THE SECRETS TO SELLING IN THE FLOW STATE AND DEVELOPING EMPATHY IN B2B SALES

In most games, the board is visible to all players. The, the whole game field is well-defined. But in sales, it's not. When we deal with people, it's very fluid. We think it's logic-based, but we kind of know it's emotion-based. And this is one of the reasons why we have salespeople, especially in larger, more complex sales. It's the salesperson that makes all the difference. They're the person that communicates value, that tries to elicit the real situation that the client's going through, and then reimagining what it could be. With the client. But to do that, you have to have deep rapport. You have to have trust. You have to have confidence that the client is going to understand you and you can understand the client. Now, this is a layer of skills that are— we think are pretty advanced, but we have to work on them. Today's guest is a great example of it. We have a guy who was raised— both parents were in the Marine Corps. He grew up, made it through a cancer episode, then went into the Navy, became a medic, and really developed those quick empathetic skills to understand situations and what the other person is going through and then applied it to sales.

What else?

That's what we all do here, right? But when you listen to this interview, ask yourself, does he sound like a salesperson? And are you putting on a salesperson persona, which is natural?

It's—

it would be hard not to at first, but it doesn't really help us. Because you start to sound like a salesperson, and who's the last person anyone wants to talk to other than a salesperson? This empathy, this understanding, this communication skills are things that we have to practice. Which brings me to a little update for the listeners of the podcast. Back in July, I interviewed somebody that I had met Uh, online. I had heard him on another podcast, and I wanted to start a conversation and get a meeting with him. I wanted to learn more about the company, and I thought it would be a great, um, opportunity to share it with you folks. The company is a company called Brevite. I, I did an episode on it in July. Uh, it's on YouTube as well if you just search for how AI has solved the sales practice problem. Now, what's the problem we have in sales? We practice with live clients. Not a good idea. But practicing by ourselves is a little boring and sometimes unproductive because we're giving ourselves feedback, which It's kind of weird. Or we could do it with a coworker. We could role play, but you end up laughing or making fun of each other, and that's not really productive. You can do it with your manager, but then, uh, they're— they've got too much criticism. Why not do it with AI? And he showed me the product. I fell in love with it because it was not like talking to a robot or a computer. It was like talking to a real person, and you get to pick out the different types of people, the different objections, the different stages of a call. And this repetition is how our brains learn. Repetition with emotion, preferably positive emotion. Negative emotion works well too, but you tend not to repeat it and not want to do it anymore. So I'm partnering up with Brevity I would highly recommend you check it out because I think it is the future of practicing for sales. Because the better you get at sales, the more money you make. To get better at sales requires an enormous amount of repetition, and there's no clean way to do it today. Let's get into this interview. I'll sum it up at the end, and I'll give you a bunch of takeaways. And as a bonus, I will share how I got Brevity to become a partner using exactly what I teach in Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting course. Here we go.

Hey, Josh, thanks for joining us today. As we get started, give us a little background on yourself.

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much first and foremost for having me here, Brian. I am a father first and foremost and a husband of 12 years with my beautiful wife. I am a— been in the sales world for about 10 years now and had high levels of success doing it against the status quo and spend my time not working volunteering and coaching all sorts of varieties of sports.

Yeah. And when you say going against the grain there, what do you mean by that?

Yeah, I really always felt when I first got into sales, and I'll tell you this, I got into sales on accident. Okay, this was not my first choice of career paths. My mother and father always wanted me to get into the medical field and truly to be a doctor. I myself am a cancer survivor. So when I went through that, I had set a goal as a child that I wanted to give back to that community and be able to speak with children that are going through something very terrible and challenging and be able to come to there with an experience that I could share with them. What I quickly realized is that sales wasn't for— or I'm sorry, the medical field wasn't for me. And it was because of the challenging nature, as you could imagine, emotionally dealing in those situations. I joined the military. I got out of the service. I was in the Navy. I was a Naval Corpsman. And when I got out, I Didn't know what I was gonna do next. So I knew the medical field wasn't it. And I had a friend that— I'll give you a quick, quick background story on this. But I had a friend that had a job interview to be a technician with a telecom company. And I said, I'm gonna go with you. And he goes, what do you mean you're gonna go with me? I said, I'm gonna show up. I'm gonna go with you because you don't know me. We get into the interview process. I was the first one done with the test. And the lady goes, well, who are you? And how did you get here? And I said, well, you sent me an email. So I started my selling, right? I got an email. I'm supposed to be here. Long story short, she goes, well, wait right here. And I thought for sure she was getting security to escort me out. A young 25-year-old kid who just made a risk, right? I think I watched too many Will Smith movies. And the head of sales for that company happened to be in that office. And this is a major telecom company. And he comes down and goes, you ever think about sales? I said, never. He goes, I'm gonna put an offer in your inbox before you get home today. And that is where my sales career started on accident.

That's a great story. Is that your kind of your mindset is to kind of find and create an opportunity that doesn't currently exist?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think we see things differently too, right? If we, When I first got into the sales world, I noticed that everybody was so process-oriented. Everybody was so focused on the numbers and the metrics and the KPIs and blah, blah, blah. And for me, it seems so foreign. I'm like, why are we thinking about this? No one gives a, you know, a crap about your numbers and your data. We cared about the relationship. Why? Where's the relationship in all of this? And so when I say I go against the status quo and I typically look for those opportunities, it's because many people are missing out on why people make buying decisions, on why people have emotional connections to people and why they continue to build this relationship over years. So, you know, I think you've talked about it a few times. Everyone comes in with this hunting mentality, right? We gotta hunt. Well, hunters kill their prey. Hunters kill. There is no reviving.

There is no— Who wants to be eaten?

Yeah.

Who's lunch?

Yes, exactly.

But if we come in with a mentality of farming and building and helping people achieve the goals that they've put in front of them, our success will not be determined on what we did down the path, but it'll be determined on what we did today, right? And if we focus on the today, you know, the today goals, the today metrics, everything else falls into place.

Well, you know, I did one of those videos on why we hire salespeople and the emphasis on people, you know, because everybody then treats them like robots.

Yeah.

You know, how many calls did you make today?

And all of a sudden everyone cares about the number of calls they make rather than the results or the outcome or the content of those calls.

It's funny with the call KPIs, that was the first thing I ran into, right? Coming into the B2B world, when I moved out of kind of your B2C sales motions and into the B2B world, everyone's like, how many calls did you make? It wasn't how many of those calls converted into new meetings or how it was—

That call to work.

Yeah, exactly. And how do you create repeatability, right? Instead of just saying, hey, if we made 150 or 200 calls today, everyone's racing to be at the top. So we're not actually looking at the results or looking at creating some sort of positive outcome. Or learning from the things that we positively implicated, you know, put together within that process. Instead, we're focused on, well, I made 150 calls.

You know, and granted, it looks pretty in the report and on the leaderboard, but did you produce anything? Did you learn anything? Did you become any better or did you become worse?

And are we teaching others, right? Are we learning from each other?

Yeah, we hire people because people connect with other people.

Or we hope, right? Or we hope.

Have you ever listened through a whole robocall voicemail?

I wonder how it ends.

Nobody cares. It's a mechanical voice and you're— no, no one cares.

No, no one cares. And, you know, so getting back to the relationship side, I always felt the relationship started within the first 5 seconds, right? It had to be quick because everybody's coming in with the same mentality on the buyer side. And we've all been on the buying side of the table too. Someone's looking to sell me something, but do they understand what I need? Do they understand what my goals are? You know, is it a career goal? Is it a, you know, to help me get that new home for my family? Those are the things that matter. And it's not the outcome of a business because at the end of the day, people don't buy from businesses. People don't buy from companies. People don't give a shit about your brand. People want a relationship. People want someone that they can trust that will help advise them on how to accomplish certain things or overcome certain objectives. How do we create force multipliers? How do we help people become better versions of themselves?

Yeah, and people want to talk to people they want to talk to, they enjoy talking to.

Yes.

And I think too many people might be listening to this and thinking, oh, it's about sports or the weather. No, not really. It's about them, whatever they care about.

Absolutely.

That's what matters.

Why do you think salespeople don't? I mean, what do you think, you know, in your opinion? You've been doing this long enough.

It takes— well, you have to be comfortable with yourself to have the confidence to build some kind of curiosity. And to be curious, you have to not be worrying about your quota. And then to be empathetic, because you got to think first, then you got to think like another person. That's thinking in general is really a struggle. You know, conscious thought, not just—

Yes.

Not really like, what's the best way to do this? What do I think they care about? That then you get that empathy and that can start a conversation.

Absolutely. And it starts with actively listening and being authentic and actually having true empathetic relationships with people. Like, we really need to lean in. And, you know, I get asked this question a lot and people say, well, You know, I've tried to build a relationship with someone and it didn't work out well. And I said, well, let's go back and revisit this. Did you make the conversation about you or did you make the conversation about them? Right? Because empathy is to, right, about them.

It's not coming up with a better way of talking about your product.

Exactly.

Which is all the training we get, right? Marketing comes in, enablement comes in, competitor says this, we say this.

You ever look into persagenics? Are you familiar with the term persagenics?

No.

So early in my sales career of coming into the, I worked for a company Act-On in the marketing automation space. And, you know, again, this is my first rodeo. Somebody had asked me if I, you know, wanted to join a software company and at the time I was selling high-end cars. So huge transition. I said, I don't know anything about computers. He goes, Good news, I don't either. And this is someone that was, you know, a mentor of mine and highly successful in the B2B space. And he goes, yeah, I don't know anything about computers either. I'm a software guy. And I kind of took that to heart when I got in. But one of the first things that they went through in the training, they flew us all out. We all sat, you know, in this room for 5 days in San Francisco, your traditional kind of training. And one of the first things they did is we all took a Persagenics test. Now what Persagenics goes through is your primary and secondary personality traits. And so there's 4 major personality traits that we all kind of carry. There is the amiable type, right? Your quiet, soft-spoken type. There is your expressive type. Most salespeople, right? We talk with our hands, we make sound effects. You have your analytical type that are very data-driven, and then you have your dominant type. Okay. And dominant is the straight to the point. You know, I don't wanna go through all the BS. I just want it straight and delivered. And so we all carry 2 of these. Most salespeople, successful salespeople tend to carry an expressive dominant trait where they're expressive, they're fun enough that we wanna talk to them. And then the dominant trait allows them to get the message across directly and quickly. But we also, in the Persuagenics training, start to think about how others you know, what their personality traits were. How do we meet people where they are versus trying to drag them to where we are? Because that's the wrong approach, right? We wanna meet people where they are.

Yeah.

Build that trust and rapport and then ultimately guide them to where they need to be. Now, we can look at someone's LinkedIn profile, Brian, and we can say, hey, are they a big smiley type with a bright colorful shirt? I can tell you they're probably expressive. Right? They're probably a fun person to have a conversation with. And then there's others that, you know, maybe put on a very serious face. And before you even get on that call, you should know what type of personality traits you're dealing with. Therefore, you can set your mind in the right place to have a genuine conversation and again, meet someone where they are versus trying to get them to come meet you where you are. Yeah.

And that requires curiosity because you have to be curious enough to go check it out, do a little LinkedIn research, a little Google research, try and find a hook, something that you think they will care about.

That hook is also called person, a pattern interrupt, right? I'm sure you've heard that before as well.

I know pattern interrupts. Yeah.

That's a big part of it. If we can create a like-minded topic subject, right, where we can create relatability quickly, It allows us to build a relationship that's meaningful and the trust that allows us to continue to move a conversation in the right direction. And if the right direction for sales is to close a deal, it's the wrong direction. Our goal should not be to close a deal or to get a signature. Our goal should be to align our tribal knowledge that we have to a problem to create a solution together.

Yeah. Now, where'd you get this mindset? I mean, it wasn't the Navy, I assume. Well, maybe.

I think a lot of it came from my parents being both being retired Marines. They always— yeah, I always said that everyone said Dad was scary. I said, well, Mom was way scarier. But it was Accomplish a goal, right? Put a goal down and accomplish it. And that was something that my father was really, really big on. It was, you know, if you set goals in your life and you don't write them down, they're just dreams. And so it was always about solving a problem, and whether it was my problem or someone else's problem, it was put yourself completely— immerse yourself in that problem with them. Because until you feel what someone else is feeling, you honestly have no idea how to solve a problem.

Because as salespeople, we think of the problem as, that's all the only problem they have because it's the only solution we have.

Yeah.

So we have no interest in the other problems.

Yeah. And salespeople have this problem of emotionally not being connected to a problem. Like we need to be emotionally invested in that problem before we can understand how do we provide the right solution. Yeah.

And what's your take on why they don't want to be emotionally connected to it?

Sales is hard. I think sales is really hard, right? It's the one of the few professions in this world where we get told no more than we get told yes.

A lot of rejection.

Yeah.

And I think rejection is really hard on people and especially if you weren't accustomed to it or used to it or didn't have any life experiences to thicken the skin. It can be extremely, extremely challenging.

And 2 Marine parents, that rejection or taking feedback must have been part of the daily routine, I assume? No?

Yeah, nothing was easy. Uh, you know, pleasing, uh, pleasing 2 Marine parents was always a, a tough challenge as a child, right? Um, you could have— you could go out and hit 4 home runs in a baseball game and dad would say, well, why didn't he hit 5? Right? He'd remember the strikeout before he'd remember the 4 home runs.

So you grew up having thick skin, having survived cancer, going into the military. Why'd you pick the Navy though?

Both my parents being Marines, the Marine Corps doesn't carry their own medics. They, they are supplied there. They use the Navy. Yeah. So I had such a passion and a love for the Marine Corps growing up that anything that I could do to put our soldiers back on the field was what my job was to do. And again, it was helping people, right?

Yeah.

The interesting thing that people don't know about any medics in the, in the service is that our job is not just to help our own. Our job is to help anyone around. So this could be Enemy, this could be a civilian. This could be any number of things that when we're in the field, our job is to help people, and that is the first and foremost thing that we need to do.

And I got to imagine that built up the curiosity and the empathy because you got to do triage. The first thing is what's going on? Yes, they're screaming. You got to try and find the cause of the screaming, right?

Yes, solving these problems in. you know, when you're triaging to people, it's really important that, you know, when we put this into context, we're talking to people, right? Even in their worst state, we're trying to engage, we're trying to talk, we're trying to shift the way that their mind is thinking.

Yeah.

And so a lot of that translates over to the sales and marketing side as well, is that we need to be able to create a change. We need, it's, and some will call it a diversion. I don't believe that. I don't believe it's a diversion. I believe it's moving the conversation, right? And so sometimes, you know, our affirmations will control the outcomes of how we feel about something. We could have the best plan, but if we're negatively thinking about something and we're only focused on the negatives, we never actually get to the positive outcomes that we're seeking.

Yeah. And what got you really good at sales? I mean, because the, you know, the conversation, the rapport, the digging into the problem that builds interest and some urgency, but You even sell an enterprise which requires many people getting involved, the company changing.

And it's a lot of curiosity and the curiosity is extremely important. And I think too often, you know, we see sitting in a sales leadership position where we'll watch reps immediately fall back onto feature functionality instead of asking Why, right? I think it's always that peeling back the layer of the onion, right? Understanding, hey, yeah, there's a problem. Why is it a problem? You know, who does it impact? What happens if nothing changes? You know, if we change this way, what are the predictable outcomes that we can leverage? Everyone's always focused on revenue, Bryan, from my sales experience. When we talk to someone, well, I need 25% more revenue, I need this, I Those are outcomes. Those are not goals. And it drives me absolutely wild. But I think when we have those open conversations and by building good, strong rapport in the beginning allows us to ask those tough questions on, you know, why, right? Why is this happening? Why does this impact you? Why do you feel this way? You know, are you okay with mediocrity? Are you okay if nothing changes? Because they may be the tough questions, but you have to earn the right.

Yeah, I mean, and I got to believe the medical because it's all tough questions, isn't it? Yeah, right. The personal questions, very personal questions. And but how about like the process and stuff? How'd you learn NAS?

How did you Again, I took the process that was already kind of established in early in my sales career. Any company you go to typically has some sort of process they like to follow. That process, what I've realized might not be right for you, right? In sales, a lot of what we do is about who we are, right? And we need to be authentic. And so It was funny. I'll give it— my son this morning asked me, he goes, you're gonna wear a sweatshirt on a podcast? And I said, well, that's me. I don't pretend to be somebody I'm not. I said, Brian would be lucky I didn't wear a hat today because that's me. People know me as the hat guy, as the sports guy. That's who I am. So authenticity has to be at the forefront of everything we do. Process-wise, we have to be able to find a process that works for us as individuals. Not every static process works to the skill sets of our best salespeople. And when we only look at process, we sometimes find that salespeople don't do well in that, right? And it's not a fault of the salesperson. It's actually the fault of the process that has restricted someone from being themselves and adding their own flavor and personality Well, that's it because most companies, the process is what they'd like it to be, not what it is. Correct.

They'd like it to be discovery call, presentation, demo, propose, negotiate, close. But that's not how people buy. They do a little of this, some of that. Our job as salespeople is to kind of figure out what process will work to close the deal.

And a lot of times process needs to be aligned to the customer, right? To the prospect. They don't care about our process. They don't care that—

Right. They don't even know what their process is.

Exactly. Exactly. That was one of the things I got into. So, you know, I work in the PRM space and, you know, the partner enablement space and, you know, we touch everything, right? Everything from your LMS systems to your CRMs to your marketing automation, your ERPs, your CPQ, you name it. Okay, we touch everything. And one of the things that I walked into early at Allbound when I was there, it was, you know, it was a small company. They only had a handful of customers in 2 and a half years and everyone goes, well, we can't figure out why.

We have a good process.

We have these great slide decks. I said, well, your 72-page PowerPoint, it's putting people to sleep. I said, if you want to understand what processes work, Understand what processes your customers don't understand so that we can help navigate and help them find the right people to understand how to get what they want.

Yeah. And if you don't do that, then it's just technology looking for a problem instead of, you know, showing the client what could happen.

Exactly.

If they had it, the possibility, because they're kind of comfortably numb with what they have.

Exactly. And sometimes fresh eyes is what you need, right? You need that outside perspective to say, hey, this is what we see. This is what you see. But here's what I see, right? Are we on the same page? Are we seeing the same things? Maybe there's things that they haven't thought about yet because they've lived within an ecosystem for so long that it just becomes a natural thing, right? On Monday through Friday, we step in, we do, and we leave.

Yep.

But the reality is, is sometimes we need that outside view. And the other piece of this is Not everyone has bought something before and not everyone has bought something at the company they're working at before. And so we need to help them understand that maybe they don't know, right? And maybe it's okay to involve the right people along the way. And too often everyone, you know this, Brian, everybody's got a wooden spoon. Everyone wants to stir the pot. Everyone's a decision maker. Everyone does, you know, pays the bills around here. The reality is, is that it's a team game and it's a we game, not a me game, a we game. And so we have to help them navigate the we, you know, who are my people? Who are those people that are going to help me chip off the little pieces that procurement's going to ask for before we get there and then realize there's no time left? And our deal now pushes to the next quarter. Now you've missed your number. Now leadership looks down upon you because you didn't make that mark.

And I think that's the one of the biggest mistakes that people make is they hear from a champion. I'm the decision maker. Whatever I recommend, they will buy.

Me and the CEO go golfing. We're like this, right?

And then I, you know, because I coach reps all the time, I go, is the CEO or their VP even aware of this problem? Not the product, not you looking for a product, but the problem. In your case, you know, connecting up all the, these stakeholders. Are they even curious about how it's working? And if the answer is no, and you go to them with a new way of doing it, they're like, why are we doing this?

It already works. We're already doing it. Yeah, everything's working great.

And then you get ghosted and people don't understand why.

The ghosting piece is interesting. It's something that I feel a lot of reps deal with and, you know, someone just disappears. Historically, I have not had that issue, Brian. I have always seemingly gotten a wonderful response, even if we weren't the solution of choice. And people are always curious about why.

Right?

Why does that happen? Why don't people blow you off? Why don't people just disappear on you? Because I focused on the relationship and I focused on the person. And people that you like, you will do everything in your power not to let them down, not to hurt them. And if you're just another sales rep, that's what you'll be.

Yeah.

But, you know, we got to care about the person. And if that person genuinely feels that you care about them, they will care about you and they won't ghost you and they won't let you down.

Yeah, because let's face it, they're ghosting you because they don't feel comfortable giving you bad news. And nobody feels good about giving somebody bad news. Yes.

Yeah, I think that stands true in our personal lives just as well as our professional lives.

You know, let's say you mess up your wife's car for some reason, or it's like When do you tell her? Last housewarming.

Yeah, exactly. I don't know. What'd you do?

Uh, nobody wants— because especially to a salesperson, what's a salesperson going to do? They're going to go through the objection handling sequence, and a lot of sales— a lot of clients know that's going to happen. And it's not— first you misrate it, the champion's authority and power and political clout within the account. Now you're gonna try and double down on that by convincing them that their objections aren't really real and you've got a better answer. Doesn't matter. They're not the decision maker.

And that happens a lot in our space too with like operations. You know, we'll build up all the champions in the world on the sales and marketing side and channel leadership side. And then it'll come down to operations and operations will say, well, I think that's great that you guys all have this wonderful desire for this product, for this solution, but here's what we want. And it derails the entire thing, right? It will absolutely just crush a deal. And I think at times, you know, our champions will feel that they've oversold themselves at times too, right? Where they've maybe said, hey, you know, I put a lot of made you believe that I have all this power and all this power. And then in reality, just one person shuts the whole thing down.

Yeah. And, and I think people don't understand, and this is why we have to be proactive, because operations doesn't just get involved in one deal. At each deal, they have to— IT, security, procurement, legal— they all have a little way of slowing or killing a deal because it causes them work and change and who knows what else.

You know, it was funny. One of the things that I did when I got into enterprise sales, Bryan, which I think was very different than what most would do in their first kind of opportunity in the enterprise side was I managed really large enterprise accounts like, you know, Siemens and these massive companies and The first thing I did, and my boss scratched his head, he goes, well, you're not calling all these people. I said, I only call procurement people. And he goes, well, why? I said, because I'll fly out to where they are and I'll take them to a nice Italian dinner and, you know, and I'll wine and dine the procurement people. And he goes, well, those aren't our buyers. I said, those are absolutely our buyers. I said, if you can't get through them, they don't care. And when they have a stack of 20 requests on their desk at the end of the quarter and they see your name, guess who's moving to the top? The guy that feeds them. So that was something that was against the status quo that I did early, you know, in my career that I've always kept up with is that procurement people come first. And if I don't have a relationship there, it's gonna be really hard to get that deal through.

And everybody thinks that I've been on the procurement side that they think, oh, they just have to enter it, get someone to sign it and boom, it's off. But if that was true, why does it take weeks?

Yes.

Yeah.

And they kind of have a gatekeeper mentality because it's a thankless job.

Yeah.

Nobody runs down to procurement and says, boy, you purchased that.

Did it stop working?

You only go down there and yell because they bought the wrong thing or the wrong person or the wrong price or they took too long and It's a thankless job.

But it's so critically important that we understand the buying processes of our, you know, of our customers. You know, there's a lot of companies that, you know, we've had the opportunity to sell multiple times, multiple different products. And as you know, some positions will have longer tenure than others, you know, some, some have a 2 to 3 year window, right? And someone new is in that place, especially in sales leadership or channel leadership and marketing leadership, you see this high, you know, change over, you know, 3 to 5 years. So you may be selling to someone completely different. But the one thing that I've seen that really kind of rings true is a lot of times procurement people end up being the same. You know, those people end up having a longer tenure with the company. They have a very good, comfortable position that they hold and they have a little bit of authority and power. So it feels good.

And It's a lifestyle job. It's not a climber's job. The people who want to become CEO don't do it through procurement. It's more the people who want a steady job, same place, same thing every day. That's fine. And those people don't move very often.

Exactly.

What skill do you wish you learned 10 years earlier than you, than you did?

Honestly, that I thought a lot about. This question in particular because I've heard it before. And something that I wish I would have learned much earlier in my career was it's okay to go against the grain. You know, it's okay because I struggled early in my sales career like many salespeople do in trying to follow a process that wasn't aligned to me. It wasn't aligned to the things that I was already good at, and it wasn't doing a great job of sharpening the areas in which I was dull, right? I needed improvement in areas, but following a process only taught me how to follow the directions. It didn't teach me how to accomplish a goal. It didn't teach me how to get better at anything. It was just static.

Yeah.

So something I wish I would've learned much earlier, Brian, was that it's okay to go against the grain. It's okay to be yourself. It's okay to be authentic. And more importantly, it is okay to care.

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

Yeah, so you can follow me on LinkedIn. You can also— I would encourage anyone to that cares about the sales and sales motions to also reach out to me at Earmarks at jruffner@earmarks.com. Earmarks is a reference software that was designed by salespeople for salespeople to help them find the most referenceable customers within their databases today. So again, sales guy just trying to solve more sales problems and make it easier for salespeople to accomplish their goals.

I want you to notice, did you catch where he turned the interview on me and turned it into much more of a discussion than an interview? Uh, he did it very smoothly and almost seamlessly and engaged me into the discussion more than an interview, and I liked it. It felt good, uh, and I think we kind of pulled out a few things about both why empathy is so critical, requiring us to think in the present, in the current situation, not just feel and react. But really put some analytical thought into it. Now, empathy is much bigger than that. It's— and to say next level is understating how important it is, because in empathy you get to think like the client, and you also get to feel what they're going through. And what you'll get from that is their confusion, their fear, their not wanting to make a mistake, to solve the problem in the right way. And this is critical and something that we, we assume that we're doing anyway. But it's really hard to have empathy when you're hyperfocused and under pressure. Because what happens to our brain when we're under pressure and we have urgency, that prefrontal cortex just shuts off and the old primitive brain takes over and we do dumb things. We pressure, we give away a discount hoping we're going to get something back in return. Do we? Do we really? And how do you become this comfortable selling as Josh is? You have to get that confidence. And when people hear the word confidence, they immediately go to overconfident or cocky. That's what I want to talk about— just comfortable in your own skin.

The way you are.

When you're with your friends, people you enjoy being with, that comfortable, organic conversation comes out. And why do we lose that when we go to sell? Why don't— oh, well, maybe because they don't know us, so we should be more— Yeah, you should be a little bit more professional. I get that. You don't want to be goofy or Overly casual, but you want to be comfortable with yourself first. And then be friendly. Not friends. Friendly. There's a big difference. And in sales, it's not about making friends, but we need to be friendly so that people want to talk with us and not just have to talk with us. It's that wanting to talk with us, which is the distinction of having a relationship with the client or not. If they don't take your calls, if they don't call you back, if they don't engage, they don't want to. It's not because they're busy. We're all busy. It's because we're not engaging enough. We're not showing enough interest. In them. Now, back to how I got Brevite, how I got the first meeting. I heard them on another podcast. I looked up the speakers on LinkedIn, and I just followed the process exactly as I teach it and start the conversation, get the meeting, and I got a meeting in less than 40 minutes. Scheduled, not actually talking, but it was for the following week, and it was a great conversation. We connected. He didn't know who I was. You know, he didn't know about the podcast and the followers and the walk and talk videos. He really wasn't that active on LinkedIn. They were startup. They're trying to you know build a business. Not much time for social media. And if you want to learn how to do it in an organic, natural way, this is the way that selling has been done forever. What we've done today is try to automate it and eliminate all the human interaction, all the human likability, friendly elements of human interaction by automating with these spam machine guns and sending love letters all day to potential prospects. And, you know, if one person did it, it would probably work. When millions of people do it, to say it doesn't work is kind of an understatement. You know how it works for you. If it works, keep doing it. If it's not working, you might want to find a better way. And start the conversation, get the meeting. Is that better way? It is something I've developed, you know, pretty much full-time for the last 10-plus years and leveraging what I've experienced before because I created it When I had no market awareness.

I was starting my own business.

You know, the number of people who knew me, you know, this is before LinkedIn took off. This is before smartphones were everywhere, before anyone knew what a podcast was. Yeah, I'd written a book and everything, but it was like, that's old school. You know, people read the book, they think they know everything. You could read a book on chess, doesn't mean you are a chess player. It means you know how the game is played. Doesn't make you a great player. See, we're the chess player in the sales analogy. We know how to sell, but we need to know how to sell better. Because the better we sell, the more we sell, the more we sell, the more money we make. And that's why we're here. It's in that order. It's not, how do I become as busy as possible? The busy thing has become the obsession over the last 5 or so years. And I did a video this week about sales is only a numbers game for those people who don't understand how to sell. Because if you understand how to sell, it's all about Focus, prioritization, who is most likely to have the problem that I solve. It is not how many people I can hand my business card to. That's kind of marketing, isn't it? And a lot of people gave me pushback on this, and it was clear they don't know how to sell. They basically do it by random luck. By being busy knocking on as many doors as possible to try and find somebody who's interested. Why not create interest with the one door you knock on? The door that's most likely to have the problem that you solve. Not all doors are the same. And we think they are. They're not. We gotta think like detectives and not like census takers. And if you really want to take your career to the next level, you have to become a student of the game. And, and here's kind of what I've learned along this. The deeper I go into sales, the more I understand how little I know about sales, which fuels my curiosity to learn more about sales. So I become on this upward spiral Of learning, developing, understanding, finding distinctions, and sharing them with you. Now, most people, they learn enough to hit their number and then they stop because now they think they've got the credential, the degree, the badge of being good at sales. And they're good. But are they getting better? Probably not. They're probably getting a little bit worse and the world is getting a little bit harder. So what do they do? It can't be them. They know how to sell. But they don't understand that you have to become better and better at selling, a little bit smarter and a little bit smarter, and you have to focus on it. And the way to do that is to hear other people doing it. Find the best algorithm heuristic for doing that and really repeat it over and over again and finding more and more distinctions. So check out the courses at b2brevenue.com and check out our friends over at Brevity. And what Brevity basically does is allow you to practice the verbal conversation, whether it's a cold call, a discovery call, any interactive conversation with an AI-enabled client. And it's not a robot voice, it's a real human voice. It can analyze your call, give you some feedback, and it's a way of practicing, warming up, getting that muscle memory that we need in sales. And this is not for the— just for the first-year people. I use it. Because guess what? Think of another performance, like a musician. You think Billy Joel doesn't practice playing the piano? One, he does it to warm up. Two, he's got to get into that groove, that flow state, and you have to warm up to do that and keep it at that because the song can be pretty well contained. Sales is like infinitely, exponentially more complicated because every person's a little bit different. Every company's a little bit different. Time throws another curveball because time is never the same. Last year is different than this year. Yesterday's different today. So there's so many variables in the complex sale. You have to have an understanding of how it works. If you don't, you're going to do what the client says, and the client doesn't know. They know what they're feeling right now and what they need right now, but they don't know how to get it done within the company. They tell you they do, they think they do, and they won't learn that they don't until they try it and it doesn't work. And that's what's called no decision. Well, the decision was made. They just appears like there's no decision. The decision is no, or start over, or buy as little as possible. None of those are good for us. Winning the complex sale will take your game to the next level so that when you get those meetings and you start those deals, you only get paid on the ones that close. So Why not find the best way to close that deal? We'll see you next time. If you see my stuff fly by on LinkedIn, give it a little like, a little comment, a little share. Appreciate that. Tell a friend about the show, and we'll see you next time.