THIS REP'S #1 SYSTEM TO B2B ENTERPRISE SUCCESS

One of the hardest parts of being successful in sales is really determining what type of salesperson you should be in each call. Now, what do I mean by that? Too many people, they see other salespeople and they try and emulate them, or the word authentic comes up, but then people go, well, maybe authentic is too authentic sometimes. And I was thinking about this Last week, and I got a little metaphor and story for you. I've been doing one of those meal delivery services for a while. Love it. Food is good. Price is reasonable. Saves me a ton of time. And one of the things I have for breakfast is this overnight oats. And man, was it delicious. And you're like, Brian, what does this have to do with sales? I'll get to it. Hold on, stick with me. Okay, and so for probably a couple months, I was ordering this overnight oatmeal, and it had blueberries on it. It was delicious. Loved it. And then all of a sudden, a couple weeks ago, it was different. They had changed the recipe. And I was like, I hope it's just this week. I hope next week they return it. They had kind of Watered it down. It was still overnight oatmeal, still had blueberries, but you know why they watered it down. They wanted to make more money, make more oatmeal for the same number of customers. And this reminded me about what we've been doing in sales. See, I can relate everything to sales. Meaning that people have watered down The quality of sales. And the recipe for the oatmeal is a lot like our recipe for our sales process, our sales structure. Remember that word today. And what it ended up doing was I no longer looked forward to that oatmeal. I used to, you know, wake up in the morning and go, oh, looking forward to that. Because I just put it in the microwave and it'd get nice and warm and melt down and it was just delicious. But now it's just okay. It went from a 9 to about a 7. I still get it, but it's not this treat that I look forward to. Now think about your recipe for sales. Have you been watering it down? Are you tweaking it? For each individual? Now, the company would probably, if I called them out on this, they'd probably say, oh, well, people like the new recipe. Oh yeah, really? Really? That's why you did it? Yeah, sure. This is also a good metaphor because people try and rationalize why they do selfish things that affect their customers. Our recipe In sales is so critical because we have to tweak it for each client. If we try and keep it uniform, and you can do that, but that's kind of B2C. B2B is really customizing it for each customer, even though we don't like doing that sometimes. I get it. B2C is kind of like, take it or leave it. Here it is. Which, you know, has its place. So really look at your recipe and how can you make it better for you and your customer. Let's get into the interview. If you're in the courses, check out the office hours and make sure you, you check out the new app. Thinkific, the company that hosts the course, my learning management system, has released an app. That goes on both iOS and Android. Just go to your Play Store, search for Thinkific. So the word think, like with our head, and then the word if, like if you're going to do this, and then ic, all one word, don't separate it. And then download it, sign in with your credentials, and then search for getthemeeting, all one word. Click on that and you're all set. You can go and consume the course content wherever you are treadmill, bed, road, dog walking, lawn mowing.

Let's get into the show. Hey, Matt, thanks for joining us today. As a way of getting started, give us a little background on yourself.

Hey, Brian, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me. So, uh, my name is Matt Olivo. I have been in sales— I had to think about this the other day— it's been 21 years that I've been in sales of one kind or another, and Right now I work for the leading SaaS provider of work automation solutions. So I've been doing that now for— been in this space for about almost 6 years now. So it's been a good ride so far.

And why sales for you?

Funny. There's a lot of—

I didn't mean to stump you.

No, no, you didn't stump me. It just took me back to thinking when I was in college, you know, I worked in sales in high school going door to door, knocking on doors, trying to get people to take appointments to get signings. You know, and I learned the hard way how difficult that is, but I like the challenge. And then I came into sales again my senior year in college where I worked at a retail store where I sold home audio equipment. And I love that. And that's what pushed me to— it was more of the competitiveness, like just being able to feel like if you keep doing what you're doing, it's going to pay off in the long run. Like I saw the work You know, effort equals, you know, dollar signs equals, you know, all the things that I wanted in life could be achieved. So it was the quickest way, in my opinion, the quickest way to get to where I wanted to be.

And what did that get you? What did that, you know, for me it was independence. What was it for you? Was it a car, a lifestyle, a—

Keeping my, keeping my wife, uh, my girlfriend and my, my wife now. She told me Yeah, she'll, she'll be watching this because she's a big fan of yours too. But, um, it, it, in all seriousness, it came down to I was in college and I, I was doing sales, you know, on weekdays and weekends, um, working for this audio equipment company. And I, I knew that there was money, and I also knew that my, my wife had aspirations. Like, she was well, well on her way to being where she is today. I was nowhere near that. And I said, okay, how what am I really good at? I like people, you know, I, I have— I'm structured. There's certain things about me that I think I could use in a profession, but what profession is it? And so I would say it wasn't necessarily like there was something that I wanted. It was just that I wanted to feel like— I wanted to feel somewhere where I belonged and, and somewhere that I, I could be myself and not necessarily, um, pretend. Like, I'm not a— I'm not someone that, that likes to pretend. What you see is what you get, you know? And, and I, and I just wanted to feel like I could, I could be in a place where I could make good money, not necessarily getting a physical object, but, or, or anything of that sort. It was more I wanted to be a place where I felt like I belonged and where I could hang. I could, I could actually go out there and compete. So it wasn't, yeah, it wasn't so much the— I mean, money's great. I love, I love the money. We all do. And that's why we stick around. But it came down to like my wife, you know, she was well on her way and, and I wanted to compete with her, you know, like it was that competition. That works out well. Hey, we're still together. It's been 22 years now or something like that. So it's been a long time.

Yeah. Do you compare forecasts or account reviews to get a little QBR?

Funny you say that. No, we do. She, she's, she hates the blessing and a curse because when things are going really well, you know, it's, it's, you know, it's great. It's a great conversation. But then there's days at our dinner table where we sit in there and I'll just, you know, unload on her all this stuff that I've had happen over the course of the day or of the week and she's, she's poking holes, you know, it's kind of like that internal collaboration. Like she helps motivate me because I see that she's getting a promotion. I'm like, all right, well, I gotta sell something bigger. You know, I gotta offset what she's doing. But then in the same sense, I also have a sense of, um, I would say a sense of purpose because I see that I, she's helping me with my everyday, like giving me insights from someone who's not in sales because she's not in sales. She's, she's— Oh, she's not?

Okay.

No, she loves your podcast and she's not in sales. Um, although she would probably get get mad at me for saying it, but she's— she works in insurance and, uh, and she does stuff with environmental pollution. So nothing to do with our space, but she's got such a great mindset that bouncing ideas off of her has been throughout my entire career has really helped out. Even career moves, like moving to a different company, you know, is it the right move? You know, more money doesn't always equate to better, you know, better lifestyle or happiness. So it's always having that devil's advocate kind of, uh, I guess, approach, you know, in terms of like our relationship. It's worked out great though.

Well, I think it's always great to be able to talk about your deals, your process, just to get it verbalized. Even if the other person may not have any brilliant insight, they could just ask some obvious questions like, what makes you think that? Or what do you think could go wrong?

Especially someone who doesn't know software. My wife is the most technology illiterate person you will ever meet. So talking to someone, and what's interesting is in her job, she is like the go-to between IT and business. She is that conduit, right? So she has insight into business operations. She sees things that I don't see. And I think that's probably one of the best things about our relationship is how dynamic we are, meaning that she can see things that I in a million years never would've seen, like financial things. I am not good at math. I did not go to school for accounting. I was I was not good in college in statistics, but I passed it, you know, and she's really good at that stuff. So just being able to collaborate with her and to say, hey, like, I'm gonna— this is an email that I'm thinking about sending. Does this resonate with you? You know, is this something that I should be pursuing? Or, hey, you're in insurance. Tell me all that I need to know about what's disrupting your industry. You know, like, your company's recession-proof, but why? How are you doing it? Where are you carving out things that potentially could be opportunities for someone like me selling. So it's been a good ride because of that and being able to continue in every company I've been at, which has been vastly different than the others, being able to pull things that she's seen in her daily life that has nothing to do with mine has really helped out a bit.

So it sounds like you had a great foundation. You like working with people. You're very competitive, willing to work hard. But How did that, how'd you get good at enterprise sales? Because that's kind of, they don't teach it in school. There's very few people that get it. There's a lot of people who mislead you into it thinking it's all about this or just about that. And you've sold some pretty hard stuff, some big ticket items as well.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've run the gamut and I, you know, from the intangibles like selling you know, TV commercials, which, you know, they're not tangible. It's not like you can guarantee an ROI where it's gonna fix your problem, you know. And then obviously the outcome of that being if customer doesn't get the results they want, you know, they're gonna churn, they're gonna turn something, they're gonna move to some other medium or what have you. I think really what it comes down to is, you know, for me, like what's made, what's made a successful career for me in the last 20+ years has really come down to It's— it comes down to structure, right? So you're gonna have— I— you need to have structure, like, to the point where I literally have— you're gonna laugh and your viewers will laugh— I pack my lunch every day because I'm structured like that. I have a lunchbox in my fridge right now filled with my lunch because—

Batman or Robin?

Oh, come on, that's my— it's just an old— it's an old Igloo cooler that I have my— that I have in my, my fridge. My wife thinks it's the funniest thing ever. I've been doing it. It's structure. I've been doing this since I was a little kid. Going to high school, then going to college, then starting my career. It's one less thing that I have to worry about. But that just sets— that kind of gives you an idea of the amount of structure that I have, that I try to employ in my daily routine. And that's really like that as part of sales, that, that was the one of the things that attracted me was, wow, if I can, if I can have a system, and I know you talk an awful lot about having a system, like What makes things work for you? What is repeatable for you? And why is it repeatable? And then making tweaks when things aren't working. Like right now, things aren't working the way that they were 2 years ago for me, or 2 and a half years ago. So I've had to change a lot of what I'm doing, but I'm still keeping that structure because the foundation, to your point, it works. But what you put on top of that foundation, that may change. You know, how the house is built may change. So that being very different than what I had dealt with earlier in my career, that's something that I've had to address. So like, you know, the bigger ticket items that I've had to sell, especially what I'm selling now, where, you know, you could be going through 6 to 10 months of a sales cycle or longer. I've had longer, 2 years, right? In some cases. And I've had to sell to all sorts of different organizations. Like I've had to sell to a religion, you know, selling to like an actual denomination, which was very difficult than selling to you know, a place that's looking for some kind of, you know, increase in their ROI or increase in their financial earnings. I mean, so you have a structure in place. I've used it at every place. It's worked out well. And the other part that I've learned that's really worked out well is the collaboration aspect. I used to, when I first started in sales, I saw everyone as competition. You know, I see Brian Burns as competition. What is he doing? I want to replicate what Brian's doing. maybe do it better, right? And, but, but the, what I, what I learned early on was that it's one thing, like if Brian Burns is great at selling, I, yeah, I want to compete against you, but I also want to find out what makes you tick, you know, like I want to dissect what you're doing, implement it into my, into what I'm doing. And that means collaborating even with your, even with your internal competition, your, you know, your peers. And so working with that team, That's something I didn't do very well early on that, that helped me scale my business because I could not scale. I, I work a certain amount of time and that's all that I have in my day. So how do you make more of the time that you have available? And then obviously trusting in the people around you to help carry that forward when you're not there, like if you go on vacation or you're at an event or whatever it may be. So that was a big part of it.

And are you surprised to see other reps who don't have structure, that kind of wing it, see what they have to say, or are Yeah, I talk about this with my manager all the time.

We laugh about it because there's luck timing territory, right? You've heard it, I've heard it, we all— there's bluebirds, there's all sorts of stuff. That's one of the things that I would say, like, that's also one of the things that I wish I learned early on that I, like, I could have told myself, which is like more along the lines of be patient because you— just because you see someone else fall into something that they didn't work hard for or that they didn't earn. That happens. Um, and not to say that that's not the case, but you know, that's the case for everyone. It's not one size fits all. I've been on the receiving end of things that, um, that kind of just happened, and maybe I wasn't as prepared, but then I learned from that. Because oftentimes when you, when you fall into a scenario like that and you see other— you see reps in the field that don't have that rigor, um, they don't necessarily have a plan, right? They get onto forecasting calls and you know, they'll be talking to their leadership about the forecast and how are you getting there? Well, I don't know how I'm getting there, but you're projecting a number. How are you doing? You see that and you realize that those people aren't the ones that typically last in the companies that they're at, or they are humbled because when the microscope is put on them, you know, ultimately the veneer starts to come off and you start realizing like, They didn't really, you know, their boss helped them with this, you know, or this, this came from some other source. And oftentimes it's not something they can repeat. So I think a lot of times people learn from that. It's not that they, um, that they continue down that path. They're, they're humbled. I've been humbled before, you know, thinking that I was, you know, the best thing. And the next thing you know, you know, you lose a, you lose a deal that was your whole year. And now you gotta figure out how am I gonna get back to that point? And chances are it's because of something I didn't do. Right. Something I didn't repeat or I should have repeated from an earlier instance.

Well, that's it. Because when you hear territory, timing, and talent, you only have control over one of them. And people forget that part. Right. So it's like, okay, so you can work the inside game to maybe change the territory, but the timing, you know, we don't have control over timing. We can kind of influence it with our customers, but our talent, we have 100% control over. And every— who focuses on that?

Well, that, that's what, that's what I learned is that I'm not like, there's a lot of things I'm not good at. There's more, way more things that I'm not good at than I am good at. So, and that's part of, you know, that's part of the collaboration. Like you have people around you, you know, like my, my manager and I, I love working with my manager. He's awesome. He, he and I, we were able to collaborate in ways where, you know, I, I was thinking about this earlier before jumping on. I was thinking like all this stuff that goes into like what takes up a day, like if you were ask me at the end of the day, what did you do? You know, what did you accomplish? What did you do? I have to really think hard in some cases, but a lot of it's the preparation that goes into it. Like, I was thinking about an email that I sent out. My boss and I are working on the email together. Like, I may have missed something that I should have included. And instead of thinking I'm the best, I've done this for so many years, I've had success, you've got to take a step back. You've got to look at yourself and say, You may not be the best at writing an email or talking about whatever the subject matter is in that email. So giving your, you know, giving your manager or giving a peer that you respect or mentor, giving them an opportunity to kind of look at it and to have their eyes on it and to say, I wouldn't do it this way. This is coming off not the way that you want it. That's the stuff that I didn't do early on in my career. And as you evolve, and to your point, like when you see other people in the profession that are just getting by, and there's plenty of people that just get by, you shake your head and you say, well, you know, maybe I can help them in some cases, or maybe they'll see something that maybe I'm doing that they could also implement and replicate and use to help continue that, that, uh, that success that they've had.

And what would you say is your strongest sales characteristic?

I'd say curiosity. Right. It's curiosity. It's— yeah, well, it's— I got killed for that in my last job because my boss said I wasn't curious enough. And I'm sitting there saying, I know that I got here because of the curiosity. But he, you know what, again, it's self-reflection time. You have to be able to self-reflect. He was right in that moment. I probably could have been more curious. But it comes down to, I think having curiosity also comes from the product you're selling, like having a genuine interest and desire that your product can do XYZ and having curiosity for understanding how that XYZ can fit into, you know, all the prospects that you're currently going after, right? And seeing where things are aligned. So like, I didn't have curiosity in terms of in certain places because I didn't have as much interest in the products I was selling. And those are the places that I didn't spend as much time, but I still had the same method. And when I realized, and people have pointed out to me, you gotta get better with your curiosity. Like, we know that this is something that you have. Let's see you, you know, take it to the next level. I followed up by, you know, drilling down, creating better discovery questions before going into a call, doing better research, you know, just doing things that would help offset that. But that's always been the constant, having some form of curiosity, even when you're banging on doors and you see people siding when you're 17 and you're trying to get them to take an appointment. I'm curious, why do you have siding from the 1920s? You know, like, These are questions that I asked at a young age and it's the conversations change, but the curiosity has not.

And how about your weakest sales characteristic?

Oh, mathematics is probably the biggest. So like, so forecasting—

Not that much math in sales.

No, no, no, no. I know. No, but it's, you know, in all seriousness, it's—

10% of $10 million.

Yeah. I wish, I wish it was, I wish there were a lot of problems like that, but it's, it's, I would say that outside of things that are more of like my learning and how I think, I would say it comes down to, in the past, is looking on the outside. Meaning sometimes I looked, and I still do, I look at my competitors. I don't look at competitors necessarily like the competing software products. I look at all my peers. I look at everyone that I'm working with because I aspire to be more than what I am today. I don't want to be where I am Right now. I want to be further along. So I see everyone around me, but I also get discouraged sometimes because to your point, you mentioned, you know, someone that has good timing or good luck or whatever and seeing that. And I do get discouraged. I get— it takes me away from the focus that I have. And that is a real weakness because I get overly competitive to the point where I sometimes let those things eat into what I do on a daily basis.

Wow.

And I let that dictate And disrupt my sales motion. And that's a— that could be a problem, but I've been getting better at it, but it's not something that I'm 100% past.

And where do you think that comes from? Is it sports? Is it, you know, birth order? Is it—

Oh, birth order. Wow, you went there. Yeah, it probably is because in all seriousness, and I know you meet a lot of people, I've listened to a lot of your podcasts and Those individuals, they sometimes came from sports, right?

A lot of sports.

They come from sports. I didn't. I played baseball and I was not very good at it and I was not very competitive. It wasn't until I got into sales that I realized I had this competitive nature behind me that I, you know, that I wanted to, you know, go and be better than where I am. So it wasn't, it was also the middle child syndrome like you alluded to. I've come into— I've come to realize now after 39 years of being in existence that I, I do have a little bit of that, you know, because I have children myself. Well, I have children myself now. I realize, oh my gosh, like, I, right, I can see it. Yeah. So I think my son, my older son, is probably going to, going to fall into his dad's profession because he's going to see the same things that I saw, which is you want to, you want to be better than the people that you're going to school with. You want to make more. You want to, you know, Have, have a greater esteem in terms of like where you are, you know, in terms of what your pecking order may be in your family, whatever it may be. So yeah, that would, that would probably be where I'd say the majority of my interest in sales and continuing sales, why I stayed in this profession.

And so you talked about how the competitiveness got in the way. How has it helped you?

It's, well, it's made you, it's made me evolve. Right? It's made me evolve. I, I was probably more of a lone wolf, you know, earlier in my career because, you know, and I hate that term because I've been called that. And like I just said, I was called that and I hated that term, but it's, it is what it is. It's true. I was, and I kept everything to myself. Like I would, you know, talk about sandbagging deals, you know, like talk about, we talk about, you know, just not necessarily giving managers all the information that they need to be able to do their job. Like I withheld a lot in initial stages and I paid I paid for those sins, you know, because I realized, and I, I didn't have, you know, there was a period where I could have had more success, but I didn't because I held on to information and I didn't want to be coached. You know, I, I fought back on that.

Yeah.

Yeah. And, and, but when I started seeing people around me that were doing those things, like the successful people were talking to the management, they were in the manager's office, you know, conversing with them almost on a daily basis. I saw that and I said, I gotta do what they're doing and I've gotta pick the pace up. You know, what are they doing? And that's what gave me the motivation to start changing my routine, maybe asking better questions or to go the extra mile, make an extra, you know, 5 phone calls. You know, when I was making, you know, the 100 phone calls a day, make the extra 5 or whatever because I saw other people doing better than I was.

And what do you think was behind that? Was it about control or did you have a bad experience where a manager Gave you either bad advice or end-run you and went direct to the customer and messed up one of your deals, or they made you push the deal and it ruined it, tried to get it in the end of the quarter. There's a lot of good reasons to say no too.

Yeah, no, I mean, it came down to, I've had some management in years past. That's why I'm very excited about the people that I'm working with now. But I've had some management in the past that has given me bad advice that was not for the best of the best interest of the customer. And then you gotta live with those things again, like you're living with the choices that you made in the moment. And because I saw what was being done because I was newer, this is earlier in my career, I was newer and didn't know how to run a proper sales process. You know, like Brian Burns didn't exist, you know, back in 2000.

That's true.

You know, there wasn't a Brian Burns. Heck, I don't even think podcasts were even around when I was first doing this. And so like you're living in your own head and All that you can do is think about, like, you know, I go to bed at night and instead of thinking of all the positives, I'm thinking, oh my gosh, what did I do wrong today? How am I gonna fix that? And so a lot of that came from the experiences, like, like you said, having managers that were focused on themselves, focused on, on their bottom line, how they're gonna talk to their boss.

Yeah.

And I didn't, at the time, I thought my bosses were doing right by me. You know, I'm thinking they're, they're, they're doing right by me and my customers. But guess what? They're looking at their bottom line more so than I was aware of, and you pay for it. But then again, you iterate, you evolve, and you learn from that, and you find people that you'll want to get aligned with that have the same outcomes that you want to achieve and the same goals that you want to achieve, and you build a system of trust. And that's what I have to this day, and I've been building it from the ground up for the last several years in different places. In this place, I feel really good about it.

And I'm sure you've been exposed to a lot of great salespeople as well as some not so great. What separates the very best from the rest in your mind?

Yeah, I think so. I was gonna say it comes down to curiosity. I think what I have is the real deal in terms of what I think everyone out there, anyone that's getting interested or is interested in sales and you're watching something like this and you're trying to decide what your career will be, know that you're gonna, you're gonna have to have some form of curiosity. I think you're, it's an innate type of motion that you have to go through where you just wanna learn more, whether it's about a product, whether it's about a problem that's happening in an industry. So I've seen great salespeople that have curiosity. What they'll also have is that, that the structure, like you cannot be successful without a structure. We, yes, you may have a year or two where you're You're hitting your numbers, but it doesn't last. And you'll be, you'll be like the people I see jumping jobs every year or 2, looking for that bluebird that you're never gonna find. So curiosity, I'd say structure, and, and I'd say the other part of it is just around collaboration. Um, and, and that's something you learn. That's something that you, you don't have to have day one, but you will want to get to that point because the top sales reps that I've been around They work as a team. They do. When you see a win announcement, there's 20 people on that win announcement, not just one, not two. It's an entire team of people, you know, that help cultivate the opportunity, you know, help the customer drive interest and understand the value of it. That's a big thing. And I didn't realize that until probably in the last 4 or 5 years, that just as how important collaboration is to all those top people being successful and remaining successful, not just being successful on a one-off.

And why do you think curiosity keeps coming up? Because it's probably next to empathy, and I think it's a sequence. You have to have like confidence to be curious. You can't be a nervous Nelly and be curious. And to be empathetic, you have to be curious because you have to be thinking like someone else, and you can't do that without being curious about Someone else.

Yeah, no, everything you said is accurate. I didn't have, like, I had curiosity. I remember I mentioned I went through periods where I lost that curiosity or I got away from it and I went, I went to like the lowest common denominator in a sales process, right? Like the things that we want to avoid. I was, I was finding myself going through that and I, and that's part of the reason why I left is like I wanted to get reinvigorated. I wanted to get back to being the best Got away from my process. But I'd say the curiosity in terms of like, it's tough. That's something you really can't teach someone. I think the curiosity, if you see something like for me, I was always interested in technology. This is how I can relate to sales and how I can bring this back together. So my mom has been in IT my whole life. So I had someone who was in IT. I never had interest initially in IT, but then I started getting interested in technology as a whole. probably starting with video games and so forth, but getting really interested in the technology aspect of life. And then I started realizing, well, maybe there's people or places where I could go where I can talk about technology, be as passionate as I want to be, and I can fuel my success with how much I'm learning about the technology, about the industries that I'm selling into. And that's how I evolved. So I would say to people who interested in sales, maybe they don't know where they want to go. I would look at, you know, what, what makes you tick? What are you excited about? Like, you get on your phone, you look up news, you know, everyone looks up some kind of, you know, something on Reddit or something on news. What are you looking at? Like, I find myself looking at the same, you know, 3 or 4 things every single day. What are those 3 or 4 things that make you excited? And then start figuring out, well, within those areas, you know, You know, to go a level deeper, like what makes you interested in those areas and would you wanna talk to people about that? And that's sustainability in sales is when you get to the point where you find something you're interested in and you remain interested in it for years to come.

And what part of your structure, routine, process, um, needs the most work? Because most reps are really good until that final stage. They got the champions all excited. You get the big meeting, the close meeting, you get your manager, their manager together, and then the reality hits, right? Because the picture in your mind is this beautiful future, and all of a sudden the reality comes of what has to get done on the customer side to get this transaction done. Well, everyone's got kind of got a hole in their process or something that they were really a lot better at that would take their game to the next level. Do you have something like that or?

Yeah. I mean, for me, yeah, it's tough because there's a couple of areas that I know that are weaknesses of mine right now. There's definitely some holes in my game. I, I can tell you that. I won't go over all of them because I, I, my, my boss is still learning some of this.

Might be listening.

Yeah, exactly. But But I'd say what it comes down to, what I need to get better at is, you know, I have to understand a customer's process, right? Like, I think you've talked about that on many of your walks. Like, it's understanding what they have to go through on their side so that you're prepared. Yes, I do that. But to the level of degree where if I'm talking to someone outside of, you know, maybe a leader in my company, you know, being able to say, well, this is happening because of this, this, and this, I can generally tell the story. But I think being able to take that story and to actually make business sense of it into our, in our own worlds, like meaning like, how, how is that, how is that going to help or hurt me having this process that they have in place? That's where I need to get better at. So I personally have made an effort to try to understand a customer's processes earlier on when I'm doing a sales process, learning what makes them tick as a company, why they, why they go through contracting, how they've contracted with other vendors. Right? Because oftentimes that's where you get to the— you get a bottleneck is at the end of a sales process. You go through everything, you go, you get all the, you get the stakeholders, the consensus buying group is there, they're all agreeing, you get everyone to agree to this one thing, but then they get it done in purgatory forever. You're stuck in purgatory.

Yeah.

How do you get it done? So that's something that as I've gotten into enterprise sales, that's something that I realized that is a hole in what I'm doing. And I've been working on it. It's getting better, but it takes reps, right? And it also takes, again, the collaboration where my, my manager is saying to me, Matt, do you have this? Like, do you know this? We got to, we got to, we got to dig deeper. Like, this is— you have surface-level information. This isn't good enough. So just taking that criticism and then being able to bring it back, I think I'm going to be able to fill that hole in due time.

And if you had to do it all over again, what single change in either your personality, your skill set, or your routine would've taken your game further faster?

I think just aligning myself with someone early on, like a mentor. I didn't have one. I thought I did. I, I didn't have one cuz he wasn't a mentor cuz I, I haven't talked to him in like 20 years. But, you know, I, uh, outside of that, I mean, I, I needed a mentor. I needed someone that had best practices like that, like would've sped up my delivery. It wasn't that I— it was never that I didn't want what I, what I want today. It was, I, I— it was how to get there. I didn't know how to get there. I didn't know the best process. And having a mentor, that's what I wish I had early on. Having someone that just would be able to tell me, Matt, you're cutting corners, you're going to pay for that. You can do it now, you're going to pay for that later on. I didn't. I learned the hard way in every situation. And again, having a mentor also would have allowed me is to focus on less around the, I call it the inside noise, meaning like what's happening in your workplace, the drama, people leaving, you know, like get out of your own head. I guess you don't sell. No, I mean, you're seeing in sales, you see a person leaving every other month practically. So like you're getting attached to people and you keep getting sucked in. And it happened probably 12 times in a period of 3 years. And I'm thinking to myself now, That cost me time. I could have been out banging on doors. This is when we were actually doing that sort of thing. I could have been doing more of it and I didn't. And it's a shame because I lost valuable time to grow. But it's okay. Again, you learn the hard way and then you fix yourself, you evolve and you become better, or at least that's the hope. So that's something I wish I had. I just wish I had someone to tell me early on, like, This isn't the right way. Get out of your own head. This is how I did it. Follow my steps, you know.

Hey, this has been fun, Matt. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

Sure, I'm on LinkedIn. I believe my LinkedIn name is Matthew. It's all formal. It's Matthew Olivo. And I don't do anything on Twitter, but you will see some occasional posts. And I believe it's just Matt_Olivo. And that's Twitter. But really appreciate, Brian. It's been an honor to be here. I'm a big fan of you and your show. I love what you're doing and you're getting people to the point where they're able to have conversations like this and obviously to share it with the masses so that you can understand how to be the best, best of yourself that you can be. So I appreciate you making that available to everyone and thanks for having me.

Now, what Matt was talking about when he says structure, some people call the process, and sometimes we get tripped up on the words because the words have or trigger some meaning in our little head. That isn't pleasant. But how do you become great at anything? You gotta break it down into small pieces, practice those pieces, really hone them, and be able to put them back together. Look at any sports, any performance, whatever it is— acting, debating— they break it down into simple process, and you typically have a leader or a coach to kind of walk you through it. And to be able to keep your prefrontal cortex focused on what matters most. And that's really what a coach is, is your kind of designated driver or prefrontal cortex, the thinking part of our brain, to be able to help you weed through what's emotional and what's logical. Because our brain is a pain avoidance machine. That's sometimes good, but in the complex sale, sometimes bad, because we come up with superstitions, reasons why a deal went sideways or died that is outside of our control, but yet we could have done something about it. If you want to become great at sales, you have to come up with your structure. Most people have the wing-it structure, the reactive structure, and people think, oh, well, they're good at it. And that can work after like 10, 20 years of experience in the same industry with the same type of customers. But as soon as you start going into a new industry with a different set of customers, you need to take it from that unconsciously competent to— Consciously aware of how it's different. And I've seen this throughout my sales career, and it's something that I tried really hard to adjust my recipe early in my career because first I was hyper money success motivated and I hated wasting time. So that became a good combination for me to hone in my skills. The trap that most people get into, certainly after a year or 2, maybe 3 of sales, is they get stuck in the B-player trap. They have strong evidence that they are talented salespeople. There's no argument with that. But then something changes— territory, job, whatever it is, economy— and all of a sudden what worked before doesn't work now. And instead of adjusting their recipe, they blame the customer. They blame the person eating the oatmeal. It's their fault they don't enjoy it. Much like in my intro, where the company is probably rationalizing why they're watering it down instead of just admitting they want to make more money. To do this, you can hunt and peck throughout the internet, your friends, reading books. Or you can get a coach, somebody who's been through it for, say, longer than you've been alive and has seen a lot of it and really documented it and focused on a lot more than just platitudes. And this is really all I see on LinkedIn is platitudes, people who can correlate anything new to anything old. And That correlation, they rationalize. What you want is your structure, your system, your process, so that you can analyze it, polish it, perfect it as much as you can. And that becomes the silver bullet of sales. You are the silver bullet of sales. Your process, your structure, your systems become that. Look at any coach and any performer. What do they do? They come up with little practice routines. There's a structure, a flow to it.

Why?

Because you have to contain it into something that you can control, even though in the real world you can't control it. You know, there's the famous boxing quote. It's like everybody has a strategy until they get punched in the face. And that's true. But that's why they train how to get this stuff so ingrained in their subconscious is that even when they are punched in the face, they know how to defend themselves, recover, and come back. If I got punched in the face, I wouldn't know what to do. I'd probably just run away because I haven't been trained for that. I haven't practiced for that. I haven't thought through. I don't have a recipe.

for that.

Get your recipe and make it the best you possibly can. Go to b2brevenue.com right now. Join the best salespeople in the world and make it your practice, your profession, because it pays you. This is the only job out there that really rewards it for what you do. If you go into marketing or Product development, whatever. They're not on commission. Oh, you can say, oh, they get equity. They get a tiny, teeny little piece of equity that, yeah, maybe they'll be able to buy a TV or a car with it after 4 years. Good luck. Congratulations. I'd rather be in sales where I have control over my income and I have to focus on getting better. What are people doing today? I'll just join another company. What's wrong is the current company doesn't support the way I do it. That might be true, and it— there probably is truth to it. But then you get to the new company and it's not identical but similar. All we have is ourselves. Our process becomes our silver bullet. Make it yours. Sign up today. We'll see you next time. Check out the Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers show.

It's rocking.

If you're a sales leader, I got the Sales Leadership Show. If you'd like training on site with your team or customized training, get in touch with me on LinkedIn or just send me an email. Email's in the show notes below. My website's in the show notes below, b2brevenue.com. We'll have somebody get in touch with you. We'll see you next time.