THE SECRET QUESTIONS ONLY THE BEST ASK...

So, we've got a great interview for you today.

What you're going to learn today is how big deals get done. And in this case, it's top-down. But that might not be for you. But the key things you're going to learn are life lessons in sales over a long period of time. And today's guest, Dean, has been with the same company for 20 years selling The same technology. Now that might not be your bag, but what you learn from it are those hard-learned lessons, skills, strategies, techniques, and how not to waste your time. Because when you work on these deals, they take a long time. And if you don't win them, that time is wasted. Can't get it back. Can't reverse, can't start over. So how do you develop that judgment of what to work on? What's the best match? What will close is the question that we should be asking when we look at our pipeline. We go in every day and we look at that CRM and it's full of stuff, but how much of that stuff turns into deals? Anything that doesn't turn into a deal is a distraction. It's not a deal. We have to be really ruthless with our time, with our judgment, developing that skill of what to work on, how to work on it, and how well do we work on it. We forget that part, don't we? We're really focused on the, the actions and the activity. Most of us got that down. That's easy to count. And then on the other end, the outcome, that's easy to count too. We see it in our paycheck. It's that stuff in the middle that, you know, isn't a KPI. The judge is the customer. Doesn't really matter how well we think we did. It's the customer that's the judge in that. And they're all different. And their companies are different. Let's get into this interview. I really want you to maybe even pause this after Dean drops some gold on you. Think about it. Think about how you could apply it to your particular deals situation, how you can develop both the skills and the execution of it and become better in sales. Before we get into the interview, make sure you're checking out our friends over at Covideo. Video email is crushing it now. Uh, have you built it in? Have you tried it? Go to the website, give it a try. Send it to a couple of friends where you don't care about the results at first, where it's just practice. And like everything, it's how well you do it. It's that performance element. No one talks about that except for me. Everybody else talks about activity and getting excited, then how to do it, the knowledge of doing it. But sales is not a quiz; it's a performance. We would all most of us would pass the quiz, and certainly all the people who get to be the finalists have passed the quiz. But it's that performance that matters. Focus on that. I'll also sum it up. For people in the course, we had great office hours yesterday. There's tons of new one-on-ones in the course. Make sure you're checking them out. And I'll give you an update at the end.

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

Oh, thanks, Brian. Thanks again for having me. I, you know, as I say, this is a real honor. Background-wise, a long, long time in field sales and field sales management. So, I think there were a few dinosaurs that were roaming the earth when I first— but interesting how I got into sales. I was actually a pivot from wanting to be a lawyer. My father was a lawyer. And I grew up wanting to be a trial lawyer. I felt like I was a pretty persuasive guy and I loved to perform and enjoyed watching him do his trial work. And about halfway through college, I walked into his office one day and saw him buried in books. I said, what, what in the world are you doing? He goes, oh, I'm doing research. It's about 80 to 90% of my job, at least back then. I went, oh boy, okay, I gotta think of something else. So, so yeah, so I got a— I got the sales bug, um, actually from my wife's— future wife's father, who was an executive at Lytton, started in sales and The rest is history. Started with Xerox in professional selling skills and worked all the way up last 20 years with the same company in large enterprise sales. So I enjoyed it.

Was it a natural progression from college or?

Well, it was. I felt attracted to sales, particularly after kind of being around my future father-in-law at the time, and he, he really got me to appreciate, uh, the, the whole notion of selling and that it's a, it's a real profession and it's something that he thought I would be good at. So, uh, it was a progression through getting input from, from guys like him. And, uh, I'm, I'm a people person, so I thought I could do well at it. I really was attracted to Everything being different, um, no 2 calls are the same. And, uh, so from that perspective, I think so, it was a natural progression.

And you're selling some pretty technical stuff. I mean, I was kind of in that space for a while.

I saw that. Yeah, I saw that. Yes, yes, no, absolutely. I saw your background. I, I think we come out a little bit out of the same Yeah, so you sell into software architects and developers, is that true? Yes, I mean, that's partially true. I have tended, Brian, to try to do a top-down approach, and when I say top-down, it's really largely chief information officers, CIOs, even if it's a short call and I get directed down, I like that direction down. And I think in enterprise sales, you can get pulled into the feature-function war, which I'm very careful not to do. And when I speak to our new hire classes, which I've done over the last 7, 8 years from the field, to me, that's a losing proposition. I view myself As a person who solves problems, not who sells products. And that distinction, in my opinion, no matter what you sell, is very important.

Yeah, because I mean, you guys are big players in that space. So what would your approach be going— because the CIO, he's got a lot of problems, right? Or doesn't think he has any problems, one or the other.

Yeah, it's interesting. It's— I spend a lot of time with CIOs, kind of prided myself on that, and it's fairly interesting because I really know the ones who have done a very good job at connecting to the business. I can tell fairly early on, probably in 10 or 15 minutes, those that have really connected to the business, and I asked them, I think, for salespeople out there that are selling into technology, one good question I always ask is, how much time, how much of your time do you spend with business leaders? And it's an interesting response. And I find the ones that are on the more on the leading edge of innovation, certainly going through digital transformations, things like that, Usually spend about 70 or 80% of their time with the business.

Yeah.

And what do you think differentiates you from other salespeople?

Yeah, that's a good question. I, I, uh, I think they know that I care. Um, I very much take an outside-in view of selling. I, my questions, which I always, I like TED questions. Tell me, explain to me, describe for me. So I tell when I, I'm very big believer in TED questions, as I call them. Um, they know that I'm interested in, in them. I take, I think a lot of salespeople make mistakes in going too quickly. Everybody's too impatient these days. So I say, have a little patience, understand their business, understand their products. How do they sell? How do they differentiate their products that they sell from their competition?

Yeah.

Where have they done that before? Provide me an example of how you differentiate. And so, you really get an appreciation for what they go through, an empathy. And then you internalize that, you get passionate about that, and then the rest kind of just evolves.

Yeah. Sounds a little bit like trial attorney.

It does. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think one of the things I hear you talk a lot about, and I believe in, very deeply is we are in a performance business.

Well, people misunderstand that, like we're singing and dancing.

No, it's how well you're doing it.

Not just that you do it. Because today people count the activities and they look at the results and everyone ignores what goes on in the middle.

Well, and that's right. I spent 14 years, 14 of my years were in sales management. I enjoyed that too. I enjoyed both. I'm not the kind of guy that— in those 14 years when I was managing, I'd spent very little time looking at spreadsheets and computer things. And I always say quality over quantity. The metric to me when I was managing and when I drive myself from a sales perspective is, am I doing quality things? Within the context of the focus accounts that I'm on. And if you're just going through the motions and saying, oh, I did, you know, 100 calls today and 10% of those answered my call and, and one scheduled an appointment. Okay, that's great. You could get to the end of the year and there's nothing on the scoreboard. So quality over quantity. And whether you're an individual salesperson or a manager, challenge yourself, inspect yourself. Are you moving— I'm big on analogies— are you moving the ball down the field? Are you progressing it? Accounts, opportunities, they oftentimes largely don't know how to buy.

Of course. Because how would they know how to buy unless they've done it before and done it recently before?

Yeah. And the reality are the, you know, I sell 7-figure deals. I mean, I, you know, in my 20 years at the company I've been with, I'm now in my 21st year and I've been very consistent and very successful. But, uh, you, You know, you've got, you've got to kind of show them the way. And I think, I think a lot of people, and I'm preaching a little bit and these are my views, but they, they mistake activity for progress. Well, I did a demo. Well, so what? Did you have to do it? Did you have to do a demo?

I did a demo.

Could you have progressed The opportunity without doing a demo, or I did a proof of value or proof of concept. Well, did you have to do that? What about, what about having them talk to one of your successful accounts and avoid that? So, so again, quality over quantity. Are you progressing the opportunity? And where are you, you know, in that overall cycle?

Yeah, because I see a lot of people doing what they know only because they don't know what to do. Yeah, so they do demos, they go through the steps, but are they doing it with the right people in the right way that does progress that decision within the enterprise?

That's right, Brian. I I'm a big believer in not skipping steps. So you don't change your style. You know, I'm a big believer in people should— if you feel like you're good at what you do, you have an aptitude for selling, you want to sell, you want to get better and learn at your craft, do it. And don't mistake process and steps in a sales cycle for style. Because a lot of people go, I'm not going to, you know, they're trying to change me. Good managers don't want to change people, change styles. What they do want to make sure of, and I challenge myself selling, is don't skip steps. You know, that's key. Because that'll come back to haunt you.

Yes.

I mean, one of the big things I see, Brian, is that if they, if you go too quickly and you skip steps and you are particularly product-focused, oh, they, this, this account needs this, this, this, and this, these 5 or 6 things. Why? Because we always sell those 6 things and you price it and you don't have the collaborative input back that they need those things. Guess what? You're going to be viewed as expensive. Right? So yeah, a little bit on my theory of selling.

And why did you go back to carrying a bag from being a manager?

Because that's what, honestly, that's what I truly love. I enjoyed managing and I felt like I was a good manager. There were aspects of managing, honestly, that I didn't particularly enjoy.

No.

I remember people always asked me why. I said, I always had the Kleenex box on my desk there. I guess there were some conversations that sometimes elicited some tears. But I love selling. My customers to me, and this is going to sound really corny, but they're family.

Yeah.

When they celebrate success, I do too. When they hurt, I hurt. They know they can call me unless I'm sleeping, 24 hours a day. And I tell my customers this, if you have a go-live, I mean, you're You started in the same business I'm in. They had go-lives at 1, 2 in the morning. I want, I wanna know about those go-lives because they don't always go smoothly. And I have my phone on. You know, they know they can call me if they've got a problem.

Yeah.

Harken back to your question on differentiation. I don't know how many of my competitors do that. If they do that, Good for them. But that's how I conduct my business.

And I'm sure you've seen a lot of good salespeople. What differentiated the very best from the good?

Focus. I'm big on focus. And again, for myself, I challenge myself on this because I can get defocused too.

It's easy.

And I have to sort of slap myself on the side of the head every now and again. But again, every time I talk to new hire classes, I said, no matter what you've been assigned, make sure you have kind of an ABC priority. Know what your A accounts are. And here goes the metric, but I tend to spend about 3/4 of my time in those A accounts. The other thing I, I'm a believer in is just because you get a couple of nos or you're not making a heck of a lot of progress in the first 6 months, don't, don't necessarily drop them off your focus account list. I think good salespeople, or great salespeople from the good ones, they kind of understand that better than others. I always say they kind of smell where the opportunities are. They know how to attach themselves to the big problems of an account. They do their research. They understand what the executive priorities are of that company and what the corporate initiatives, funded corporate initiatives are, and they attach themselves to those big problems. And I think those are the guys that are doing the multi-seven-figure deals that, that make them great.

Well, I like that, being able to smell the ones, you know, I call that judgment because you get a territory and you have whatever number of accounts, but there's only a tiny amount of them that are going to buy that year.

That's right.

Especially if you're doing 7-figure deals. That might be probably less than 10, maybe less than 5, but you might have 50 or 100 accounts there. That judgment that you then focus on, you know, you could pick the wrong 5 to focus on, but if you have good judgment skills, you'll be good at figuring those out. And that's where I think a good manager comes in. Why'd you pick that one? Why What makes you think that?

Yeah. And that's where the B accounts come in. So, you've got to have— people have asked me, gosh, you've been at your company 20 years now in your 21st year. Well, I mean, are you—

why?

I mean, how can you even do that in our business? And I said, you know, I've been consistent every year. I've been every quarter, every— well, not. I mean, I've had a few goose egg quarters over the course of 20 years, don't get me wrong, but I've always had consistent years. And that's because of focus. It's those A accounts, but it's also the B accounts. Okay? So, what I do at the beginning of every year is I know, I call them 7-figure buddies. Those are the big things I'm attached to. So, I've got those. But I've got a lot of other deals that are, you know, sort of, let's say, $200,000 to $500,000 on average. And I focus on— that's the other 20%, 30% of my time. Okay. So, it's that balance there. And the C accounts are the ones that probably aren't at all this year, but you want to nurture. You may want to call, just check in. Brian, I can't tell you how many times I go into an office, uh, an architect or somebody closes the door and says, Dean, we deal with X vendors, let's say, I don't know, 20, 30 vendors. You're one of the only ones that come and see us and check on us when you don't have a deal pending in the next 90 days.

Yeah.

And I thank them for that because I try to do that. It's earning their trust. It's developing the account, and you need to do that as well.

And what does keep you at a company for 20-plus years? I mean, that's almost unheard of nowadays.

Well, I mean, I, you know, I— it's, it's part culture, uh, some culture. I mean, you kind of make your own culture, but It's, you know, I've— I like the people I work with. I've historically liked our executive, the original founder of the company. I love— he happens to be the owner of the Sacramento Kings now up north. You probably know the name. And, you know, he was very dynamic. He was a very innovative guy. He really saw the future. 5, 10 years ahead of things occurring. And so, he was the one that you charged the hill with. And then, of course, the last 6-plus years have been different. It's been part of an equity play, equity company, very interesting one and a very large one. So, it's always something new though. It's challenging. And I've been consistent. I mean, don't get me wrong, there've been, on an occasion, people have courted me to move, but I always have that next big deal. And I'm like, wait a minute, how can I walk away from a large commission? And I know this is gonna sound corny again, but I almost feel like I'm leaving my family. My customers are my family.

And when you sell the problem, dig into that for us because I try and— this is a very different way of thinking because the company doesn't teach us this. They teach us here's what we do, why we're better, why they need to switch. They don't focus on the business problem that you solve.

Fear, need, envy. This is what I look at, right? People buy out of fear, need, or envy. And I look at those 3 elements relative to executive priorities. I do dig into that pretty heavily, Brian. On my focus accounts, not every account, but on my focus accounts, I consistently listen to their earnings call. I want to know what they're talking about. I read through some of the annual report. I read 10-Qs. I look for presentations. So it's— you need to develop an understanding, and there's so much information available. Let me tell you another thing that I tell salespeople. If you go into a sales call and say, so tell me about your business—

Not nowadays, no.

Or, who are your top 3 competitors? What keeps you up at night? Yeah, it's like, you know, those are gonna be short conversations. So, so do your homework, and, and I keep saying, attach— try to attach yourself to the big initiative, the big problem. And, you know, some companies don't teach that. They wanna teach you about feature function. And competitive feature-function differentiated. By the way, this isn't true on all of our products, but if I ever got into a feature-function war, I'd probably lose more of those than I'd win.

Yeah.

On the whole. But when I do my debriefs, and I occasionally lose, but I also debrief when I win. I'm always told the same thing. You understood us better than your competition. You took the time. The last one I won a few months ago, they told me it was almost, you added time to our decision cycle, but we're glad you did. Because we found out some things about what we were trying to do that we hadn't even thought of before. And so I, my only closing thing on that is have some patience, dig into the research, dig into the problems, then align your product or service to that. And I think you'll be in good shape.

And have you ever tried to go in line of business versus IT?

Yes, although honestly, we are more of a sort of a CIO-down IT-type sale. It's changing, Brian, where our products, particularly the last 5 to 7 years, because we sort of say we connect data, we manage data, and now we analyze and help companies become more predictive in how they look at their information and ultimately have better outcomes. That's starting to change. So I'm having more conversations with line of business than say I had 10 or 15 years ago, for sure.

Well, that's it because most of the money is drifting to line of business.

No question.

You know, they're saying that even marketing has more IT Yeah, there's no doubt about that.

I see a big shift out to the— and cloud is driving a lot of that.

Driving a ton of it, yeah.

Because now, you know, whether you're— no matter what cloud service you're using, they give you metrics on who's spending what, which for many CIOs has been almost alarming. Because now they can say, OK, Mr. XYZ department, you have spent X amount this month. And it's almost shocking to the individual department heads. And it's interesting. I mean, the cloud guys won't like me for saying this, but it's almost like, whoa, we thought cloud was going to be less expensive. So it's interesting.

Yeah. And why do you focus on the bigger deals? Is it just more fun? Because they're not easy.

It was the only one. It is— that's starting to change, by the way, because as our business moves more and more from a perpetual license model and annual maintenance to subscription, Largely because the valuation of companies are more highly valued in a subscription model.

Subscription, yeah.

But the types of quotas that were assigned, there is no way I could achieve the types of numbers without having at least one or multiple 7-figure deals. I just couldn't, I couldn't make it selling solely what I would call my B transactions.

And how would you judge your technical skills? Because in selling technology, there's people on the spectrum. I used to say there's the ones that are engineers in suits, and then there's the ones that have an engineer next to their suit. And which, which one Or where are you on that spectrum?

I never— I judge myself. And again, I say that I keep talking because I do a lot of speeches to our new hire classes. And I have pretty consistently now for a lot of years. It's not okay, in my opinion, for a salesperson to say, you know what? I don't know that. I don't really understand it. And I've got to bring in my tech for that. That I don't like.

Yeah.

So I would say I'm somewhere in the middle. I'm not going to code. I've done a couple of Fortran programs. That dates how old I am. But I understand our products, generally understand them. I can sit there and have an initial 30,000, 40,000-foot level with a developer or a technical person. Beyond that, I would bring in a solutions consultant.

Yeah. And how do you separate yourself from the competitors? Because you're in a hypercompetitive space.

In terms of my technical skills?

No, no. Well, I mean, you compete against everything from free to the big boys. There's lots of ways of solving the problem.

Well, I always say there's no free lunch. There's things you have to look at. As an example, I don't want to get too technical, but with things like pure open source, which, you know, has been coming on strong the last 3 to 5 years, but there are trade-offs with that too.

Everything, yeah.

Everything's got a trade-off. And so you have to understand what those trade-offs are. You have to Again, come back to what they're trying to solve. And you've got to position yourself properly, sometimes in combination with competitors.

Right.

And I'm working more and more with partners.

Yeah.

You know, this is not necessarily a go-solo sale anymore like it was 20 years ago. So I work with large, the large Indian SIs all the way to the Large consulting firms, boutique consulting firms, what have you.

And what would you characterize as your superpower as a sales rep?

I think the big one, and I've done a lot of, I've done some work with personal branding, um, with a friend of mine, is what always comes back is trust, is they know My customers and prospects know that they can trust me. They know that if I commit something, I do it and I do it on time. And I, and if they select my competitor, now my competitor may be the same way as I am. I don't know. I'm sure there are a lot of really good competitors out there and I respect them all. And by the way, I never mentioned a competitor by name ever.

That's smart.

In a competitive cycle, nor do I mention any of our product names. But if I lose a deal, and occasionally I do, they're not going to get me. That's the way I view it. I say, you know what? I wish them well. I never say, oh, and by the way, you didn't get me. But internally I say that. Because I know I, I kind of bleed for my customers and they know that.

Yeah.

And what motivates you more, the hatred of losing or the love of winning?

I knew you were going to ask me that question. And you always say it can't be both. And I always think—

Which one's more? Of course, everyone's got both, but both tells me you're not thinking about it.

This sounds probably a little bit conceited. I never think about losing.

No?

I, you know, when I'm in, when I'm fully engaged, I'm in a cycle, I always think about winning and making sure I'm doing everything I can to make sure that that customer selects the right solution. I always— I'm passionate about what I do, and I always feel it's my solution and my company and my service and everything I bring to the table. So, what motivates me more, personally, I think it's winning, because I don't think about losing. Having said that, I think general fear has always been a motivation of mine. Fear of losing my job, as an example.

After 21 years.

Well, not so much now. Not so much now. I mean, I think I'm pretty well respected at my company all the way up to our CEO and throughout the executive rank. But early on, sure. If I don't carry my weight here substantially, I could lose my job. So, so that's always— fear is always a motivator of mine, for sure.

And are you ever shocked? You know, because when you do lose, is it something that you're like— at what stage are you shocked? I mean, because let's say you get the technical win, you've, you've got the business, you think you have the business win, you think it's moving into legal and procurement. Are you ever really surprised if you lost?

You probably think you are, but you really shouldn't be.

You shouldn't be.

You shouldn't be. If you're— I don't care what system you use to, to process how you approach a sale. I'm, I'm a— I've been trained on almost every sales process known to mankind, starting with Miller Hyman. I mean, I, you know, I take things from all of them. You know, I listen to you religiously, um, others. I'm a big believer in force management and medic, and, and I, I kind of adopt all of that. And if you really— If you get that call, and we've all Oh God. I mean, when I was managing, Brian, one of the big things I asked in my interview is describe for me your most recent loss. And if somebody interviewing could not describe a loss within the last 12 to 24 months, I did not hire that person because they're not competing enough.

Or they're not learning.

And not learning enough. And so, so yeah, it's, uh, I debrief. I demand a debrief.

That's smart.

For your, for your people watching your show, if they lose a deal and they don't demand a personal debrief with one or more people, you're missing an opportunity. So I do that. I go back and I go, you know what, based on what they told me, I miss that.

And do you get the— do you feel you get the truth in a debrief?

Not always.

Yeah, I think people hate delivering bad news. It's just, it's not— there's nothing in it for them, right?

They always hate delivering it to me because normally they like me. Most people like me. That, that's not universally true, but But generally, even the ones I lose, they'll feel badly about delivering the news. It's never price.

Well, that's it. When you hear price, it's never price.

No.

I mean, you know if they can afford it long before you make the first call.

I know you came out of the— because I know you ran a very large team selling like gateway-type products, API management gateway technology. We sell one of those, and I lost one of those, actually, to a customer. You would think, gee, you wouldn't lose something like that with a customer. And I could not pull out of them the real reasons, as hard as I tried, I couldn't figure it out. And they wouldn't give it up.

Yeah, and sometimes it's just they liked the product, or they liked something, or they lazy, or, you know, they were in a rush and they flipped the coin. Yeah, sometimes, you know, we think it's a spreadsheet and there's this one feature or this one step you missed, but sometimes You know, the other person called after you hung up, right?

Yeah, you kind of, you know, when it's not going well.

You should. Yeah, that, that sense, that— When you're at—

when you've been on the dance floor and all of a sudden you're in the corner and the music has become very faint.

There's no chair.

There's no chair. You know, you know, you're heading down the wrong path. And of course, all good salespeople want to avoid that. We do everything we can to avoid it.

Cool. Hey, Dean, I really appreciate this time. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

I appreciate it, Brian. Thanks again for the time. Uh, I'm, I'm on LinkedIn. That's probably the easiest thing. And my last name is spelled just like a hot dog. I always tell people Wiener, W-I-E-N-E-R. And that's probably the best place to get me.

Did you notice how he talked about selling the problem instead of selling what the product does? Now, what was interesting about this interview is early in my career, I competed against this company and they were a gorilla in this space and we were this tiny little startup. And what you learn about when you compete against a company is— because our products, we had the speeds and feeds, we didn't have the big name, we didn't have the big references. So you just had to fight the fight in a different way. And I think that's what we each have to do when we look at our territory, our product, and figure out how to best do it. Not just do a lot of it. And they're doing a lot of it. It's, it's okay at the beginning. It gives you the practice, but it doesn't get you to President's Club. It doesn't get you to your end destination. Um, you know what I've learned a lot about in teaching individual reps, because the drive is there, because they're showing up, they're spending their money, their time A lot of people want it just to be knowledge. Let me just hear it and know it. Okay, that, that's good, but then you have to do it, which is the next step, and then you have to do it well. Okay, so how do you do it well? You got to keep breaking it down into small pieces, judging it, tuning it. Honing it. And I always kind of break sales into a game or define it or equate it to a game because that way we can understand it. And it helps if you play a game. We all do, you know, whether we call it a game or not. Every interaction could be viewed that way. And the great salespeople Get that. They look at it, they break it down, they practice it. I had, um, the insurance guy on about a month ago, and he would practice his opener, his introduction in a call all day long, all morning. And when you— when I hear that, that person gets it. They know the words to say. They're practicing how to say it, with what tonality. And if you don't attach yourself to this, if you don't make this part of your evolution as a rep, you're going to be missing the point. Because having the best strategy, the best subject line, uh, that, that's good. But we still, the real selling is when we're talking and conversing and interacting with another person. Anybody can send an email. We don't even need people to send emails. What we need people for is that connection and communication, that transfer of confidence and emotion and perception and view of the world. That is really what selling is all about. It's something we do with people. And how well you do it, you take the nuances, the little, the tonality, the pace, the tempo, the energy level, and you look at that and grade yourself on it so that you know where you are and how to get better. How do you define an A-level sales call? How do you define an A-level process? See, a lot of us don't want to look at that. Because then we find out we're not that good at it, or there's a big gap between where we are and where we want to be. Is knowledge going to get you there? Knowledge is part of it. You got to know the game you're playing, and that has to be figured out because you can't win at the game if you don't even know what it is. Then you have to play. Yes, you have to take action. And managers way overweight action versus how well you do it— performance. And when I say performance, people tend to conjure up like singing and dancing or, you know, dog and pony show. I don't mean it in that sense. I mean it just in how well You do it. How well is your conversation? How well is that initial call? How well do you present the ideas in the demos? How well do you listen and react and get the other person focused? How well did you understand the other person?

That's all.

It's complicated. Not, not that it's like algebra or calculus. But there's a lot going on there, and we tend to just give people the words, the knowledge. Then we tell them to go do a lot of it, the activity, the action. We need that, but then we don't spend any time looking at it and kind of evaluating it. Judgment is kind of the wrong word because it kind of is demeaning and puts the other person above. You. But no matter how long you've been doing this, and that the insurance guy, you know, he, he's been doing this 40 years, still practices it every day on the drive. And, you know, when we had face-to-face meetings, I would practice it on the way in because you have to warm up. Think about playing the piano. That is a performance. You, you can probably learn the elements of playing a piano in a couple years, but you spend a lifetime becoming great at it. So you need a little warm-up, you need a little rehearsal, you got to get the brain, the body, the whole state of mind in line. And we overlook this, we demean it, we don't understand it. We think it's innate, but it's not. It's developed. And how do you do it? Are you documenting your process in this game? Because I think we're oversimplifying. We're turning it into like binary knowledge-based. Nobody really talks to me about this online. Everybody asks, what book? That's knowledge.

Okay.

They read the book, then most don't take action. The ones who do take action and don't get the result, they blame the book. The very few great people understand that, okay, the knowledge is good. It's not wrong. It may not be best. They did the action, maybe been enough or not enough. But how many people really look at that performance? How many of you talk through it with other people? Watch how other people do it. Look at it like a performance, like an athlete, because we're the athletes of the business world. When you listen to these great salespeople, is it really knowledge that they have?

Has that—

have they really— there's been light bulbs, I'm sure, for you. And there were several in this interview today, but how well they do it each day and knowing that that experience is just a small element of it. And it's something that we also lose later in our career because we become overconfident, get burnt out, get tired of it, or just assume that we should have that credential. It should be an honorary thing instead of something that we have to earn every single time, every single conversation. That's kind of daunting, but that's the world. We can't change that. So I hope you enjoyed this interview. These are the type of things that I teach in the course, these distinctions and how to become better at it. Not only the knowledge, The action, and then the performance, but the distinctions. And you can do this several ways. You can do it on your own over a number of years. And if you've heard these interviews, these great salespeople, we're talking a good 5, 10 years before they hit their stride. That's a long time. Now, the only way to shorten that Is have somebody show you that way. Not just the knowledge, not just the action, but the performance of it, the distinctions, and to give feedback and to hear other people do it. Are you going to get that at your company? Probably not. Managers, they focus on the knowledge and the action and then the outcome. But the problem with just the outcome as a metric Yes, that's really what matters. If you lose, no one cares. But the outcome can be correlated to what you do or could have happened anyway. We've all gotten bluebirds, deals that happened no matter what, didn't take anybody to be there, or easy deals, repeat deals, uh, you know. Deals that were just going to happen anyway. Well-timed deals, deals that we happen to be at the right place at the right time. But those hard-earned deals, the ones that we do have a high correlation with, that's what we want because that is where our value is. And to both understand it from a knowledge standpoint and have a strategy, because in the complex sale, I'd say— 98% of the people don't understand how it works because it's really complex. So that's a lot of knowledge that you have to learn there, but also understanding how to maneuver it because all it is is one trap after another. And they're so easy to fall into.

They are.

And they're so tempting. And it's really hard not to fall into them. It's sometimes near impossible. So go check out the courses at b2brevenue.com. You know, I've put out some great interviews on the Sales Leadership Show, even if you don't want to be a sales leader. But these are great salespeople, and to hear, you know, how they lead great teams— I got a great one coming out this week. And something maybe to share with a leader that you'd like to work the way you want to. If you see my content fly by on LinkedIn, give it a little thumbs up, a little celebration, a little share, a little comment would be greatly appreciated. We'll see you next time.