THE #2 THING THAT WILL GET YOU TO YOUR QUOTA IN B2B SALES

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So, were you accountable, Dustin, or what?

There's times where I don't think I was as accountable. I'll be, I'll be straight up about that. So, there's been times where I felt sorry for myself. Um, that victim's mentality. And you have to catch yourself when, when that's going on. It's very easy to point fingers in sales and wanna blame it on everybody else. But I think the sooner that you can own up to your decisions and where you're at based off what you did, the better. Because if you're just resentful or blaming other people, it's gonna drive you crazy. And if you actually own up to your own mistakes and be accountable for whatever you did, you actually feel better about it in the long run. And you kind of move forward. But if you're stuck in that victim's mentality, not kind of feeling sorry for yourself, blaming other people, then it's really challenging, I think, to be successful in sales because you're just gonna be in this on a hamster wheel constantly blaming, blaming other people.

And, and I think it's kind of an overused term today. I don't know, because I hear it in all kinds of contexts, you know, because what you described was kind of personal responsibility, which is accountability. I get that. This is similar. Uh, managers tend to use it when reps aren't doing what they want, which is— I don't know if that's accountability or— because I, I guess everybody wants somebody else to do what they want, and calling them they're not accountable. I like the personal ownership part of it. I'm not sure the management view of it is Because I've seen a lot of managers put that in the comments of the stuff I say. Oh, you gotta keep these reps accountable. Well, that's what the comp plan does. And if the comp plan doesn't do it, you didn't hire reps, you know, you hired data entry monkeys.

So the managers are more worried about KPIs, how many calls did they make? And then Well, the comp plan, but a lot of times they make the comp plan so confusing. How can you be accountable when they change it all the time on the reps, right? It can be confusing.

Well, people aren't there to, you know, do data entry. They're there to make money. That's, you know, yes, the comp plan is overly complicated and designed to pay you as little as possible for a lot of work.

Yeah.

Yeah. But, and I think, you know, when Managers use it. I think we should distinguish between personal responsibility and doing all the things that management wants. Because let's look at the pattern of a year as a salesperson. What happens in January? You know, you get to kickoff, everybody sends out this activity spreadsheet. If you want to make your number, this is all you have to do is reverse engineer it into activities. And I go, that's stupid. I've seen it every year I've been in sales. It's never worked once for anyone I've ever met outside of transactional sales. You know, transactional sales, yeah, it can work, but that's really not what the podcast is about. We're in the complex sale, business to business. And when you focus, this reverse engineering focuses you that, oh, Everybody's equally likely to buy. And if you just do all these activities and you hold yourself accountable, you'll make your number. But then what happens if you don't? Is the spreadsheet wrong or are you wrong? Yeah.

I mean, I guess that's kind of the whole efficient conversation. You could be accountable doing all the things that aren't going to help you hit the numbers. So if you Make 100 calls a day or whatever it is, or you have all these KPIs that you do and you're technically accountable to your manager with it, but that doesn't mean you're going to hit your numbers. So it's kind of like that whole effective and efficient thing. You're efficient and accountable, but you're doing the wrong stuff, which is not going to be good. Right. So I'd rather be, I guess, effective and have the personal responsibility on the accountability side. Cause I think that will, will help. But yeah, that's a great perspective. I wasn't thinking of it from a sales manager standpoint. I was more just from. that personal ownership. Because if you don't have that, it's, it's just, you're, you're going to blame everybody for, for everything. So I think I've had a lot of things over the last few years that have helped me with, with the accountability side. But yeah, and then it's also, I think, being effective and accountable versus efficient and then listening to what they're telling you to do with, with the KPI stuff.

Yeah, because there's nothing in the comp plan about efficiency. If there was, there'd be a lot of very rich salespeople out there.

Yeah.

It's all about effectiveness. And then how do you become accountable when there's a lot of soft elements to it? Because let's say you get a terrible territory. You ever get one of those?

Yes. Yes, I have. I have. And there, there's a lot of, a lot of, a lot of pointing fingers at that time.

Right. And then, so to be effective in that territory requires creativity, not a hard skill, a soft skill. Okay. So I'm not getting any leads. There's no customers. The territory's not that great. How do I make my number? You could take the 100 calls a day approach. Okay. You do that for 2 months, nothing. Then what do you do? You're accountable, but are you, are you really accountable? He's not selling anything. The pipeline's not growing. See where I'm going here?

Yeah. Yeah, I, I'm following. I'm following.

Right. So I agree, I agree with you, but I think we have to expand it. That, you know, you know the old saying, you go to the— you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had. You know, and I did a lot of government sales and it would be like during times of war, all of a sudden this old lethargic organization that could never make a decision, couldn't get anything done. Just flips on its head and becomes the most effective organization in the world. You know, right after 9/11, it was like I got these calls and it was like I was up on site, I was cleared, and they go, your company's not to— or not to deliver anything else until our needs are satisfied. So I put together this contract The lady reviewed it in front of me and signed it herself. It's a lot of money. And, you know, when we needed something, you know, my CEO says, well, we can't do this because of this. I go, you don't understand. They're not asking, they're telling. And I go, the next call will not be from me. It'll going to be from somebody else. So what I'm saying is, When it has to get done, people can get it done. And in sales, what we have to do is achieve that goal somehow, some way. And blaming or looking at the weaknesses and having a great alibi is nice. It feels good, but it doesn't accomplish anything. And there's a lot of great alibis out there.

Oh yeah, there's a ton. I got, I got several over the years. I mean, you've had all the supply chain issues since COVID I mean, before that too. So there's supply chain stuff. There's a territory. I've been in that situation where I felt like my territory wasn't very fair compared to the rest of the area. The economy right now, that's a great one. Uh, you know, the economy's kind of whatever you want to say about it. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So there, yeah, there's a million, there's always going to be those excuses, but at the end of the day, nobody, nobody really cares if you're not hitting your number, right? So you have to hit your number. And it is funny what you're saying because I, when I was at the hospitals during COVID when it first happened, unfortunately it wasn't urgent to get my stuff, but they completely flipped the switch for, you know, safety equipment for the nurses and all that. I mean, it was like overnight they just ordered everything you could ever imagine for all that, which understandably so, but They went from that government sleepy mentality to all of a sudden no red tape, no bureaucracy, and boom, made a decision in days. Like they had telemedicine coming to the hospitals in less than a week when they were pushing back on it for the last decade. So it's funny, it's funny how that works out. But yeah, I mean, in sales, all that really matters is hitting the numbers and following through and, you know, whatever your goals are for the territory. I mean, you gotta kind of make that happen. So I guess it's—

Yeah.

Kind of goes to SMART goals and having a system behind it and, you know, the daily things that are gonna get you there to, to hold yourself accountable. But, you know, no one's gonna be happy if you don't hit the numbers, especially yourself, but also the organization. So the excuses aren't gonna matter at that point.

And I, I gotta imagine your accountability has changed dramatically working for yourself.

Oh yeah. I've had, yeah, I got several. I mean, the, the one that stands out the most was probably the surgery experience because I had 4 surgeries in a year, right? Not what I was expecting to have happen. It was, it was supposed to be 1 surgery that was pretty intense, but I thought that would be it, right? And it turned into 4 surgeries. So it was very easy to point fingers and probably rightfully so at some points, but it really wasn't getting me anywhere. So it was more just, hey, I'm the one that got injured, right? I pushed myself too much. I was working out too many days in a row. getting a little bit older, couldn't do the same things I did in the past. So that actually made me feel better when I just was like, okay, hey, that's on me versus like blaming all these different providers or doctors or nurses. So that one, that one definitely stands out because it was so easy just to point fingers on that. And then doing my own thing, you know, I got kind of pushed into it a little bit. But yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't have a choice. Like I have to be, I have to be effective with my time. I have to be accountable. If I don't close the deal, There's nobody else to blame besides myself and, you know, my business partner. It's, it's, it's on us. And if we don't execute the right way, so, I mean, you're never gonna be perfect. You don't want to have like that perfect, because then you're gonna drive yourself crazy. But, you know, I don't, I don't have a backup option, you know, necessarily. I mean, I of course could do things if I wanted to, but it's, it's more like trying to go all in with this. You have to be accountable. You have to follow through. You have to prep, prepare the right way and I think that that's also too, is like prioritizing helps me a lot be accountable because I just cut out the crap, cut out the noise. I don't want to meet, I mean, in a nice polite way, I'll turn stuff down, but I'm not trying to meet with random consultants or different people that want to talk to me about XYZ. It's just, I did a little bit of that at first because I was just trying to get the lay of the land, but now I'm just like laser focused with my time. If it's not like a revenue generating activity or a long-term partnership or Podcasts, getting, getting my name out there. It's just we have these buckets that we focus on and that's helped me be more accountable and, and prioritize stuff because I have to. I don't, I don't have a choice. I don't have a, you know, salary coming in. I have to make it happen, you know?

Well, that's it. And I think a lot of people, their base salary blinds them or distracts them a lot because the company puts a lot of noise on top of employees when you're a rep. You know, I remember going to either a QBR or whatever, and the manager— you'd walk away with enough action items to take a year. And I said, you know, did anybody— did they follow up on the action items from last year, last QBR?

No.

So you just basically— oh yeah, you write down the notes really like you're going to do something, then you go off and do whatever you need to. And I think reps, we have to understand that this is the, the job. And if you're not hyperfocused, then it's our job to focus on what's going to matter most for us and think through both our time and our energy. Because when you're, when you're looking and you're planning, it's easy. You know, we talk about the beginning of the year. Does everybody set their goal? I want to be 80% of my number by the end of the year. Now everyone's what, 200%? Is that what everybody does? Yeah.

Yep. Yeah.

And I've seen it. Yeah. First quarter, everyone go, go, go. Second quarter comes and all of a sudden vacations, spring break, this happens, that happens. Then the summer comes. And it's like a ghost town. You don't see many people in July and August, and then September comes, everybody's panicked, and then it's panic till the end of the year. And is that planning? Is that accountability? I mean, especially in business to business, it is a planning, you know, you use the project management metaphor for a lot of these deals and it is like a project. You know, happens over a long period of time. Lots of people, lots of moving pieces, always takes longer than you anticipate. There's always hiccups. And if you don't anticipate and think through some of these things, you're in reaction mode the whole year. And a lot of people are very comfortable in that reaction mode, but that's a service rep. That's not a proactive sales rep. And they tend to say, well, let me see what my manager wants me to do. Your manager wants you to close the deal. They don't see all the moving pieces, nor do they care. They got 9 other goofballs out there who also have no plan. They look at their calendar, there's nothing but the next 2 months. They just have this week, they overbook and then they repair it. And it's just, I think we have to be accountable for the whole year. And what's it gonna take to get to our number? And it's not just activity. So there's a lot of creativity in there, smarter ways of doing it.

Yeah. And it also depends what type of company too. Is it a legacy company where they just have business rolling in, a lot of inbound, they're, they're definitely order taking, or if they're truly going after new business? Because I've seen the differences there and you It's, it's definitely, there's some challenges on the other side of it when you're just straight up trying to get new business. I was talking to a company the other day and right now they're fortunate to have a lot of inbound coming in. So their sales reps are doing pretty good, but he was worried. He's concerned about when that inbound stops coming in and how accountable his reps are going to be because they're going to be struggling because they're, they're just taking orders right now. Like, you know, how high can you jump type thing? And then what happens when The inbound stops because it's not, I mean, hopefully it lasts forever, but that's very rare for that to happen. So that's interesting. And it's something that's helped me. It's me being proactive outside of work. And there's always a lot of resources you can probably do at your company as a sales rep. But I started doing coaching programs outside of work, right? I did your course, I did personal branding course, I did this passive income thing. I mean, so I constantly was having people sort of hold me accountable by doing these coaching programs and that helped me. So whether it's like working out or for sales, there's a lot of things that can probably hold you accountable, or you can access internal resources and have, have somebody like a top rep hold you accountable weekly and have a meeting with them to go over stuff. So I think you can also get, I guess, accountability partners, coaches, other people to kind of help with different programs that can kind of push you over the edge. But that was me doing that on my own accord. No one was telling me I had to do that. So I think you have to have the right personality, but. I think more salespeople should be looking to do stuff like that because it doesn't matter if you're, you've been the top rep for a couple of years or, you know, if you're a CEO, you can always get better and improve. And if you don't have that accountability and someone holding you to it, then you can get away with a lot of things. Like if I don't go to the gym a couple of days in a row, if I don't have anyone holding me in check, it's like, you know, I can just do whatever I want, right? So if you get people to hold you accountable, that can also help too.

And you know what works for me is you gotta have a standard week, a standard day. So you get up and you're not like, and if you can, you know, if you're traveling, it's really hard. But if you're not traveling, you should be able to wake up and have a morning routine and you can stack stuff on that routine as you need to. But when you get up and, oh, I wonder what I should do today. Oh, I've got to sell something, right? How should I start? When you look at a prospect, okay, what should I say? How should I personalize this? No, you have to have a system. That's how you hold yourself accountable, because otherwise you're going to be building a system with each person and each deal each day, like it's a brand new opportunity. It may be exciting or more interesting than having a routine, but it is as effective as having a routine. Because guess what? You know, not every day I feel like putting out a podcast or making a video or doing this or that, but if I have it as a routine, I just do it. And I kind of—

Yeah.

Yeah. Don't focus on how I feel. Because I mostly, I feel like hanging out, sitting in the sun, enjoying my life, but that doesn't pay well.

Yeah, it's automatic. And yeah, people don't see that behind the scenes. And I, this week, for example, it was coming off a holiday and I was, my schedule was a little bit off, right? I usually plan my week high level. I plan my week either on Friday, late Friday, or on Sunday, depending on what's going on. And I'll just plan out the week of like, what are the top 3 things I want to get accomplished? High level, and then I'll kind of roughly map out my days. And then the day before, I'll in detail write out my day. So that way, when I wake up, I just like boom, I already know exactly what I have to do. I don't have to think. It's written on paper or on my calendar. And I just immediately go into my LinkedIn prospecting, which I'm probably going to do that anyway. But a lot of it I have written down or in my schedule, just so I don't have to think. I want to wake up and just go straight into it. And then like boom. look at my paper like, okay, that's what I'm doing next. But if I don't do that on the front end, which doesn't take a massive amount of time, but you have to kind of be strategic, then you can get kind of off, off kilter. And this week came coming off a holiday. I was a little bit behind. I didn't do it quite how I normally do. And you can see the aftereffects. You're not as sharp as normal, which is probably typical after a holiday. But yeah, I mean, having a system, have preparing, kind of mapping out your week and your days, that, that really helps me out too. And then anytime I have sales calls or I get down the process, you know, based off what I did from your course. I have like an overall system and map and I just reference that, you know, when I need to look for questions to ask, when I need to look at, okay, hey, what bad could happen? I, I just have this system that way I don't, and of course I add stuff and tweak to it every week, but it's, it's there so I don't have to keep recreating it from scratch.

Yeah. And if you have a system, You don't get stuck in the quarterly or the monthly roller coaster because most people, oh, how they plan their day is they open up their email or their CRM and they start reacting to someone else's priorities. And that can ruin your day pretty quickly. Somebody's mad about this, some delivery didn't happen, you've gotta clean up somebody else's mess, and all of a sudden your day is taken away. It's 2 o'clock in the afternoon and you haven't started working on your stuff. And, you know, the quarterly roller coaster, I saw this so often. I was at this one company where the sales leader, he was just into it. You know, I think the last month of the quarter is the only month he worked. The first month it was all vacations and meetings and offsites and bullshit. And that's a third of the quarter. And all of a sudden the second quarter, Everyone starts committing and this and that, and then the third month everyone's trying to close, but the work isn't done. They're trying to cram a deal from whatever it should be, 3, 6 months into 3, 6 weeks. And guess how you get the deal? Discounting.

Discount. Yeah.

And, and that steals from tomorrow. And, and they just had this routine of going to existing customers and giving a discount for the future payment that they owe us if they paid us now. So it was like the inverse payday type thing.

Yeah.

And I used to try and keep 'em outta my territory because they're just stealing from next quarter from me. I go, no, that's going to ruin the deal. But yet everyone was doing it and then they were all exhausted, so they had to take the first week off of the next quarter and then the cycle just kept going. And I go, that's kind of the opposite of accountability, isn't it? Just reacting to someone else's needs.

Yeah. And it sets bad habits for the customers too because now they're expecting that. So they're just gonna wait till the end of the month or the end of the quarter and get a better deal, right? Which kind of ruins, messes it up for everybody, right? Because they're gonna expect that from all vendors. So yeah, that's, that's definitely the opposite of accountability. The other thing I started doing I still need to improve is kind of doing postmortems on calls or meetings and using AI, that Otter tool to track my meetings because it's just way easier to go back and send follow-up notes. But you can also see like, hey, where did I stumble a little bit? Where could I have said this? And I'm not going to do that for every single meeting, but it is kind of nice if you want to be more accountable, you can kind of track your meetings and see where you can improve. And that's the only way you're going to get better is if you listen to some of your conversations. And I know, well, it can probably go too much too. There's probably companies where they listen to every single rep's conversation and that can be annoying, but I'm saying more for yourself to get better. And, you know, that's something as well that's kind of helped me out recently.

Yeah. If you could just ask yourself at the end of the day, you know, what was the best use of my time and what was a waste of my time?

Yeah.

You know, and that's kind of why I stay away from those coffee meetings and stuff. And it's like if, Because I ask myself, is this for me or them? It's never for me.

Yeah. They want, they want to be on your podcast. They want you to connect them with somebody. Yeah.

Free therapy session or something. And I'm not a therapist, so I'm not going to really help. And I get the need to just, you know, vent. I understand. I'd like to vent too sometimes, but it's just not Not a good use of my time or really theirs either. And I think a lot of people would react to that instead of, and they might even view it as work, an accomplishment, a sales call even.

Yeah, those, that's where I've really had to get laser focused. These coffee meetings, these catching up with people. I mean, I'll push it out maybe further out when I'm not as busy, but I just can't, I don't want to say waste my time, but I just can't waste my time with that type of stuff right now with what I'm doing because it, it just doesn't make sense. I mean, I got a lot, a lot riding on what I'm doing, so I have to be focused on that revenue type, type thing. So that, that's really all I, all I try to do. So yeah, I mean, accountability is key. There's no doubt about it, I guess, from a personal standpoint and then also hitting your numbers standpoint. So the more you can of take ownership and do a lot of things we're talking about, I feel like it's helped you out. So I wasn't as accountable earlier in my career, but I've been much better.

Hey, I hope you enjoyed that. If you're looking to accelerate your growth as a salesperson, whether it's getting more meetings, getting into your dream accounts, starting conversations with those complete strangers who are sick of the 17 touches in 17 minutes, There's smarter ways. Go to b2brevenue.com right now. Check out Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting. This course is just a game changer for anybody who's in sales because what do we want to do? We want to be talking to prospects that will turn into customers. And it's a lost art. People think it's sending a bunch of spam. The problem is everyone's been doing that for 20 years now. So everyone on the other end is kind of sick of it. And if you don't happen to find somebody already interested, which is kind of unlikely because people today who are interested search out solutions. They don't sit and wonder and ponder, maybe for a day or two, maybe a week, but they go and find it on their own. So it's up to us to create that interest, to get them aware of the problem that they're feeling that they haven't put a name to yet. We all have that. We all have latent pains. And once they're activated, we start looking for solutions. And that's right where you want to be, is when they start looking for solutions. Or maybe you get into enough accounts, but your deals are stalling. Taking a little bit longer, starting over, becoming marginalized. Closing the Complex Sale is the course for you. It'll help you understand how companies buy and how to keep that deal moving. It's very different than a simple sale. So you need to understand all of those steps and how companies buy instead of just reacting, sending quotes and checking in.

That's not selling. That's being a clerk.

Anyone can do that. There's no skill to that. The skill is understanding how they buy and guiding them through that process. Here's a hint. They don't know what they're doing. So if you don't know what you're doing and they don't know what you're doing, who does know what to do? Uh, someone needs to know what to do. So check out the course, Closing the Complex Sale. It'll definitely get you to your quota this year. Thanks for listening. Make sure you check out the other show, Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers. And if you happen to be a sales leader, check out the Sales Leadership Show. What a great idea.

Do that.

Connect up with me on LinkedIn. Check out the YouTube channel as well. Just search Brian Burns Sales on YouTube. Subscribe there. I keep all the videos there. So if there's something that you saw on LinkedIn or a past guest, You can just search for it. You'll find it. It's right there. We'll see you next time.