HOW TO STAY OUT OF THE B-PLAYER TRAP IN B2B SALES AND SELLING

In sales, there's this concept of the B-player. And in the B-player, these are the people that do pretty good in sales, but they never seem to become great at sales. And I call it the B-player trap. In science, they call it the Dunning-Kruger effect. It's when you have a little bit of success and it kind of goes to your head and you stop Being reflective, looking at your game, focusing on getting better and better, humbling yourself at times, looking at your confidence level, keeping it high enough to be curious but not too high to not see what's going on. You connecting with this? It's the most common thing out there in sales. And It also kind of tips on the know-it-all. Now, if you're listening to a sales podcast, hopefully you haven't fallen into this trap yet, but it's kind of unavoidable for a short period of time in your career. You get a little bit of that success and all of a sudden then you're not getting it. And what do you do? Here's the trap. You start pointing and blaming other things instead of Reflecting, taking responsibility, and analyzing what's going on, and focusing on what you have control over—

you.

It's the only thing you have 100% control over. And even at that time, you may not admit it, you may not appreciate it, and you may not do anything about it, but it is the one thing that we have. We have control over our thoughts. We have control over our priorities. We have control over What we focus on. And if we really take advantage of that control and expand it instead of reacting to it, that's where the magic happens in any performance profession. And, but sales, we tend to get to a certain plateau and get too comfortable there. And all of a sudden we're in the trap. Can you get out of the B-player trap? Of course you can, but you first have to recognize it. You have to understand that your game got a little stale because you stopped focusing on getting better. This is one of the topics we're going to cover today, but it's something that every sales rep should anticipate and do everything you can to prevent it from happening. Because once you're in it, It's kind of hard to get out because you're not going to see it yourself. Somebody else has to kind of pull you out of it, or you get a wake-up call when all of a sudden your sales aren't doing too well and no one's buying the excuses anymore. And maybe you need to stop buying the excuses. I had an interview the other day with a rep who ironically sells sales assessments. So I was trying to ferret out, like, what are the most common sales problems that reps surface? And the top 2— number 1 was not a good listener. Clearly, humans by nature are not good listeners because to listen, we have to quiet our mind, open up, become confident and curious about what the other person has to say. As opposed to we want them to be curious about what we have to say. But number 2 was even more interesting. It was not taking responsibility. And we hear this all the time, and people have different words for it, but it's our income that should be driving us in sales. Meaning that if we want to increase our income, we got to increase our skill set, our abilities in sales. And that has to be a consistent thing because if you're not constantly polishing and developing your skill set, you tend to be going backwards. This is where the 1% a day thing I have a little argument with because Yeah, you're sure you're getting better at certain things during that day, but aren't you losing other things? There's a lot. I get it. There's a ton. And sales is one of those professions where it's not a skill, it's an aggregate of tons of skills. I know it's a lot, but if you want to increase your income, you got to increase your skills. It just goes along. What other— what else could it be? Everyone thinks it's just finding a different job, getting a better territory. Okay, how many times can you do that though? After you hop job to job after every 9 months, it starts to look bad. How about if you focused on what you have control over? Thinking about your positivity, your curiosity, your confidence, and regulating it. Not arriving at it. And one of the ways to do that is to practice. But in sales, how do we practice? We can think, we can plan, we can strategize.

All good.

And we should do it. But we got to open our mouths and interact. And to do that is risky because the clients— we got to prepare for those meetings. They're There's so few of them today. We have to practice. And the way to do that today is with AI. brevitypitch.com has developed an AI solution for this where you basically interact with the human voice on your computer and you get feedback. You get to practice in all kinds of scenarios. Easy to hard using a methodology or using whatever you want to do. It gets you talking. It gets you interacting. And from that, we become a little bit more self-aware because you don't want to go into the game cold. Would you like your surgeon to come in cold? He just woke up after a bender. Yeah, sure. Yeah, why don't you open me up and muck around in there for a while? No, that's ridiculous. You want that surgeon practicing, thinking about your operation for days in advance, analyzing, having the whole team go through a checklist, making sure that he's prepared for all the contingencies because it's your life. The only thing more important than your life is your income. A little joke there, but you get my point there. Because in our mind, we may be an A player, but when we open our mouth, we can go down to a B, B-, C+ player real quick because we haven't warmed up, we haven't practiced. And yeah, you did it well yesterday, but so did the surgeon. Right. You got to get the juices flowing. And you know, the more often you do something, the better you get at it. So you could do it all day long without wearing anybody else out. So check out brevity.com. Tell them Brian sent you. They'll help you out. It's a great company, great product. Let's get into the interview. I'll sum it up at the end. Here we go.

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

Thanks. Yeah, so yeah, my name is Henning. I'm based in Calgary in Canada. I'm originally from Norway. I came here in 2005 to join school, met the love of my life and stuck around. It's a little personal background. I've been in sales for as long as I can remember. I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. you know, and grew up with conversations about customers and sales and business at the breakfast table. And so I think I started working in my dad's business at the age of 12, which I don't think is technically legal. But officially, I think I've been selling stuff since I was 14 years old-ish.

Yeah. So are you a natural at it or was it something that—

I think it's something that I acquired over time, to be honest. And I was never really sure if it was the career that I wanted to pursue. But it's sort of, you know, after completing university, the natural step was to get into sales. And I think it wasn't until maybe a year or 2 into that role that I realized that, you know, I can figure out how to do this and start to become good at it.

Yeah. And you got an MBA in finance though. That doesn't seem down the sales road, does it?

So I did, again, because of the background, I did a business degree with focus on business development and entrepreneurship. And then I realized, you know, in my role, as a sales rep, you know, I didn't really see that much value. And, and, uh, so I'd been in sales for about 5 years and I was looking for, I was looking for, you know, some advancement, uh, looking at leadership position and MBA seemed like a good idea. I'd always wanted to study abroad. So, so that seemed like a good opportunity to do so. And my employer at the time gave me, um, a 2-year leave of absence to go here and study and, and come back, uh, you know, a better leader. And so What, uh, and then as I was doing my MBA, I just really loved kind of the corporate finance aspect. And so it was more just like, this is really interesting, I want to learn more about this. And I actually think it made me a better, um, more well-rounded sales rep by having some of that sort of financial background, understanding what's happening on the balance sheets and P&Ls around the world.

Yeah, you get to talk, you know, numbers with people.

And yeah, yeah.

And understand the difference between CapEx and OpEx and stuff like that.

Yeah, yeah. I think it helps to have an appreciation. I don't think you need an MBA with a specialization in it, but, you know, having some level of understanding is probably a good thing.

And what makes you feel, makes you good at sales? Is it your personality? Is it your desire?

I hope it's a combination of the two, to be honest. I think to begin with in sales, I could come into sales junior hunter type role and I started in sales in an environment where everybody wanted to buy the tech that we had to sell. And so it was like, it was like really, it seemed like immediately very easy, but I don't think I learned a lot. I think it wasn't until things got hard, you know, that I started to figure out, you know, how to actually do the job. And I think for me it was, I got the taste for closing big deals and I think that's sort of what hooked me and then realizing that I could actually close the big deals and I could get paid a lot of money doing it. The combination of that, I think, was sort of the initial driver to motivate me to continue a career in sales. I think when you're closing big deals, I think it's, I just love the complexity of it. I think I'm, you know, I think I'm just naturally drawn to problem solving and naturally drawn to dig deeper to understand what the problem is. And so I think by doing that, it sort of becomes natural for me to build some level of trust quite quickly with customers and other people in general. I think that's a I don't know if that's a personality trait or again, something I've developed over time, but that seems to be very important to me in my career.

Because a lot of great salespeople like that challenge of the puzzle of how to get this deal done, how to win it and block out the competition and not just get a transaction, but kind of an enterprise type thing done.

Yeah, yeah, it's definitely that sort of, sort of, it's, you have to be curious, you need to be creative, you have to think out of the box, you know, sometimes you have to really put in the hours as well, right, that you need to do and you have to be really cognizant of what's happening within the customer. Like I always like to say that you should be the subject matter expert, but not necessarily about what you do, what the customer does or what they actually need to get out of that transaction. So, you know, if they need to leverage a centralized purchasing agreement, you know, you figure out how to help them do that better and save money, for example, if that's the motivation. And that could have nothing to do technically with the product that you're selling, but it might be what's actually driving their decision at the end of the day.

And do you think the first job being easy relatively helped you or hurt you?

That's a really good question. I think it motivated me to, like, it made me feel that I could be good at this. Like, it gave me some confidence. And so when, and this was a few years back. So this is like the dot-com bubble burst and, you know, just the sky came crashing down one day with no Y2K budgets anymore. And it was like just, And my company had some dodgy financial transactions. Our reputation wasn't great. And so, if I didn't have any confidence that I could do this job, I probably would have left. And I think many did, you know, at that time. But I decided to stick it out and I got some really good opportunities as a result of that.

Because a lot of people, managers think they should put the reps on the hard stuff first versus the easy stuff first.

How do you feel? Yeah, you know, when you say that as a sales leader, I tend to kind of like to give them some confidence first, you know, like you want to give them something that they can tackle and manage before you're kind of throwing them off the cliff and letting them fly or swim or whatever you want them to do.

Well, that's it because if they just get rejection all day, You know, you can have the attitude, well, that builds thick skin and stuff if they stick with it.

Yeah, yeah.

But a lot of people aren't sticking with it.

You know, I think, I think that's, you know, and, and some might be really good at dealing with that. They just, they just kind of like, you know, they're, they're gritty. They just, they can handle it. But, but, and then they can get, get good results, you know, over a period of time. But I think there's always a risk that they're going to burn out. They're going to lose interest over time. And I think leaders should probably think more long term, you know, with their reps. And how do I build, how can I help this person build a career? And I think having the opportunity to lead teams, that's kind of been some of my proudest moments in sales, if not necessarily closing the big deal myself, but helping someone on the team be successful. And that generally doesn't happen overnight. It's a—

Long—

It happens over a longer period of time.

Yeah, because I think the best salespeople learn how to do things as you described, smarter, more creative.

Yeah, yeah, that was kind of my— that was one of my notes here is like you have to hustle in sales, but, but, you know, you can hustle dumb or smart, and the ones that are hustling smart, they, they typically are more successful over time. But again, you don't acquire that right away. No, it's easy to hustle dumb. It is.

Yeah.

And today I think that's the focus is, you know, more dumb things faster instead of— but the objective is to sell, not just to be busy and miserable.

Exactly. Yeah.

And on the creative side, what about that excites you? Is it seeing it come together? Is it beating the competition? Is it beating Other people on the leaderboard?

I definitely had, you know, been in some really competitive industries and challenging sort of the market leader. And there it's like being able to beat them has been huge and losing against them has been horrible, right? And so you take it almost personally when you're in that environment and every deal is a fight. So definitely that's part of it. But I think it's in part just seeing the puzzle come together and maybe also seeing that puzzle being completed, you know, by the customer. So you kind of realize that, you know, you've been able to help them solve something that was important for them, whether it's personally for their company, more so than not, it's for the individual, you know, or the individual in the organization. They need something to get done and they end up trusting you, right, to help them do that. And to do that, you have to bring something to the table that's more than just, you know, a product or a solution. And so I think that's probably the biggest driver or the most exciting outcome of thinking outside the box, being creative, challenging the customer. And I don't mean necessarily challenge your sales, but I mean just help them challenge the status quo and help them ask questions like if they're going down this path, why are they doing that? Are they doing that for the wrong reason, for the right reason? And that approach tends to work in almost all aspects of sales, whether you're prospecting or you're in that phase where you're solutioning, discussing different options with them, or you're closing. And I think to do that right, you have to be creative. You have to give them some feedback that they weren't necessarily expecting from you. You have to surprise them in a positive way.

And it sounds like you don't act like a salesperson. I mean that as a compliment.

I don't think I do. And that's why I said it's like, I'm not sure if I'm a natural sales rep. I think it's like my personality with acquired skills over time because I don't think necessarily people want to buy from a salesperson the way that they typically think of a salesperson. And so coming in there with a different approach and being original, you know, know, in a way that adds value to their day and to the end result for them, I think is very important.

And how do you do that? It sounds like you're asking tough questions, things that they're not thinking about.

Yeah, I think there's— it's a good combination of some experience, some research, not just into what the company does, but what are people in that role typically concerned about, what's driving them. And I think the finance MBA sometimes, you know, helps with that. And maybe also having been in situations where you've had to manage, you know, finances, or imagine yourself being in that situation. It's like, hey, what would I do? What would I need? You know, do I need a best friend or do I need, you know, somebody that actually knows how to help me save money? And so I think that's going a little bit deep on that is important, maybe not in all aspects of the sales process, but Definitely when you're kind of in front of an opportunity after you pass that first hurdle of getting in and booking that meeting, it's really important to really understand who you're talking to and also have a, not necessarily empathy, but an understanding of why they would want to spend even 5 minutes with you.

Yeah, it is empathy. And I think a lot of people don't really get empathy. I think a lot of people, you know, how the product would impact them, but it's really what are they trying to accomplish with the product?

Yeah, yeah.

How does their workflow change? How does their political existence in the organization change?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the companies I'm working with now, they, they, they, um, um, we have a safety management software. And so we met with a large company about their existing safety management system, large global company, 76,000 employees, I think, in 70-odd some countries, right? And they start the conversation like, we're super happy with our, with our, you know, our existing product gives us everything that we need. And then we just start talking about it. What does it do? How does it do that? You know, is there something that it doesn't do? And then we realize that it doesn't do really what they need at all. The product itself is good, but it actually doesn't help them accomplish what they need to do. And I think like that balance of through that process of understanding, asking the right question, because it's a challenge to them. So, you know, you can always play those kind of conversations back to them as they go along. So yeah, you like the visibility that it gives you, but you don't trust the data. So then Is that a concern for you? Right. And what are you currently doing to maybe deal with that? I just love that kind of how that back and forth goes. It's really interesting.

Well, that's it because most clients are comfortably numb. They've kind of learned how to live with how things work today.

Yeah.

Yeah. The way we were before smartphones. Yeah, we need to make calls and maybe an email here and there. That's fine.

Yeah, yeah.

Until you can see, oh, I can browse the internet. That'd be cool.

Yeah.

Did somebody teach you that, how to like activate that latent pain, or was it something you kind of learned along the way?

So I think you just learned along the way. I mean, later in my career, I've been through some sales training of proper discovery calls and all the kind of acronyms that you need to know these days. But I don't think it felt like that was sort of just confirmation of the process that I was already doing in a way. Now, I say that these trainings and these frameworks are good anyway because they're a good reminder. But it's, I think it's something that you acquire if you really, if you're really serious about being a good salesperson, you know, you continuously evaluate your own performance. You don't wait for your boss. You don't wait for the CRM to tell you that things are not going in the right direction. You know, you should have like a good understanding of like, what am I doing and how is that working for me? And how can I do things smarter? And whether that is changing up, you know, your cadences or your content or maybe learning something new, read a new book. All right. Get some new impulses. You know, it can be a number of different things, but I think that's really important to to learn on your own. And I don't know if I can say this on this podcast, but I also think that there's a lot of people that are kind of in the position where they're mentoring and coaching people that are new to the sales profession and they're not necessarily great mentors or coaches. They're often in that role because it's the next step if you're successful.

Yeah.

And so I think that makes it even more important, especially as you said, in this world where, you know, it's all about hitting your activity numbers and your KPIs and do just more things of something. We don't really care the result of that, but just do more of it. You know, and that tends to be such a focus for people entering the profession that developing that ability to look at your own performance and gain your own insights independent of, you know, what other people might think. You might be on a different trajectory than what your boss thinks you should be on. And probably a good idea to be on your boss's trajectory too. But, but like, like, think longer term for yourself and develop those insights about what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are, and what seems to be working and not, and create your own plan and your own development plan.

And did you get pushback from any sales leaders that, no, just do it my way or the company way? Or—

You know, I was, I was expecting you to say that or ask me that. And I, I was thinking back and there's been Throughout my career, there's been questions asked, but for some reason I've been in a situation where I've always been a consistent performer. I've never really been the number one sales rep, like in a given quarter or a given year, although I've had some amazing experiences, you know, being right up there. But I think it's just that consistency. And so they're kind of like, okay, we're just gonna let Henning do whatever he does because it seems to be working. Yeah. Yeah. And generally speaking, you know, when they do look at the KPIs and other things, you know, it's there. Right. It's not far off. But at the end of the day, you know, we need to hit and exceed quota both for our own sake so we earn. But I mean, that's what we're there to do and paid to do.

And how have you avoided the B-player trap where you get pretty good, you make your number?

Yeah, you know, that's interesting. I think there's been times in my career where I definitely been an A-player, but I think there's been times too where I've sort of been happy being, being a, being a B player. I think, I think, um, uh, I think when it comes to, to working with a team, um, you know, I'd almost, I'd almost much rather have, you know, a team full of B players than, you know, than, than a couple of Cs and A and then, and then maybe one or two Bs, just because within the B player there's a lot of people that will have the potential to become an I, when I've hired for sales roles and built teams and whatnot, I try to look for sort of people that are really interested in learning and that are really curious, you know, not, they don't have to have a business background or even sales experience. But, you know, I think at one time I hired a copywriter for an SDR role and he was amazing at it. Because he could think like the customer is thinking, you know, he's a journalist background. And so he would be able to quite quickly, you know, turn, you know, a conversation that he was having into good content right away. And then he could quite easily also understand what wasn't working with his content and getting— so I think it's like, but that was because he had some education background that helped, but he was curious, right?

Very curious.

He wanted to figure this out, like what can I do next to get better at this? And I think if you have that mentality, like you're not content, like you don't wanna be stuck being a B player, you know, you wanna move forward. And it could be in part the money or you wanna be the best, but it's also just that curiosity. It's like I just wanna know what I can do next to do a little bit better.

Yeah, because in the B player trap, people tend to become know-it-alls if they don't have that curiosity.

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's very true. Yeah.

And I don't know how you feel about that, but I've never seen the know-it-all have much success.

I don't, I don't, I don't think so. Yeah, you, you definitely need, you definitely need to, to, um, kind of, kind of step out of yourself and not, not not think about so much what you currently know, but think about what you can learn.

Right.

And, and, and yeah, no, I think, I think you're very, very right. Like, I worked with a lot of really good sales reps that have been colleagues, that have been strong B players, if you will, but maybe thought they had it all. They knew they had their process, you know, this is how we do it. It works every time.

Until it doesn't.

Until it doesn't. And then it just really doesn't work.

And then it's someone else's fault.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's the market conditions, or it's a number of different things. Well, it's our job to be in the market. You know, we have to deal with the market conditions. It's part of the job.

Right. The economy doesn't stay steady. Nothing stays steady.

Yeah, I mean, there are harder times and there are easier times, and sometimes you just can't hit your number. But you can really tell, you know, when you're talking to people who are the ones that are really aware why that is and already thinking about how they're gonna fix it versus the ones that are using it as an excuse.

Yeah. And how do you use creativity in your sales process?

Is it Oh, that's another very good question. I think it's, one part of it is that customer-facing part where, you know, you need to be, you need to think out of the box around who do I need to engage on this? How can I learn more about what's really happening behind the scenes? You know, you might be struggling getting into the right person. So how do you then, how do you then get around that problem, right? There's a number of different things you need to do, and being creative with that certainly doesn't, doesn't hurt. You might even say that some people might get really creative in, in, in even the prospecting phase. You know, I think we've all tried, tried and failed on a number of different things. But at the end of the day, if you understand your customer, that would be the number one, like understand why this buyer should be willing to spend even, even a minute on the phone with you. If you have a good understanding of that and you can articulate why that is, then you probably have a pretty good shot if you do get them on the phone to get past that and get to the next step. The other part I think is that internal part, whether like you mentioned, like my sales process, I think of it more like my job is to help the buyer buy, not so much me selling. And, and so that they might not always buy the way that you want to sell. And so, so being flexible and being able to work within kind of there and not maybe not so much creative as flexibility, but being able to, to notice that and understand that and adapt to it, it's maybe, maybe part of creativity. The last part I think is if you want to win big deals, you can't just look at your current offering and your current organization, how you currently do things and say this is this is the way because it probably isn't. And so you have to be willing to sometimes take up that fight with your customer success team or your account management team or even your engineering team or your product teams. You know, if we want, we can bring this deal in and this is how we're gonna do it. But, you know, in order to do that, we actually have to do this slightly different than how we're doing it today. And so The combination of that, I think, is in some cases it's not possible if you're selling it kind of off-the-shelf SaaS software, customizing the product just isn't part of the option. But in many cases, if you're selling a more complex sale or even just doors and windows, like there are ways that you can easily kind of augment how you currently do things to help you get the deal across the line.

Because what I always noticed was not everybody wanted it to do exactly what it was designed to do, the way it was designed to do it.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, that happens. But I think also in that, and, you know, if that happens, Brian, you have to like, you have to also understand why do they want it to do it a different way? Have they come up with some magically better way of doing it that we're not currently aware of? Or, or maybe they're stuck in doing something in a way that may not make sense, you know, in 2023 or 2025 or whatever the year is. So I think there's an opportunity in that too, to come across as an advisor. But again, it might also not be, but you need to understand where you're sitting. Like, are you sitting in an area where, you know, I can close a $5 million client if we just do it this way and they actually seem to have figured out a better way to do it? It makes more sense for everyone involved than Maybe we should do it that way. Or maybe if it doesn't, you know, the job is then to work with them and see if there's a way they can do it that fits better with the service or the product that you're offering.

And when you're interviewing salespeople, what are the top 3 or 4 things that you're looking for that are, they have to have it or it's not gonna work for you?

It's gotta be— I always look at the questions that they ask. So, so I look at that as the one of the best tests for, for, for whether you're curious or not. And, and I typically look for questions that I might not even be expecting, or, or, or things that aren't commonly asked. So that's one thing. It's easy to say that, yeah, I'm really curious, but then if you have no questions for me, then, then Then I'm not really sure at that time. The other thing that I like to do, and I know that there's lots of people that don't, that don't, that is not a fan of this, but I do a little role play at every initial interview that I'm in. And it's really quick. It could be about something that's not our company. It's not sell me this pen, but just imagine, you know, you're selling this product and you got a customer on the phone. You know, and just let's just play it out. And then I would typically give some feedback and then I, and then we'd run the same role play again. So this is all like just a maybe 8 to 10 minute exercise. And I look for those that are trying to improve or maybe that are actually making an attempt to deploy some of the advice that they got in that first kind of in that first conversation. Now, this is just me recently hiring BDRs, SDRs. Be a little bit different with seasoned AEs. But those are 2 things that I've been looking for. I am for a more seasoned sales rep. I just, I'm looking for someone that's thoughtful and that can listen to what I'm saying and play that back to me in a way that That is sort of they're they're applying some of their own knowledge and experience, and they're adding value to the conversation. And so that can be in some ways it's almost like I'm looking for some of those interviews to be almost like a kind of a discovery type conversation where I'm trying to learn about you, you're trying to learn about me, and then if we're both happy at the end of it, we go to the second, you know, we go to the second stage. But there's not like. a question necessarily that I use, but the curiosity piece, the ability to quickly sort of add value to the conversation, as well as the kind of the ability to take advice and maybe be coachable.

Have you ever hired somebody who wasn't able to take advice or rationalized why they did the role play the way they did it?

I actually don't think so. Yeah, I don't think so. I've had some that have rationalized it, but not to the point where they've said that, you know, I don't want to change it. They've still, I think they've still tried, you know, to, and to be honest, like the second time you do it, technically, it's worse than the first time because now you're so like—

Awkward.

Yeah, it's awkward now. It was awkward to begin with, but now it's really awkward. And, and I know that I mentioned that I don't like to throw them out on the deep end, but, but this gives you a slight— this gives you a slight indication of what they would do. And, and if they didn't make it, would they come to you and ask for help? And I think that's really important as a leader to work with a team that realizes that, hey, you know what, I need to grow. I, I can be better at this. And, you know, and I want to, to get advice on how to do that. And it's really hard to build a successful team if you don't have team members that are like that. Yeah. Yeah.

Cool.

Hey, I really appreciate your time today. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

So LinkedIn is probably the best place. Henning Moe. I don't think there's many of us on LinkedIn. So, so yeah, I'd love to connect with as many as possible. And, and I really appreciate this conversation, Brian. It was, it was good.

There seems to be a few themes that keep coming up in great salespeople. It's that curiosity which enables empathy. And if you develop your empathy to a certain extent, you're essentially able to read the other person's mind because you're putting yourself into their shoes. But in sales, we tend to be under so much pressure that we don't take the time to do that. Today, the focus seems to be on doing more dumb things faster instead of selling something. And I've been thinking to myself, like, why, why do people do that? And I think it's because they don't want to feel the pain of rejection. They want to busy themselves? Why do people feel comfortable loading up their spam gun every morning and firing it all day? Because it's low risk, low reward, and, uh, they're more comfortable with it as opposed to building a know, like, and trust relationship with somebody. We had office hours yesterday and we really move into much more of a case study-based approach. What I do is people in the course send me or put it into the community their case study. I want a meeting with X. And on the previous office hours, somebody submitted it. I worked on it. I presented it during office hours. He took what I did and did it for himself. All the people connected with me All the people connected with this person, and now he's got a conversation started, and it took 10 minutes. Now, I asked them, what would happen if you sent a pitch? And everybody rolls their eyes because they know the likelihood of it working is less than 1%. Now, is that selling? Really ask yourself, is that selling? No. Or is that gambling or spamming or hoping? I don't know. If you're having challenges trying to fill your calendar with conversations that turn into meetings that turn into deals, start the conversation, get the meetings for you. Now I know you got a lot of excuses. Everyone's got their excuses because that's what happens. To our little brain when we try and change or do anything better, we become self-defending, self-protecting. We come up with a little excuse. It's like oh, I'm too busy, or I got under too much pressure, too much pressure to do it smart. I'm too busy doing it dumb. Sales, the first step in anything. is to come up with the best possible approach. Then you practice it. You try it. You dig in deeper, deeper, deeper into it to understand it. Today we just want to hit buttons, but that's not what sales is. Anyone can hit a button. Sales is about conversations with people, engaging with people so that you can activate their latent pain so it's active pain, so they become interested. That's what selling is. What we're trying to do today is save money on commission by hiring people with no experience and work them to death. It's not working. Sure, it works when there's pull, when there's demand, but is Are your leads demand or are they just contacts? Just curious people checking out your content. But are those going to turn into deals? Probably not. Start the conversation, get the meeting is the foundational skill of selling. It's how to start a conversation with a stranger. And I'm not talking about a cold call and I'm not talking about spam. It's building it up. Step by step, and I show you how, exactly how. And you can copy it, you can emulate it, you can customize it. I get it. Everyone's territory and prospects are a little bit different. Totally get it. And here's the secret. This works with all people, all cultures. Why? Because we're all mammals. And what I do is I take the science behind mammals approaching strangers. And I implemented it in sales over the last 14-plus years now. And it's still the most effective. And I evolve it because I need it. I want it. I know that cold calling and pitching, the likelihood of it working is so low. Even when you become great at it, it's Still really low. And becoming great at it takes way too long. Do you have 3 to 5 years? I didn't think so. This is your income we're talking about. If you want to raise your income, you got to raise your skill set. You got to really focus on getting better consistently, not just once. Not reading something and saying, oh, now I know that. Knowing it is the start. Applying it, perfecting it, really polishing it, iterating over it is where you become better. Not just taking someone else's sequence. That's marketing. And it works the same way marketing works. 1 out of 100, 1 out of 1,000. Good luck with that. Go to b2brevenue.com. Sign up today. Make sure you follow directions on the website. There's 2 videos there. One shows how the courses work— video-based, self-paced— and the other is how to pick which course is right for you. So I dig into what the course includes as far as one-on-ones and office hours, and it's all with me. There's no— you can schedule a call with somebody on the team to ask questions, but the course is all with me. with me, the one-on-ones, the office hours, and I record them all and put them into the course. So you want to eavesdrop on other people's one-on-ones? Let's say you sell security to CISOs. Hey, I only got a couple hundred people doing that, and they're successful doing it. You can see exactly how to do it. See how other people are doing it and see the real-time success stories of them doing it. And you get a little bit of crowdsourcing and a little bit of community out of it to hear how other salespeople are succeeding. And these aren't people that are told to take the course. I hope not. I hate that because self-paced learning requires curiosity and the individual applying themselves. Pretty good, huh?

Check it out.

I think you'll like it because— and it also has now a smartphone app. So if you want to go for a walk or get on the elliptical, you can have your course there, listen to a one-on-one, listen to an office hours, and really hear the tactics, the exact steps, both theory and implementation. So you can understand what's working behind the scenes. Thanks for listening. Check out the other show, Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers. We'll see you next time and give Brevity Pitch a try.