on their time is they always slip into trying to put too much on their calendar. Give a bunch of good breaks in there to recharge the energy batteries, to rethink about what to use. Don't be one of these people that has every 15 minutes booked because It feels like you're busy, busy, busy, and you are, but you're not effective. Remember, look at the deals that closed. Those are the ones you got paid on. Everything else fits into your base. What you got paid on was those deals that closed. Look at— they didn't take a lot of time, wall clock time. They may have taken a lot of calendar time. Calendar is start to finish. Wall clock is actual time spent on the deal. Like a lawyer, he doesn't work on one case full-time. He works on several cases in 15-minute increments. But don't think like a lawyer, okay? Think like an entrepreneur. And remember, it's your time. And how much money you make is going to be dependent on how well you utilized it. If you want to learn more, go to b2brevenue.com. I got 2 major courses: Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting. This is a prospecting course for cold outbound and B2B, and it's all about starting organic conversations that turn into business conversations. It's not about spray and pray. It's not about better spam. It's about connecting with another human being. In a way that's organic, where they don't even feel like you're a salesperson. The other is closing the complex sale. This is taking it from that first call all the way through closure and how companies buy and how to keep the momentum going and how not to be feeling like a sales rep hounding and checking in and touching base, having a system that matches how companies buy. It's game-changing, but you're too busy out there having false positive meetings. It's up to you. To utilize your time, you have to be able to understand the game you're playing. And anyone can take an order, but very few people can sell. We'll see you next time. Check out brevitypitch.com.

Thanks for listening.