UNLESS YOU HAVE THIS - YOU WILL NOT SUCCEED IN B2B SALES

One of the big things about the complex sale versus the transactional sale is that we have to have patience. And patience isn't just waiting. It's not just sitting there twiddling our thumbs, looking at email or the light on our voicemail to see if, hey, did they call us back? Patience is knowing that it's a process. And this eludes us because we're ready to go. You know, the salespeople— and this is what gets me about time kills all deals. Well, I don't meet many salespeople who procrastinate. I see a lot of salespeople who are too anxious, too pushy, too outcome-driven. But the outcome has to be at the right time. And today's interview really digs into this. And it is something that a lot of people struggle with in the large complex sale. They don't know what to do unless they're reacting to the client. What we need to do is guide the client through that journey. But the problem is we have to know what the journey is. And we have to know the game that we're playing. And today, the farmer analogy is coming up quite a bit, but I want to preempt your reaction to that because a lot of people in sales, farmer means like account manager, customer support, service-oriented. That's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is the farming metaphor, meaning that it's a long process when you're a farmer. You have to treat the soil. You have to plant. You have to water. You have to weed. You have to harvest. And all of these things kind of have a season. And the complex sales that way as well. And today's case study is really more complex than most in that it's a new product in a new category where the problem is kind of understood but misinterpreted. The implementation is kind of gray and varying, and it's difficult. But that doesn't mean that we should not adapt to it. We have to adapt to it. We have to understand the game we're playing. Because in today's case, if you treated it like a simple sale where you're pushing, pushing, pushing for the next step, what ends up happening is you get ghosted. And that's usually the reason we get ghosted is we're moving at 100 miles an hour and they're moving at, in this case, 10 miles an hour. So what you— instead of doing the 100 miles an hour or even slowing it down to 50, we have to start at 10 miles an hour and kind of chart the course for them so that they get comfortable going at 20 miles, 30 miles, 40 miles an hour. And then we can lead them. This is a skill. And too many people think of selling as just conversational skills, persuasion skills. It's really knowing the process and guiding them through it. And the process is not discovery, demo, presentation, close, all that. Okay. That's your CRM. And that's what we'd like it to be. If it works for you, great. But if it's not, that's not working. We've got to change. Let's get into this. And if this is one of the challenges you're facing with closing the complex sale, the course for you, because I guide you through how do you understand what has to be done and take a large complex sale and break it into tiny manageable pieces so that you can win it. It's all about winning. We're not in this just for the pressure. We're in it to win. Let's get into the interview. I'll sum it up at the end.

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

Yeah, thanks, Brian. It's great to be here. I'm a big fan. Yeah. A little bit of background. I'm 50 years wise, so just hit the big 5-0.

Wow.

I live in Park City, Utah with my lovely wife, Kelly, who's been in sales her whole career. And we have a little 18-month-old furry friend named Roman. So a little 15-pound miniature Aussie doodle and keeps us on our toes. I grew up in Iowa. Have you heard about Iowa before, Brian?

I have. Is that in the United States or is that—

It's not the potato state. It's that they have great sweet corn.

Yeah.

Learned a lot about hard work and values. Family of 5, 3 older brothers. We're always getting called to go out and do things that most people have probably never heard of, like detasseling corn, walking beans, baling hay. And very proud to grow up there and learned a lot about hard work and principles and values and those sort of things. And then from a sales career standpoint, so I started my career with Pitney Bowes and spent about 10 years with them and got some great foundational sales training and leadership principles there and learnings and ever thankful for that and still look back and tell stories about the things that we used to do there and stuff. And then just went to work in leadership with Apple and spent a few years there. And then I transitioned out of leadership. My wife is younger than me, and she was on this path with her career to move up into leadership. So, I decided, well, I need to get into something where I can live anywhere. And kind of do anything. So got into this world of enterprise SaaS and worked for a great company called Cornerstone. And now I'm at an organization called MentorClick.

And what was it like going from big companies? Pitney Bowes, huge, Apple, enormous.

Yeah, that was interesting, you know. Somebody taught me a long time ago to come up with what your personal work values are, Jim. I mean, it took me some years to do this. And number 5, I won't go into all of those right now because that's like a thesis, but number 5 is agility. And so that really helped me going from a company that had everything and all the processes in place to a smaller company that you're like, how do we make coffee?

Where are the cups?

Right, exactly. Oh, we don't have cups. Go get them.

Because, so yeah, but in sales, that's so much different when you go to a startup because, you know, you call people, everyone's heard of Apple.

Yeah.

Most people have heard of Pitney Bowes, but it's a very different sale when you have to like start with, you know, the whole category.

Yeah, it's interesting. And, and, you know, every one of those companies that I work for has been the leader and now, now MentorClick and And so that's one thing I've kind of been, I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I've kind of figured out, well, like find the best company that's the best at what they do and work for them. And, you know, the thing with, if I can just tell you a little bit about the company I work for now, is that okay?

Sure.

Yeah. So it's MentorClick. It's an employee mentoring software platform. And I was reading a report the other day that said like, it's like 92% of Fortune 500 companies are doing mentoring 100% of Fortune 50 companies are doing mentoring. I would argue within those companies, 90% of the people don't even know mentoring exists. Certainly, you have women being underrepresented when it comes to mentoring diverse groups like Black talent. And that's why we exist. We just take that and make mentoring sustainable, scalable, and provide meaningful outcomes. And it's just been It's been a pleasure. I gravitate towards that. I've had some great mentors in my career and, and yeah.

Well, I mean, that sounds like a great idea, but I bet it's not easy to sell because where do you start?

Yeah, I mean, I guess it's a matter of, you know, trying to, you know, doing your research, trying to identify the types of organizations that are like, for example, like Diversity Inc. top 50 type companies. And a lot of times it's a technology that doesn't exist within organizations, which is unique versus other things. So it's a lot of, this is very interesting. We don't have a budget, you know, do nothing, no decisions. But if you do the right thing and stay in touch, follow up, usually good things happen.

And who owns that problem? Is it HR? Or is it line of business?

Yeah, generally speaking, it's, you know, HR, your, you know, talent development. DE&I now is being really formed with all the things that have happened in the last few years and kind of falls, can fall under that umbrella. But a lot of times we're doing mentoring that is more like coaching. So more skill development. So that might fall under a specific business unit like sales or IT or finance or whatever that's trying to, you know, align, uh, not so much mentoring but coaches with specific new, new employees or high potentials.

And I, I talk to and I work with a lot of reps who do sell to HR, and they're super nice people, but their budgets and their change agents, uh, not so much.

Yeah, you got that right. It's not the easiest thing. I say simple but not easy.

And I got your main objection or obstacle is nice to have versus must to have.

Yeah. I mean, of course, I would say it's a must have. We've seen tremendous— I have to say that, right? And we're on record. But, you know, we have tremendous data points around ROI and, you know, reduction in turnover and promotions and things like that. But yeah, I don't think we're like, you know, the world of you need a copy, get a Xerox, you need a phone, get a mobile device, get an iPhone, that type of thing. I don't think it's there yet, but hopefully we'll be there.

How do you get your reps and yourself when you're involved in the deal? Because Probably getting the demo is pretty easy, not easy, but possible and maybe an app eval. But when it goes up to get funded—

Yeah, that's the, I think the secret sauce is getting people just to see something that they've never seen. You know, if I tell my team, if it's like, if you had never heard of a car or you'd never driven a car and you've heard of a car, And I tried to verbally explain it to you. It's like, get them to see it. And we've had some unbelievable experiences that people were like, I'm not really ready, that type of thing, or don't have a budget. Well, I know you don't have a budget because it doesn't really exist within organizations as far as a tech, so to speak. So.

And how have you kind of mentored your team to become good at selling into that environment? Because most people, they're very comfortable in the beauty contest type sale. We're looking at 3 vendors in this category. There's some curiosity, interest, and urgency around it. But I think when there's emerging technologies, of course the ROI is there, but somebody has to get it.

Yeah, yeah, it's, there's a certain rhythm to it for sure. And I'm a big believer that slow and steady wins the race. You have to, you know, you have to really manage your time and, you know, these leads that are companies that you talk to that now see it, but maybe they're still not ready. You gotta have timely follow-up and And I think that's what people want, you know, patiently persistent because mentoring or coaching is gonna come up at some point, you know, for sure. And when that does, somebody says, ah, I saw that purple company and it was really cool.

They did something with this.

Yeah. And oh, by the way, this person is still staying in touch with me and I like how they do it and they share insight information and You know, invite us to events and things like that.

Now, how did you, or how do you maintain that mindset? The patient persistence, is that part of the farming background or because that's—

Yeah, you, I would say, I mean, for me it, it just comes back to like, you know, hard work. And, and yeah, it's that farming thing. It's like this is very much a plant the seed type of industry and farmers can't just plant seeds, you know.

September.

Grandpa every morning was probably out looking at his field, checking things out, you know, and, and you just have to get into that rhythm of doing that. And that's, that's the key piece. And some people don't want to do that, you know, they want the instant gratification and What do they say? Good things come to those who wait or what have you.

Well, and this is kind of the key differentiator or one of them between the simple sale and the complex sale.

Yeah.

Is that, you know, waiting for the gratification.

Right, right. And you gotta celebrate the little wins, you know, that's the big thing. And In this world and enterprise software world, you gotta celebrate the little wins.

And how do you keep the team focused on that and not try and, you know, push for the close on that first call or at the end of the month or quarter when it's, everyone knows it's not ready, but they're like, why not try?

Yeah, that's the $62 million question. I think a lot of it is lead by example. Don't ask people to do things that you wouldn't do yourself. And, you know, you gotta be cohesive and work together as teams to come up with ideas and keep people, I guess, lack of better words, maybe like keep people together and thinking the same thing and working together. And, you know, follow-up is king and It's just, it certainly helps when people start to see successes when that happens, you know, and then you've got to celebrate those and first beating them up on the not doing it, celebrate the wins.

Yeah. And how do you interview for that type of personality? Because a lot of salespeople, you know, they've been conditioned, trained, rewarded On the stimulus response?

Yeah, I guess, you know, you want to, in my mind, you want to be really, really thoughtful about the type of person that, like, I've done this job myself and I understand what that really means. And you want to be really thoughtful about the type of, first of all, how you present what you're looking for. And then be very thoughtful about the types of questions. You know, so I would say you want somebody with that farming mindset, that, that the same type of mindset that it takes to run our rhythm versus how they did it now and really understanding that. And of course, if they've been successful running this type of rhythm, Which there are orgs out there that are like that, that kind of fit into that, you know, a little bit different category of nice to have. And if they brand rhythms that align with that, that's the key piece starting there.

And what types of questions have you found, like either an indirect question? Because I'm working with a leader right now on this.

You know, that one, you know what, a lot of it is to me like situational-based stuff. Tell me about a time. What are the biggest challenges you find? You know, things like that. I probably have to put some more thought into that. I know I have like a list of interview questions probably. Pulled up, but I don't know, what are your thoughts around that?

The, the one I came up with was during the interview process, bring up, hey, a company's, you know, offering this 401 and I'm not sure what to do with it. What are your thoughts about 401s? Is it in retirement? How do you feel about that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because the people who have the long view are going to be like, oh yeah, you save a little now and in 30 years you're a gazillionaire. And the other person is like, no man, you go, don't worry about it. Just put it into real estate and let's go skiing. Yeah. Right. There's the, you know, immediate gratification and then the delayed gratification. Yeah.

Right, right. For sure.

And, you know, that's a good one. As humans, we're really bad at delayed gratification, especially nowadays.

Well, people want everything instantly, you know?

Absolutely. Immediately. Yeah. Yeah. And that's not how this works. Nope. Nope.

That's why I say slow and steady wins the race.

And what's the hardest part of your job?

I would say the, The hardest part is probably, well, I think people think as a VP that everything's always like rainbows and unicorns and, you know, that we don't like, maybe I would like to think that most VPs care about people. I know people that know me know I immensely care about people sometimes, like probably to a fault. But I think it's that balance of driving the business and then making sure that you're putting culture and people, you know, in front of that and making sure that that's understood with your team.

Do you get resistance? Maybe it's not the right time to ask, but either through the board or leadership, because, you know, it is a business and everyone's got their own expectations of what it takes.

Yeah.

I've never really—

I've had great leaders that understood this, but at the end of the quarter, things kind of shift a little. Board meetings happen and all of a sudden, Yeah, it's a good question.

I need to think about that a second. I would say that, you know, that there's a tendency to like push panic buttons, you know, and I feel like, you know, especially at like end of quarter or end of year, things like that. But This is where— this is one of those balancing acts where you're in the middle of, like, upper leadership or the board or whatever, and you've got to filter those things out. And, and, and I don't know, I have— I see some people, like, will push panic buttons and start throwing a ton of things at people when you're trying to, like, run a system. And, you know, I talk a lot about don't look at I'm a big sports fan, and Nick Saban—I'm not an Alabama fan—but Nick Saban talks about focus on the play, focus on the six seconds of the play. Do the six seconds. Don't look at the scoreboard. Well, the end of the quarter, we start looking at the scoreboard, and then we start running a ton of different plays. And at the end of the day, it really comes down to sticking to the fundamentals, and the blocking and tackling has to continue. You know.

Yeah, because, you know, what keeps coming up when you use either farming analogies is the hunter-farmer mentality.

Right.

And people, and I think people misinterpret the farmer that they, they're just managing accounts as opposed to there's a circadian rhythm of the day, there's seasons of the year. That if you understand the process and you, and you work consistently every day, that it naturally works out.

Yeah, that's it.

But the farmer just says, well, just go shoot a deer.

Yeah, right, right.

Well, then you need to find a deer.

Right, right.

Within range and have good aim and then find a way of getting the deer back. And I think enterprise sales, although you need the farming mentality to understand the process and not look at it as account management or servicing the account.

Yeah. And there's a balance in there of like, You know, hunting, you know, hunting and farming. And you could argue there could be one and the same. Then there's gatherers, there's types of jobs that are gathering. That tends to be more like retail sales, you know, like, but yeah, you're— there's got to be a consistent way. The farmer can't say, well, let me go out to the field one day a week, and then 14 days later, and then I'll do it. I think, oh, the crops look like they're getting a little— they haven't been intended to. So you've got to, you've got to have that system and that rhythm and continue to do that. And I find that like most salespeople in farming type environments will like, they'll go to the field. I'll use that analogy. We'll stick with it a couple times and then they're not reaping the reward. So then they'll stop.

Yeah.

And it's those that go back and go back and I don't know. I call them the top 10 percenters. Those people that do that usually will win.

And what skills other than that would you build into a rep? Let's say you had CRISPR or you were building, you had the ability to build a rep.

Yeah, well, I look at it like I learned this from my training days and quite frankly from just Probably going back to Pitney Bowes, the, I look at like there's 5 key areas of pillars, call them, you know, what you want with in sales to be successful. You need to know your, certainly your industry. Okay. You need to know your product. You need to know your competition. You need to know the tools that will help you be more effective at your job. you know, better at your craft. And the last one is sales process. And you could argue like methodology, right? And it's interesting, Brian, because my 5th year at Pitney Bowes, I was fortunate enough to do really well and went from an individual contributor to a leader on an advisory council. And then I got an opportunity to go into training. And so, I flew to— we moved to California like the Beverly Hillbillies, packed up our pickup truck and dog, and away we went from this little town in Iowa of 800 people to Los Angeles.

Wow.

And here we go. And so, I was in charge of training for 7 states all along the West Coast, Alaska, and Hawaii. And first thing I asked is I said, hey, I want to go to the regions and meet the top performers. And some of them I've known from advisory or clubs and stuff. Like most of them did like those first, all those 5 things really well, industry, product, competition, tools, sales process. But what I found out with the top performers is they went deeper into sales methodology. So they were talking about 5 minutes with Vito, selling to Vito, spin selling, you know, stop telling and start selling all of these old classic methodologies and So I look at all 5 of those things and I think a lot of leaders spend most of their time on the 5th one, sales process, you know, prospecting, closing, and they leave the training part behind. So I'm really looking at those 5 areas and people that are constantly wanting to get better in all of those areas and they're gonna go get that. Are the best. Yeah.

Because, and that's been consistent with the people I interview with, is that if somebody doesn't have a system, a process, whatever they call it, methodology, and then there's the rest that kind of a reactive wing it, um, hail Mary it, or, you know, call Mr. Big Cheese or Mrs. Big Cheese at the end of the quarter. Found kind of the simple sales stuff applied to the complex sale. I always found was a disaster. But the people who kind of understand the game they're playing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's certainly important to stay on top of things and understand things and You know, a lot of people are big on the relationship, which I think is important. But at the end of the day, people want to buy from people that will help them make that process easier and efficient and will follow up and do things with integrity and things like that. I don't know if they care that I grew up in Iowa and I like, I don't know, It's entertaining. The Iowa Hawkeyes or something, you know, it's like people get hung up. You know, there's a lot of like, oh, they really like me. They really like me. It's like, I mean, I got a great relationship. Like, really? Like, I mean, I've been married to my wife for 20 years and we've had a few fights and we have a great relationship. I don't know if you're 3 or 4 conversations.

Yeah.

I mean, if the relationship's about the interaction between the 2 people, that's good. That's rapport. But is the relationship around solving the problem that they have that you have the solution for?

Yeah. Yeah.

That's the relationship you really want.

Exactly. Helping them solve business needs and helping them arrive at like how they can actually acquire this solution, especially in this world of, you know, must, you know, or, you know, nice to have. Right.

And I'm guessing that this sale is also a lot more complex than your previous sales. More people involved, maybe more money, more change on the client side.

Yeah. I mean, especially like post-COVID. Post-COVID has definitely changed the number of people that it takes to make a decision, you know, because people, I mean, this is my opinion, but I think people can get involved in making decisions because they're not all like driving into the corporate office, you know, they're working virtually. So like, hey, why don't you join this? And pretty soon you have, and I also think people are more cautious with making decisions with software. There's more around data privacy and security and things like that. So yeah, it's almost like There are sales within the sale, you know?

Yeah, definitely.

All the way along.

And what skill do you wish you had more of or that, or you feel would take your game to the next level as a leader or as an individual contributor? Either, whichever one you think. Yeah.

Boy, there's a, there's a ton of them. But, uh, I mean, I'm a— that's a, that's a good one, uh, because you've got an interesting background.

And I, I like the going into the training side because that's the probably the best preparation to become a leader.

Yeah.

Yeah. Because you get to work with other reps and you get to understand how those rascals think and you learn how crazy different everybody is.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I think like my personality type is kind of unique from a sales leader. If you've taken DiSC, I'm not the D dominant. I'm the IS person. And it's interesting. Best salesperson I ever met in my life, gentleman named Ed Diva from San Francisco, no longer with us. But this resonated with me because he, you know, you talk about skill like a sales skill, and what I wish I had better is closing. And people that when Ed said this, he told me this too, like that's his biggest opportunity. I'm like, you're the best salesperson I've ever seen. You go to club. I mean, they built clubs for you at this at Pitney Bowes, you know, and. And he learned like that was his biggest weakness, but he learned how to overcome that and different tips and tactics to— and I'm kind of that same way. I tell people this, that's my biggest opportunity. They're like, no way. Like, yeah, you got to be willing to like look at different things in the processes and be real with yourself and be coachable and understand that.

Yeah.

find ways to overcome that.

Yeah. And when you're— what do you see as the key difference between like the B players and the A players in your— not necessarily your current company, but either in a past company or just in general?

Yeah, I would say Well, so I have a saying, I don't know, I probably stole it from somebody, Brian. So I say that 50% to be successful in anything you do, and we're talking sales now. So to be successful in anything you do, 50% is hard work, 40% is being a person of integrity and standing for something, and the last 10% is a dogfight. And I think that's what we're talking about is the dogfight here, what separates, you know, the top 10 percenters. And I would say like time and territory management, especially now with all the moving parts and the opportunity for distractions, people that embrace coaching and feedback.

Yeah.

And they don't necessarily take it in always, but you can see that they've embraced it. You know, they may go, I don't know, but then they make that change. And then the last one, I've always said this is people with uncommon curiosity. Like, they're the people, like, after the meeting, they're like, hey, can I schedule some time with you to talk more about that? Because I feel like I was bogging everybody down, but I really want to know. Because that in this world of moving so quickly, the best salespeople know more about their product than the people demonstrating it. And that helps you in those situations where Brian's asking me questions and somebody who doesn't know their product or their competition, that's a good question. Let me get back to you. And soon it's like they say that 6 or 7 times. That's a good question. I'll get back to you. And then they have to run to their solution consultant or something like that. And at the velocity of the way things move nowadays, people are like, they want to move on, not necessarily buy, but move on to the next decision point or vendor or what have you. So I would say those are the areas that make— put you in that 10%.

Yeah, because curiosity keeps coming up and I think it's, it's not an autonomous or independent skill. I think you have to have confidence before curiosity, then you have to have empathy before curiosity.

Yeah.

And that's all. Now you got 3 advanced skills that you need kind of in sequence almost. That you typically don't find in young sellers because they're new. There goes the confidence. They're like imposter syndrome. Yeah. You know, playing a character instead of being authentic.

Right, right, right, right. That's so true. That's so true.

And, you know, then you have to be empathetic, which is thinking like someone else when they're still worrying about thinking like The salesperson.

Yeah, yeah. You can't just blow right past some things, you know. You have—

Because curiosity comes from empathy. What's it like to be on their side? I'm curious about why is that important, as opposed to I'll go figure this out, I'll go get you the answer. Maybe you don't want the answer. What's— what you really want is why do you care, right?

Right. It's interesting. It's like I'm a big quote person and You made me think of another one. People, how's this go? You might have to help me about people don't know how much you don't care about how much you know until how much, until they know how much you care. Right? And that's probably what you just said. Like if you could, had to grab a quote and sum it up, maybe that's how.

And I had a manager who said his success was faking sincerity. And I said, you know how much better you'd do if you didn't fake it? If you really cared.

And that's probably caught up with him at one point, right?

Oh, people see through it after a while. Like, yeah, yeah. You know, because he wasn't being malicious, he was just being expeditious. He's trying to get something done faster.

Yeah. Yep. Right, right.

And, but yeah, but then when you get that part done, then all of a sudden the client wants to know that you really care and you're not around. You got what you wanted. Now they're on their own.

Yeah. Yeah. And that will come back to bite you real quick. Yeah. For sure.

Cool. Hey, this has been a great conversation.

Where can people go to connect and follow you?

Yeah. Find me on LinkedIn. I'm not much of a Twitter guy or anything like that, but definitely find me on LinkedIn. I love helping people out. I actually just met a person the other day, just sent me a text. I got her connected, got her an interview. The enterprise software world is like San Diego. It's like the, what do they say, the biggest small city in the world. It's a big world, but a lot of connections. I love getting people connected and I got her connected. She just got a job. So Hannah, if you're listening, congrats. And yeah, find me on LinkedIn, hit me up and love to connect and have conversations. Brian, thanks for what you do. I love it.

It's good to hear a sales leader who understands how the clients are going to make this decision. And this is what I've dealt with my entire career, going into companies, uh, being hired as a sales rep, and they give you a laptop and wish you luck and come back in a quarter with a ton of revenue. And it's really hard because the expectation is that it's simple to sell because, yeah, people build their little toy or product and they think once people see it, they're going to just want to buy it. But wanting to buy it and buying it are 2 different things, especially in the large complex sale, because the people who want it have zero budget authority. They have to Go convince people internally that it is a must-have. And the days of people buying nice-to-haves, uh, they're gone for a while. So we gotta turn our product into a must-have. And people say, well, it's not a must-have. Believe me, everything can turn into a must-have. Takes a lot more work. And replace the word With follow-up, with follow-through, teaching them how to get this done. And if you don't know how to get it done, you need to learn how to get it done. And that's what I teach, so you're in the right place. Oh, but you have to do a little work, spend a little money, oh, a little bit of time. I know it's arduous, but it's worth it. Look around. The end of the year is coming up. Where do you want to be? Do you want to be on the leaderboard at number 1 or kind of near the bottom on the cut list? You don't want to be on the bottom. You want to be on the top. All the rewards come to the very top disproportionately. Is that fair? I don't know. Doesn't matter. That's the way it is. It's not changing. Hasn't changed in my lifetime. Probably not going to change in any of our lifetimes. So we better learn how to work around it. And you got to do it with enough time because you can't make a baby in 1 month with 9 women. You need 9 months. It's just the way it works. And the large complex sale is similar to it. There are trimesters. There are certain parts of it that are more fun than others. So you have to understand What is the system? The game. I call it a game because a game basically confines a problem into an understandable situation. Monopoly takes in real estate and turns it into something you can understand on a game board. Making it a game allows you to understand what you're playing, where you are, where you need to go, what is typically going to happen. It's never foolproof. It doesn't ever work 100% of the time. There's too many variables, too many people involved, too many emotions, too many things that we cannot control. But we want to go with the highest probability. That's our judgment, our judgment skills. Too many people think that if, you know, if this doesn't work 100% of the time, it's not. Gonna work. Well, sorry, that is the way it works. How long have we had weather? We've had weather since the beginning of time, and still we can't predict what the weather's going to be tomorrow. We can get pretty close. We're really good with what it's going to be like in an hour. We got that down with Doppler radar and AI. But we still can't predict what it's going to be tomorrow. Too many variables. So what do we do? We come up with a heuristic. Not an algorithm, a heuristic. A heuristic is basically an educated guess about what it's going to be. And that's what the complex— that's what every human inner action is. We can't predict exactly, But we got a little heuristic to kind of help us, guide us with our best judgment. And this delayed gratification thing is critical in the complex sale. I just went through this with a friend of mine trying to help her get a job. And she was used to the transactional sale. Her sales before were very, you know, couple of calls, closed. And if it didn't close, it would never close. Sound familiar? That's the transactional sale. But she's been out of the job market for a while, worked for herself. Introduce her to a CEO and she's going for the close. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, you've got to build rapport. You got to build interest. You've got to get the person to like you and trust you and know you so that You can understand how that decision's going to be made. That CEO is making a very complex decision. It's not just to hire someone. It's hire them to do a big part of their business. That's a complex decision. It doesn't happen in the snap of a finger. It's not going to happen because you're the most proactive. It's not going to happen because you're the most persistent. It's going to happen because you're the best person. And how do you get them to understand that? You have to have long, consistent conversations talking through the issues and not acting like a salesperson. I get it. It's a shift. It's not a natural shift sometimes. Sometimes it doesn't feel organic to you. But that's why you have to get it out of your head and be able to see where you are and where you need to go. Otherwise, you go with your instincts, which can be good, but who knows? If your instincts are used to the simple sale, it's going to be bad. If your instincts are good about a long, arduous process, then it's closer. Let me help you with that. Go to b2brevenue.com. Check out the videos on the courses so you understand how they work. They're both accessible for a year. You can pay all at once or monthly for 12 months, but it's not a membership. It's a payment plan. So be aware of that. And if you're not willing to do that, don't sign up. And if you're not willing to do the work, you're not going to get the result. And if you're not willing to Have some consistency with it, you're not going to get the results. So, you know, make it a habit, make it part of your daily routine. We have an app now so you can do it on your smartphone wherever you are, consume the content. There's more case studies than you probably could consume if you were doing this full-time. But that's a good thing because you don't have to listen to every single one. You listen to the ones you need. in the order that you need it. You show up when you can, and you work on the problems that you are facing. And at the end, or even in the middle, you get a system, a system that helps you become number one, because that's where all the fun is. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening.