THE TOP 3 REASONS THIS REP IS CRUSHING IT AND YOU CAN TO

Here's a great interview today. And this one, I think you might react like, well, that's a different sale than what I have. Don't really think of it that way because think of it just from the standpoint of conversations that we have, discussions that we have instead of pitching, instead of the classic presentation and then discovery. Think of these conversations and think how the guest today takes a long-term view of it, looks at it as a performance, meaning that each one becomes better and better. And look at the— how he evolved over his career. Don't get locked into what he's selling because these conversations we have regardless of whatever we sell. And I'll sum it up at the end, but there's a lot of great lessons here, a lot of great examples, and it really sums up kind of that secret sauce that we're all looking for, the cheat code of sales, the, the magic or the silver bullet, which is us. And I'll explain at the end how to get it.

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

So, um, been in sales, uh, sales management for 25 years, uh, and I've been selling to car dealers, uh, that entire time advertising programs. Um, and, uh, so anything from $3,000 deals to $100,000 deals. And, uh, then I started, you know, about 15 years ago, I was a vice president of a large advertising company. I was training a lot of people. And honestly, if you ever heard this before, Uh, you want to learn something, try to teach it.

Yes.

And, uh, so when I started teaching it is when I really realized what I was— sometimes I just didn't even know what I was doing that was working so well. And then I started having to— I had to evaluate it so I could teach other people what I was doing and why I was doing it and when I was doing it and all that stuff. So, um, I really started to, uh, develop a little bit of a reputation for that as far as being able to teach people how to close a car dealer, because I mean, they're the top of the food line when it comes to sales, right? Right. And so you've got to be a little bit clever on— you can't do traditional sales tactics because they're going to see it coming and say, oh, you're just trying to do this. So stuff like that. Well, they'll call you out. They'll call you out.

Well, they're a tough crew, right?

Yeah.

To get to that role.

Yeah.

They've run the gauntlet.

Yep, absolutely.

And what got you into sales?

So it's kind of a funny story. I was a finance major in college at Iowa, and I was working in Chicago. after college, uh, in finance. And I'm on the computer all the time, and I'm like, man, I remember sitting there going one day in the afternoon, I wish, I wish I could make money talking to people instead of be looking at a computer all day long. I was like, duh, that's, that's sales. So I started— I was going to the Tony, uh, Tony Robbins, Anthony Robbins seminar, met some guys there that were, uh, selling to car dealers, and they said, hey, I think you'd be good at this, you want to give it a shot? And, uh, you know, I was 25 years old. I said, yeah, let's, let's, let's give it a shot. And, uh, moved to Cincinnati where I live now. And, uh, it got me into sales and I never looked back. It was a perfect move for me. I, uh, I love everything about sales.

Now, what got you into finance? Was that something your family pushed you towards or was it just—

Uh, no, it's just I'm good with numbers. And, uh, I was in college and, you know, and I was— didn't know what else to get into. I found a passion for finance while I was in school. I mean, I went to school to be a coach in football and baseball. And, you know, after about a year of that, I started realizing in college that I was, you know, finance, I had a passion for it. And I just did that for a while. And so I did it for 3 years out of college, and then I realized I wanted to move into sales. Yeah.

So you had that, which is hard for a lot of people, kind of the wanting to talk to strangers.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just kind of that part, you know, that part was the natural part for me. It wasn't something that I had to really, um, I've never had to really, you know, stressed out or, you know, you know, there are some people that just, you know, you put them in a room with people and they, they freeze up. That was never me. I was, I walked into a room and I'm gonna meet as many people as I can in that room. My time's up, you know.

But, but then there's stuff—

but selling's so much more than that, right? Because—

Oh yeah.

Right, because you can build rapport and everything, but you kind of got to lead them or see they're qualified, see if they have the problem you solve.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Change the way they view it.

Oh yeah, yeah. Just, you know, there's a lot of people that think that just because they're good at going to, let's say, an outing and talking to a lot of people, that they'd be good in sales. But that's not the case because they can talk Those are the people that typically talk themselves out of a sale. Yeah, they talk too much and they go like, oh man, I built great rapport with that customer. They love me, they're gonna buy, blah, blah, blah. They didn't ask any qualifying questions. They don't know any issues or pains that the customer has. And they don't realize that the customer the whole time was sitting there going, I wish this person would shut up.

Shut the hell up and leave me alone.

Yeah.

Or they're like, oh, great guy to hang out with, but And if I ever need that, I'll call you.

Yeah.

That's not sales, that's service.

To sell, you got to kind of like get under the hood and see, you know, do they have the problem? Do they recognize it?

How can I get them to look at what we're doing?

Yeah, right. Because a lot of times people in sales, they talk, they talk so much, the customer doesn't even really know what the heck they do, right? They're like What problems of mine do you solve? What gain am I going to get out of this? How do you fix my day-to-day operations? How, you know, they just, like I said, talk themselves out of it.

So, and you stayed in what I would consider— I don't know anything about it, but a pretty difficult field.

Oh yeah. I mean, this is— I have a book that I read a long time ago. It's called The Rhinoceros Success. And one of the key things that talks about having 2-inch thick skin, uh, trust me, you need to have 2-inch thick skin because I've always said selling to car dealers, a lot of people can sell them, but when things go wrong, how do you handle that is who is, is, is those that could stay in. And there's a lot of people that can't handle the stress, the pressure, or the character. that you need to be able to fix problems when stuff goes wrong. Advertising people, whatever it might be that went wrong, you know. Um, yeah, yeah, that's—

They're not exactly, um, wallflowers, are they?

No, no, no. Because if you— if something goes wrong with a car dealer, he's gonna flat out let you know in more ways than anybody you've ever met on the street, you know.

And how did you develop that 2-inch skin other than just years of Um, I don't, I don't know.

You know, I kind of actually didn't have a choice. You know, I didn't come from, uh, an affluent family or anything like that. I grew up in the farmlands of Iowa. And listen, I had to figure it out. I had to figure it out and stick in there when times looked tough. And I had a lot of friends often say to me, Matt, why are you doing this? Get out of that. Come do this. I just kept seeing the money opportunity in it. And I, you know, over time I started to realize how to handle problems before they became big problems.

Yeah.

You know, kind of the— I call that— I got, I got a lot of rules that I live by, and one of them is in the way, in the way. If I know something's going to happen that's going to be an issue, I'll talk— I'll call my client before they find out. I want to beat them to the problem, kind of run to the problem, so to speak. And I'm going to call them up and say, hey, hey Jim, hey, it's Matt.

Hey man, I know you're gonna be a little upset.

I got a little bit of a problem. Here's what it is, and I'm going to tell you how I think we can fix it, you know, and I'm going to beat them to it. And a lot of times they're like, Matt, that's not that big of a deal, or that's cool, okay, it sounds good, or take care of me on the next one. And they appreciate that because most people run and hide when there's a problem.

And that pisses people off even more.

Oh yeah, then they're come— then they're gonna— they're gonna seek you out and they're gonna find you and they're gonna hit you over the head with a mallet, you know. Yeah, yeah.

And what is the right approach with this type of market to convert somebody, or especially like a new person?

Uh, wait a minute, what do you mean? You mean like a customer or a prospect? Yeah, what's the right approach?

Yeah, like how do you approach them?

Oh, so, you know, I kind of always said you got to be 3 people to sell a car dealer. You got to be, uh, Clint Eastwood, carry a big heavy stick. You got to be able to be tough when you need to be tough. You've got to be, um, you know, a Will Ferrell where you got to have a little bit of humor in you.

Yeah.

You can make them laugh. And then you gotta be a little bit of a Gandhi where when they're all done with you, they're like, that dude kind of knows a little bit more than the average person out there. So you got to be able to had that 3 phases that they go through with you, that they respect you, they think you're, you're fun to hang out with, but they also know you're not going to put up with anything either. You're not going to take their crap. And, uh, so—

Are they sequential or are they random?

Man, they're random. They're not— yeah, they're, they're, they're, you know, there's some, uh, you know, there's some that, you know, that are just flat out, they don't care about anything but money. Then there's some that care about their staff, and there's some that care about the numbers only, and there's some that care about how does it make them feel. Some of them, how does— is this fun? Are they having fun? You know, and then I use, um, I learned a long time ago, I use DISC profile as far as—

Right.

And that's a big thing of how I modify how I'm going to talk to somebody based on what I think they are within the DISC profile, so that somebody that's a very, you know, cutthroat high D person, I'm going to get right to it, bullet point. I'm not going to— I'm not going to sit there and talk about how's their day going and things like that. They don't care. Versus like if somebody is a, you know, a high I, they're all about, hey, you know, I got to make sure I like this person. It's going to be fun. And so on and so on with the S and the C. And so you got to modify how you're talking to them.

That's good. A lot of people don't do that, or that they all think everyone else is just like them.

Yeah, that's the— I preach and preach and preach that you have to be an actor with selling. You've got to modify, understand what that other person's like, quickly identify it, and be able to adapt your style of selling to what they are like. Because it doesn't matter what you're like. You've got to— otherwise you're missing out on a ton of sales if you just try to sell the people that are like you.

Right. Because there's not many of them. Yeah, certainly not enough.

Yeah, I mean, it's only a fraction of them, but, you know, let's call it 25% of people are like you. The rest of them are some other style. So if you can change, you can pick up— like, you know, what in DISC, there's the high C is the, is the numbers, the spreadsheet person, the, the analytical person. They analyze, and a lot of sales reps hate those type of customers, right? Oh, I can't get to that guy. I embrace it, and I just get down to the details with them. And I go down to, this is going to be $3,426.97. You know, when I get down to the exact detail with them, and that's, that's, that's music to the ears. And that's why other sales reps can't sell them, is because they don't talk the way they want to talk. And it's all about the customer. It's not about you as a salesperson.

And how have you been good at reading them, determining that? Do you Do you look on their LinkedIn profile? Do you check out their website? Do you find out from someone else what's the person like before you contact?

As much as you can, all the above. You know, anything you can find out. I do look on their social media because I can get an idea of what type of person is, uh, but based on that. But then when you— when you— whether you're selling them on the phone or you're face to face, man, as soon as I walk in, I look at their office and I'm looking at, is it organized? Is it— is there paperwork all over the place? These are all key things that tell me what the they're like. And then how do they greet you? From the second they greet you, if somebody says, kid, you got 5 minutes? I know I got a high D. I better get right to it. Bullet point. I say, it's good. Good. I don't like the small talk either. Let's get right to it. If it's a guy that says, hey, how you doing? Nice to meet you. Okay, I got a guy that wants to be on the personal side a little bit. I'm gonna spend a little bit of small talk with him. And then I'm gonna, you know, ease into that before I get into just go right to business. So, um, I watch, I look at so many things. Um, I can't say there's really one thing. I just, I know I'm trying to figure out before I start talking what type of person they are, so I'm going on the right path with them.

And was this something that you've discovered early in your career? Because the reps that I've met who are great, that just tends to be some type of framework.

Yeah. Um, no, I was as naive in sales as you come. I mean, like I said, I was a farm boy from Iowa and I came in. So I read probably 200 books in like 3 or 4 years of my time, like about psychology, selling, all this stuff. And then I started going to some, uh, various, uh, selling classes and seminars to really figure— I had to self-teach myself. I had no family here. Nobody in my family had ever been in sales before, so I didn't know anything about anything, and I just studied, studied, studied. And, uh, it was a, you know, a passion. It became a passion to learn it.

But you took like a student mindset towards it?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I was— I studied more after college than I did in college because my livelihood meant it.

Exactly right.

You had incentive to.

Yeah, I knew I had to figure this out. I had no other, no other option, no other way.

And something like that DISC forces you to have empathy because you're immediately trying to understand how the other person thinks, right?

Yeah, it's a natural— it naturally starts to happen. And that also helps them like you, right? Because you're showing empathy and you're, you're understanding, you're talking the way they want to be communicated to. You're understanding their thoughts and how they are versus, man, you just— when I've been out training sales reps and side by side, I kick guys under the table constantly, like that, you know, shut up, shut up, let me take over. And I tell them, you know, hey, we're gonna— there's some questions. And I always have a series of questions that I'm going to ask in a way that I'm going to get the other client, the client, to start to self-discover that maybe they are interested in our product versus me just trying to force it down them and tell them they should be interested. I'm a big believer, I want the self-discovery, uh, because when they think they need it or want it, it's more real than when I tell them that they need it. And, uh, and that's what improves the closing ratio, in my opinion.

Can you give us an example of one of those questions?

Yeah, uh, I mean, just, it starts with a kind of a series of stuff like things like, um, hey, I don't know if you've ever, uh, had any interest in this. Can you share with me what, uh, what are some things that, you know, I don't even know if my product can fix it or not. What are some things in your world that's not going very well right now? I don't know, let's see if there's anything that I can help you with because I wanna find out if there's a fit or not. I don't wanna waste your time talking about all the things I can do if there's no fit for you. Can you share with me some of the challenges you're having or what's keeping you up at night?

A problem question, like, and you're looking for—

Yeah.

Because even if they don't share a relevant one, you can build that into something that's relevant.

Well, so here's where you go with that. The first problem they tell you is not the real problem. So I start with that. I says, oh, okay, tell me a little bit more about that. I'm gonna dig a little deeper. Tell me a little bit more. Why is that happening? I'm gonna dumb up. I'm like, why is that happening? That seems weird. Because I want them to continue to talk about it. The more they start talking about it, several things happen. I start building rapport because now they're doing all the talking versus me. Uh, I start finding out how to sell them because they start to tell you. You don't know if they're going to talk. For 2 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes. And so I just— once I get them going with a few questions, I kind of sit back, put my hands up and just— I don't literally put my hands up, but I listen and listen and I take notes. I take notes of key things that they're telling me. And then I start formulate how I'm going to go back to them in that same conversation, not later down the road, in that conversation with key points that they told me. So, hey, now you mentioned This. Can you tell me a little bit more about that, why that was a problem? I may— I think I missed that. Oh, and I may already know exactly why there's a problem, but I don't— I want them to tell me, because the more they talk about it, the more it creates urgency. It creates more deeper pain that I gotta do. They start going, I gotta do something about this now. And that's what That's what I want them to tell me. That's the whole self-discovery part of it, right?

Well, you're trying to take a latent pain and turn it into active pain.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

That's relevant to you.

Yeah, because exactly, relevant to whatever I'm selling.

Right, not paint or roofing or something.

Yeah, right, yeah, yeah.

Because clearly you're associated— the first problem they're gonna raise, revenue's down, sales is down, we're not getting enough traffic.

It's always generic, big picture.

picture stuff.

Yeah.

And you got— well, tell me a little bit. Wait a minute, I thought Ford's doing really well right now. Why, why is revenue down? What am I missing here? What, is there something with the manufacturer? Is it your market? And I'll gently add stuff that I know it might be. Is it the location? Is it this area? Is it, you know, is it the, you know, the, the recalls on the Ford Broncos right now? What What am I missing here? And by saying stuff like, what am I missing? They just—

They love correcting people.

They love correcting people. And I like to be corrected all the time. Yeah, I use that strategy, kind of like what I call dummying up, um, all the time.

It's irresistible to correct somebody sometimes.

Yeah, even when you're cold calling, like there was— you call the receptionist and, or, and you're trying to get through to somebody and says, hey, I got, uh, Jim's cell number as 316-472-8832, but it's not going through to him. What am I missing? Oh, you— I don't know whose number that is. Here's what it is. Boom. So you got the receptionist giving you information, or, you know, before you even get—

His email bounced.

Yes.

It's not jim@ford.com.

Yeah, right, exactly. Dummy up curve is, is Works great. A lot of information out of people with that.

And what do you see most of the reps that you were training doing wrong? What were some of the kind of the pivot points along the way?

I think one is, so you bring them into a company, a new rep, and you tell them about all the great things the company has. First thing they want to do is they want to go out there and brag, brag, brag. And then they get shut down, shut down on the things that the company's doing great, and they don't understand why. Whenever I brag, I actually downplay my brag. So I'll, I'll say stuff like, hey, I don't know if this is a big deal to you or not, but here's one of the things that we do, and whatever it is. And I know it's something that they're going to want, but I want them— that being the client— to tell me, no, that's actually real important to us. Oh, it is? Can you share with me why? I didn't, I didn't think it would be. And then again, now they're selling me on our features and benefits, right? Versus me selling them. So I think sales reps brag too much. They— my biggest, like, thing that I do is I— it's called pendulum move, where I take things away. I, I talk, like, badly about me. But good about my competition and good about the, the, my clients', uh, staff or situation. Say, man, you guys are probably killing it right now. There's probably no reason why you would need something, uh, help from us. Is that fair to say? And then let the client say, uh, no, we're not doing that great right now. Really? It seems like to me that you guys are going great. What's— what am I missing here? Can you— You know, um, so sales reps are afraid of— they're always wanting to go just positive, positive, positive. And I like to go the opposite, go negative, and get the customer to tell me more about whether it's about me. Yeah, I don't know if you probably, uh, you probably love— you probably, uh— oh, rumor on the street is that, uh, you're in love with, uh, so-and-so, being a competition mind, that you would never ever leave him. Is that fair to say? And can I tell you something? There's not one client has ever told me Oh yeah, I do love him. He's great. I'll never leave him. They're like, oh well, they always back me up.

They started off good.

It started off good. It's not that great, you know, we're not married, stuff like that. Says, so yeah, but you're never gonna leave him, right? Well, even if I beat him in price, you're stuck with him. You're, you're gonna like it. And then they'll start telling me, well, maybe you could beat him in price. I say, yeah, but that's not enough. What else would it be? What else would you need to know that would convince you to try another vendor? Yeah, um, so pendulum, I think sales reps are so afraid of using.

And how long, or what techniques do you take the reps through to get them to get that? Is it just confidence, success, having a little bit of—

I, I— a lot of training, going over it, role-playing with them. But it doesn't work as well in role play. And I take them out, honestly, they just gotta see me do it.

Yeah.

Because I think sales reps are not as well learning. They learn best from belly to belly, seeing it actually happen. And then when I tell them, hey, here's what I'm gonna do, and then we go in the meeting and I start using them and they see it actually work, we go out of the meeting, we get in the car, they're like, I can't believe that worked. That actually— I see now what you were talking about. Until I walk out there hand with them and do it in front of a customer and they see the reaction from the customer, I don't think they really get it.

Because everyone kind of thinks selling is telling instead of selling is asking.

Yeah, selling is not— or telling is not selling. I can— I may have Big believer in that. Like, you know, another thing I, I'm totally against is ABCs. Everybody talks about ABCs, always be closing. And I always say this, if you're constantly closing, then you're not selling because you're not listening to what the customer's needs and wants are or what they're about. You're trying to get what you want versus what does the customer want.

Want.

If you focus more on what the customer wants instead of trying to close them, I can't tell you how many times I've sold something that I've never used any type of close. The reason why is because I stay focused on them. What's their needs and wants? Tell me a little bit more. What else? What else is holding you back? What other concerns do you have? They tell me, tell me, tell me, and then after I've exhausted them with that, they go, well, how do we get started, Matt? Or when— how soon can we do this, Matt? Well, they just closed themselves, right?

Because now they want it instead of you wanting it. Right.

It wasn't about— I didn't make it about me. I made it about them constantly. And that's like what you said, telling is not selling.

And early in your career, did you have kind of a learning process? Did you plan each call, execute, then review it and grade it and look for distinctions?

Yeah, there was times, you know, from, from, you know, like, I, like, I remember when I first started, I would bring a notepad and I, to this day, I take a blank notepad into every conversation I go into. But back in the day, I would list like 10, 15, like quick little bullet point reminders that I made sure that I covered or that I was— questions I was going to ask in the presentation. And a lot of sales reps later on, when I would tell them to do that, they were like, I can't do that. Like, listen, I've never had a client ever say to me, I can't believe you're doing that. Matter of fact, some of them said, I wish my sales reps would do that. Yeah, because I had a list of things of how I— well, things I wanted to talk about and prepared, um, for the meeting.

Well, plus the beauty of outside sales is you get time to prepare But then you get that gap afterwards to reflect on it.

Yeah.

That you don't get at the desk, right? Because you don't have the windshield time. Yep.

So I would also, you know, always had a little recorder and I would— here's, here's what I learned, here's what I did good, here's what I did wrong. I did that after every meeting all the time. And then at that night, I would sit there and take, okay, how do I build on this? How do I get better? Because That's another thing. A lot of sales reps will walk out of a meeting and say, man, we crushed it there, we killed them. Like, what could we have done better? And I had— I would have sales reps say to me, what, what do you mean, what could we do better? We, we killed it, we did great, we did this. I'm like, no, what could we have done better? There was some— there is always something to learn from it. And they would get argumentative with me at times, like, I can't believe you're sitting there trying to find out what we could have done better. We just sold them. I'm like, because I'm trying to make sure every time there's a different type of client, we learn from this. Uh, so those are— that's another thing that, uh, uh, was hard to teach sales reps, um, is that there's always something to learn. Whether you got it, whether you got the deal or didn't get the deal, there's always something to learn.

It's a performance.

I—

because your analogy with the actor personas They're actors.

Yeah.

One's a tough guy, one's a funny guy, and one's humanistic.

Yeah.

Kinesthetic. And that reflecting on the call, especially right after it, of what you did, because what you're looking for is the tiny distinctions to get better.

Yeah.

And if you don't admit it can get better, how can it get better?

Yeah, see, that's another thing right there. First, you know, taking personal accountability and responsibility for yourself and saying, you know, I got, I got 3 kids, uh, and 2 of them are in high school, one's younger, and they're playing sports. And I come—

Nice.

I talk to them like, you gotta ask yourself, how can you get better? There's no— you can't blame other people. You can't blame the ref. You can't blame the coach, the team, your teammates, and all that stuff. What can you do to get better? And in sales, the same thing. And that, I always say, I played a lot of sports. I always say that's what taught me to have the right mentality for selling is because I learned a lot about, hey, like there was months that things were tight, wasn't having a great month. And to me, that was like the 4th quarter of a basketball game, right? Hey, we're down by 8. Am I going to fold here or am I going to try to still try to figure out a way to win this game with 7 minutes left, you know. That mentality is what drove me through in sales, even in bad days, bad months, uh, to continue on, to find a way and not give up.

That's a great example, because if you don't do that, you get comfortable and you tend to get worse, not better.

Or you start to believe the little talk, the bad talks in your head, right?

Right.

Oh, it's, it's raining. I'll go out tomorrow. Right, it's almost 5.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's another one, like on Fridays, you know, everybody, sales reps cut out early or they're mentally checked out by 1 o'clock on Fridays. Yeah, I always say go strong while your competition's weak. Yeah, Friday afternoon, I've made more money on Friday afternoon than any other time the rest of the week. I can tell you I have closed more business. I think Your clients are worn out a little bit.

They—

the sales reps are not going at them hard. I don't know what it all is. I just know they're all weak. And so that's why I focus and go strong. You know, I typically don't cut out till 6:30, 7:00 on Friday nights because of deals closing. Um, it's just— it's a mentality thing.

It is. This has been a great conversation, Matt. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

I guess LinkedIn, Facebook, Matt Baker Charge Forward Group.

Did you see that attitude, that mindset of continuous improvement? Not resting even after you've been doing something for 25 years, that each sales call was unique and well thought out. And executed and then reviewed and looking for distinctions of how you can do better and write it down, record it, have some way of memorizing it and building it into your process. That is the cheat code of sales. Now you got to find those distinctions, find better ways, find different ways, find ways of identifying the client. Find ways of pacing yourself, developing questions, sequences of questions that you can learn from other people. And everyone always comes to me, uh, what book would you recommend for this or that? And, and I go, yeah, a book can help, but a book also gives you the excuse that you think you now know something because If you read— take the last book you read. What'd you learn from it? How long would it take you to describe what you learned from it? Did you take any notes? Do you have any Post-its, any way of integrating it into your process? Or you think you're just going to do it off of memory? If it's off of memory, I don't think you're going to remember it At the time that you need it. In pretty much any performance activity— cooking, sports, debating, any kind of academic or music— what is it? There's repetition, there's collaboration and comparison, there's review, and then there's modification. It's a simple formula, but it requires people who know the distinctions, who can give you help along the way, who can show you why something is less effective than other things. That's what I try and teach in the course. And that's why if people look at it as just knowledge, it doesn't really have much impact. If you look at it as a skill, as a performance, as something that you do, And it depends how well you do it, people get it. Once you get the mindset, skill set, performance of it versus the knowledge, it's not a quiz. You don't go into a sales call and they give you a little pop quiz, multiple choice essay. It is an interaction. It's a discussion. It's a conversation, and it requires preparation and skill and understanding what the other person's trying to accomplish and having them focus on what you think is the best solution. Now, that is a skill, and it's not a test. Too many people think it's knowledge. You know, every sales leader I talk to is like, can you come in and teach us this? And people sit there and they play with their phones and they nod their head and they try and map it to something that they already know. And okay, they heard it, they can parrot it back, but can they execute it? And I used to do it and I would try I'd spend the first half of a day talking about it, talking through it, and then I try and get people to do it. And they, well, give us a hint. Well, we talked about it for 3 or 4 hours. And all of a sudden, you know, everyone nods and it makes perfect sense. Okay, now try it. Now put it, get it out of your head. And too often I hear people say, I either win or I learn. Okay, well, tell me what you learned. Well, what do you mean? Well, when you lose, what'd you learn? Oh, you know, they were the wrong people, or they went with price. Is that really a lesson? You didn't know that? Oh, well, I guess I knew it. So you didn't learn. Too many of us, we want to stay in the comfort zone, but we're not going to get better there. And we think just because we've been doing sales for n number of years that that That means something. Maybe, but a lot of us still aren't getting the level that we want. What we tend to learn or get a kick in the head is that we didn't put the effort in. We didn't really think about it. We tried to just go through the motions, tried to be consultative and trusted advisor. If I had a dollar for every time I heard that, I go, You think you're trusted because you trust you. And you think people want your advice because they sit there and nod their head. But do they view you as trusted advice? Do they trust you? They trust you if you've been showing more interest in them than in yourself. To become great at sales, you have to really practice these things. Look for distinctions. Review activities to find little nuances. Come up with your own paradigm of what the person is going through. If you need help with this, that's what B2B Revenue is all about. 2 major courses. One is Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting. And the whole premise is, yes, teach This model, this distinction, this paradigm, this easy-to-understand thing, and now apply it step by step, but understanding this is all based off of empathy. It's not based off of pitching. And a lot of people get stuck because, like, just tell me what to do. Well, I can tell you what I think to do, but I'm going to start at the probably awkward stage because I haven't sold what you did. And then we have to go through it. But people aren't willing to do the work because they can't think empathetically. They hear what marketing tells them. And but that's, that's not a symptom of the problem that your customers are feeling. Because start the conversations about that cold outreach. You're talking to people who are not in active pain. We have to build that up. If they're not at active pain, they're trying to think about why they don't need you. And we walk right into the trap because we start describing what it is and they say, well, I've got that covered. All set. Thank you very much. And then there's the winning the complex sale where typically you lose about 60 to 50% of the time just to no decision. And that's not a decision. That is the inability to get what logically makes sense from a business standpoint done because they don't know how to get it done politically. They don't know how to get it done administratively. They don't know how to get it done compared to people sticking their toe in it, tripping you, getting their own personal interest above the interest of the company. They can't justify it. It's the default. Never mind your other competitors who want the same money, want them to use their product, not yours. How do you control that? How do you direct it? And I still, I put these posts out and okay, the VPs of sales go, ask them what their decision-making process is. What's their criteria? They either don't know or it's wrong. They're using what the competitor's criteria is or what they read online. We have to change that criteria. We have to make it about what really matters and convince them and break those rules and then guide them through this process. But you have to know what the process is. Reacting to their process is order-taking. Guiding them is selling. Anyone can take an order. A C-player can take an order. A B player can probably beat another B player 50% of the time, but that B player is going to lose to an A player all the time. You got to get to that A player level. That's where all the money is. Why do all this work for nothing? If you lose a deal for whatever reason, it doesn't close, you lost. You can, you can co— you know, cuddle yourself any way you want with, oh, I learned. Okay. Did you— what did you learn? Oh, I learned that I should listen to Brian and his podcast.

I should take that course.

Well, then that learning is worth it. Check out the courses at b2brevenue.com. Also, it's on the YouTube channel. The link to the videos is in the show notes. It's on my LinkedIn profile. It's on the YouTube channel. It's on the website, b2brevenue.com. Uh, there's 2 videos. There's one on how the courses work. And then there's one on which course is right for me, and it's in the description. The link to is in the description on the YouTube channel. It's also in the show notes of the podcast right here. If you have any questions, email me, and I hope to see you there. We'll see you next time.