THE TOP 3 THINGS THIS REP DOES TO BECOME SUCCESSFUL

Today we got a great guest, a podcast listener, and somebody I've gotten to know as a salesperson. And I think you're really going to enjoy the interview. And it— I've been doing a lot of research on what it takes to be a great salesperson and a great sales leader. And what I find is that people tend to either oversimplify or over—

Complicate.

Complexify the sales process. And either one is wrong, or either incomplete or distracting. What we need to do as reps is model our sale and cover all of the complexities that are there, whether we admit it or not. I did a poll on LinkedIn where I asked, how important it is to have been a salesperson to be able to lead sales. Now, a lot of people poo-pooed it. A lot of people said, oh, the best players don't make the best coaches. They used a lot of sports analogies. And one that really stuck with me, one that was, you don't have to have been a horse to be a jockey. And the assumption there is that sales is like A finite game, you know, that where there's a start time and end time, there's written rules, there's a referee, uh, there's plays, and there's time, and there's complete and openness where everyone sees what everyone's doing. Well, that doesn't happen in sales. You know, we have a few meetings with people The number of people who can get involved at some level is pretty big, even if it's just for influence, not approval. People who can just say no or distract. And the timeline— when does it really start? Does it start when you start talking to them, or does it start before that when they hear about you? When does it end? Does it end on the PO? Does it end on not this quarter? Does it end on you getting paid? Or does it end on them being great reference? What can go wrong?

A lot, right?

So you can say, oh, you're overcomplexifying it. But if you don't win, does it matter how simple it was? We already don't have the deal. Our job is to get the deal. And we have to understand the whole game that we're playing and not, uh, just condense it down to a platitude that it's all about relationships, or, oh, they like us, or, you know, they're gonna do it because they have to. We have to understand all these elements and become great at it. Now, I'll sum up this interview at the end, But I'd listen kind of close because this person's journey, and he's a top rep, is pretty critical.

Here we go. Hey, Sam, thanks for joining us today. As a way of getting started, give us a little background on yourself.

Oh, hi, Brian. Yeah, great to be here. Massive long-term fan of the show and all of your content. Regularly have your podcast on while I'm preparing dinner in the evenings and My wife actually jokes that there's 3 people in our marriage. There's me, her, and Brian Burns. She's so used to hearing you as I prepare my meals in the evening. But yeah, I'm Sam Parnell, based over in the UK. I'm a business development director working for eClinical Solutions at the moment, and we're a tech vendor working in the life sciences space. So we help pharmaceutical companies gain better control over their data, collecting loads of data as everybody is in all industries at the moment. And often is the case, people don't have the infrastructure by which they can get their arms around the data and leverage it for what they need to.

So yeah, sounds like a pretty easy sale.

I wish it was. Yeah, it's probably the toughest one I've done so far. Is it? It really is. I think I've had the I've had the good fortune to have a pretty varied career across the board, actually.

Yeah.

Yeah, you've probably seen from LinkedIn and my— the various companies I've worked at. I've kind of dotted between different industries. I've had a whole mix of everything from big blue-chip corporates through to complete startups, and then everything in between. And I think The size of company I've landed at now is where I feel most happy, actually.

Yeah, why is that? What do you like about it?

It's not— I've done the startup thing, the complete startup where you're scrabbling around trying to find product market fit. You're not entirely sure what that might be and you're basically just leveraging Rolodex to try and get into accounts and it's fun. Um, but I think it's, uh, it, it's not necessarily sustainable. And I think for me, with my skill set, I prefer, prefer to work for organizations and have technology that at least has, uh, a little bit of kind of, um, product-market fit, and you've established some existing customers that you can build upon. I think that's what I do best.

Yeah. And you didn't like the bigger companies where there was Too much infrastructure, maybe?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's the polar opposite. So I've done some huge companies, the FTSE 100-sized organizations, and they're great for getting your foot in the door because everybody will see you because you've got the brand recognition. Um, but actually getting anything done, both internally and being creative as a salesperson as well, is, is Is a lot more challenging in those bigger companies.

Yeah, you know, 'cause I did a big company through an acquisition and it was probably more work trying to get something done internally than it was to sell something.

Yeah, exactly. That's the biggest challenge.

And what do you like about sales?

I love, I think if I was, I like money, number one. Sometimes you feel embarrassed to say that, but I think it's a good thing to be able to earn a lot of money. And I think the thing for me that I really like is that any— it's a real kind of leveler, 'cause as an individual contributor, you can go and walk into some of these huge organizations and influence the direct— even though it sounds a bit grandiose, but the direction that that company is going. is going to move forward strategically with the technology that you're selling. And it's all on you as the individual. Surely you've got a team around you that help you out with that. But I think there's an element of, wow, I can get— I could really influence something here as an individual who hasn't gone to uni and studied law or medicine or something like that. It's all on the person. Yeah, I find that quite motivating. find it pretty motivating. It's exciting. Yeah. Yeah.

And you came highly recommended for the show.

What do you think motivated people to do that?

It's a good question, actually. So I think the people that recommended me are people that I've worked with. And I think what they've probably seen in my approach is I'm quite meticulous around preparation.

Yeah.

I think I, I didn't used to be, but I think you get burnt a couple of times, particularly as you get into the more complex sail, actually, and the technical sail too. Uh, you go in unprepared or without the right team, um, you're soon found out, you're found wanting. And I don't know, I take things— I'm the kind of guy that, uh, I don't want to feel like an idiot in the room. So yeah.

And people tend to think that you're going to get a do-over, that, oh yeah, let's come back again. It's like, no, that was your chance.

Well, yeah, it really is. So for me, I think the penny dropped for me about the whole kind of sales thing was when I realized that it is a performance. And to perform well, you've got to practice, you've got to analyze what you do well, um, and you've got to perform on the day too. And, and that takes a lot of effort and a lot of thinking and preparation.

Yeah.

And, and, and for me, that, that is the fundamental thing that I think, um, I try and take with me in everything. It's like, this is a performance, what we're doing today.

Yeah, and I think that too many people think, oh, it's just like, let's see how it goes. Yeah, well, the default is it doesn't go well.

Yeah, I am not the guy that can think quick enough on his feet to just see how it goes and wing it.

And I always thought, like, how much time did it take you to get that opportunity to perform?

Well, yeah, that's it. Like, The number, if you start thinking about the actual numbers of customer-facing meetings versus the effort to get there, and then the actual effort into the preparation of the meeting sometimes is minuscule versus the amount of hours you put in to generate the meeting.

Yeah, I mean, if it takes, you know, 4 or 5 days to get a great opportunity to meet, Spend 2 or 3 hours maybe preparing.

Absolutely.

Practice a couple times, maybe think through what do you think they're going to push back on, how do we get the next meeting after this.

No, I, I'm with you. I, I think the, the more complex and technical sale that I've got into, the more I've actually had to do this because it's one— I think there's a whole sort of various different reasons around that. I think when you're working in a technical and complex environment, the language and all of the subtleties of that industry. If you're not prepared, that can baffle you and you get into the meeting environment and you're worrying about the wrong thing. Whereby, in my experience, particularly if you have a presentation or something like that, I will actually sometimes write out what I want to say in advance. I don't read it verbatim, But because I've written it out, I think about the words that I want to use. And I think the words that you use and the way that you use them are so important, really are.

It is. And, you know, I came to this conclusion luckily early in my career, because if you blow that opportunity, there were only a few of them.

Yeah, there really are. And it takes— it's worth taking the time to invest the effort up front. And yeah, I think it does a number of things as well, because if it is a presentation to an audience, if you've done that prep up front, you still have the adrenaline, but it's, it's less, it's less so and it's less apparent. And, um, I don't know, uh, I kind of took quite a lot from a, um, there was an England rugby coach called, uh, Sir Clive Woodward who took England through to the World Cup final, and we won in 2000 and, uh, 2003 it was. And he had this whole concept called Teacup, thinking clearly under pressure. And I took a lot about from that because his whole kind of mantra was, if I can get the team so well practiced and rehearsed that when it comes to being in a pressured environment, they're in their flow state and it's just natural then good things are going to happen. And I think you can translate that into the business context every day of the week.

Yeah, you can. And that's really how our brain works. And that's why, you know, pretty much every athletic pursuit, it's just this constant repetition of building up skills and practice so that when you are under pressure, your subconscious takes over. You don't have to consciously think.

That's it, Brian. And I think you feel that when you're in kind of these— particularly, I actually find on Zoom calls and team calls where you've got a big audience, you actually feel like you're in that flow state if you've done that preparation upfront, literally in the presentation. Whereby if you don't do that, I do find with these types of calls, particularly with a big audience, you can very quickly particularly because you can't read the room, start to go under. And it's quite hard to come back from it.

And I always had this saying. I go, I've never overprepared for a qualified meeting.

Yes, that is key. Yeah. The key is the qualified bit because you can go— Yeah.

If you're just meeting someone for coffee and you don't know where it is or what state they're in, they may be looking for a job. Not looking for your product. Okay, that's kind of unqualified. But if you've had a couple of conversations with somebody and they look— they have the problem you solve.

Yeah.

And they're curious or interested in learning more, that's qualified.

Yeah. And then the preparation comes in.

Yeah. And I've never left that going, you know, I'm really way overqualified or overprepared.

I know, it's, it's, uh, it is funny that, that so many people leave these things to chance. And, uh, yeah.

And where do you get this competitiveness or this desire to win?

Yeah, so I, uh, I'll give you a bit of, um, my backstory if you like, because that will, uh, help answer this question. So I kind of, I drifted into sales. Nobody— I went through school, Wasn't particularly academic. In fact, I wasn't— you sometimes hear about the only, like, the person being the first person in the family to go to university. I was actually the only person in my family not to go to university. So the real black sheep, if you like.

Yeah.

And it just didn't click for me at school. I couldn't, like, join up the dots between, I don't know, like, lighting something in a Bunsen burner and how that would then translate into me doing something in the real world.

Interesting.

Yeah. Yeah, so that didn't really click. And, um, I ended up joining the Army at 17.

Wow.

And, uh, yeah, so I was in military intelligence in the Army, traveled a bit of the world, um, had some fun doing that. Um, didn't really like being told what to do all the time. Yeah, all the time. Um, which is kind of important if you want a long-term career in the forces. So, uh, yeah, after, after 5 years, I got out of the Army and, um, I didn't really know what I wanted to do going forward. So I actually don't know how I got into my first sales job, but it was a job selling gym memberships basically to the general public.

Yeah.

And I actually, I loved it. I thought it was great 'cause it was communication and I did a lot of that in the army. It was meeting people, it was making them feel good about something because that's what they were joining a gym to do.

Yeah.

And learned some pretty sort of raw, very transactional type of sale, but cut my teeth on it there. And then I got into medical device sales and kind of carried that forward and worked for a few different big companies on the medical device side of things, but always found that the kind of people approach resonated, and particularly in medical devices actually, because I was selling to surgeons, and surgeons are— well, everybody has an ego, but surgeons are known to have a very big ego, and they, they are so interested in their craft of surgery. And all you have to do to get on with them is ask them about surgery, and then look out.

Yeah, there goes an hour.

Yeah. And, and like, I built on that approach, and I, I actually had, um, surgeons come to my wedding because I developed such great relationships over a period of time.

Oh, nice.

So it all evolved to that. So, but anyway, I'm not answering your question. I think competitiveness, I swam a lot at school and through the age groups and from a sort of a national championships perspective was up there or thereabouts. And I played a lot of rugby too.

So we talked about the preparation, but how about the interpersonal skills?

Yeah. I think that clearly that's key. And what I've learned over the years is that generally people care most about themselves. Yeah, they do.

It usually takes us a while to figure that out.

It does. And I think when you first get into sales, you're taught to do the pitch and—

Talk about yourself.

Talk about yourself and how great the product is and all of that good stuff. And it just doesn't really wash because everybody cares about themselves the most. So I think the key for interpersonal skills for me in our context is to try and be interested in the person that you're dealing with.

Yeah.

Because that will help you no end because that's about themselves. So, and if you can build upon that and be genuinely and legitimately interested, and I'm lucky because I've always worked in domains that I've actually had a legitimate interest in. And I think it sometimes helps coming from— not coming from that background because there's so much to learn. Yeah, yeah. And that gives you an opportunity to be authentically interested in the, uh, industry and domain that you're working in, and you've always got great questions to ask. So—

And were you ever intimidated selling to like surgeons? Because I don't see any medical background.

Yeah, totally. Yeah.

So going from no background to sell— surgeons are kind of like on the top of the hierarchy, aren't they?

Yeah, they are. I actually, I now sell to scientists and data scientists and other people working in life sciences. They're a more challenging audience than surgeons.

They're not known for their social skills, are they?

They're not. And they, they, they're normally very bright, um, and they're working in organizations, Big Pharma, etc., so they're very commercially astute too. So you've got this mix of intelligence and commercial astuteness, um, that makes them a kind of a formidable opponent if you're getting into a discussion with them. So you've got to be on your A-game. And surgeons are the same, but surgeons are very tunnel-visioned into helping the patient and what's right for the patient. So if you can get into that psyche, you can get them on board quite quickly. But yeah, I've always had slight imposter syndrome because I come from a background with limited— I didn't go to university or anything, I don't have a degree, but I've never found it a limiter. Well, only personally, a personal limiter.

Yeah, the personal limiter. But, you know, there's so much on the internet now Yeah. That all it really takes is work.

It does. Yeah, you can Google something, go onto YouTube. You can even— you can join industry forum groups. I do that now. I'm in a forum group for data managers in our industry. And it's a great network around— you learn.

You learn, you write down the words, you Google them, find out what they mean. And then you have to Google every word in the definition to find out what they mean.

Yes, you do.

But, you know, because people always value the degree so highly, but the need to go to that magic building and listen to the magic people, you don't have to do that anymore. You just have to search for the magic people.

You do. You really do. And I've often thought, should I go back and do a degree? And toyed with doing an MBA. and all of that good stuff. And there's never been that kind of compelling thing about the course that I would be signing up for that makes me interested enough to want to do it, actually.

Right, because as a salesperson, you want to learn about a certain thread through that stack of knowledge.

Yeah.

You don't want to take 6 months of psychology to learn about one particular thing, or 6 months of data science Exactly. And I always look at like formal education as kind of like your personal trainer. If you don't have the motivation to go run and lift weights and stretch on your own, you have to go to the gym. Yeah, you have to hire somebody to count to 12 while you lift those weights because you don't have the structure, the discipline to do it on your own.

I think that's it. It's a really good way of looking at it. And I think I used to think it was a limiter because often you'd see on job adverts that must have a bachelor's degree. But once— even my little stint doing gym sales gave me the experience I then needed to have to jump into medical device sales. Even though they asked for a degree, it wasn't required because I had sales experience, I had good track record, and I was able to come in and do a presentation, do a role play at an assessment center, and I'd at least sold something in the past versus nothing.

This is what reps always bring that up, because I always say, you know, college degree for a rep, you know, if you want to do it, you have time and you have money, go do it. But if you don't and you don't want to, but oh, the company requires it, I go, if you can't get over that objection, sales is going to be very challenging for you because the person hiring you is not HR, it's the sales manager. What do they want? People who can sell stuff.

Exactly. So yeah, it amazes me that they're still on job descriptions.

Some of them have MBAs on there with 15 years of experience for entry level. It's just, it's boilerplate. It's cut and paste. No one's thinking.

I know.

I know.

It's crazy. But yeah.

How about as far as like keeping your focus? You clearly know what the flow state is and, you know, state management. How do you keep that on target?

Habit, basically. I think I perform best when I have good routines.

Yeah.

So, doesn't happen every day, but alarm clock at 5:00 AM, run and walk the dog, scheduled prospecting, and then the pipeline development and customer meetings in the afternoon. Don't drink too much at night and early night and get up again and do the same in the morning. I think if I, I've worked it out, if I stick to those types routines, I'm in the right mental headspace to perform.

Yeah.

If I start to fluctuate out of that and have late nights or miss stuff or don't walk the dog in the morning or whatever, then things start— the difficult stuff in the calendar starts to get pushed out or doesn't happen. And yeah, when you start to realize that, you understand how important routine and habit is.

Yeah, and I found that as well, in that, you know, even though I get up early, I still set an alarm because it just gets me. And what I find is the faster I can get out of the house, the better. So I go for a run in the morning, and after that run, I feel like fantastic. Yeah, you know, his endorphins are going. And it's still super early, right? Yeah, you got the whole day ahead. If you, if you don't have that set time, you tend to like pick up the phone and goof off, and it feels kind of like work, but it's not real work.

No, it, it's not. It's really important. I, I get really great ideas when I'm out running as well. I find it, it stimulates the creative juices. You can play forward in your head what an important meeting might look like. I do that. I had an important meeting on Wednesday this week, and I went out and did hill sprints for about an hour and a half before I went out and did some hill sprints, and it just put me in the zone for performing at the meeting. And, uh, yeah, people that listen to this probably think that's mad, but I, I personally think It has a big effect.

Well, it does, because it gets the breathing going, which forces your brain to think differently.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden, it's like the shower. You get good ideas in the shower because you got a routine and you're not going anywhere. And all of a sudden, boom, some idea comes together.

It does.

And I don't know about— do you have your phone with you when you run or walk the dog?

Uh, yes, I do. I've, uh, yeah, I'm normally listening to music or podcasts on the phone.

Yeah, I just found this app called otter.ai and you can just hit them.

Yeah, it's good.

It's fantastic because it doesn't cut off your headphones and you just hit the microphone And it turns voice into text. But it saves the voice as well. So boom, you got a note. You don't have to stop running, don't have to slow down. And all of a sudden, you go home and you got 2 or 3 notes. So just trying to remember an idea an hour later when you're—

Yeah. You're right. You do have these great ideas where you listen to somebody, a podcast that comes up with a really good idea and then you're like, what was that? I'm gonna have to go through that again.

That whole hour. What do you think was the biggest epiphany or change that you made in your career that kind of took your selling to the next level?

Yeah, the performance thing was key about that. I think Approach to outreach. My approach to outreach changed a lot over the last couple of years. And when I moved away from the direct messaging, the—

Commercial.

The commercial. Because I always— I'll tell you what, actually, the real thing was when I took a step back and thought about if I was on the other end of that communication, what would I think? Would I click unsubscribe? Would it annoy me? Does it make any sense at all?

No.

And if the answer was no, I'd be like, why am I doing this? Why am I saying it? Why am I presenting it? I think it was that point of self-reflection and trying to be the person on the other side of the table.

Exactly.

And it just amazes me that we still see so many of these messages. I get loads of them in my inbox still that are just written about me, me, me, basically.

Why?

If you received that, would you ever answer?

No.

So why did you send it?

Well, they think because they're in market and thinking about it all day that you're at least somewhat thinking about it all day.

Yeah.

But when you're selling something like your stuff, they're not thinking about that all day. And if they, they have to really read it to try and map it to what they're doing.

Yeah.

And who, who does that?

Yeah, if I was to try and sell what I do via a commercial, it would take like an A4 sheet of paper and you still would then have to join up the dots. Basically, it just would not work. So I think, yeah, it's nice if you get lots of inbound, but We all know that that doesn't happen anymore. Yeah, I think that I find LinkedIn really effective these days because people put themselves out there on LinkedIn. Um, people who put themselves out there want to have their stuff liked and commented on, and then that naturally bridges, bridges the gap and breaks the ice. Yeah.

Oh, What do you tell other reps that you work with who either get stuck or they're not in the groove yet? Because I'm sure you hear about it from other colleagues.

Yeah, I, I do. I, uh, I tell them to— it depends on the, the part that they're stuck on, but I think when it comes to outreach, I'm like, just reconsider the whole way that you are reaching out to to prospects and meet them where they are basically at that point in time, build the relationship and try and start a conversation that way. Yeah, I think the other tricky component which I still have not cracked is gain some curiosity or interest from prospect, taking them through to the point where they're actually going to formalizing an initiative for the type of technology that we sell and all the way through to closure. That is a long— there's a lot there from point of contact to closure. And I don't know, I talk about this a lot with people internally. Like, people think the sales process is linear or the buying process is linear. Somebody reaches out, you make a—

Like the buyer's journey.

Yeah, the buyer journey. That you subject them to a 1-hour discovery call where you ask them 50 questions and they respond to it. They then get a demo, they then get a proposal, and then it then closes. I've never had a situation where the sale has played out that way ever.

No.

No, it just doesn't, because it's assumed that somebody has an initiative or has a formalized process and want to buy something, but the majority of people don't.

I haven't— never met any. Even when they do, it appears formalized. They have a little committee, they send out an RFI, an RFP, and then nothing happens.

Yeah.

Well, that's not a buying process. That's a busyness process. That's a market study process. We're in the selling process.

Yeah, I think that's another key point. I think early on in, I guess, flipping from medical devices to technology was a big leap actually in my career. So med devices, you are actually the subject matter expert in medical devices. You're in theater by the surgeon's side, and your expertise is on how that implant and instruments go together for the successful outcome of the operation. You're not the surgeon, but that's your domain. When you get into technology, so complex, and there's a technical component there, that the services component, there's the regulatory component often, that you as the salesperson, you're a bit more of a point man, and you have to bring the right people into the room. That took a long time for me to— For it to click for me mentally, actually. And I remember going to my first few meetings in technology sales alone, and like going into a room and people go, yeah, so we're here to hear about your solution, whole committee members of other people the other side of the room, because I was so used to doing that in med device sales.

Well, it's medical device, it's pretty confined.

Yeah.

Okay, you know, it integrates— the known integrations compares against something else. Yep, a set stack of vocabulary. You get into technology sales and it's like, you know, because everyone's got their own words for stuff and pre-built conceptions of what it is and how it works and what it does. And that committee meeting is the most dangerous meeting.

It is, yeah.

Because everyone's got different agenda.

They do. And, um, they're so hard to read and very difficult to follow up on, I find, as well, because you're like, who do I go to?

Well, they scatter like cats after the meeting.

Yeah, they do.

And you're there going Do I have anything?

Yeah, yeah, it's not as if— it's almost awkward if you've got a committee meeting of 8 people there, particularly over Zoom, trying to force a next step with 8 people in the room. How are you gonna do that? It is challenging.

Yeah, but a lot of reps want that meeting. I try and avoid— that meeting is best at the very end of the sales process. Where the customer and you are kind of presenting the solution.

Yeah, that type of thing. Yeah, cool.

Hey, I appreciate your time today. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

Um, LinkedIn's best, so Sam Parnell on LinkedIn. I'm happy to connect and share ideas on this great topic of sales that we all love.

What Sam has learned from both the courses Is how to model the sale that you have. Not make it more complex, but take the complexity and simplify it. Get it out of your head. Get it onto a computer, paper, whatever. Understand where you are and where you want to go. It is our job to lead the deal. We think the customer is in control. And in some ways they are. But we have to kind of lead them. They don't know where they're going. You know, I heard this expert say, well, just ask them how they did it last time. Well, how'd you buy your house the last time? How'd you buy your car the last time? Unless you did it in the last 6 months, things have changed. You forgot. It's complex. And this is where deals go to die. They go to die not because they don't need the product. You know they can afford it before you even call on them. It dies because it loses momentum. The champion finds an easier way of solving the problem. Not cheaper, easier. Cheaper is sometimes easier, but not always. And we're always competing. We're competing against doing nothing, doing it internally, buying some other product or augmenting what another vendor is providing. All of which doesn't put any money in our pocket. Becoming great at sales requires practice. And I got a confession to make. Since I've been doing the online course going on, you know, since 2018 now, and all of it's stored and put back in the course. So you get, what's that, 3, almost 4 years of lessons in there, all recorded and at your disposal, is I've probably doubled, maybe tripled my game in sales, and both being able to understand the complex sale and articulating it. I interviewed this kind of world-famous CRO on the Sales Leadership Show. It hasn't been posted yet, but this person came Highly recommended. This guy knows the complex sale. Big, big name and everything. And we're having a great conversation. And he has a great mindset about never getting too comfortable that you know it all or you've seen it all. Always have a beginner's mindset. And I like that. But when we started talking about deals, he had a very high-level view of it. Not really the competitive part, not really understanding how a deal gets done internally. He gets— he got the, you know, the order-taking side, the processing once you have the technical win, which he didn't really understand either. My point here is that to become great at this, you have to become a student of the game, a consistent student of the game. I still read books, I listen to podcasts, I, I attend webinars, and I'm underwhelmed most of the time, but it gets me thinking. It gets me to think about the videos that I make on YouTube and on LinkedIn to kind of clarify, like in that sports analogy, there's some overlap, but you compare it to even a finite game of chess, which I'm sure you're familiar with. There might not be a time limit, but the moves that can be made are rules. And you can't break those rules, and you have to think ahead, but it's pretty confined. It's 8 by 8. The complex sale doesn't have those rules. They have kind of like rules of thumb. And, you know, in the course I teach the rules and laws of the complex sale and then how to apply them. Winning The complex sale is what it's all about. Nobody gets into sales to lose. I hope you hate losing. I hope you love winning. And how's that calendar of new opportunities looking? You know, what I hear from most people is, I get no leads. Cold calling, not so good. Spamming, not so effective. Brian, how do— is there a better way? Yeah, there is. A systematic way. You got to learn how to talk the way your clients want to talk. They love talking about certain things, but they hate listening to pitches. Sales has changed. You've got to update your game. You've got to practice. And for less than the cost of Your cable, you can do it every month. Cost isn't the issue. A lot of people, oh, I don't have budget. That's like bullshit. You've got the money, you just don't have the energy. You don't have the commitment. You don't have the backbone. You want to like listen to a, you know, a podcast, which is helpful. I try and make it as resourceful as possible, but it's not as curated step-by-step process of a deal. No one would listen to that. It's not entertaining enough. That's why it has to be a course. I have to take you through step by step and then give you tons of case studies. No one would listen to a case study if I put it up on iTunes.

It—

yes, it's not as entertaining, but it is infinitely more valuable because you get to hear those account reviews that you miss And they're not like a manager asking you. It's like a colleague talking through it, trying to figure out what the next best step is. What are the lessons learned? How to prevent it from happening again? How to get those deals done? That's what the objective is. How to keep that calendar full of new conversations that turn into meetings. Start the conversation, get the meeting. Check it out at b2brevenue.com. Uh, the video overview is in the show notes right below. It's also on the home page of the YouTube channel, as well as a link on the website b2brevenue.com, just at the training tab. Um, where else is it, Brian? It's on my LinkedIn profile.

I keep it everywhere, trying to make it simple for I really appreciate you listening.

Tell a friend about the show, but get serious about your career. Time is waiting for nobody. Everybody's like, when should I start? You should start a year ago. The next best time is today because time waits for nobody. We'll see you there.

B2BRevenue.com.