HOW YOUR BASE SALARY MAYBE HOLDING YOU BACK IN SALES

Most of us have one or two things to sell, or we, you know, we have a bunch of maybe even a portfolio of products, but typically they're around a particular problem or a keystone product, and the rest kind of fall in behind them. Today we're talking to a manufacturer's rep who has 25 companies behind him, and this can be both good and bad. Uh, the bad part is you gotta— people are gonna ask you, so what do you do? And you could give them the 25 answers, or you gotta like quickly get it about them and finding out what particular thing is top of mind right now and how you can map that back to one of the 25 products that you sell. The other thing that being a manufacturer's rep gets you is it's a commission-only sales role. And although most of us with big base salaries would look down at this, I look up at it. Because if you're on commission only, your judgment skills, how you spend those 24 hours that you get every day, is critical. And if you do it well, you get paid really well. If you do it not so well, you don't. And this is one of the things that we teach in both courses, because the prioritization of our time is critical. Because typically we're working on about 80% of these deals that either it's too early, it's not going to close within the window of your comp plan or your territory plan, and you're not going to get paid for it. And is this completely unavoidable? Of course not. But if we're able to kind of flip that over where we spend 80% of our time on the very best deals, the 20% that will close, fantastic. And if you stayed even more focused, imagine how better you would be. Or you took a different approach, maybe make deals bigger and faster. Imagine that. Closing the complex sale. That's it. Let's get into the interview.

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

Sure, Brian. Good morning. Thanks for having me. Appreciate being here. My name is Jeff Morton. I'm with Polytech Services. We're a manufacturer's rep firm in the Southeast and an independent manufacturer's rep, which is kind of unique. We're, we're not direct salespeople for the companies that we represent. We represent about 25 companies, which gives us a big arsenal in our quiver of solutions that we can provide to our customers. I think the, the biggest fear and the biggest challenge there is that we are commissioned-only agents.

Yep.

So you only eat what you kill. And that can be pretty terrifying in the beginning.

And was it?

Oh my gosh, it was horrific. I started in 2008, so not exactly a glorious time—

Perfect timing.

In our financial history. So I came— I think you came from a software background.

Yeah.

I came from an IT background. I was a network engineer for a large telecommunications company. I was designing and building their backbone network. So I was not in a direct sales function. People always said that, you know, I've got the gift of gab and enjoy talking to people and making friends. So they, you know, it seemed like sales may be natural. But man, there was so much to learn. And, you know, just trying to grow from Um, from just the, the idea of just first just getting a meeting to getting a meeting that made sense to getting a meeting that was good for both parties, you know, there's an evolution there. And, uh, so yeah, it was, it was a stressful period.

And how did you deal with that? How did you get comfortable with it? Because it's not only commission only, it's a whole new role.

Oh, for sure. I leaned on my coworkers here, a terrific group of guys, very knowledgeable, very successful, and just leaned on them for day-to-day advice of, you know, how do you get meetings?

Yeah.

And in 2008, 2009, cold calling wasn't exactly dead yet. As you've made— commented on, it's growing tougher and tougher these days. But, you know, we would— one of our big customers are public utilities, the large generation, you know, PSEG, Duke Energy, Southern Company. And physically going to the sites and talking to the guards at the guard shacks, and trying to figure out who you needed to talk to. And then one of my buddies, Ruck Barnes, who had been at Polytech before me, we had little call sessions that we called pity parties. And it gave us the ability to commiserate with each other and share those tough defeats or those hurdles that we were having a chance to overcome. And not necessarily to whine and, you know, and just to wallow in our own misery, but to figure out how to talk each other through it and get through those tougher times early in the beginning.

And how long did it take before you felt at home, that sales was the right thing for you and this manufacturer's rep model was a good place to be?

Well, I don't think you ever truly feel completely comfortable.

Yeah.

There's always a little, you know, if you're just complacent and you're staying in that comfort zone where you're not putting yourself out, where you're not putting yourself at risk, then you're limiting your potential for growth. But But I would say a year and a half, 2 years into it.

Yeah.

When I began to learn our customers' businesses, you know, what was driving the customers, what was driving them to make their decisions. And, you know, in most cases, I think everything always comes down to a financial decision, but there's different metrics involved in that. So Yeah, it was, it was a couple of years.

And would you change it? I mean, because the people who are on commission only, it's super scary at the beginning, but then they like it because they have 100% control. And you don't have to go to meetings, you don't have to fill out the CRM, you don't have to, uh, do a lot of things that that base salary for forces you to do.

That is completely accurate. And I guess the balancing act there is until you get that, you know, if you're coming into a newer territory that has been underserved and you're trying to get established and you're putting wood on, firewood onto your wood pile, build your pipeline.

Yeah.

And as you're doing that, there is an amount of fear until that pipeline becomes healthy. And I think, you know, just recently you posted about, you know, being emotionally tied to a sale. But I think that can be detrimental in the early stages because, you know, just like an athlete that's pressing or, you know, somebody that's, you know, let's just say trying too hard because You know, you've got to book this job in order to put that firewood on the, on the woodpile. You just try too hard. You're unnatural. You miss listening to your customer, and instead you're telling your customer what they think that they want to hear.

Yeah, it certainly is detrimental at the early part of the sales process. Because you're not seeing clearly.

Oh yeah, 100%. Yeah. And then, because the, the biggest thing that I think you could do in, in any sales role, or, you know, no matter, no matter what company you're working for, is, um, you need to listen to your customer first and foremost. Yeah, because they're going to tell you, not directly sometimes, but indirectly Oh yeah, for, you know, and then just asking questions, you know, building off of that, finding out, you know, in their evaluation process of this equipment or this service that they're getting ready to purchase, you know, what are the important aspects? Is, you know, are they under a severe budget crunch that that is going to be led to driving down that initial first cost? Or are they looking at O&M and a more, you know, complete lifecycle cost approach that could help you tailor your pitch?

Yeah.

Is, you know, one of the things that we're seeing right now is schedule being super important because we're still coming out of COVID supply chain is strangled and you've got ships sitting off the coast of California, you got ships off the coast of the Carolinas, and people have equipment sitting on those ships for weeks and weeks and weeks. So if schedule is super important, then if you're selling something that's manufactured domestically, you really need to focus on that.

And what would you attribute your success in sales to?

Empathy, listening to people, not treating— you know, I mentioned that some of our customers are utilities, are large industrial customers. They're big institutions like colleges and universities, and there's a limited number of those in my territory. So I've got to do as much as I can to service those customers and be sure that they know that if, if they partner with me and any one of my 25 principals, that we're going to make— do everything that we can to make it successful. Yeah.

And is that what empathy means to you, to be able to see it from their perspective?

Or— Uh, yes.

Yeah. And is that something you've had before you got into sales, or was this something you had to learn the hard way?

Uh, a little of both. Yeah, I, I, I think, I think that I, I did have some but really had to focus on, you know, better understanding that at the end of the day, I'm working with customers that are trying to do their job. And yeah, it's my job to sell them stuff, and I don't hide that. And they know that, you know, at the end of the day, I'm trying to sell them something, but it's all about Helping them meet the goals of their business.

And what kept you in the manufacturer's rep model versus a vendor pulling you? I'm sure you got calls all the time, right? Because you've been there long enough, you've got tenure, you've got knowledge in the territory, you've got relationships that are established. That's all valuable.

It certainly is, yeah. And you're absolutely right. I mean, with a, with a good agent like that, it's your Rolodex of people and your knowledge of the industry can be super valuable to a lot of different companies. I really appreciate the folks that I work with, and they have given me an opportunity to be a junior partner with an equity stake in the company, which means the world because You're still doing well. You're still eating what you kill, putting that firewood on the pile, but you're also benefiting from the profitability and the health of the company. And it's nice to have that on the horizon.

And how do you manage the— you get 25 companies in your portfolio. And people say, so, hey, so what do you do, Jeff? Well, I do 25, right?

Yeah.

How do you, how do you answer that without overwhelming them? And how do you get them to engage in what they are really facing?

You mean from a customer perspective, Brian?

Yeah, yeah, because I'm sure you, you go in and the, the immediate question is, so what do you guys do?

Oh my gosh, yeah. So I guess we've got time for a quick story. Early on, I was again cold calling, learning the business, and, and I finally got a meeting with the manager of a facility that I had been trying to get in touch with for weeks. And I was so excited that I got the meeting. I show up. And I've got my line card of 25 companies and their logos and the bullet points of what they do. And as soon as I sit down in his office, you know, his phone is ringing off the hook and he's like, hey, I'll call you back. Hey, I'll call you back. And you could, you know, it was obvious looking back that this man was under a ridiculous amount of pressure that day. He had a lot going on. But I was so excited to be able to walk him through my line card that I just kept exhaustively just, you know, like reading a PowerPoint. I was, you know, we do this, we do this, we do this, we do this. And then the phone would ring. Needless to say, finally I got to the last thing and I had taken 25 minutes of this man's time reading my line card.

Yeah.

And I had no idea what I was supposed to focus on. I was just reading. And he finally looked up from his computer and he looked over at me and he goes, are you still here? And I was crushed.

How do you handle that objection?

And I said, yes, sir, thank you. And I retreated. And I realized that I was throwing everything at him Instead of letting him know a more focused approach of how we could assist him.

Yeah.

And also recognized that in the early stages of those cold calling efforts, that going directly to the manager was probably not the best course of action.

Yeah.

It, you know, maybe I should have baby stepped in with a couple of his lieutenants. Um, but, but yeah, you know, you, you recognize that you made a mistake. And, and I followed up with meetings with the folks that worked for him and eventually got back in front of him. And, uh, and then we focused on the product that they needed at the time that they would benefit from the most. And that was much more well received.

So is your strategy today to try and find the person that has the problem that you solve and work your way up and around?

Yeah, absolutely. And being in the business for a little bit longer, you continue to leverage your network as much as possible to make those initial meetings as painless on both parties as possible. And yeah, go ahead.

Because that's it. Because I've worked with companies, big portfolio companies, that— and they do that. They do the, this is our update in our portfolio. And then the client is responsible for bridging what they need to what you have, instead of the sales rep bridging what the customer needs to what they can do to help.

Right. And in a lot of cases, we try to leverage successes that we've had with other customers. And then you look for similar circumstances within your region. and figure out how to connect with the person that's in that similar position and say, you know, hey, Amy, you know, the reason that I'm reaching out to you is to share what we did right down the road. And that's normally much easier to pitch Because, you know, you're already aware, you've done your research, you've done your homework, and it gets straight to their pain points rather than the mistake that I made on some of my first meetings, just going in and reading my line card.

Yeah. And what do you see people doing wrong that you compete against? Because I'm sure you're in a competitive space, right?

Ultra competitive. Yeah, just like anywhere. I mean, you know, there's a minimum of 5 different companies that want our business every day.

Yeah.

I think some of the things that come to mind are negative selling, you know, trying to, you know, point at or just point out all the bad things about the other companies. And that's never a good thing to do in any field. Some of the things that are not well received are brute force marketing. If they— if one of our competitors is— if we're approaching a project bid date, a lot of times our competitors that are a little bit further behind than we are, you know, maybe they haven't been involved from the beginning. Um, the, this, the relentless calling. Hey, you know, the other guys, hey, I'm just checking in. Hey, I'm checking in. Hey, I'm checking in. And I think you know where that goes.

And how do you keep that communication away from the just checking in, but keep it open and honest and progressive? Because I think too many reps, they try and race to the point of here's the proposal, and then they check in until they either get an order or the person won't call them back.

For sure. Um, I'm a, I'm a huge believer in, um, especially with the 25 companies, um, it's, it's hard for, um, for me to build and pass credibility to all 25. My customers will trust me enough to give me a meeting, but then I have to help build the credibility of that company that we rep. One way that I like to do that is, again, back to the leverage part. If you've got successes locally or nearby or within that same company, just in a different division or in a different facility. I don't always offer references, but I take it a step further because it seems like when you, when you offer those references, it's like, okay, they're doing business over here. That's great. Right.

We're different.

And we're different, but they, they also never follow up.

Right. Yeah, you can't get them.

Not always. So I'll offer the reference and then say, when are you available next week? Give me 2 time slots and I'm gonna set up a meeting to put the 2 of you together. Yeah. Or when are you available? I'm gonna, I'm gonna set up a tour of their facility. You can go see the equipment and, and you can talk to the owner. And, and build your own experience from it. Connect the two.

Because that is the most powerful kind of proof of concept, right? Because if you give them the equipment, there's the learning curve, the integration, the misunderstanding, all the stuff that can go wrong with it. What you want is to show them where they get the outcome that they're supposed to get from it.

Absolutely. And, you know, back to the 25 companies, one of the terms that we use, you know, just to be able to make it through a day is I'm an inch deep and a mile wide. I know a little bit about a lot instead of a lot about, you know, a focus. I'm not a product manager.

Right.

That would be extremely hard to to do. So, so being able to share that credibility from a previous customer and, and pass that along to new and potential customers has, has been really beneficial in our business.

And when you— do you have a particular mindset about how you go about your territory? Because the good part about a manufacturer's rep is you can be the go-to guy For a category of issues instead of the go-to guy for one product that most reps are.

For— yeah, yeah, it gives us— it gives us, instead of having one arrow in our quiver, yeah, we have 25 arrows in our quiver. And it gives us the ability to stay in front of those decision makers those customers, because we may help them one year with one product, and 2.5, 3 years later, we'll help them with another project. In general, attacking a territory, I think the biggest thing is you've got to be careful of ADD. You've got to be careful of chasing that shiny object. And, you know, because you can, again, inch deep and a mile wide, you can spread yourself in too many different places and miss capturing those larger opportunities that you, you know, really need to focus your efforts on.

And how long did it take you to get that? Because that's a hard-learned lesson. Because early in your sales career, as long as you're busy, You feel like you're effective or you're working hard, right?

Oh, completely. Yeah, it is a daunting task and it can still cause problems even as you've, you know, your calendar gets full. You've got to be able to try to identify those pie-in-the-sky, never-gonna-happen opportunities But certainly early on, I would say, you know, it took me a couple of years just to get comfortable, but I was still very excited to have 3 or 4 meetings on my calendar per day.

Yeah.

Even though nothing may come from those meetings, I was just super excited just to be able to say that I was visiting people.

And how long did it take before you were like, you left the meeting and go, that was a waste of time? I would have been better off watching TV than going into that meeting.

Yeah, yeah. Another episode of The Office in the parking lot. Um, it, uh, yeah, 4 or 5 years. Um, it was, it was not easy to, to identify and vet those and bet those opportunities early enough. You know, now if— and just, you know, talking and sharing and the other good thing about, you know, the more experienced folks that I work with here, early on they would not discourage because they knew of the evolutionary cycle that a salesperson goes through.

Yeah.

And they didn't want to discourage that cold calling effort and that knocking on the door effort. But now, you know, it's, well, are you sure you really, you know, do you really think that this is gonna come to fruition?

Right, because, you know, utilities and big companies, sometimes the people are just lonely. They just want somebody to talk to.

Yeah.

And a visitor who thinks the world of them and will listen to them, like there's They're spewing gold. It's an entertaining event.

It certainly is. Yeah, the consultants are the ones that really milk us dry. The consultant that is working on behalf of the owner, and, you know, they're always in their home office. They're always available. And they're always looking to make another pitch to somebody, but they're never going to turn down a free lunch to remind you of this huge opportunity they're working on with their client and trying to get you to believe part of it.

Yeah.

And have you kind of— I always built out this model. It's like, how's this going to play out? You know, because it always sounds good. And you go to the lunch and then you find out, well, they're not even under contract yet. Or this project hasn't been approved. So you're looking 2, 3 years before they buy anything.

For sure. Yeah. And just the nature of capital equipment sales, business to business, is a much longer sales cycle, which was also tough for me to become comfortable with in the beginning because You may, you may sell something, you may get a contract tomorrow, that equipment may not be delivered until 2024. And as an independent manufacturer rep, you're not going to be paid until that equipment is delivered.

Yeah.

So yeah, being able to, to be experienced enough to ask the questions, you know, oh, is, is this a, is this a fully funded project? Is this a project that you have? Why is your client doing this? Are they, are they doing it for federal compliance?

Yeah.

Are they doing it for state requirements? Are they, are they doing it as part of an efficiency program or, or something else to, to, to show some of their stakeholders or board members that, that they're green? You know, what's the driving factor and when do you see it playing out?

That's it. And too many reps just focus on why your product or solution is the best instead of the real driver behind the inquiry.

For sure. Yeah, it goes back to, you know, and they're not even hard questions to ask, but why are you doing it? How is this, you know, and, and you're not going to sound silly asking those questions. No.

And it's really surprising if they don't know, or there's— because they're not thinking that far ahead. They're just happy to be under contract.

Yeah.

Or have a project.

For sure. Yeah. And it, you know, when you ask those questions, you mentioned somebody not being sure. If you ask somebody a question, about a project and they're not sure about it, then that may mean that they're not the real decision maker.

That's for sure.

Cool.

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

Sure. I'm on LinkedIn, Jeff at Polytech Services. Our website for our company is polytechservices.com. And we're operating in basically the The Southeast, the old ACC and SEC Conference, Virginia to Florida, over to Mississippi, and working in heavy commercial and industrial and utility space.

Here's some of the stuff I get out of this. When I talk to commission-only salespeople, there's always this crystal clear prioritization. And you may think, oh, I'm sure I have that too. But do you? The fastest way to become great at sales is using that 24 hours better than your competition. And the natural thing at the beginning is to just do more work and less rest or less everything else. And that, that can work for a short period of time, but then you very quickly realize that, uh, doing it smarter It is a lot smarter than doing more of it. It took me probably 9 months to figure that out when I was in sales. I did the 24/7, you know, trying to reduce sleep, give up my weekends to sell more and be better at it. And yeah, you get sick. You really don't do better. You tend to just do more. By the way, Focusing in on the things that are most likely to close in the order they are most likely to close. Everybody says they do this, but do you? Can you show a pipeline that is in that order? And I don't mean to challenge you on it. I just, I'm really just trying to get you to think about that because that would get you the the most amount of results. Now, a lot of people would say, well, just keep working on pushing stuff in the pipeline and eventually it'll come out. That might be your sale. Typically in the complex sale, that helps. It's helped to have a, you know, 50 people that are all at the proposal stage and, oh, maybe 5 or 10% will fall out. But is that It's like being a clerk or a salesperson. A salesperson really understands how to get the deals all the way through. And if it doesn't come through, was it worth spending time on? Yeah, maybe it'll close eventually someday, but typically it's in someone else's territory when it does, and you don't get paid for it. Our focus In sales is so critical. Our judgment of how real a deal is, where it is, and where it needs to go is so critical. And our ability to guide it through there. Because what happens in the complex sale is that the value that we're talking about with our champion, with our person who wants the product, diminishes greatly Every time they try and communicate it. And I've got a fix for this. If you're in Closing the Complex Sale, you'll know what the fix is. It gets your deals not only to be more engaging, but to close because I teach you how to communicate that value in the eyes of each person who has to see it. Because your accessibility to them or even awareness of them is so minimum. Because these are the days where people ask their partner about ideas. They ask their neighbors. They ask their go-to expert in a particular area what they think. And oh boy, all of a sudden, who the decision maker is becomes really clouded. Yeah, they may have the decision, but what are they basing it on?

Hmm.

These are the things that'll be the difference between you closing a deal and sitting on that forecast forever. And until it closes, all that work was done for free. If you managed your day, your week, your month, and your quarter as if you were on commission only, how different would it be? It might be worth experimenting. Because all these little trips or meetings that are optional, that aren't revenue generating, may, may change. May change. So go to b2brevenue.com. Check out Closing the Complex Sale. This is the course you need to get deals through. If you've got deals in your pipeline, but they're not closing, You got to understand why. Because we think if somebody is going to meet with us, they're interested enough that they could buy. But in the complex sale, the need and the ability to buy are not coupled. They're so dispersed. And the bigger the company, the more they have set up to not buy stuff.

Hmm.

So how do we work around that? Closing the complex sale.

That's it.

I appreciate everybody listening. Make sure you check out the other podcasts, Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers, the B2B Revenue Leadership Show, Sales Leadership Show, and the best of the Brutal Truth. We'll see you next time.

I was just going to give a bit of a testimonial, if that's all right, just to kick it off. Just—

Only if it's positive.

No, it is positive. It was a— yeah, just because I started the course, I think, in June of last year, 2021. I got a few more months left of access, which is good. But I feel like it's been a transformative experience in my own personal and professional life. I was able to go from a period of a low sales slump in the middle of last year in the summer and early fall, and then really was able to then come back and exceed my target by the end of the, by the end of the 4th quarter. And so the only other thing I would say is that it's also really differentiated me amongst people on the sales team in terms of focus and clarity of what's important. And now I feel really good about what I'm doing in terms of the approach of reaching out to customers and having those conversations and being focused as opposed to just doing a lot of the other busy work on the side, like organizing resources and doing business analytics and all this other stuff. And so it's really been a noticeable difference with our executive team at my company. And so I just want to thank you for the content and for these opportunities. And so I hope that helps. If there's anybody new, it's— I'm a work in progress, but it's getting better.

Good. Yeah.

And you're selling pretty hard stuff.