THE TOP 3 THINGS THIS REP DOES TO STAY OUT OF THE COMMODITY TRAP

How do we differentiate in the world, our world of sameness? How do we build trust when we're selling what the client believes is a commodity, a thing? And how do we avoid the commodity trap when it can be viewed as a commodity very easily? That's the topic of today. And we're digging into a lot of the core issues that we all face in business-to-business sales. And we're going to get into how to work around them. How to build that trust? How to differentiate when it appears identical? How to win when you're not the cheapest? How to get everybody in that decision path to buy into you, your company, and your product? Guess what? We all have the best differentiator in the world— ourselves. And people sense it. People know it. People want to work with the person who is going to help them the most. The easy person to work with. The enjoyable person to work with. Remember, in business-to-business, it's not their money. It's the company's money. And when I hear, oh, oh, it came down to budget, Brian. We were not the cheapest. We were not the lowest bid. Well, who cares? I don't think I ever was the lowest bidder, but I always liked winning. And somehow, some way, when somebody wants your product, they get it. And I think we too often fall into that commodity trap, and we buy into the commodity frame, vision, or perception of what it is instead of How we view it. And it's— that's what we call selling. It's getting somebody to look at the world our way, with questions, with rapport, with examples, with a little story, a little case study. Call it what you want. That's our job. Let's show you how. This one you definitely want to listen to. Now, we do get into a couple of running analogies, so if you're not a runner, Just replace running with whatever hobby you have that happens to be a performance one. But running's not really even performance. It's probably as close to pure work as you can get. You're just moving legs in front of each other. There's no artistic element to it. It's a lot of labor. But to become fast and be able to go long distances, uh, takes a lot of training. A lot of training, a lot of not so fun training, certainly at least at the beginning, and requires, you know, rest, diet, stretching, strength. Oh, see where I'm going with it? We got to break it down into little pieces. And this is what happens in sales. People sit at the surface level and they say, oh, I did everything I possibly could. Everything that they asked and still they don't go with us. Well, maybe it wasn't everything. Maybe there was something else. Let's get into this. And if you want to become great at B2B sales, go to b2brevenue.com. Got 2 videos, one on how the courses work, the logistics. We got an app now. Did I tell you that? I'll tell you more once you sign up. The other video is on which course is right for me. Now I did this video and it's pretty detailed, so please watch it before you either sign up or schedule a call. You can schedule a call with somebody on our team if you're ready to sign up. I know the prices are gonna go up, so you better do it today. But be ready to sign up because there's only so many spots available. Here we go.

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

Hey, Brian, my name's Michael Mead. I am CEO of FloorSeals America, which is actually a new startup division of a global manufacturer of engineering materials based out of Italy. So May of 2021, hopped on with them and have been starting up and leading the project here based out of the Houston area.

Cool. And how's it running so far?

It's been great. It's been a ton of fun. So I was previously a distributor for FloorSeals, so had 10 years of relationship with FloorSeals as a company and the knowledge of what they do. But I've been very, very fortunate. We got a great team growing and that's everything for me. The company's the people and I've been very, very fortunate to find the right people that are on board To grow this thing and and make it happen.

Was it scary going out on your own?

No, no, it wasn't. No, it was exciting. And I mean, I think you know going out on my own, I I have floor seals has 500 people. So I had a great support system over in Italy. So I never felt like I was on myself. But also, you know, I think I had done that before. I'm born and raised in Pittsburgh. And graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and then took a job with the San Antonio Spurs, which is how I got into sales, and moved down to Texas not knowing anybody, not ever being to Texas. I was surprised there wasn't tumbleweed rolling down the roads and everybody wasn't riding on horses, right?

So where'd you pick up your rent-a-horse?

Exactly. So I have always been— I have an adventurous side to me, and I'm very competitive, and I like a challenge. So I think overcoming that obstacle of moving away from my family, my support system, Uh, feel, feel, felt kind of fearless because of that. So.

It's cool. I once had Texas as a territory, even though I didn't live in Texas. I loved it.

Oh, fantastic.

I know. And the people are just straight shooters.

They're, yeah, they're very open and they're very friendly, right? I mean, Pittsburgh has a little bit more of a faster-paced mentality and mindset. Um, and I, I thought I would have never left Pittsburgh. It was funny, my, my college teammates, I was a track and cross-country runner. Are like, you're gonna stay in Pittsburgh, you're gonna go to your same high school, because I was so prideful and it represented it. And, um, here I am moving down to Texas and now I'm saying the same thing. I'm like, I'm never moving back. Uh, for me, the cure, the cure for the heat is a lot better than the cure for the winter. So I'd much rather have a hot summer than a cold winter.

And why sales for you?

You know, I feel like I've been in sales my whole life. Um, I always loved the Michael Jordan shoes growing up. We couldn't necessarily afford them, so I would work out deals with my parents and say, okay, I know we can't afford these $150 pair of sneakers, but you need the grass mowed, you need the floors washed, you need the house painted. And I would say, okay, how about if I do all these things for you instead of you paying people or whatever it is, you work these shoes out for me. So, and then that translated into several jobs and several things. So for me, I've always enjoyed it. It allows me to be creative. It taps into that creative side and allows me to connect with people. So I've always kind of felt destined to get into it. Now, very specifically and professionally speaking, I wanted to be an NBA player growing up. And then I realized that I'm 5'10 and I'm skinny and I'm not really that good at basketball. So coming out of college—

Other than that, you're sure as hell—

Other than that, I should have made it. I should be in the playoffs right now, Brian. But, um, but so I, coming out of college, I, I Google searched NBA jobs, uh, found the San Antonio Spurs, applied online, and, uh, got a job doing inside sales for them. And I said, wow, this sounds awesome. Okay, I'm, I'm not good enough to be on the court with Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili. I might as well sell for them. So got into their inside sales program and it was 80 to 100 cold calls every single day on the phone, uh, cold calling people to buy season ticket packages. And it's just kind of taken off from there.

And so what I heard so far is you like the independence of it, the creativity, the competitiveness, or?

Yeah, all the above. So I say this jokingly, I don't like being told what to do, right? So being in the sales world, it allows me to use my creativity and it allows me to work with people, right? I mean, I get genuine enjoyment helping people get to what they need to do. And I think that's kind of a separation in my sales approach versus others is sitting down with the customer, letting them tell us about their business, what they're trying to achieve, what they're trying to do, and then creatively finding a way to provide that solution. So that's what makes me very, very passionate. Absolutely.

And now going— I can see like working for the Spurs, it's exciting, it's glamorous. And then you went into the wild world of plastics.

So it's funny. It sounds glamorous, right? And it sounds really—

Plastics?

And it was funny when I went— no, no, no, the Spurs. The Spurs. Yeah. And that was when I, you know, I worked for the Spurs for a year, had a great experience. I think that was like sales boot camp, right? Because you're making all those calls. It's a tough sale. You're getting hung up on all the time. And then I moved over to the world of plastics where you're working with manufacturers and you're working with engineers to find a solution. I'm like, this is awesome, I love it. But then I would go back home and everybody would be like, hey, you're with the Spurs, you're with the Spurs, right? I'm like, no, I'm in plastics. And their interest would immediately cut off and they'd immediately go off and it would get lost, right? So yeah, no, I mean, I really enjoy the aspect of being in manufacturing, even with floor seals. You know, in the morning I may be talking with an oil and gas company and working on a solution for a valve, and then I'll get done and I'll talk with a semiconductor company on a certain tool that they need, and then we'll get over and we'll talk to a medical company. So for me, it's very dynamic and it's constantly moving, constantly changing. So there's constantly that challenge in those different outlets versus being mundane and coming in and doing the same thing or pushing the same product day in and day out.

And what's the hardest part of it?

Man, it's a competitive industry. It's a very, very competitive industry. There's a lot of manufacturers in it. There's a lot of representatives. And unfortunately, it's a commodity sale. So you can establish these relationships, which we do, and you can win an order, but then you have to win the next one. And our customers may be using our product and buying our product daily, weekly, monthly, Whatever it may be. So it's a constant fight and a constant battle. And unfortunately, a lot of the times people will just dive to the bottom on price. So that's why you have to have those relationships. You have to provide value and you have to separate yourself because if not, somebody will just come in and undercut you by 10% or 15%. And Brian, a lot of the times there's not a lot of long-term contracts. Now we try to go for those and they exist, But it's not so common of a thing. So you have to fight every day and you have to hustle for every order.

Yeah. And how do you differentiate yourself? I heard relationship, but what does it mean in this space? I don't—

Yeah. So, you know, it's funny because you hear everybody, that's the hot word, relationship selling, right? It's relationship selling. And to me, it's not, how's your kids? Do you like fish? Do you like the golf? Right? To me, you know, that's an aspect of it and it breaks the ice. But to me, it's How do you— and the biggest thing for me on relationship selling is how do you help them grow as a company? Or how do you help that person if it's a large corporation of 20,000 people? How do you help that individual in their role succeed and grow and achieve what they're looking to do and what their department's looking to do? And that's a relationship to me. And I think where I've had some success is building a relationship with my customer where they're growing. Right? And their company's growing and they're getting better. And I think that's where a lot of salespeople just wanna come in and they wanna get the sale and they're so focused on getting the win, but they're not focused on how they can actually get there. And, you know, not to digress too much, I learned a very valuable lesson as a track runner. And my senior year, I was the best runner on my team. I got hurt, right? And I wanted to win the Western Pennsylvania Championship. That was my goal all along. I got hurt, couldn't get back good enough in time. And to be honest with you, I probably wasn't good enough to win it on my own. But I realized that if I got on a relay team and I got the other 3 guys to buy into that project, for them to get better, for them to get on there, I could win the championship. And when I realized that it wasn't about me, it was about the team and working with everybody to get there. And I had a guy that was a sprinter that never did a distance event. I had another guy that was, you know, this and that. And when we all came together and we got the team to work collectively together, that's when we accomplished our goal, right? And that taught me a very valuable lesson as a salesperson is it's not necessarily about you, but if you can help other people get to where they're getting, that's how you're gonna grow your business. That's how you're gonna grow your sales. And that's where I've been fortunate enough to build these relationships that have lasted for me over a decade.

And that's what a lot of people in business to business don't understand. That they try and transfer the simple transactional sale, the season ticket type sale to the business to business.

Exactly.

Not only does it not work, it tends to backfire.

Without doubt. And if they don't, you may get that order and especially my business where you're fighting for every order, you can win a purchase order. Great. But for me, I don't want to win. I want to win the business forever. Right? Because especially in a commodity-based business such as ours, you can win a purchase order, it's great, but it's very hard to replace that customer. Once you have a customer to keep adding new ones and new ones. But if you can retain business and you can keep them and you can grow that, that's how you really actually grow a business and that's how you sustain it. So understanding how they work, what's important to them, and listening to that is what's gonna sustain your business long-term versus just Winning it, getting out the door and moving on to the next person.

Now, did somebody teach you this? Did you learn it through trial and error?

I've had a lot of really good mentors along the way. Absolutely. I think it's a combination of both. I mean, it starts from my parents, my family that I grew up around, coaches, right, that always implemented a method of team and a method of humility, right? And then even, you know, The atmosphere of floor seals, right? The ownership of floor seals and the family that started and still runs this company today. It's all about the team and it's all about helping and supporting others. And I think those mentorships maybe checked off that box or encouraged me to be myself and validated, okay, yeah, that is the right thing to do. So it was justifying and kind of saying, yeah, no, that is the right way to go and helped me to encourage me to be myself. myself and go through those ways.

And let's see now, who are you dealing with on the client side? Is it engineers, industrial engineers, or—

It's everybody. It's everybody. And sometimes, and it's normally a combination of them. So a lot of the times it's supply chain or purchasing that's cutting us the contract.

Yeah.

And you can fight the daily fight, which we do, of winning that order from supply chain. But a lot of the times, especially with these larger manufacturers, you're gonna have a design engineer that needs to have a certain performance and certain properties. And a lot of times they're gonna specify a certain product or certain requirements. So you need to engage them at that end. You have quality where it has to meet all of the, you know, it has to meet all of the requirements and everything else. And then there's also the sales side, right? A lot of times in manufacturing, especially in innovative companies, you're gonna have a sales rep that's driving a product line or doing the same thing where they're driving a solution to a customer. So for us, we want to be a shiny tool in that salesperson's tool belt, right? We may not always fit into their customer, their application, or the component, but we want to be something that they're excited to sell. So we want to make sure that they know they have our product, our support, and our technology to drive those things. So a lot of the times it's a combination of all of them. And I think That's what I've realized. That's what I've been mentored and that's what our team does is it's not just one person. And if you really want to develop a relationship, it takes a village versus just getting that one person in there.

Now I see a lot of salespeople making the mistake in industrial supplies only dealing with supply chain or approaching supply chain like they're the sole decision maker.

Exactly, exactly. And I mean, think about it, in a company of 10,000 people or 100 people, you really think only one person makes a decision? I mean, come on.

Right. And what else could they care about other than price? Everything else looks the same to them, right?

Absolutely. And, you know, I try to simplify things when I'm talking to people and I say, okay, even, you know, within my own household with my wife and I, when we go decide to make dinner at night or we're going to go out on a trip, There's multiple people that come into play on that decision. We have a 1-year-old baby, right? So we got to get the grandparents' approval that they can watch the baby and for how long. You know, we got to make sure that my wife's into it and she likes it and I like it and everybody else. I mean, even in simple decisions in your everyday life, there's a lot of times there's not one decision maker within it. So for them to think on a business side that they can solely depend on one person, come on. And I think even more of a reality Is, and I think where we do a good job is helping that person within the company get the message across throughout it, right? And, you know, you may sit down and talk to a supply chain person and they're very skilled and very technical on the supply chain side, but to expect them to pass along the technical engineering details of it and the properties and the requirements, it isn't fair. And think about it, they probably have a mountain of inquiries and requests that they have to get through. Why are, I mean, other than, okay, you may be a good job and you both might like to golf or be Pittsburgh Steelers fans together. Do you really think they're going to take the time out of their day to go explain to this engineer for an hour why your product's better than the other one?

Never. I've been in procurement. It's like, I do what I was told.

Salespeople call me all night and day and I go, I don't make those.

Oh, and think about supply chain people never get called on by sales guys. So you're the only salesperson they talk to that day, that week, that month. So you're making a lasting impact and they're gonna, they're just gonna run across the office and do everything for you. Come on.

Now, what do the design engineers care about or want from a salesperson?

I mean, so a lot of the times it's going to be performance-based. And I would say on a very simple level, you have your price discussion and you have your performance discussion. And a lot of the times price is going to be on the supply chain. side. With engineering or a design engineer, they're looking for innovation, they're looking for better performance, right? Or they're looking for ways to do something a bit different, right? So a lot of the times people will take a block or a shape of something and then they're gonna make their finished part. Well, there's different processes of making that, right? Melting it and turning it into a solid so you can get different performances out of that. Also, you can maybe make a shape that isn't so big, so you're not removing so much, you're not taking so much waste away. So there's a lot of different ways to find value, right? But in reality, a lot of the times I ask that exact question to a design engineer. So what are you looking for? What's important to you, right? And what is it? Because sometimes it's a lot more simple than you make it out to be. So for me, a lot of the times, and I think a lot of salespeople do this, they assume they know the answer or they assume they know the problem of the customer. Ask them, right? Because—

Yeah.

Yeah, because the other thing is, and I think we do this a lot as salespeople, we come in knowing what we want, them to buy our product, right? But, and sure, you can use persuasion, you can use a lot of things to get them there, but you have to allow that customer, whether it's an engineer, whether it's a purchasing person, to work through their own mental progression and their own train of thought to get to the point, okay, Here's value, right? And here's an opportunity for something that's a little bit different. Here's something that may need to be there. You already know that in your head, right? But it may take them time to get there, and you have to allow them to do that. And if you just tell them, here's your problem, here's your solution, here's your answer, is it really gonna stick? Probably not. Maybe, maybe, but probably not. But if you ask them to identify their problem, And I'm sorry, I'm going off here, Brian, but you know, a lot of the times it's funny.

No, it's good.

Go ahead. A lot of the times you sit down and you talk to a purchasing person and say, oh, what kind of issues are you having? None. Everything's great. We love our supplier. Then you bring in a quality person or you bring in a receiving person and say, man, these guys' material comes in every time with gashes in them. They package it like crap or this and that. Or you know what? Hey, we've had a lot of these rejections and we've just been eating a 30% rejection rate. Well, that never got passed along and they never got told because they didn't ask the question.

Well, also salespeople don't understand that these design engineers, no one likes to listen to them, right? You think their spouse is like, tell me again how you made that widget. They don't care.

There's like, right?

But to a salesperson, it's like, I can talk to somebody else about plastics all day.

What you just said, I think is a secret weapon within sales because you're totally true. I love my wife to death and we sit down, we come and talk about work. But if I actually get into the mechanical properties of a stem packing for an oil and gas well, it's right over her head. And same to her. I enjoy what she does. She's in financial planning. When she starts using acronyms for this and that and everything else, my eyes glaze over, right?

Yeah.

No, it's— in a sales opportunity, you sit down with an engineer, you sit down with anybody, and you ask them, tell me about what you do within your job, tell me about what it is. Then all of a sudden, they're gonna— this is their opportunity to actually talk about what they do, what they spend at least 40 hours a week of their life doing, and somebody that actually cares and actually listens and actually understands their language.

Has a similar passion.

Exactly. It's amazing. And then all of a sudden, before you know it, they're giving you all the answers to the test and you didn't even have to ask it to them.

Because nobody is curious about what they do. They're kind of like in this room, whatever they do, it works. I don't know.

Well, and even like you said, I mean, like we talked about earlier on the call, when I, when I worked for the Spurs, people wanted to hear about it. Now that I'm in plastics, nobody cares. Nobody wants to hear about what life in plastics is like. It's not that exciting to them. It's not.

And why do you think most reps don't get this? Is it they don't want to? They're lazy? They're focused on just what they want? They're burnt out from procurement or?

You know, my answer to this is how I like to lead my sales team. And I think there's a lot of pressure on sales to produce and they have to produce and it may be monthly, it may be weekly, it may be daily and you have to produce, you have to bring the numbers. And I think a lot of the times they get focused on the pressure of that and also the glory of the sale, right? I mean, how sweet is it to get the purchase order, to get the sale, to have your numbers, to be the top sales rep? So the focus becomes on the results and not the process and not the activity to get there.

Yeah.

And as cheesy as it is, I'm a huge salesperson. You hear, you know, you hear stuff about Kobe Bryant, you hear stuff about LeBron James, and it's always those guys are obsessed in the process. Right? They love it. They love the training. They love getting up. LeBron James, every offseason, is working on refining his skills. He's adding something. He's adding a postgame. He's adding this. He's doing whatever. And then those are the guys that win the championships because they're obsessed in the process and they enjoy it. Tom Brady, he's a psycho, right? He loves it, but he loves the details of it. He's psyched to be there. Just so happens to win a Super Bowl every other year, but it's, it's not. But those guys aren't focused on just the end result. They're focused on every little detail that gets there. And I think it's a combination, by the way, that a lot of salespeople are managed and measured and evaluated and pushed versus also just what's glorified by it. So for me, I try to focus on here's our plan, right? Here's the details that go into it and make it fun, right? Make it fun. Every day we come in, we're in here 40 hours a week, Sales, it's normally a lot more than that. Enjoy the process, have fun with it, because if you're only— it's a very vicious cycle and it's almost like a drug. If all you do is chase that order, then, you know, you want a bigger one, you want the next one, you want the next one, and then it never becomes enough. And that order never becomes enough and it loses its gratification and its satisfaction. And then before you know it, you know, you have those lulls. You lose your enjoyment in it. So for me, you got to find a way to appreciate the day in and the day out of it and the steps of it, because if not, eventually, the longer you're in sales, you're going to lose the glory of the win.

Yeah. And your track background, because track is kind of different than baseball, football, basketball that has a season. Even though track has a season, you've got to train all year long.

You can't—

Absolutely.

Take the winter off and then put your sneakers on May 1st and hope to, you know, do a good 5 miles.

So, so, and I, I was a distance runner, so I cross-country in the fall, indoor track in the winter, outdoor track in the, in the spring, and then summer is where you build your endurance and your strength. And, and there's— and, and I see 2 sides of that that I've applied to the professional world. Number one, there's no hiding, right?

There's no faking it when you run.

When you run, there's no faking it. You can't You can't let your teammates pick it up for you that day. You can't get a foul call, right? There's no denying who makes it from A to B the fastest is the winner. End of story. No discussion, right? So there's no hiding within those.

No style points.

So no, no, no, there's definitely not, especially in cross country, right? Uh, running through the woods and everything. So you have to put the work in and you have to do it and you have to be there. The other side is being a distance runner. You can't go all out every single day. If you went out— and I used to run 12 to 16 miles a day in college. I ran 12 to 16 miles a day. If I went out and ran as hard as I could every single day, I'm gonna get hurt.

You're gonna get hurt.

And, and a lot of distance runners end up hurting themselves because they push too hard. So you have to learn balance, and you have to learn, I just can't go out and run as hard as I can every single possible day because number one, I'm gonna get hurt. Number two, I can't sustain that. Your body can't keep up with it. So you have to learn how to take easy days. You have to learn how to take days in the middle, and you have to learn that pace. And you also have to buy into the long term. The season starts in the summer, right? So you start your summer training, you're building in your endurance base, you're building that strength. And then as the season comes, everything comes to tapering for that championship race. And you want to plan everything to taper for that championship race. So for me, I, I am very impatient. I'm a very, very impatient person and I'm very competitive. Running taught me that I have to buy into the plan and I have to put in the work day in and day out, but I have to buy into the long-term plan of it because if I expect the results right now and if I peak, if I get my absolute best at the beginning of the season, it's very unlikely I'm gonna be able to sustain that. And I think it's the same thing with sales. You know, even being a traveling salesperson, you may wanna hit the road every single day, travel every single week. Well, guess what? How are you really gonna follow up on those inquiries? Are you really, you know, if you traveled and, and I did that, I got into, in, in my previous role at a distributor, I was in outside sales for a year and then I, I got promoted up into an aircraft role and I ran the aircraft program for the entire country, or actually globally. And I was so excited to have free reins to sell anybody anywhere. I traveled for 11 weeks straight. That 11th week I got sick. I was tired. And then I said, wait, who are those guys that I met the first week and the third week in that really good meeting? And then it was just activity, but there wasn't any results coming out of it. Yeah. So I've learned through that, just like in running, you have to pace yourself through it and you have to have that end plan that you're working towards. Because if you're just going crazy calling everybody, meeting with everyone, the reality of you actually getting to your end result isn't gonna happen.

There are so many great analogies, but I'm a cross-country runner as well. And I, in freshman year, I made the mistake of, I ran maybe 5 times during the summer. So I go to, and we had double sessions, which was 5 in the morning and 5 at night.

Wow.

Well, I did that for 2 weeks. The first week in school, I couldn't walk up the stairs. My legs were so sore. So you learn that if you don't do the training, there's no cheating. There's no cheating, no cutting the process. There's no shortcuts.

Yeah. And I mean, I think even just like in sales, and I'm buying, I'm going all in on this analogy. You can run and that's great. And you go out and get your runs in and you can be a pretty good runner. But if you want to get to the elite level, and Brian, I ran collegiately, but I was way out of my league. I mean, I would get smoked by these guys. I was lucky to be there. And I think once you get there, so you can do the running and you can train, you can run every day, but then if you really wanna take it to the next level, then you gotta work on your sleep and you have to get adequate sleep every night. Yeah.

And nutrition.

You have to do that and you have to eat right. And then, you know, maybe stretch afterwards, maybe do some different, you know, biometrics or some lightweight training and the ice bath and everything like that, right? So it's the same thing. Okay, great. You can just, you can just call people and cold call every single day and do that. And you're probably gonna have some success. But if you wanna get to the next level, are you technical? Do you have the technical knowledge? Do you understand your customers, right? Do you understand what your buyers are looking for? And do you understand the mentality and where they're going, right? And evolving those skills and those skill sets, that's what's gonna take you to the next level versus just, you know, going all in on one thing.

Well, hey, this has been a great discussion. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

So I'm on LinkedIn, Michael Mead. I am, like I said, I'm the CEO of Floor Sales America. We're here in Stafford, Texas. It's one of our 10 global locations. So yeah, reach out on LinkedIn and you can have all my information from there.

Have you noticed a lot of the same or similar themes keep popping up on these interviews? One is that These aren't the fast-talking people that you think would be the best salespeople in the world. They're very thoughtful, down-to-earth, calm, collected, giving people, not taking. And early in my podcast, you know, years ago when I started it, I used to bring up that sales is a giving profession, not a taking profession. And a lot of people either didn't understand that, didn't understand my I said, giving? What do you mean give? What am I supposed to give? We give our time. We give our attention. We give our interest. We give our curiosity. We give our help, our advice, our thoughts, our opinions. But we do it with their best intention in mind. That's the key difference. Bad salespeople or okay salespeople, they talk about themselves, what they want, the outcome they need. Smart salespeople, that's a natural outcome of the giving. You don't have to hound when you're busy giving to that person because they reciprocate. Typically not as fast as we like, but they do. As opposed to the, the person who's hounding them, they block. They shut down. They remove from their lives. They might— may not tell you, but that's what's going on. And few of us are aware of that. So we think, oh, maybe they're on vacation, or maybe I need to talk to somebody else there. Yeah, maybe, or maybe not. These are the critical things that I think is being crushed today in sales because everybody wants to build a machine And you can build a machine if you get inbound. If you build a great product, great marketing, and you've got lots of inbound, you can, you can build a reasonably good machine. You know, if the product's priced reasonably and there's interest and demand and it's easy to use and there's clear differentiators. Have you found that company? I haven't. I looked for it my whole life. But the people who hire salespeople and are willing to pay well for salespeople, it's because the product is good, it works, people like it, but it's a niche or a new market or a difficult market where there's uniqueness to it that needs to be appreciated to get the additional margin for it. Most of us are in that market because companies don't hire salespeople just to check a box. They hire salespeople because they need sales, sales, and the only way to get it is with people. So they have to put the 2 words together. Most companies don't like salespeople, don't like paying commission, don't like changing. Believe me, I deal with my vendors as well. When they tell me it's a feature and not a bug. Uh, it's a bug. Sorry. As salespeople, we have to understand what the client's going through instead of just trying to do more in less time, trying to find that unique customer who isn't going to complain, doesn't want to test it out, just has more money than know what to do with. And he wants a quick deal. I love those customers. They're just hard to find. That's all. We need to build those customers, create them, construct them, not find them. I'll teach you how. This is your life, your career. You chose it. And to not become the best you can be early as possible in your career is malpractice. It really is. You should really question your career strategy if you don't want to become better at sales. And I got to believe if you're listening to a sales podcast, you want to become better. I know you like the tips and tricks. And Brian, what's the best time of day to send spam? I don't care. I don't send spam. Oh, but I have to. How about cold calling? I don't cold call.

Why?

It's just not that effective. If it works for you, congratulations. I've got a smarter way. I build conversations with people that turn into deals. And, oh, well, you're big on LinkedIn. That's why it's easy for you. Well, most of the people that I get in touch with They're not that active on LinkedIn, and they didn't know who I was before I contacted them. Doesn't mean they don't want to talk to me once I explain how I can help them. And my curiosity and my interest is about helping them because I know if I help them, they will help me because that's how the world works. I'll I know everybody else out there is waiting for, I'll help them once they help me. Doesn't work that way. You've got the law of reciprocation backwards. Most people do. It's natural. Once you turn it around, all of a sudden things start to work a lot better. Not in every case, but in most, and enough to crush it. Because that's why we're here. So, you know, whether you, you know, have a passion for sales or not, you got to get good at it. Because when you're good at sales, it's a lot of fun. It's a great profession. When you're not having success in sales, it's not that much fun. Believe me. Yeah, I've been in those real bad situations where the product's not there or the territory is Barren. There's no leads, lots of pressure, uh, no understanding from management, but we still have to sell. And guess what? They still need you to sell. They want you to sell. And they're not changing. Very rarely does a company change for the better.

They do change though.

So if you want to become great, go to b2brevenue.com and here's what you get. Because this isn't like all the online courses. I know they're popping up all over the place. Here's the difference. Course has been online in its current form factor for 5 years now. Now it's alive. All the modules have been changed and updated, but you get office hours, which is a live meetup every other Friday per course. It's an hour long. They record it and put back in the course. And here's the magic. I put them all back in the course so you can go all the way back to the very beginning and listen to them. And guess what? I keep them evergreen. So we try and stay away from current events and focus on how to sell so that it's not contextual on the time of year or in history, because most of the stuff— I'd say 95% of the stuff Is evergreen. We're going to see it today, saw it 5 years ago, saw it 50 years ago, going to see it 50 years from now. How people behave, how they build trust, how they open up, how do you keep a deal moving, how companies buy, how we don't know how companies buy, how our clients don't know how companies buy, and how to get them to buy. Because if they don't buy, This is essentially academic. So sign up today, get serious about it. And there's an app now so you can listen to all this stuff on your smartphone as you go running or cooking or playing video games, whatever it is you do in your free time, or listen to podcasts. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening. If you see the— My stuff fly by on LinkedIn. Give it a little like, a little comment, a little share. You'll have a friend for life.

See you next time.