WHAT GREATNESS LOOKS LIKE IN B2B SALES

Hey, today we got a little different interview. Still a very great rep and pretty much one of the greatest tests that we have as a rep. Can you live off of your commission only? No base salary. And today's episode, I want you to think about because during my morning run, I was like, yeah, you know, we all are salespreneurs, whether we admit it or not. We kind of want to be in denial and be comfortable with that base salary. And I did a poll on LinkedIn. I asked, would you take a job with twice the potential income, or twice the commission essentially, but no base? And less than 30% would. Think of the logic there. Yet still, over 50% of the reps think they're A-level reps. Well, you'd be kind of crazy if you're an A-level rep not to want to make twice as much money. Yeah, it might be a little bit lumpy. But that base salary is such a crutch, such a gilded cage for us. And it's only getting worse in that when you look at the on-target income, when you look for a job, they always tell you it. Oh, reps plan to make X. A lot of money, typically. And then you ask, how many people made it? Well, most will make it. No, how many have made it? Oh, that's different. What companies are doing, and the math is pretty simple, to attract the best reps, they need high base salaries and high on-target earnings. Now, the base salary you can't fake. The on-target earnings you can fake. All you have to do is lower the commission rate and up The on-target earnings, which is counterintuitive for anybody who's good at selling. So where does this leave us? Why are companies doing this? Well, it's not just to attract reps, it's to control them. How are you going to get people to spend 30, 50% of their time doing non-selling activity if you're not giving them a good base salary? How are you going to get them to pay attention to you, listen to all your stuff, do what you say, be coachable? Well, guess how? You pay them a base salary. The problem is there goes the hunger. We become house cats. We become used to our little kibble and our Fancy Feast every morning. And we don't— that mouse, that mouse is fast and it might have fleas on it. I'll catch that mouse later. That's kind of what's happening today. And it's okay when you have a brand name. Incoming leads and market domination, and you're already a unicorn. But what if you're a startup with no brand recognition? People don't, don't understand why they need what you're selling, what it does, why it's a must-have instead of a nice-have. Well, there you go. There's the problem. Now, as reps, what do we do? Okay, let's say you're happy being a rep. But you're, say, 30, 35, and you're doing really well. Now, you're probably thinking, well, I could do this the rest of my career, make this kind of money. I could retire early. But then 10, 15 years go by and you're like, wait a second, my manager is younger than me. Well, you didn't want to be a manager. That was your choice. You could have been a manager. And now they don't really understand what you're doing. They're not as good as you. They are focused on the dashboard and not the customer or the deal. And they really like to have detailed discussions on each report, really dissect your win rate and your pipeline. And you're like, ah, this isn't helping me. So it becomes frustrating. It becomes more and more Annoying. And then what do you do? Well, you don't want to be a manager, or maybe you do, or maybe you tried being a manager and it was like, it was fun, but you were more motivated by money than just being helpful to everybody. You can be helpful to everybody on your own time and make money as a salesperson. It's all an individual choice. I'm not saying one is better than the other. My point is, I'm asking you to think ahead. Because no one except for us, you and me, care about your career. Everybody today, the tenure at a company as a salesperson— yes, you may be W-2, which means you're an employee, but you're an employee at will. The legal definition of that means that you can quit for any reason and they can let you go for any reason. Neither has any recourse, meaning there's no contract in place. You're an employee at will. You're not owned by them and you don't own them. You have this agreement that you'll give each brother, each one, 2 weeks' notice and good luck and God bless. Well, oh, does that feel like an employee or does that feel like more like a contractor? That's why the salespreneur thing is so important, is that we have to own our career. Nobody else is going to help us. Everybody else wants to own our career, but that's to their benefit, not ours. So if you want to plan your career, you kind of got to think about this stuff, preferably before you need to, because this, this happened to me. I did like being a manager. I was a manager 3 times, and each time I was like, ah, you know, the people working for me were making tons of money, and I was helping them make tons of money. And I was happy for them, but I was a little sad for me because I missed that money. I missed that. I had that withdrawal. And, you know, you can try and be that You know, work your way up to CEO and stuff. But you got to understand that, you know, with each rung up the ladder, there's that many more people that want that job and are more motivated by that title, that role, that opportunity than they are the income. And I wasn't. I was motivated by the income. So then what happens? Pretty much later in the career, started working for people Less experienced than me. And the advent of the CRM became the focus of selling versus talking to customers and closing deals. You can imagine how much I love that. Let's get into this interview. I think you're going to like this one. Give it a chance. Think about your career. Think about where you want to be on the latter half of it. If you're mid-career, it's definitely time to start thinking about this. Now, there's lots of different alternatives, and this is just one that we're talking about today. And I'll sum it up at the end. But did I mention office hours yesterday? We had a great one. If you're in Winning the Complex Sale, there's nothing better than office hours and one-on-ones where we really dug into the challenges that reps are facing. These are hard deals. These are not easy deals to close. And there's a dynamic to a deal that if you overlook or you're used to a different type of deal, you'll get stuck in these traps. And this is what the course is all about. And it's all about helping you close more deals. And if you heard the testimonial from one person who kept track of his performance over the year long he's been in the course, Minimum 30% income increase. Not bad. Would you like a 30% raise? I would. Also, when you're online looking at target incomes and salaries, there's a lot of these job sites that come up where you can either complain or divulge the base salary. Do not enter your name or even your fake email address. This information is sold. To managers and you get put on the whiners list, people won't want to hire you. Let other people do that. Be careful. When you give this information, they can take your private little email and map it back to who you are. And managers want that list so that they don't hire those people. So just be careful with that. Here we go with the interview.

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

Okay. So I'm 41 years old. I've got 16 years experience in field sales, and that's mostly in the life sciences research segment. The first 12 years of that, I was a corporate rep, and then in 2017, I started an independent sales agency. And today, that agency represents 11 different manufacturers in various countries, and we sell to about 150 different customers here in the Northeast US.

My dad was a manufacturer's rep. It's a hard—

well, is it? I mean, sales—

sales is hard.

Sales is hard. That's right. I think, you know, you have sales and then on top of that you have running your own business, and those two sometimes have tension between them. But I think it's actually— I find it very rewarding personally.

Well, I mean, you have a great education, you seem like a smart guy. Why sales?

Well, originally I got into it because I wanted to make money.

You evil bastard.

Okay. So that's not 100% true. So my first job out of college was actually not even in the life sciences. It wasn't even really a job. I started my own company. It was a software company. We were doing web design and this was back in the early 2000s when web design was new and cool.

A real skill. Yeah.

Yeah. It was something you could start up a shop and there was demand for the talent. And so my partner and I, we both had computer science experience. And we were like, hey, all we need to do is throw up a website and pass out some brochures and click the money. People are going to knock on our door. And you know what? They don't do that. You really have to go out and do it. And so originally, my partner was supposed to be the salesperson on the team because he had some sales—

He had the personality or he had the charm?

He had the personality and he had done some work doing summer jobs, doing sales. And I was like, that's fine. I'm happy to be the technical person. And I think over time what happened was he just gravitated more to the technical role. And I was like, you know, if we're going to pay the rent this month, we've got to beat the streets a little bit. And literally that's what it was. It was going door to door to different small businesses saying, hey, are you doing any e-commerce now? Have you thought about it? You know, these are the benefits and so forth. And that was sort of a hard knocks introduction to sales. I didn't have a mentor. I didn't have a book on sales. I had no training and, you know, managed to come out of it with my skin intact and with a little money in my pocket. And then I had a break from the business world for a bit. And when I came back, I kind of had a decision to make. I said, you know, do I want to go back into sales? And if I do, where do I want to— what industry do I want to do this in? Where's the most professional industry? Where are the reps paid the most? And where can I get the best training? And I started looking in medical and And that was actually my first job, medical devices. And then from there, kind of gravitated more into research.

Cool.

Now, that first year when you decided to start your own firm, what was either the impetus for that? Did you get sick of working for other people? Did you see a particular opportunity?

Well, so all those videos that you do on LinkedIn where you're like, hey, this is what's wrong with CRM.

You mean Mr.

Cooperative, yeah. This is what's wrong with forecasting. Basically all of those reasons kind of put together.

Piled up.

You know, I think, and it's, it's, I'm not being sarcastic here when I say this, really, it's, it was about, okay, I recognize there's some major inefficiencies here. And as somebody that I, you know, I can sense my own talent, and I feel like that talent is being underutilized. So I can, you know, talk, I can knock on my manager's door and say, hey, Mr. Manager, you know, CRM is not working for me, can we make some changes? Or, you know, how about we talk about, you know, expanding what's incoming in the pipeline rather than how many meetings I've had last week. And on top of that, there's also a lot of inefficiencies financially. You know, I can remember, you know, getting on a plane, takes me a day from Hartford to get literally anywhere. And if you're making that trip for one customer or two customers, that's a colossal waste of resources. And I remember thinking to myself, you know, if I had like some other product lines I could sell, I'd have more customers. I could do more with my time. And I'm realizing that efficiency now. So when I travel up to Boston or down to New York, it's the same reason. I'll typically have an anchor visit where it's like an important deal, but then I can fill up the rest of my time easily with other products that I have in my bag.

I think this is one thing that managers in corporate America have overlooked in the last 15 years.

With—

because in the '90s we had CRM, but it was really optional. Everybody worked off a spreadsheet for the forecast.

Yeah.

But then when they came out as SaaS and they didn't have to get IT involved and they were selling to managers, so now we had to use a CRM. And then you found the people who became managers were the bean counters who love to play with a CRM.

There's, I think there's truth in that. I think every, you know, I've worked at 6 different companies in life sciences. And I think at every one of them, I could say the CRM, while technically functional, was, was functionally and business-wise sort of broken in its implementation. These companies are sold an idea, a concept by salesforce.com, or now, now more HubSpot a little bit too. And I don't see any of them realizing that. And it's kind of shocking to me. And what happens is the CRM, you know, you bring the CRM into your process, and you're like, okay, we're going to adapt the CRM to our process. And that's sort of the ideal way to do it. But then what happens over time is it's like, well, we start drifting away from what our business process should be and what our customer relationships should be, to what the CRM wants us to do, or is guiding us to do, or is setting us up to do. And now you have, of of course, AI coming in. And, and I haven't experienced this, but I kind of cringe when I think of the AI popping up in a window and saying, hey, Owen, you should call these customers today. I mean—

That, that the people who think that's the future of sales are good. And there are certain cases where the market is mature, the brand is known, there's repeat customers, it's operations. But we're on frontline selling. Very different things.

Yes. And that's, I think, something else that's not widely recognized is that within sales, you have different skills and abilities and preferences, right? You always have the reps that gravitate towards the account management. And that I recognize is a valid skill set. It's not one that I gravitate towards as much. But, you know, it takes effort to kind of, you know, keep these customers in long-term relationships and, you know, be able to cross-sell, upsell, do those things. But it's a totally different skill set to be able to beat the street and pick up the phone.

Get a new account.

Exactly. That's a totally different skill set. And unfortunately, managers in my industry typically hire for all of that squeezed into one position, one person.

Now, how did you get the confidence To go out on your own? Because you get the build, you know, what I call the gilded cage of the base salary.

Uh, so I kind of got kicked in the teeth. I got fired.

They made the choice for you?

Well, they, they— that was the straw that broke the camel's back. Um, and I had been kicking around the idea for a few years prior to that. And like you said, it was like, well, you know, I got this nice paycheck coming in, I'm hitting all my goals, I'm, I'm either number 1 or close to number 1 on my team. Why would I leave that? I have it made. And the reason I kept coming back to the idea of going independent was I was feeling unfulfilled and I was feeling a little bored and maybe a little bit burned out too. It felt like a little bit of a hamster wheel. And I can remember when this idea started, I was working for a company and they published quarterly and annual goals for every rep. Very standard practice, except they'd wait until the first quarter had passed to give you the goal for the year. I'm like—

First inning's over.

Right. How is this in any way fair? I don't even know what my incentives are the whole first quarter. I'm just kind of going on instinct and taking my best guess. And I swear, the thought crossed my mind, somebody in finance has got it in for me because they're resetting the goalposts.

Mid-game.

Where my ball was moving. And I was like, gosh, there's got to be a better way. And then job after that, I was doing really well. And I got to say, in fairness, I was getting kind of bored and personalities weren't clicking. And then they cashiered me and I was like, okay, well, time to strike out on my own. Never been a better time.

And what was it like? Emotionally that first year?

Uh, mixed. I had a—

Did you have a high burn rate or—

Burn rate in terms of expenses? Oh, not so much as expenses. You know, I was pretty careful with my budget, you know. And once I got fired, I was like, we're gonna jump into this.

Party's over.

Like 5 days off. And then I was like, we got to get really serious. Um, and Put together a business plan, identified my gaps, went out and did it. And so for, I think, the initial period, I was kind of busy executing my plans. And then of course you get some clients on board and you're like, oh, now I got some stuff to sell. You go out and you start selling, but at the same time you're trying to get more clients. And then there is definitely a period when you're starting your own agency where you haven't yet developed the customer relationships that are going to support you and you have to be able to support yourself. So don't do this if you're working paycheck to paycheck. No. If you've been successful and you've got some money in the bank rather than in a Mercedes in the driveway, that's going to get you through this and you'll have much better choices as you set yourself up.

How long did it take before you felt a level of comfort that this was not only the right decision, but this is what I want to do?

It was a full year probably. Yeah. I mean, again, one of my weaknesses here was I didn't really have a mentor that had done this independently and successful at it. I had some people that had kicked the tires on the idea and were doing it part-time or that sort of thing. There's an association that I joined and that was actually quite helpful in terms of kind of seeing what other agencies are out there, how they're doing things. But I think client selection was probably the biggest thing that I didn't really pay much attention to. I had this attitude that you give me a product and you give me a market and I can sell anything. And most of the time that's true. But in terms of client relationships, there's a lot of other dynamics that go on that now I'm savvy to, but initially I wasn't.

And what do you look for in a partner, the people that you represent? Now, what my dad always experienced was he would find somebody, build up a market for them, and then they would cut him loose.

Well, isn't that nice? Yes. Uh, I don't really have— I have that expectation, actually. Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, my contracts, almost all of them have like a, you know, 30 or 60-day termination for convenience clause. And so they can get rid of me literally anytime. I can also get rid of them. So it's a two-way street. Um, and it's really What works for me in terms of retaining clients is the relationship equity that I develop with customers. Because, you know, even though as an agent, you know, I'm just getting orders for the client and the manufacturer, the customer's dealing directly with the manufacturer on the transaction. They're sending the PO into the manufacturer, not to me. But the person that the customer trusts and listens to is me.

Yeah.

And I think, one, most of my clients realize that, but two, My clients are also busy doing other things. They're trying to expand other categories, they're doing R&D, they're trying to raise funding. And they're like, for them, sales is kind of like, we just need somebody to execute on this. And that person is me.

And how many companies do you represent?

Currently 11, 5 domestic and 6 international.

And who do you focus on as far as your customers?

So life sciences is really big. I mentioned I'm in research, so that's a much smaller spend segment than clinical. And within that, I try to put a portfolio together that's around neuroscience and oncology. And I have a lot of overlap with product lines, which is key for me, but I'm also kind of a generalist. My experience in 16 years of doing this has been across all areas of research. The key for me, there's kind of 2 keys. One is, is it complementary to my current portfolios? Like the customers that trust me, can I go to them and bring a new product to them and is it going to be a fit? So that's one criteria. The other criteria is who are the people in the client organization? Are they, you know, do— is there like a vibe? Do we get along with each other?

Right.

Do I think they're going to support me? And you mentioned clients, you know, Your dad being afraid of having clients get rid of him. My worry is that clients are going to get rid of their marketing program and come to rely on me solely. And I have to emphasize that, you know, I'm not a marketing department. Also, you have to have a marketing department and then you have to have me to execute on the sales.

And what you sell, is there a lot of repeat business or is it kind of like one and then for a long time?

So initially, Initially, I was focused mostly on equipment, high-dollar value items, because that was always a thrill for me as a corporate rep, being able to put—

A big deal.

Sometimes 7-figure deals together. That's a thrill. And unfortunately, once you've done that deal, then the customer relationship really kind of fizzles because they don't usually—

Need to.

In my industry, need a second one. So I gravitated a little bit more towards a mixed portfolio. And so I do equipment that's high, 6-figure items. I do a lot of consumables and materials that are like 4 or 5-figure items. And then I do services also, which are like 5-figure items. And that blend actually has served me really well. That's what kept me floating during COVID when all these labs shut down. My equipment and consumables dropped in terms of my volume, but services went way up because all of a sudden these people can't get in their labs, they need to outsource, and they need service providers that can do that. And my clients are all young, scrappy companies. They're still at work. They can't afford to shut down. And services jumped in a huge way for me. And so that made me a firm believer in having a balanced portfolio.

And how long did it take before you were making what you were making as an employee?

Probably a couple years.

It was, yeah.

But it's also not a direct comparison because my lifestyle's a little different too. If you look at it on an hour-by-hour basis, I probably beat that in the first year.

Really?

In terms of the hours I had to put in to generate the dollars that I needed. And I was probably underworking the first couple of years in terms of sales, in terms of the hours I was putting in compared to what I'm doing now. Because I think for the first year, I had like 4 or 5 product lines. Second year, it jumped to 8. And we had a little bit of turnover. Now we're up to 11. And I have people working for me now too, so that helps.

You do.

Yeah.

But it's not a one-to-one comparison between corporate and independent.

Right. And the tax advantages, and you own something now.

Yes. And then like last year, I have a $30,000 travel budget just for myself in normal times, pre-COVID times. COVID times, that dropped way off. So that comes right back to my bottom line.

Yeah. And what do you think— what do you wish you did differently if you had to do this part all over again?

Uh, well, I think I probably would have tried to— the agency part, I would have tried to get things in motion before I left a job. That would have been nice, you know, to have the paycheck from the corporation stop and then the next day really be able to kick in some contracts. And I You could totally do this. You know, you can— there's a lot of companies that I'd say it probably takes about 6, sometimes 9 months to get a client on board. And so you could easily go up to a company and say, hey, you know, I'm a successful sales rep right now. I'm getting ready to start my own agency in 9 months. Do you want to— can we get a contract together where I start in 9 months? And that's pretty good runway for them, pretty good runway for you. And you could do that and start with 4 product lines on day 1. That would be ideal. I think the second thing I would do is I would probably work a little harder to find a mentor. Within my industry, there's not a lot of independent reps, but there are in other industries, and they have typically a lot more gray hair than I do, and therefore, you know, more experience. And I think probably picking out some ones that have been successful or that have a certain, you know, style that fits mine and tried to develop them as mentors would have been very helpful.

Yeah, and I think this is an option because I've had quite a few, uh, manufacturers' reps on the show and in my courses. Because, you know, once they go out on their own, you know, you lose the brand name. So your network's easy to get a meeting with, but then you have to develop that skill outside of that.

That's, that's true. Um, you, you have to pay attention to self-development, and that's both, you know, like in terms of selling. And so, you know, obviously, uh, I use the podcast and other podcasts as a part of that tool set, but also conferences, books, things like that. And then, in terms of self-development, really, you know, you've got to challenge yourself to learn what you need to do. You can't let it go. In the corporate world, it's like, hey, you show up at the sales meeting once a year, you sit through the PowerPoints and it's like, hey, we're all trained up, we're ready to go.

Well—

Leave aside how effective that is, but it's kind of, you know, it goes from checking a box in a corporation to when you're on your own, okay, this is essential, we've got limited time, what are we going to focus You know, because I did the same thing, but kind of just selling me as a service.

And, you know, when you go through, you know, a huge sales career having a lot of success, but then all of a sudden you're on your own, you know, and some people, very few people know you, right?

Yes.

And I had never sold to this new market that I'm selling to. I always sold to a different market.

Well, you may have found some pleasant surprises in doing so. And I think part of it is your personal branding, right? And if you develop that, there is a— well, I think there can be a magnetism that happens. And I'm fortunate now where probably about once a week I get a call from somebody that wants me to represent them or at least wants to discuss the idea. And probably A third of those are serious in terms of like, okay, it's not just a company from China that's looking for 100 reps. They're a serious company. They want my background. And so it— because of the lack of independent reps and the few people that do what I do in my industry, you know, when you go searching for it, it makes it a little bit easier to find. But I think really— Part of what I've tried to do Rather than on day 1 of my agency, I was going out and I was saying, here I am, I've got experience, I can sell anything, throw me all the problems that come with this product line, quality failures, lack of training, poor marketing, whatever, I'll sell right through that. And now it's a little different. I have more choice and I have more options and people kind of come to me looking for a particular fit. And I am also upfront with people and I tell them, this is how I want to work. And if you don't want to work with me this way, I can refer you to other people. It's no skin off my back, really. I don't take it personally, but you have to recognize that not everybody out there is going to be your prom date.

Well, the other issue you have is if you have a happy client, they want to hire you and control you and own you and—

That hasn't happened to me yet.

No?

And maybe I'm underpriced. Maybe it's a signal that I'm underpricing myself, right? But I also try to keep some nice bright lines between what I do for a client and what they have to do. And so of course I participate in sales meetings periodically with the team and I offer advice when it's asked of me, but You know, I don't do like market research for people. I draw some pretty bright lines. And I think what you are asked, and it really makes you think, you know, as a salesperson, how much of your time is spent doing internal non-sales activities? And it's a significant amount.

Some say it's more than half.

Right. And I, and I say, I'm happy to do those activities, but we're going to have a separate fee for that. One example would be trade shows. So I don't stand in trade show booths for my clients. That's their job, their expense budget, their time. I go to the same trade shows, but I spend my time at the trade shows trying to meet and network with other people. I have prearranged meetings. I'll get prospective customers to visit my client's booth where I will show up also, but I'm not going to stand in a booth for 8 hours a day for 3 days straight on my own dime.

Now, what would you say to you Back before you started the agency, how many years has it been now?

4. I've been an agent for 4 years now.

Now, you were a solid rep. Clearly, you could never be successful as an agency if you weren't a great rep.

That's true.

No way, because you got a double-sided sell now. You've got clients and you've got suppliers. You're in the middle.

What do you—

what advice would you have had for you 4 years ago?

I would probably advise myself to be even more aggressive.

Yeah.

You know, I worry, I think I was worried in the beginning about being too aggressive and too bold. And again, like I said, there's not a lot of people doing this in my industry. And so I don't have, you know, there's not like 100 other people I could point to that have done the same thing before me. I'm kind of blazing a trail for myself here. I would have told myself to be more bold. You know, I had some ideas and some goals about what I wanted to accomplish, But I think I would be much more specific about that and have less fear that I wouldn't fit. You know, the first clients I took were the first ones that would talk to me and sign my contract.

Yeah.

I thought that was great. Hey, I must— I'm a success because I'm signing clients. I got products in the bag and now I'm hitting the street to represent. Um, but I think I probably would advise myself to, to be, be even more bold, define exactly what I want to do, the niche in which I want to operate and stick to that.

And how much of your time is kind of one-to-one communication, kind of old school email, phone calls, meetings versus building a brand? Or because people say, oh, there's no more events. No, there's a 24/7 event all the time. It's called the internet.

Yeah.

So the answer is not enough working on the business because it's the E-Myth book, right? You know, you're either working in the business or you're working on the business. And, you know, As a business owner, the coaching is always, hey, you should be working on the business and hire other people to work in the business. That has been a tough balance for me to strike because when I started, I was a one-man show. Clients came to me and bought me—

Want to talk to you.

Yeah, because of my personality, my skills, and so forth. And so I've had to kind of slowly transition away from that, bring in people of my own to sell under me as a team. Not independently, but as a team, and then give myself more time to work on the business. And it's been— it's hard because at my core, I'm a salesperson. And when a customer comes to me or when I see a customer that's a fit, I'm like, I really want to go after that. I can't take myself away.

Is your market active on either social or some channel on the internet?

Yes. Yes and no. So I think I contrast it with an industry like software where people are more active in social and especially, you know, places like Twitter. My industry, there's a segment, there's a group that's more active on social, and we've started to pay more attention to that as a channel. Probably could be doing a better job of it. We have some initiatives and ideas, but it's Literally, scientists are— they're not a homogeneous bunch. There are some that are outgoing and they appreciate the social and it is a really important channel. That's how I find out about most of the cutting research that's being published is it's on Twitter. It gets pushed there and I'm already following the author because they're a key person. And so in terms of intelligence, oh, very valuable for certain things. It doesn't capture everything yet. And so I think There's kind of— we have to pay attention to it, but we also have to really try to make up for the old-school ways where we could maintain relationships with customers in person. And, you know, that would be meetings, it would be in-person events and all those things, and trying to, you know, just struggling to reinforce those relationships digitally. And for some clients— sorry, for some customers, it works really well. You know, they're, I would say, more digital natives, and they, they do the video conferencing and it's good. And others just, you know, kind of haven't adapted yet, and they spend more time at the bench, more time doing internal things that they couldn't accomplish previously.

And, you know, because this is the number one complaint I hear from senior salespeople, you know, that they know what they're doing, they don't need to be managed, They don't want to be administrators. They want to sell. And corporate America is set up for the college grad who's willing to be told what to do and enter stuff in the CRM all day.

Yeah, that's crap. That's crap. I mean, so this is a— this is a culture. Those, those same senior reps, if I, if I were managing, I might be like, okay, like, you want to have a certain culture, you better step in and coach those younger reps. You know, those college grads, we're going to set up a system and you're going to get partnered with one of them and turn them into the kind of salesperson you think is going to make this company successful. You know, provide the coaching, provide the mentorship.

Now, if you were to have had the foresight that you wanted to do your own thing but started as a side hustle, how long would it take as a side hustle, you know, after 5 PM and before 9 AM Before you would feel comfortable, comfortable enough to make the leap?

It's hard to say. I mean, I know a couple people that do it as a side hustle permanently.

No one knows.

Yeah, big— they've got important positions and they still run the side hustle, um, repping it. Not, not just consulting, but repping. Um, I think, uh, so I, I think the side hustle is actually valid. The main roadblock for me is really ethical. It's like, okay, so let's say I'm traveling to you know, Boston and my corporate employer is paying for that travel. Is it ethical of me to, you know, make some sales calls on the side? You know, maybe it's, I think, an individual choice there.

Well, you know, if you had friends, dinner with a friend.

Yeah, there's that. And that friend happens to be buying something from you.

Well, I don't mean even transacting.

I mean building the network, the plan.

Yeah, that's a good way to do it. I mean, so trade shows would be a great example. So back when we had in-person trade shows, That's how you really are able to network with the manufacturers that are selling things, especially ones coming from other countries. Like, you wouldn't meet them any other way. Um, you know, I— some of them I can email now and get a contract, but, uh, others, it really is kind of like the personality. It's like, who's this guy who's walking up to my booth and what, what do I think he's going to do for me? Um, that you can definitely do as a side hustle. Uh, what you need to be doing in your corporate job if you want to be an independent rep is you got to Develop the business plan and then build the network. You don't actually need to be carrying product.

Right. Signing contracts or selling anything.

Right, right. And you could do it as a side hustle. I think the question you got to ask yourself is, why am I not jumping in with both feet? What's stopping me? If I've got the plan, if I know the market is there, either you got to jump in with both feet. Trying to have one foot on either side of the fence is It's just going to be painful.

Well, it comes down to one thing, the base salary.

Yes.

Right.

And the benefits.

Okay. So in my industry, that's great. So let's say, you know, a rep with my experience, let's say I could easily get a $100,000 base salary. What does that mean? That means, okay, if I start in January, I've got— I'm getting paid in January, my base salary. Am I going to be employed in December? Is the company going to decide, okay, Owen's—

well, that's it. No one thinks that through.

Right?

I mean, the company can get rid of me. It's employment at will. They don't even have 30-day notice. I got 30-day notice in my contracts. And I think if you look at reps in my industry with my experience level and less experience, there's a lot of turnover. You know, people go, you know, 1 year at a job, 3 years at a job, and it's like, okay, well, are you gonna be proactive in making your moves or are you gonna be reactive and wait to get downsized or territory split, all those things that happen. That's a chunk— what the company is putting on paper that they're going to pay you on January 1st, it could be a different reality at the end of the year.

Well, that's it because we think we're employees, W-2, but we're really treated like contractors that are 1099 on retainer.

Right. And so the first manager I had in medical sales, coached me, he said, you know, you should treat this territory like a franchise, treat it like your own business. And that's actually a really helpful, really helpful way to think about it. So if you're in a corporate job, and you've got a comfortable base, and you're hitting your goals, let's say good rep, ask yourself the question, working for this company, if I had to do it on 100% commission, what would I be willing to do that for?

Yes.

So let's say I'm getting $150,000 total package cash as a rep. Okay. Now, if somebody paid me $200 to do it on commission only, would I do that? Well, if I'm confident in my abilities— Of course you would.

You'd be crazy not to.

Right. And so from there, it's a pretty easy leap. And that's another way to get into the rep business is talk to your current employer, especially when there's economic troubles and say, hey, I'd be willing to do this job as an independent contractor for you, commission only. And all of a sudden, one, I think you've got a high likelihood of success at most small and mid-sized companies to do that if they're looking for ways to To reduce payroll. And you know the product, you know the market, you can actually get to work right away. But then you have the freedom. You just bought your freedom to be able to add product lines. And now you can get those efficiencies that you weren't getting before. Rather than doing 1 customer trips, now you're doing 8 customer trips. Rather than selling 1 product, you're selling 4 products. And there is an economy of scale doing it, especially if Let's say you're just traveling for one meeting. Instead of one product line, now you can sell 3 or 4 product lines to that same person. You can profit off of that same relationship and the customer profits too because they trust you as a source to purchase from. Cool.

Hey, really appreciate your time today, Owen. Where can people connect and follow you?

Well, definitely on LinkedIn. I'm slowly building my Twitter presence. And then of course, my agency website, swiftsci.com. If you're interested in hiring an independent rep in the life science industry.

Now, that's a great rep. I like that idea. But we all should be thinking about how do we at least develop our salespreneur skill set. Some of the elements are, you know, your social profile. Now, people talk about social selling. Listen, we've got a 24/7 trade show going on 365 days a year. It's called the internet. Whether it's on this social network or that social network or whatever it is, you can be there. Your customers are there. They may not be looking for you, but they're looking for stuff. They want to talk about them and their problems. To ignore that is just— it's like not going to the biggest trade show for your industry that year if that was the only event. But now you can do it every day, all day. Also, the pitch, it's dead. Meaning that we were talking about this on office hours. When you pitch, you get pushed into a transactional sale whether you like it or not. You get treated like a commodity, like a vendor, not somebody talking about the problems, talking about the situations, talking about what they care about. The topics that are relevant to both of you. Now, this is why the pitch is such a problem. First, everyone does it. There's commercials everywhere. Man, I'm telling you, I just got rid of all the commercials on the podcast just because I didn't like doing them. I don't think people liked hearing them. And I want to talk to you about sales and selling. Not, not products. So when you want to become a salespreneur— now I thought about this almost 20 years ago, really, when, you know, the internet was coming out. It was clear this was the sales tool forever, right? Because you go from paper and buying lists and databases and applications. There used to be this company where you had to go to their physical building And they would only let you bring paper in. You couldn't take cameras in so that you could search their database to find information. It's called Google today. And this is the power of the internet. Also, the view of physical territories isn't as powerful anymore. And if you can become the salesperson in a particular industry, whatever that is, that could be one of your avenues for the future. Now, I've taught non-salespeople, somebody who wasn't even finishing college, how to start the conversation and get the meeting. And within 6 weeks, they were getting 8+ meetings a week, which is 4 to 8 times the industry standard, without Salesforce or any gimmicky tool. Just being genuine. Going through the exact sequence of how people start conversations and get meetings. Now, people go, well, that doesn't work in my world. It does. You don't work in your world. Yes, people want to hear who you are and what you do immediately because you're positioning yourself as a salesperson, as a vendor.

Okay.

Do you want to be a vendor? You know, do you want to be that? No, you want to be a sales professional. You want people calling you. You want people wanting to talk with you. And boy, is it fun when they do. It's a whole nother world. All that crummy little prospecting, the silly-ass cold calling. Oh yeah, oh yeah, use your, uh, tonality. Take control of the conversation. It's still a commercial. Sorry, you know. And you can sign up and listen to some felon who never really sold anything, just stole it. Look at the timeline. Okay, uh, he sold for 1 year. Okay, great. Oh, he must be a genius. Okay, is that your sale? Are you misrepresenting products and closing people and then getting arrested? Is that what you want? It's not what I want. The real world is at the high end. It's at the A-player enterprise sale where people enjoy talking with each other, have serious problems, and want to resolve them. Winning the Conversation is that course. It's game-changing. Do you want to have your calendar full? Here's, here's what I would do. Hire a college kid, have them go through the course and fill up your week with meetings. That's what I did. And it's an alternative. But how about if you did it yourself? Now, this is the craziness about salespeople. I put this poll out on LinkedIn and I said, how much is a meeting worth to you? And I put dollar amounts. Like, I think it was like $100 up to like $500. And the reps, of course, God forbid a sales rep spend money. I wasn't asking them to spend money. I was telling them— okay, first of all, they don't read and they don't listen. They say, I get my own meetings. I go, that's not the point. How much is it valuable? How long does it take you to— a couple days. How much is a couple days worth to you? $100? Okay. If you're making $200K a year, you know, it's $100 an hour. So that's $1,600 to get that meeting. Oh, I didn't think about it that way. Well, you better think about it that way because it is your time and your time is valuable and you decide how— whether you want to invest it or waste it. I'd invest it. Go to b2brevenue.com right now. Sign up. Quit your whining. Check out the other podcasts, Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers, the B2B Revenue Leadership Show. And if you're thinking about being a sales leader or you are a sales leader and you want to know what the best do, listen to The Sales Leadership Show. We'll see you next time.

Thanks for listening.

Here's some excerpts from a one-on-one that I did with one of the students in Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting course. Now, this person really embraced the course after a while. It took a couple of one-on-ones for him to try each step. He kind of fought it, tried to make it work within his current model, and that, that really didn't have this type of success. And then after he started, he started to get meetings, he started to get conversations, he started to get all the things that I was telling him about, and he started to get excited about it. He started to see the results That I tell you about where his week was full of meetings. Now, I'll let you hear this out. I deleted out kind of the specifics of the steps and the tools and the approach, but they're all in the course. If you're already in it, please listen to the full one-on-ones. When you hear the success that people are having, it's not just the steps. It's the matching of the steps with the appropriate actions and pacing. And then you get people asking to talk with you, which is the goal, which is the fun. So let's listen to it and I'll sum it up at the end and give you kind of an idea and recommendation if you want to take advantage of this.

And it's crazy. This week, this week I'm full of meetings. I was like, what's happening? And like, I— what I did was I baked in like, I just— I'm very generic. And people are like, oh, like, like, tell me more about you. Like, immediately. I have like 3, 4 meetings. Like, I already had 2 this— and, and based on the, on the On the parameters that you suggested for me, like, oh, go after these bigger companies, X amount of employees. So then by the time I'm talking to them, I already know that, okay, they, they typically have budget. I mean, assuming LinkedIn is correct with the employee size, some of it was, it was off, but it's like, okay, there's still like a deal. It can, it can still happen. And, um, but yeah, I was like, whoa, this is— I limited to like 30 connections a day. So then that way it's not like, it doesn't go crazy. 'Cause I remember one of the reps, they're doing about 30 a day. Like I said, like this week, like 4 or 5 meetings and they're good meetings, you know, and it's just conversations. Like I say, it's not about like pitching, but it's about working them up to that point where it's like, okay, yeah, we do need to advertise.

So after teaching this for quite a while, here's the steps that you should take. Take the course once, quickly through it. Find both one-on-ones and office hours that speak to the persona that you want to talk with, whether it be the CEO, the CMO, CRO, developer, marketer, whoever it is that you want to talk to. Because we break it down in gory detail. We break down the persona and what they care about. And then try each Try it with your friends. Try it with your coworkers and start to see the results. Now, most people will fight me on it. They'll spend the first month, 2 months, uh, trying to make the system fit into their pitchy email and cold calls. And it works a little better, but it works a whole lot better when you apply it because each step and each pause in between each step has been designed over time to be very effective. And then when you start to see the results, all of a sudden people are replying, people are asking you, people are wanting to talk with you, want to understand what you do. It's almost turning cold outbound into warm inbound. Now, are they in market? No, no, they're not. But they're a little curious, and it's up to us. And I show you in the course how do you build off of Instead of us telling everybody how great we are and hoping they can understand why they need us. And instead of them arguing about why they don't need us. Because until you have active pain, everyone's in denial. Think about going to the doctor. Okay, you kind of know you need an operation, but you're like, can I get a prescription? And the doctor's like, he has to ease you, or she has to ease you into the process. Well, let's take an x-ray. Let's see what we're working with here. Oh, can I— how about just a shot? Can I just get a shot till the next time I come in? Then he flips the x-ray up on the light and he points to something. He goes, that's what we're dealing with. That doesn't heal on its own. You have to have surgery for that. He has to build up To that. Until we build up that latent pain into active pain and properly diagnose it and get people to think about what happens if they don't have that operation, they're going to avoid it at all costs. That's why the cold pitch doesn't work. You're just igniting the denial. You're not igniting interest or curiosity. It's just denial. So check out the course, start the conversation, get the meeting. It's all at b2brevenue.com. There's an overview video in the show notes on my YouTube channel and on my LinkedIn profile, pretty much everywhere I am, as well as the website b2brevenue.com. Check it out if this is what you need. You know, this student, zero sales experience, but really, you know, just gobbled up this. And the people who gobble it up the fastest and the best are people who try it and get success. It has nothing to do with knowledge. It's like learning how to do a sit-up doesn't give you a 6-pack. You have to do the sit-ups. They're not fun at first. But then you get used to them and you start to like appreciating them. And then you start to get the connection between how you look and what you do. And so you start doing the things that make you look better. This is what we have. It's not just knowledge. It is applying it, taking feedback, polishing it up, and applying the system to your clients.