THE #1 OBSTACLE TO YOUR SALES SUCCESS AND HOW TO AVOID IT

Hey, before we get into the interview, I want to make sure you're aware of our other podcasts, the Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers show, which is a very quick, under 5 minutes in most cases, sometimes just a few minutes where I answer your questions. You can just send me any question to my LinkedIn profile, Brian G. Burns, and I'll put it in the queue to answer. Also, the Sales Leadership Show. If you're looking to get into sales leadership or you want to hear from the world's best sales leaders, that's where I interview them. Check it out, the Sales Leadership Show. Also at b2brevenue.com, you can learn all about all the courses. Links are in the show notes below, as well as our link to our partners over at brevitypitch.com, the fastest, easiest way to become great at sales and practice.

Before it's showtime. Here we go. Do you ever see reps getting their— letting their ego get in the way of their income?

I do. I think sometimes we kind of get in our own way and we sort of limit our success in sales. I mean, the ego side is probably a little bit of a double-edged sword because you have to have some ego. You have to have that confidence in a variety of ways in sales. But there's also where it can kind of get in your own way. And, and you don't wanna let it turn into something like, you know, being a narcissist and, and really holding you back and, you know, burning bridges along the way. So I think there, there are some good things to, to having that confidence in the ego, but there's also where it can kind of hold you back and you take everything personally and, uh, you know, everything is a self-esteem hit or everything is all about you, you, you. And that usually doesn't end very well in sales.

Because I think this is, Instinctual. It's evolutionary. It's to protect us. Because let's say you have a sales call and say both of us are in it. We come out of it and you think it went great and I think it went okay. Now, why do you think it's great? It's subjective because neither of us, we didn't have a videotape where we could replay it slowly and see each person's reaction. and have their blood pressure and a lie detector on all of us. It's all in the interpretation. What's the default?

Default's gonna be that you probably have happy years and you think it went well because you're a confident person. But that's probably rarely the case with the sales meetings.

But why do you have happy years?

It's kind of automatic to your point. It's, it's, you know, that subconscious kind of working for you. You just want things to go well. So you just hear what you want to hear type thing.

It serves you, right?

Yep.

You don't want to be paranoid because then there's a slight hint that you're not perfect. And that is where people go wrong in sales. And I think when I interview great sales leaders, it's the pet peeve 99% of the time is that reps become so confident focusing on how they feel about it instead of what's really going on, thinking like the client. They want the deal to close. That's when we go by our intuition. We don't go by thinking. You know, after the call, you should be judging it based off of what they said. What they're willing to do as a next step, what they cared about instead of how well you presented the product.

It's funny, and then you ask them how the meeting went, and they're they're always going to be very positive. But then if you start drilling down with those questions, like did you get a next meeting? What was the key takeaway from that?

Oh, he said call next week.

Oh yeah, yeah, I'll text them and get the meeting or whatever. But yeah, and there's probably balance there too. You don't want to be a— if you're a leader, you don't want to be a deal killer every time and completely shoot them down, but you want to like, okay, great, I'm glad it went well. Like, let's kind of dig a little bit deeper type thing. So it's interesting there. And I think it's because we salespeople also take— if it didn't go well, you kind of take that as a personal attack against yourself. It's like if you get told no, if you lose a deal, or if you have a bad day where no one answers the phone, or You're just getting beat up all the time, and you feel that as like a personal attack, that you're a failure, that you didn't make it happen. So you don't want to deliver the bad news, or you don't want to be real with yourself to your manager. Real with yourself first, and then you don't want to be real with your manager. So I think we, we kind of just take it too personally sometimes with that, but it's never going to be perfect. I mean, there's no one-size-fits-all. There's always going to be ups and downs. So you have to kind of Not look at it as a personal attack, and then be real with yourself. And then the the leader, there's probably art and science to ask all these questions. But at the end of the day, if you're not answering those questions that you were just mentioning, or if you don't have a good answer to it, then that means it's probably not a a real deal or a real opportunity, or there's a lot more work that that needs to be done. So it's I think starting with you, and then hopefully you have a good leader that can kind of help you navigate that. Because if if you do find a good one that asks those right questions, and it kind of flips your perspective where you are kind of grading how the meeting went or, you know, seeing how, how, how your day went. Was it, was it productive? But that's something that I don't think a lot of salespeople are doing. They're just kind of going through the motions. They're busy. They're not reflecting back on where they can get better or getting real feedback from people that are trying to help them close that deal.

Right.

Why don't they want feedback? Because they're comfortable. They think— they don't think they're perfect, but they think they're good or great. And people get stuck in that Dunning-Kruger effect, the B-player trap, because they get confident enough to go and sell and think well of themselves and have that confidence to stand up, have Great conversations, but they're not confident enough to take feedback. Why aren't they confident enough to take feedback?

Then they have to do something.

Because everybody look at the comments on my content or anybody's. Everybody thanks for the reminder that they're not even admitting that they didn't know it. They have to tell you they know it by— it's a reminder. Is that ego?

Definitely.

Or they have to change the topic to tell you you're wrong. And they, they don't— they say you're, you're wrong, but they're not referencing the content. It's their interpretation of the content. Because they know better. Now, how well is that person gonna do in the world of sales?

Be a probably B or C player, just kind of go through the motions, maybe get lucky here or there, but they're not gonna actually improve that much. I mean, it's, and I see that all the time too. It's people don't wanna get that information out of their head. They don't wanna write it down. They think, It's easier than it actually is. And because they've been doing it for however many years, they think it's just natural that it's going to happen. And, you know, some of them are probably pretty sharp people, but you just can't remember all this stuff. And our ego does get in the way because if you don't map it out, if you don't write it down, if you don't have some type of system to reflect on it, you're going to make mistakes. You just can't remember all this stuff. And I think it's also probably the companies that they're at sometimes are just making them do KPIs and stuff. So they think they just have to do, do, do all the time and not actually kind of take a step back and think. And that probably gets in the way too. So it's, it's, it's pretty interesting. And then definitely the coachability and feedback. I mean, that's a pretty telltale sign of having that ego if you're taking that always as a personal attack or if you don't kind of see it as a gift sometimes. Obviously you want to take feedback from the right people, but I think when you actually can kind of have that athlete mentality and always trying to get better, take that feedback and do something with it, that's the people that tend to really get better and do well. And I think you're just trying to kind of protect your image. It's like you don't want people to think that you lost the deal. You don't want people to think that you don't know how to do sales or that you had it. You don't want to tell people when things are going wrong. So it's just, it's, it's not wanting to deliver that bad news because of your ego or the image that you've built up or whatever it may be. There's a lot of different angles to it. So it's definitely interesting to kind of dive deeper into the, the ego of a salesperson.

Well, it's people, it's not just salespeople, it's everybody. And, you know, we're raised in the school system, which is objective, right? It's mathematical. Or it's— there's no much, not much interpretation. So the teacher can prove that you're wrong, and it doesn't feel good to be wrong. So why would we admit we're wrong? We don't want pain. People are more interested in feeling good about it than they are winning and making money. The number of reps I've had to sit down and go, you want to be right? Or you want to be rich because you're so freaking thick. You're right in your mind, but you're wrong and you're going to be poor. Which one do you want? And it took at least 3 discussions like that before I can get through to people because they're so interested in their comfort. In their ego and their self-esteem and their identity, as opposed to winning the deal. They go into the account and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. There goes the hour. We haven't talked about anything real yet. Yeah, but they seem so engaged. You were engaged. They were bored to death. You felt organically natural talking. What is instinctual in sales? Talking about you, your company, your product. What's counterintuitive? Being interested in them, understanding them, doing research on what they care about, trying to understand what they're going through. And people say, well, what's the subject line for that? Can I put that in my cadence? Nobody wants to do the work. It's true.

And a lot of it, I guess it is good to know, okay, hey, this isn't just a salespeople thing. This is just people in general. And it's something that's probably instinctual with us out of, out of the gates growing up. So it's, it's going to be hard to kind of reverse some of this. But if you know that, hey, everybody's going through this, it's not just me, that kind of makes you more open to hopefully wanting to do that. So realizing that other people are going through that, uh, I think is, could be a good thing if you can kind of show that perspective. But also, if you have this ego, you're not going to be able to put yourself in the customer's shoes. To your point, you're not going to be caring what they— yeah, you're not going to be caring what they care about because the world just revolves around Dustin. The world revolves around Brian. You're, you know, which is not going to get you very far at some point. You're going to burn a lot of bridges most likely, and it's not going to pan out very well. But if you really can't put yourself in their shoes and and care what they care about, then it's going to be tough to really take it to the next level in sales. So it's, uh, and I think at some points I had a tough time with that, uh, because I, it was probably more, uh, revolved around me. Um, but I think the more you kind of have life experiences, you get humbled a little bit. You, you know, if you're in a more commission job, which is tougher, I think you realize you have to do some of that. Otherwise you're just, it's just never going to happen. So like, yeah. So when you're in that commission type situation or startup, whatever, You, you have to learn all these things. Otherwise you, you just, you shouldn't be in sales. You need to go to a different profession. So I think, uh, getting humble a little bit can help with the ego. Uh, but most of those ego people, I think they also, they're not gonna take as many risks because they know it's kind of like that fixed mindset thing where if, if you have more of that fixed mindset and you have that ego, you don't put yourself in tougher situations because there's more risk that you could fail. So you wanna be in places where you're comfortable, where you have more likely to succeed. Mm-hmm. It's it's kind of like that academia thing. It's if you're really smart in a certain area, you know, going to med school or whatever, you're not going to go like take a course that's outside of that because it's you know risky that you could not get an A or something and it's going to look bad on the transcript. So I think there is that whole ego where it can actually hurt you from taking risks sometimes from what I've seen too. So if you if you do get humbled a little bit, if you're open to you know turning those setbacks into success or whatever you want to call it, then you might take more risks and and have more opportunities in some of these commission type.

You have to make the decision that you want to become rich. And to do that, you have to change. And because you know what your performance is now. And it's a great saying that I got early in my career, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. That's what stays in our way because we can only learn at the pace we want to. Because what we say to ourselves is, I know that, which means I don't have to learn it. If you know it, why can't you do it then? Then the excuses— territory, product doesn't work anymore, company, manager. Number one response from reps on all the posts is, tell that to my manager. I never listened to my manager, right? Is the manager going to pay you if it doesn't come in because you did it their way? No, they're going to blame you, say you didn't do it right. You have to change. All of us have to change. If you want to become better, you have to learn more. You have to become better at it. And once you decide that you want to become better at it, then all of a sudden you'll start seeing these things. Oh, there's this course and this podcast and this video, you know, because otherwise you're just gonna tell yourself, you're gonna give yourself the credit, the emotional commission, which you can't buy anything with other than feelings. Feels good. Look, I just got some emotional commission.

Yeah.

Can you get a car with that? No, can't get anything with it except for feelings. And I see this when I train reps. You know, they don't want to write it down. And what's it— why do you think it takes too much time? Oh, just send me yours. I'll use yours. Well, mine's for me and my sale, and it may not be for you and yourself. I want you to think through it and have a system instead of going with your instincts, and your instincts are 100% wrong. This is why sales is so hard. Everyone follows their instincts. They talk too much. They don't think like a client. They're optimistic when they shouldn't be. And when it goes wrong, they rationalize it away. Sound familiar? You're on mute.

When I first changed industries, I, I'd been at the same company for a long time and went really well. Then I went to medical device, 3 months in, basically lost 40% of my territory because of some backorder product major issue. And I was like, well, shit, that, that's not a good way to start. So I'm already behind the 8 ball. And then the pandemic happened, I think 6, 7 months later. And on top of that. So it was like, boom. I mean, just haymakers out of the gates. And I'm, I was still performing above quota, but it was like, man, this is, this is rough. This is hard. So it was, should I just put my tail between my legs and go back where I came from? Which I thought about many times for sure. But I decided, hey, I got to figure this out. It's healthcare. It's really complex. There's a million different things going on. It's a 12 or 18 month deal cycles, dealing with patients, like all this crazy stuff. So I did start, did what you talked about. I started looking into, okay, well, who am I following on LinkedIn? What courses are out there? That's how the thing, stumbled across your course at some point. And, you know, I was working for a big company, so they, they probably, I probably could have expensed it maybe, but I ended up just paying out of my own pocket, which was probably better anyway. And I did that course and obviously helped me a lot, uh, from a sales process standpoint, but it just kind of opened that door for me where now is this sort of investing in yourself, being more open to, uh, change and, and continuous improvement. And then I've had several other things I've done. Since then, and a lot of the content that I consume is all around that kind of personal development or professional improvement. It's not you know that that BS stuff that you could kind of follow on social media. But I had to kind of go through that experience and got kind of forced into it. But and I paid out of my own pocket to start doing that stuff. Not everyone probably has that type of mentality, but I think once you kind of do it and you see some results from it, you you can be more open to it. And now I guess five years later, whatever. I mean, I feel like this is normal what I'm doing, but then I go out and I work with companies or I talk to salespeople and most people are probably not doing that. It's probably the exception for sure. So, but if you can, if you're open to that, if you're willing to humble yourself a little bit, I mean, it can definitely help you in your career, but it's not going to be easy. You got to write it down to your point. You got to do some work. You can't just consume it. And yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Well, think of anything else that's a performance that you can learn as minimum as possible. to stay alive and succeed. If you were to play a musical instrument?

Took some guitar lessons, but threw in the towel pretty quickly. Yeah.

Yeah. Looks pretty easy, doesn't it?

Yeah, it was brutal. It was tough. Yeah.

Looks super— what, there's what, 5 strings or 6? I don't know how many there are.

Yeah, I think 5. Yeah.

Okay. How hard can it be? Now, if you use that analogy, that if— because what, what, they give you a 2-day training course in sales? Imagine taking 2 days in guitar and then going on stage and performing. Great, great.

It's a great— it's a great analogy. Yeah, you can't just— I mean, all the comedians, musicians, artists, I mean, They've probably been training and working for years, especially the really good ones. And if they don't, then they're probably gonna fall on their— fall on their butt at that show or whatever it is, because it's gonna be, be tough to be successful.

And it's not just warming up. It's like every musician practices, plays. They get down into the rabbit hole and they go deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and try and learn. Think about psychologists, lawyers. You think a lawyer going into a big case is going, I've been doing this for 40 years. What could possibly come up that I'm not prepared for? A lot. They have all their minions, you know, doing all the research, having meeting after meeting after meeting, mock trial after mock trial, jury selection. They're thinking through it. All the things that can go wrong, all the things that the other opponent would do. Do salespeople do that? They're like, let's see how it goes. That's ego.

It's definitely ego. And I wonder, I always hear about this, but I mean, at some point, was it really that easy or has this been just going on since sales has been in existence? Because I feel like—

It's been going on forever.

Yeah. I, I, but I think it's people are maybe Seeing it more these days because I think since the pandemic happened that it is getting tougher out there. There's way more noise. So I think people are realizing whether it's a big company or a small company, it's not as easy as it maybe was at one point, and it's really hard to get in front of people. So if you're if you're using your ego and you're not willing to get better, if you're not open to new ideas and changing, you're gonna suffer probably financially or the company will. So I think you know maybe with what's going on, it's starting to change a little bit, but it's still the very small percent. This is. probably that, that 0.01% that are looking into these type of things. But it's, it's crazy that, that ego can definitely get in the way of companies too. It's not just the sales reps, it's also the, it's the companies, the leaders. It's, that's where it starts. And it's like a trickle-down effect because they think the same thing about the sales profession.

Yeah. No. And if you think it's activity, why would you want to get better? You want to do more. If you're digging ditches, there's not much artistry to digging a ditch. It's really hours sticking your shovel in and throwing it. It's labor. But that's not what sales is. It might be if it's order taking, but I doubt if you have order takers or that's your role. You're there to create orders and you're talking with another human being. Just think about how your conversation skills have improved In the last 5, 10 years, or since you've been out of college?

Well, I mean, I'm, I'm more of an introvert for sure. So I mean, if you go back to high school, Dustin, saying that you're, you're gonna be in sales your whole career, I probably would've thought you were crazy because I, I was the person that never wanted to speak up in class. I didn't wanna talk in a big group, that type of thing. And I still don't necessarily seek it out. I do it for work and have found a way that it kind of works for me. But substantially better as far as understanding how to navigate conversations. And basically it's not rocket science. It's make it about them. Let them talk 80% of the time. Ask questions, be curious, like genuine. And usually that conversation is going to go really well because the other person talked the majority of the time. But yeah, I was not traditionally— I was good in one-on-one conversations, but I was not more of a group type person. But because of what I've been doing the last decade plus, now it's way more natural for me and comfortable, but it's Just making it about the other people, making it about the audience. You know, if you're that musician or the performer, it's, you're constantly thinking about what, what do they want to hear? What do they want to see? Like, what's gonna make them feel good about this performance? It's not about you. And then you gotta practice the right way to, to kind of, uh, make it happen.

Yeah. And if you don't do that, you can still tell yourself you're good at it, but that doesn't— emotional commission doesn't pay well. So it's all about getting yourself ready to learn more. And one of the things that hurt my career is one of the first sales jobs I was insanely successful at, and I thought it was all me. A lot of timing. I did work my butt off. We were super creative. I got a lot of help from executives, but then I went to another company. And they wouldn't cooperate with the way I wanted to do it. They wanted me to do it their way. I didn't have the support, didn't have the help from engineers and stuff. It was all up to me. And I had to develop those skills. I could have just said, oh, the company sucks, go to another company. But what I learned after that is pretty much every company is like that. And the magic that I created at the first company, no other company wanted to take that approach because they saw it as risky. Like, okay, well, you don't have the revenue then. Oh, we want the revenue without the risk, please. Their egos getting in the way. So if you're in sales, you want to make more money, you have to become better. What does everybody do? Look for better jobs. Looks for an easier game to win. Look at LinkedIn. Has anybody stayed at the company more than a year?

It's pretty crazy these days. There's a lot of people hopping around. It's, it's, it's interesting when you look at people. It's like every year they're hopping, hopping somewhere. So they're trying to find that, that perfect unicorn situation, that tornado, which if, hey, if you can find it, that's great. Because if it, You know, if you can make it a little bit easier, that'd be awesome. But I, it's, I've yet to find that, that perfect unicorn situation. It's like trying to time real estate or the stock market. I mean, it happens every once in a while. You're going to get lucky here, there. But I mean, even the people that all they do is study that stuff don't always get it right, or rarely, if ever, get it right. So.

It's rarely about choice. It's about timing, coincidence. But no matter where you are, you're there. You're still the same person. And if you look at, you know, less than 3% of the salespeople will read a sales book this year. Probably less than 2% will listen to a sales podcast. Why not?

Wow.

I mean, I listen to a lot of them just to get material for my own about how bad their view of the world is. And if you look at the comments, does anybody really dig into what the issues are? No, it's all about relationships, trust, hard work. And we all know that. But what does it mean? Everybody thinks they work hard. You ever heard some sales rep say, yeah, I'm a real slouch? No. Everyone uses trusted advisor. I go, they don't trust you and they don't value your advice. And then the relationship, I go, will they talk to you when they don't want something? Well, maybe. Then you don't have a relationship. You think it's a relationship because you want them. You need them to make money.

No, I mean, it's, uh, I agree for sure. It's that, that know, like, and trust and ego. It can definitely get in the way. For sure. I mean, I know times where I try to do too much myself. Uh, definitely noticed that more when I went to the commission type situations where it's really hard for me to, if I, I'm trying to delegate stuff sometimes or get a virtual assistant or whatever. And I'm just like, ah, screw it. I'm just going to do it myself because I don't, I don't have patience to like try to train someone or help, you know, get other people. But it's like, I get in my own way sometimes because I have the ego. Cause like, I know that I can do it well. So I'm just, I'm just going to do it myself. But then, you know, where can I? be more productive or outsource things that make sense that are more manual, monotonous, that aren't a good use of my time. And I still struggle with that. And it's probably a lot of it's my ego where I, I don't want to take the time to train someone or tell them how to do this specific thing. So I'm just like, I'm just gonna do it myself type thing. So it can get the best of us in a variety of ways. But if you can kind of check that ego a little bit and have that sort of performance mindset to get better, I think it can help a lot of people for sure.

Yeah, and I think a lot of people get busy just to distract themselves from the things that they know they should learn, because being busy has the same feeling as being successful without the money. Yeah, I'd rather be less busy with the money.

And to become great at sales, the best way is to model somebody who already Has become good at sales and to hear other people who have become great at sales and the journey that they're going through, the false beliefs, uh, the, the misnomers, the mindset issues, all of the stuff that gets in our way between where we are and the income that we want. Let's face it, we're in sales because we're money motivated, we're competitive, We want to be better every day than we were yesterday. And how do we do that? There's really, you know, read a book, listen to a podcast. That's good. Good start. I like it. But then you have to take action. And then you want both tactical and strategic ideas. You want mindset. You want strategy. You want to understand how companies buy. You want really deep content and examples, case studies, so that you can learn from other people's mistakes. That's what I'm here for. I'm here for you to learn from my mistakes. And boy, do I got a lot of them. So go to b2brevenue.com, sign up for the courses. There's 2 major ones. Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting fills up your pipeline. Gets rid of that problem of, oh, I don't have enough leads. I don't have enough meetings. It gets those conversations started with the people you want to talk to. Now, it's not about a pitch. It's about a conversation. Now, everybody thinks of conversations when you're talking or you're online at the same time, or you're on the phone or Zoom at the same time. That's not a conversation. A conversation's when the client is talking about what they care about. What they're interested in. And that is what we call qualification, where we can sense where are they and how do we build up that curiosity into interest, into urgency to get a deal. And these are skills that we need. They're lifelong skills that we need in sales. And then how do we get a deal closed? Yes, anyone can take an order. But what if they don't know how to get it done? You get a new account where you're trying to get a big change done internally. What are the issues? If you're not planning that through, odds are it's not going to get done no matter how much your champion wants it. So winning the complex sale solves that problem for you. Why waste all your time on these false positives? Or these no decisions because they don't pay very well. They pay 0.0. What you want to do is pay a lot. So sign up today. Invest in yourself. You're the asset in sales. Quit waiting for somebody else to approve it or train you. See if you can get it expensed. That should be your first sales Obstacle, your first sales challenge is how do you get your company to pay for it? Just go down, tell your manager you want to do this. I put a little example email in the show notes right below here. Just swipe up and take a look at that. And if they won't, you got to ask yourself, why won't you? Why won't you? Oh, it takes time. Well, you work all day. You're working wrong all day. Why not improve that? There's the time right there. Oh, the money, Brian. It's money. Well, you make more money if you become better in sales. And Start the Conversation pays for itself the first week because you're going to get at least 2 meetings just learning from the very basics of it. Closing the Complex Sale will pay for itself 100 times over. Students in it tell me it's the best money they ever spent because they now have control over their deals. And it doesn't end.

Some give up.

Some give up after they win their first deal and they think they've got enough. No, come back. Come back. Keep going. You can get even bigger deals, more deals, faster deals. That's what it's all about. Sign up today. Put the excuses away. Yeah, excuses feel good, but they're expensive. Excuse— you know what the excuses are costing you? Tens, 50, maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in lost income.

Really?

Yeah. The difference between where you are today— let's say you're making $150,000, decent. Decent income, but you know there's other people in your industry making $300K, $400K, $500K. Well, how are you going to do that? You all think it's just about getting a better job, a better territory, a better manager. They can help. Go do that. Then what happens? It's still you there with those leads trying to close those deals. And do you have the game?

Few people do.

Everyone thinks they do. Why not prove it? The market tells you what you're worth.

Accept it.

Now become better. And the way to become better is to improve every day. Really make a daily routine of learning and developing because it's not at the knowledge level. You have to become unconsciously competent at these skills, which takes time, repetition, and emotion. And I show you how to do it, how I did it, how I've taught hundreds of people to do it. But you have to want to because I can't force you. A lot of people wish I could. So do I, but I can't. So sign up today.

We'll see you next time.