THE TOP 3 THINGS I LEARNED IN 2024 THAT WILL HELP YOU SELL MORE

Well, 2024 is in the books. Here we are in 2025, and I thought I'd kick off the year with some of the things that I learned in 2024 and to share them with you kind of in a concise, direct way so that hopefully you can benefit from it. Let's start off with probably the, the biggest epiphany that I had in 2024, and it's more of a A culmination, a different way of looking at it. It's not like I didn't completely notice this before. I remember making videos about this over 10 years ago, but I didn't really understand the impact that it has on each of us and our ability to learn how to sell and become good at it. The first one is our instincts. Now, let's first define what they are. You know, what are you feeling right now? What are your instincts for what's going to happen in 2025? It feels like we've got a lot of time. We got a fresh year ahead of us, a reasonably good economy, at least in the US. Lots of change, of course. But I think we've been through a lot of rough stuff, and I think it's going to be good. Okay, that's our instincts. Now, who knows what reality is, but what good are our instincts? Well, it kind of condenses down a lot of our thought. Instead of analyzing everything, we kind of go with our gut feeling, our instincts. But They're not foolproof. And a lot of times when we're in new situations where our instincts haven't been built off of hundreds or thousands of instances, examples, case studies, our instincts might fail us. Let's look at an example. Meeting goes great. Fantastic. They love the idea, the product. They say to the decision maker, send us a proposal. Okay. And your instincts are, well, it's obvious, send them a proposal. Well, maybe not. Maybe there your instincts are working against you because if you've been doing it thousands of times, you probably know once you send the proposal, they go quiet. And the deal tends to die. Well, they asked for a proposal, Brian. What am I supposed to do? Uh, not follow your instincts. And what really brought this to light for me in 2024 was that in the course, I was working with a great student who really was digging the course, really doing the work. Writing stuff down, really analyzing, asking hard questions, pushing me, pushing the other people in the course. You know, a great student. And we were doing a one-on-one and this deal ghosted him. And I asked him, why didn't you— or did you do this step? Well, I didn't feel it would really help. Or, well, I didn't want to sound like a rep. Okay, well, what does that have to do with doing the step? How you sound is up to you. The words you use are up to you. How you accomplish the step is up to you. I do it. Other people do it. We don't sound like sales reps. Well— And you know what it was? In that moment, He did not feel like it was the right thing to do, or he didn't want to break rapport. These are the things where our instincts get us in trouble. Let's take management. What does every first-time sales manager do? They want everyone to sell like them because it worked for them. Okay, well, you can have those steps, but you have to allow room for interpretation, room for improvising, improvising different ways of solving the same problem. But man, that doesn't feel right. It doesn't sound like they know what they're doing. Our instincts can get in our way in sales. And it really is one of the limiting things in our career because what always comes to us naturally is doing what we're asked to do, to be reactive. That is innate. Humans, mammals are all reactive creatures. Why is it so few people save for their retirement? Because they can't think ahead. They only think their next meal, their next nap. That's all. Mammals are really bad at thinking ahead. So we're reactive. We eat when we're hungry. We eat when we smell something. We eat when we're offered something. It makes sense. But in sales, we don't eat for months after we do something, after we find somebody, build up interest, get a deal moving. Sales is all proactive, unless you're one of those lucky few who has an order-taking job or a service clerk job. Then Ah, being reactive is fine. But what I always say to the B players who are order takers or service clerks is, I've never found a sales manager who wanted to hire an order taker. Why? Because it's not a skill. Anyone can do it. Why pay somebody multiple 6 figures to do it? Why pay commission? A lot of people. Why? It's just reactive. Well, you want them to have some skin in the game. Okay, they'll be nice. Yeah, I guess. So in sales, do you ignore your instincts? That's a big mistake. Do you solely listen to your instincts? That's a big mistake. You have to Take them into consideration because usually they're there for a good reason. Sometimes they're for a bad reason. And they'll always have our best interest in mind, our selfish interest in mind. And that will fog the clarity of those instincts. The number one law In the Maverick Selling Method is people will always do what's in their own best interest. They won't tell you, they won't show it, but they do. Now, here's the paradox. Salespeople will always do what's in their best interest. So there's a little contention there if they're not Identically matching. Or both people are hearing what they want to hear, not what's being said, not what's being meant, but what they want to hear. And this clouds your judgment. This is why when you tell a deal to your manager or to your officemate, they go, that deal's never closing. Or that's a sure thing. Why? Because their self-interest is not involved in the deal. They've heard some of those things before, and they don't think, oh, how bad they need the deal. How bad you need the deal clouds your instincts. So this is kind of the critical thing about sales and why In the course, I really insist of getting it out of your head and onto something, either a PowerPoint, a Word doc, a mind map, however you like to think of complex things. Because when it's in your head, you're going off of instincts, you're reactive. You cannot be proactive consistently If it's in your head, because your judgment is all mucked up with your own needs, your own feelings, and your own instincts. And this people don't get, and even managers don't get. I can't tell you the number of times I've been on a sales call with a manager with 20, 30 years more experience than me, and if I don't prep them, On some of the things that the customer is going to ask for or push for, they cave. They, they do the rookie move. They follow their instincts. Why? Because they want to have that next step in the deal. They want the progression of the deal, and they didn't really think through That, and they haven't heard it in probably a while. So they just punt. Yeah, sure. Yeah, we'd be happy to do that. And this is the cause of a lot of deals slipping, dying, or shrinking. So your instincts can be a trap. And I think what most people do is they only follow their instincts or they never follow their instincts. And both of those are wrong because you need to be authentic in front of a client. You need to sound natural. And what people do sometimes is they put on a sales persona so that they can follow the process in their mind. They have to come up with almost a different personality, a different voice to do that. And that comes across as cheesy, inauthentic, slimy sometimes on the bad side. And you don't want that either. And we also have to understand that if we don't proactively push ourselves through some of these instincts, we're going to think we're right in doing it. Why? Because it feels right, and we're feeling-based creatures, regardless of who says they don't have any feelings. I've had sales managers tell me, Brian, I don't go off of feelings. I go to you, are you married? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've been married for 15 years. Uh, so you, you got married because she makes more money than you, or What do you mean? Well, why'd you get married? Well, I was in love with her. Couldn't live without her. Is that a logic? No, that's a feeling. And a lot of people try and mask the feeling with words and pretend it's not going on. Well, it's going on whether you admit it or not. And This is kind of the conflict that people get when some people just don't understand or don't know why they like or dislike somebody. This is what happens. And this is why being liked and likable is so critical in sales. Because it's not about the product. If it was about the product, they could buy off the website. It's about them and whatever that means— solving a problem, getting a promotion, making their life easier, whatever it is. That's what it's about. And if they don't like you or vibe with you, are they going to talk with you? Sure. When they have to, not when they want to or you want to. That's what you want. And that's what they call the relationship thing in sales. If you want to learn more about this, there's a book by Daniel Kahneman called Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow. And although it's a good book and it's very popular, You know, thinking fast is your instincts. Thinking slow is your critical thinking, analyzing, wondering if I give them the proposal, is that expediting the deal or killing the deal? There you go. There's your instincts. Number 2 of my 2024 List of things. Time is something that salespeople are not working on. Now, here's the simplest thing for anyone in sales to increase their income is get better with how you invest your time. Because it is an investment. And once it's invested, It can't be regained. No one can buy another second, not even Elon. Nobody, nobody can buy another second, minute, hour. So how you invest it on what deals in what way is critical. Now, I did a lot of talks in 2024 and videos about applying Price's Law to time. So if you take the 2,000 hours that you're supposed to work in a year and you take the square root of that, it's approximately 45. I did that in my head. So, so 45 hours generates 50% of the results. Now, when you look at it that way, all of a sudden time is not Equal, meaning that Wednesday and Thursday are not equal. It's what you did on Wednesday or Thursday that separates them. And this is really something that you have to understand because mammals are not good with time. Not good at all. Nope. They're circadian creatures. That's us, us mammals, meaning that we're good at the, you know, get up, eat, run around, kill something, eat, go to sleep. That's what we are made to do. That's what our DNA tells us. That's what, if we were raised in the wild, we would do. And if you take the natural reactive way of investing your time, you'll be no different than anybody else. Now, let's take a little experiment. Let's say you had identical twins that were in parallel universes. One applied Price's Law to their time, found out what is the highest leverage things That generated the most results that you had control over, and how do you do more of them? That's one approach. The other approach is the other end. What took up time that you have control over that produced negative results or no results? And get rid of that. Do as little or none of it. And you can say, well, my manager makes— I said you have control over. And the other thing, if you say that in your head, oh, my manager, that's an external locus of control. I learned that in 2023. This is 2024. So Apply Price's Law. Do a postmortem on 2024. What actions did you take that generated the most results, and how can you do more of them and get better at them? And what wasted your time, and how do you eliminate that? It's not easy. It's completely proactive. 99% of you will not do it, or you won't do it immediately. Maybe you'll do it in December, but time is the thing, because in the parallel universe where one person does this and the other one doesn't, The one who does it is going to do so much better. Not just twice, maybe 3, maybe 5 times better. The people who know the deals to work on, in what order, and in what way. See, today the biggest problem I see is everyone is comfortable being busy. Doing things. They don't care what it is as long as they either enjoy doing it, know how to do it, or it passes the time. That's a distraction. That's not an action. The opposite of an action is a distraction. Most people today are very happy being distracted. Another thing I learned in my course— teaching, not Taking was that anything new is a little uncomfortable. It's counterintuitive. It is not instinctual, building off of point 1. So people avoid it. They would rather sometimes do something that's much less effective— sending spam, cold calling. Can they work? Of course they can work. But you're not in the course because they work. You're in the course because they're not working. So do you want it to work or do you want to be comfortable? Sales is not a comfortable profession. Sorry. If you want comfort, go into marketing. That's a really comfortable profession. You can sit in meetings and talk about fonts all day. But don't digress, Brian. So sales is a focused game, not a busy, busy distraction game. No one cares about how much stuff you did that produced nothing. No one cares. You might care, but nobody else. And so many people today are just happy being busy, but that's not enough. And being busy is addictive and it's hard to break. And people always sink down to the lowest common denominator of what they like to do. Sort through email, uh, play with LinkedIn all day, play with Instagram all day, uh, come up with the perfect whatever. Tell yourself whatever lie you want to. It's a lie. It's a focus game. Most of the people have too many meetings. Too many demos. The problem is they're to people who have no business being in a meeting or a demo. They're just willing to be in a business meeting or a demo. It's a distraction, and distractions are expensive. Would you do it on your vacation? That's what I always used to ask my reps. They go, of course not, that's my time. That's what they'd always say. Well, this is my time and you're wasting it. Focus on revenue, closable deals, qualified people, interested people, people who will talk to you, people you will talk to. Not this 17 touches in 17 days that was made up by people who never sold. The people who sold those products have never sold. I've interviewed them. Totally incompetent. They build these products for sales managers who love being busy because they don't know what they're doing. If your manager wants you to be busy, he doesn't know or she doesn't know how to sell. The first thing I do with the rep, I go, let's look at your calendar. There's too much stuff here. What's this? What's that? Why are you going there? Well, that trade show, you should be good. You're spending a week at a trade show? Come on. And look at time and really understand how much of it you have, because a year seems like an enormous amount until it's over. Look at 2024. Blink of an eye, wasn't it? I still have my 2024 calendar up and You know, I remember kind of the big moments in it, and it came down to a couple of really great focused opportunities for me. If yours is high transactional, maybe this isn't as applicable. If you got inbound, again, anyone can take an order, but few can sell. Let's move on. I think the next big one was stages and sales skills. These are the natural stages that we all go through. It's not a pejorative or me putting anyone down. These are just natural stages we go through. We crawl, we walk, we run. The problem is there's a lot of people who stuck Crawling, and they think they're running. They're running really slow on 4 legs. Arms and legs all ago. Look at me, I'm winning. And they're adamant about it. Why? Because their instincts tell them it works. And this is a trap. And let me explain. The first level is the service clerk level. And we all did this. Even though we took sales courses, read books, listened to podcasts, know what we should do, but the client wants to do something else. That's what I always heard a lot this year is they want to do this, which this is always something that's not buying, them not taking action, and us working, and they do nothing. Well, that's natural. That's what's in their best interest. It's not in our best interest, nor will it progress the deal. So we have to work with it. But as a service clerk, what do we do? We're very helpful, very smiley, very likable. We got that part down. We know the answers to the questions, and we can get proposals done faster than anybody. And we follow up, check in, touch base with them often. What's the problem with this, Brian? Well, the problem is we don't take in consideration the alternatives, including doing nothing. So we don't address those issues. We assume the person we're talking to is a decision maker. They told us they were the decision maker. They just didn't tell us what decision. Their decision is, do they work with us? Do they tell us stuff? That's their decision. And usually it's a no. So at this stage, what most people do is they get comfortable here. It's a very comfortable place. It's reactive, 100% reactive. Sending a proposal is not proactive. It's reactive. Checking in is not proactive, it's reactive. So what ends up happening? Sometimes you can be successful doing this if the— if there's enough demand, enough leads, the product's really good, whatever. And if you believe that this is selling, you may do well with that company. The problem is, wait till you try an interview when a sales manager goes, well, walk me through a deal that you started from scratch. And you hear, well, oh, I got this lead. No, no, no, the one you started from scratch. Well, yeah, well, this customer wanted to upgrade. No, no, started from scratch. And all of a sudden they fall apart because they don't understand what selling is. They think it's servicing, service clerk, like retail. In retail, people come to you. I mean, car sale is probably competitive. And that's really the next stage, is becoming a competitor where you know the client has many options, including doing nothing. And you start to get a sense that they're not the decision maker. And at this stage, you kind of— you want to go to battle. You want to win the deal. You want to fight and win. So you will learn the competitiveness. But you still don't understand how companies buy. So if it's a small dollar amount, or you're selling to the person that has the budget authority, or it's already approved, or you're in a category that's well established, You'll do pretty well here as well. The problem is that's not enough. You're going to lose more than half your deals. Sorry. Why? Because what if you're competing against a rep who's at the next level? They know how to work a champion. They understand that there's many people on the client side that get involved in this. Not directly, maybe indirectly. Or a lot of people who will throw a wrench in the deal. Not directly, maybe indirectly. And you need to figure that out. And you need to teach them how to get the procurement done, how to keep the deal moving, how to work the economic side, the political side, the administrative side, the legal side, the procurement side. All of that. That's the next stage. Now, why do people not progress? A lot because they don't think they need to. They have told themselves, or their instincts tell them, that they know how to do this because they've done it before. Now, this is really the genesis of the B-player trap. Because you get into a world where you're having success and you're attributing a disproportionate amount to yourself instead of the circumstances, instead of the product, the market, the economy, the territory, whatever. Now, when you face a new sales challenge, Go to a new company, get a new territory, whatever it is, and the deals are harder. The competition is stiffer. Um, the access to power is more difficult. What do you do? Most people blame everything but them. It's just a different sale. The first step is to know that this exists. The second is, okay, where am I on this? And there's no end to the stages because I've seen great salespeople, CEOs who are great salespeople, be able to do magical things. So there's no real pinnacle here, no real destination. They're skills, and they compound on each other. Why would you want to do this? Well, why are you in sales? Hopefully, you're in sales because you enjoy it, you're money motivated, and you're competitive. But what you really need is that deep will to work through your instincts, because you're at these stages. These early stages, your instincts are working against you. They're telling you you're fine, you're not the problem. And it doesn't matter what the problem is. What matters is you're not the solution. You have to become the solution. You have to work through it, or you start buying into these limiting beliefs and the blame game. And the external locus of control, that it is someone else's fault. And it doesn't matter whose fault it is. It's your income. So this is kind of why having a chip on your shoulder, having, you know, insane drive, competitiveness, that will push you through this. You know, when I was thinking about this particular element reminded me of college. I went to school at night, um, you know, basically part-time, and one of the requirements was English 3. I had to get 3 semesters of English, so English 3 was a requirement, um, and I— and there was this really tough teacher, and there was a scam where if you didn't do the final, you could take an incomplete, which didn't affect your GPA. But you had to pass English 3 to get your degree. Now, I'm 4 years into this. Not every night, but 3 nights a week, plus homework, plus working full-time. And of course, I left English 3 to the end. Why? It was that hard for me. If you've ever seen my writing, you'll understand why. I have dyslexia. English, or, you know, it's really hard to both write and read. So, and this was long before it was diagnosed. And I had the same frickin teacher because of the location for English for the first time I took English 3, the second time I took English 3. And I remember being in my car and I'm like, dude, what am I going to do? I took 2 incompletes in the same course. If I can't pass this, I can't get my degree. And this was a time where Degrees really mattered. And not only that, I'm 4 years in this. The money, the time, the embarrassment. And I broke down in my car and I go, somehow, some way, I'm gonna get through this. That's the type of determination you need in sales. Now, I could have given up. I could have found another location, maybe a different teacher, and try it again. And I remember that final where he gave me a D, and he smiled at me and he goes, you passed. And I think he had sympathy for me, but it was so hard, and most people would have given up. And if I had to do it today, I probably would have given up, but at the time, I knew I couldn't. That's where you need to be in sales. How do you push yourself through that service clerk stage Become a competitor to push yourself through that to become an enterprise salesperson. Push yourself through that to be able to sell without a champion, to sell bottom-up, top-down, whatever it is that works in your industry. This is the type of will you need. You may think that, oh, that's dramatic. Well, Sales is not a normal distribution curve where the B players make 10% less than the A players. The B players make 1/3 less than the A players. It's hard to believe, but it's true. And if, if that doesn't motivate you, then maybe sales isn't your bag. Because the jobs for the B players, you might get through, maybe, maybe, but maybe not. Because sales, the big money, the big rewards, all the things that you want are at the A-player level. Coasting in sales, you see some people do it. And if that's your thing, go ahead. I'm not trying to talk you out of it. I'm just trying to give you the, the landscape of reality so that you're prepared for it and don't just get comfortable in a trap. Because let's say you get stuck in the B-player trap for 5 years. It's really hard to wake up and say, you know what, I've been kind of skating along and coasting. I haven't really been pushing myself. And you don't— and you get to the point where you don't even see what you need to do. It's hard to. You need a wake-up call. Make this your wake-up call. Let's make 2025 your year, your year to accelerate. And if any of this stuff you need help with, Go to b2brevenue.com. There's 2 major courses. Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting. This is the prospecting course. This gets your calendar full of great conversations that turn into business meetings. It's not spamming. It's not cold calling. It's not pitching. It's human-to-human connection. If that's your thing, you want to learn how to do it, want to get good at it, That's the course for you, and you get it for a year. Now, in 2025 will be the last year I will be doing office hours live, meaning that in 2026, uh, people who have access to the course or buy it then will have 100% access to all the past office hours, which is well over 150. As well as all the one-on-ones. So if you really want to have a library of great content describing how to get meetings and how to close complex sales, this is it. No excuses. Or you can listen to your instincts and tell yourself you know it already. But if you tell yourself you know it and you don't, Who's lying? We'll see you next time. I got a bunch more. I'll do it on another episode. Thanks for listening. See my stuff fly by on LinkedIn. Give it a like, a little comment, a little share. Thanks for listening.