Collaboration to Sales Domination with Erynn Bell

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Thanks, Katie. I'm so excited to be here. Been following your content for a really long time, so just really excited to chat.

Hell, yeah. Well, now people are going to be following your content because today the show is all about you and not about me. And so what makes the show fun and what people tune in for is we get right into the good stuff. We get tactical right away. Let's talk about collaboration. Why do you believe collaboration is so important?

Yeah, I think collaboration is really important for a plethora of reasons. The biggest thing that stands out to me is it's why I've been so successful in my career. So I think, like a lot of people you probably talk to, we all suffer from imposter syndrome. Fear, anxiety, and collaborations enable me to overcome a lot of that as well as, you know, how do you benchmark yourself if you're not speaking to others? And, you know, there's so much knowledge that's out there to be had. So my goal is to get out there and get it. And I say, I may not have all the answers, but I'm going to find out where they are and I'm going to get them for you.

So, yeah, and I love that. And you mentioned something that I've been hearing really more and more across the industry is this idea of imposter syndrome.

Right.

Of, you know, feeling like we don't belong. Now, what's hilarious, by the way, and I'll share this with you, is it feels like everyone has imposter syndrome. So then what do we feel we're imposters of? Like, if everyone doesn't feel like they belong.

Yeah.

Then aren't we all in the same pool for the most part. Right. And so when you think about imposter syndrome, like, what has helped you deal with it? I'm not going to say make it go away because it never goes away. I still deal with it. But what are some of the things that you've done to kind of help with that? You know, that feeling of not belonging or not putting your voice out there?

Yeah. I mean, I think that we live in a culture where we put people on pedestals and, you know, not even just here in America, but, you know, around the world where, you know, this celebrity culture and we have these thought leaders around where we really lift them up. And so if you are watching these people, it looks so easy. It's like when somebody gets really famous and they're like, it was an overnight success. And they're like, well, you didn't see the 10 years of struggling and not doing well at that open mic and all this stuff. So we tend to hide those things. I mean, obviously, I think in the last year, things like LinkedIn, we've really started to lean into those stories more than ever. But you're right. I mean, you know, for me, I went from having a very fixed mindset to a growth mindset. And that was a conscious effort on my part. I grew up in a household where, you know, sometimes things were talked about like, oh, I wasn't smart enough to do what you're doing, Aaron. Or, you know, that kind of thought. And I think that those messages, you know, you start to internalize them over time. And, you know, I can speak for myself. International Women's Day, as a woman in sales, I didn't oftentimes see women sales leaders being super successful. So, you know, I started to question my own abilities as a female to see, you know, to say, can I make it in this world? But there comes a point where you kind of have to make a decision, am I going to lean into this idea of I didn't know how to ride a bike, I didn't know how to drive a car, I didn't know how to do calculus. I still don't know how to do calculus. I never learned. But you don't know how to do things. And then you take the time to practice it, to talk to others, discover how they overcame these obstacles, and then you start to apply those things to your own life. And my intelligence does not equate to what I know today. It equates to my ability to have learning agility, learn every day, expand myself, and to push myself as well.

No, I love that because the growth mindset is, unfortunately, it starts to become cliche, right? Like, there's enough posts and brands and snaps and talks or whatever. I don't even have most of those channels. But you know what I'm saying of like, growth mindset, you need to have a grown mindset. But not a lot of people actually do make the shift from fixed to growth, which is such a testament, I think, to your just overall ability to adapt into the. Which then Ties all the way back to collaboration because you said you made the shift. And so if you think about your superpower of collaboration, has it always been that way, or were there some moments that, like, really helped trigger? Like, oh, like, I'm better when I pull in others. Or have you just always been a natural kind of connector in pulling people in?

Yeah, so I'll definitely say that my personality lends itself to that collaborator, that connector, that cheerleader. I mean, that's definitely been a part of me. You know, every personality test I take. You know, in school, I always enjoyed group projects. I. You know, sometimes it's called bossy because I kind of liked leading the way, creating the structure. But I always appreciated the different, you know, viewpoints that people brought to the table. But, yeah, I think that, you know, where it started to really kick in is where. When I started going for things that were outside of my comfort zone and. And I had to get scrappy. Scrappy is sort of my middle name. Those moments included moving to Australia without knowing anyone and having to make it, or moving to New Zealand and starting to work for a travel agency and building out partnership programs that I didn't even understand what that meant. And I just put myself in these situations where I'm like, sink or swim, Erin. Sink or swim, Belle. Get in there. And I've never really been afraid to do that, but I leaned heavily on the people around me to start to talk to them about how they did these things, and then started to sort of a B test that in my own context. So, yeah, I guess I. Connector, collaborator, cheerleader, and also risk taker.

I love that. Now I have so many questions about this move to Australia and New Zealand. So if we have time, I'm gonna come back to that. Just so you know. So let's keep going down this path. Right. So collaboration is also one of those things where it's like, if you asked, people said, how would you accomplish more on your own or with others? Most people will say, with others. But then when it comes to the actual practice of doesn't happen. So before we get into how you think it should happen, like, what do you think holds people back? Like, why don't people collab more, reach out for help more? Because sometimes, like, you know, common. Was it common knowledge? Isn't common practice? Like, we know it, but we don't do it. Why do you think that is?

Yeah, I think there's a difference between knowing something intellectually and knowing something emotionally. And I think that in terms of say sorry.

Say that Again. Ooh, that was good.

Yeah. Knowing something intellectually and knowing something emotionally, I think are two very different things. I tend to be a very self aware person, so I can probably give you a list of areas that I need to grow in. But does that mean I'm actually working towards them? Probably sometimes not. And I think what it boils down to in my experience, and I can only talk from mine, is fear, anxiety. A main blocker, I think really is that fear and that pride of putting yourself out there. Because if you put yourself in a group context and you're collaborating with them, if you're not bringing anything to the table, all of a sudden you think all eyes are on me. You're setting yourself up for that visibility. And I think for probably certain people, there's also a sense of entitlement as well, which I think so stems from, you know, self esteem issues. At the end of the day, we all want to feel like we're important and we're capable and putting ourselves in environments where that might be challenged is really scary.

I like the way one, that quote is just amazing. There's a difference between knowing something intellectually versus knowing something emotionally, which I think is just gold, because we make decisions emotionally, we take action emotionally, we back it with logic. And that's just a really interesting way of saying it. I hadn't heard it phrased that way. And it's funny because as I think back at even my career, so I've always. I've been a seeker of knowledge for a while now. Right. Like reaching out to people much smarter than me. And I don't think I'd ever thought about it the way you phrased it where, you know, feeling bad about not bringing something to the table, when in reality the people I've reached out to and learned from, it's like I didn't have the right to bring something to the table. You know, like, it's almost like I couldn't contribute because that's who I was trying to learn from. And so I think maybe even sometimes we're seeking knowledge from people that are too close to us. Because if you feel like you should have to bring value.

Yeah.

Means you may not be talking to someone high enough up. Right. Like, if I hopped on the line right now with Bezos, what value am I bringing? Like, there isn't any. And I think understanding that would be okay. And so. So let's talk about them. Like how. Right. So, yeah, think about the different places people need to collaborate.

Right.

So there's collaborating internally.

Right.

That could be with your team, cross functional partners. Then there's collaborating, external. Right, Mentorship, you know, Deal, deal. Storming. Right. Getting things multi. Threaded. So start with the internal, because that's a place where there's barriers that shouldn't be there because you work with these people. Right. So how do, how do you prioritize and collaborate regularly, right, with your teams, with your leaders and things like that? Cross functionally.

Yeah. So I think the first thing that is really important to understand is, you know, in terms of how it should be done in a way that respects everyone's time. You know, can collaboration happen in a communication style that is, you know, good for the person that I'm reaching out to and asking for help? Like, is it done by email? Slack? Is it a quick phone call while we're taking a walk? And also by putting 30 minutes on their calendar instead of an hour. And if we have to go over, then we go over. But I think that respect has to happen first. I think second, as leaders and organizations, you can enable this collaboration internally by creating spaces for it to happen. You don't necessarily have to force people. But an example, at Degreed, we created a bi weekly cadence called the Sales Rep Forum. So we're able to go there. Sometimes it's just open mic and we're talking through deals. Sometimes, you know, I might have an idea, hey, let's talk about how leads are getting routed. I pass that along to the people who are, you know, putting the sales rep form together. They ask marketing to come in. And it's just an open forum. It's not that really like formal meeting as well as the other ways in which I do it, I do it with my manager. So I always have a debrief call after every meeting that I have. Like if it's with a Prospect, I do 50 minute debrief calls, make sure there's not a meeting back to back. We call each other and we give each other instant feedback. And then the other thing I'll say, and this is something that I've always used in my life, is you get further with sugar than salt. So, you know, be nice, buy someone a coffee. You know, lean into understanding that you're taking a bit of their time. And I think the other thing is, and this is going back to what I said earlier, where maybe you might feel guilty for taking people's time. Just make a promise to yourself in the universe that you're going to eventually pay it forward as well.

No, I think that's so key and I think People also drastically, first of all, overestimate, you said it earlier, put people on a pedestal that one, don't belong there. Two, the assumption is that people don't want to help, when in reality the majority of people want to help. Now, whether they have the capacity to help or not is different, right? Like you may not have the capacity at the time, but sometimes they can make intros, sometimes they can bring you to people that you wouldn't been able to anyway. So I love this idea of the forum. Like we're, we're working with an idea right now of like a cabinet, right? Like forming a cabinet within the two orgs of like, you know, almost like representatives of the org, right? To talk through strategies and problems and like have kind of a voice of the people. But I like this rep forum as, as well. And so let's, let's take this another level forward, right, because you're going through like enterprise selling, which multiple decision makers, multiple steps, multiple things like that. So let's talk about collaboration through a sales cycle because I also think that's a place where reps mess this up a lot. One, they don't collaborate enough internally. They don't get the support from their manager, from enablement, from marketing, whatever. They don't do enough internally. Then they also don't help the prospect or the champion collaborate at their place of work too, to help drive a deal for it. So talk to me about how you collaborate through the sales process, both internally and with the prospect.

Yeah, definitely. So again, in a global virtual distributed world that we live in today, a lot of the collaboration that I do internally with stakeholders is either via Slack for internal zoom Syncs, and it's 15 minutes here, 20 minutes here, where I'm making sure that everyone's on the same page. What I do is I make sure that I'm giving everyone full notes of what's going on, as well as a framework for the meeting, making sure everyone knows their roles, about how much time they have in a general structure. And I feel like that eases the anxiety going into those meetings where there are multiple internal stakeholders. We also use our degree platform so we have the ability to create what's called pathways. So it's sort of like guided learning opportunities opportunities. So if I can put information into that and say, hey guys, everything's in here, course calls are in there, can you give it a listen? Let me know if you have some time to think on it later this week. So that's sort of one way there. In terms of external, in terms of including multiple stakeholders from a prospect company. There's the typical things that you'll probably hear of in enterprise sales where it's mutual action plans, close plans. So a closed plan is more internal for us. That's, you know, how do we get this deal done? The mutual action plans are where we actually get buy in from our stakeholders, from the company that we're working with to say these are all of the deliverables that we both need to agree to in terms of a full evaluation of our platform. And if we can actually help you with these challenges and add value, we need to make sure that we hit these. Here's the dates that we are expected to have these by. This is what we need from you. This is what I'm going to bring to the table as well. In terms of external collaboration, we just went through value selling training, which is awesome. And there's this concept of give get. So if you're going to give something, you're going to get something and vice versa. And I think that at the end of the day, sometimes as sellers we can like jump to want to give a lot because, you know, we're wanting to make the get the deal done, but I think it makes our prospects respect us when we also are asking for something in return. Something else that I've been doing which has been a little bit more creative is so a I want to sell the tool to my number one prospect, that initial person I'm having a conversation with so well that it's going to make them really, really want it and want to knock down the doors of everyone that they have to internally. Obviously that's not a new concept, but that's sort of my first approach. And then actually what I do throughout the sales cycle, because we do multiple demos throughout, is I start to involve them on the actual demo workshops. So I say, hey, let's do 30 minutes sync here. And then we start to build stuff out into our demo environment that makes sense in their context. So for two reasons why this is important. First, it obviously makes it really make sense to the senior stakeholders that we're presenting it to. But second, it also gets the prospect seeing how easy it is to use our platform. And I found that that has been really helpful. They're like, oh my God, did you just build out what would take me two hours in 20 minutes? Or oh my God, I could save so much. Oh, that's so cool. And you start to hear those things and you start to sell it even more to them. So those are some of the Ways.

In which I've done it, I love it. And one of the things you said there, so it's funny, I just actually did a session on this for one of my clients on the number one job as a closer. People forget this is to make them want it. It's not to close them. And if more salespeople actually approach to demo under the guise of, I'm going to make this person want what I have, everyone's demo would get better tomorrow. But because we're trying to sell people, because we're trying to close people, because we're trying to educate people, we forget to make them want it. So you have a lot of people that understand it, that don't want it. So we're gonna go down this rabbit hole just real quick, right? So, like, how do you do that? How do you make your prospect want what you have? Because I think you're completely right. If your champion wants it, they turn from a champion to a mobilizer. Right. And this is something that Doug Landis talks about a lot. Sam McKenna talks about a lot, is like, you don't want a champion. You want a mobilizer. You want someone who can take things and move it around internally. So what are some of your ways of making someone want what you have?

Yeah, I think, again, it's personalizing, putting it into their context. What is this going to enable for this person? And I think a big step in order to accomplish that is understanding their personal win. What personally do they have invested in bringing something on, a solution like the one that you're presenting to them. Once you have that, you can really personalize and punctuate what you're doing with them. And say, for example, if someone's like, I'm scared of technology, I'm scared we have all these new platforms. Well, maybe on the demo, I might say I have a flip phone and I just put together this for 20 minutes. Being able to translate it into a language and be like, now you look like the personal hero. Or you can then speak at an association for Talent Development if you know that they're trying to build their personal brand and say, you can start to talk about what you've been able to do internally by using our system. And we have lots of people who are doing this and we can connect you to those other clients. Or so I think it's really understanding what's important to them in a personal, personal way, not just the business value.

No. I loved it. Real quick, I gotta back up. Do you really still have a flip phone?

No.

Okay. I just, I could just let that slide. Like you kind of threw that out there low key. I was like, whoa, that's amazing. Like, yeah, I still got my Sidekick somewhere too, from back in the day.

But my mom did get an iPhone for me. So I will say that.

There we go, There we go. But no, one of the things that she, she said that I hope everyone caught here just so key personal problems get attention, account problems close deals. And so if you can create the personal problems first, right. That's what gets the momentum going, is the account problems that will close a deal. Cause like, a large enterprise deal isn't gonna close just because Jimmy in sales wants to hit prez club or wants to whatever else. But if that's what Jimmy cares about, he'll move that through the program. So I think that's really, really, really key.

Absolutely.

So now you mentioned something a little bit earlier. You know, talk about getting creative, which I also think people underestimate how valuable collaboration is to get creative. Right. Like to think outside the box, you actually have to get outside the box. And oftentimes that's with talking with other people. So talk to me a little bit about, like, you know, how you find ways to get creative or like how you make sure you're not just doing things the same old, same old way and how collaboration probably plays into that a little bit.

Yeah, definitely. So again, another personality trait of mine is constant improver. So part of that is my sales manager at the travel agency. She said to me once, she said, I've never met anyone who has as much FOMO as you, Erin. And I'm trying to leverage that to my advantage. And that's part of how I think outside the box. So I'll say the professional societies that I'm a part of, like revenue collective, I'm constantly in those channels, like enterprise channel and saying, hey, guys, this is what we're struggling with. How are other companies overcoming that? LinkedIn. I follow you, I follow amazing thought leaders on there. I'm constantly figuring out how are other people thinking of this. I'm looking at Kyle Coleman and the different emails that he's putting up and taking down or creating himself and trying to incorporate some of those tactics into my own outbound sales plays. Modern Sales Pros is another amazing email list that you can get on where they're talking about sales, emerging tech stacks and all of that kind of stuff. My peers five on Friday. Francois Bordeaux. People like that. Again, just putting myself in situations where I'm getting feedback from not People internally because sometimes we're looking at things with rose tinted glasses but I'm actually going out to other people that are looking at things with fresh eyes. Yeah, all of those things are ways in which I think outside the box and then I just try to test it ab test it in my own instance to see what actually hits.

I think I wish people understood that more. And this is something I've been preaching for a while now that the sales industry has over specialized in terms of, you know, there's SDRs, BDRs, LDRs, SMB, sales reps, mid market sales reps, enterprise sales reps, sales engineers, Sales operation meant like we've over specialized which has caused a lot of people to not one be able to move through. But then even then we get less crossover of ideas.

Right.

Companies are hiring, they want someone who has three years experience selling the exact same thing that they've been selling which then prevents the range. There's a great book called Range that talks about how the most successful people tended to be late, specializes, love that they dabbled, they did a bunch of different things, they got different ranges of experience and then have been able to apply it. And I hope people caught y'. All. She listed off like four different things that she's doing to get new information. There is no way you won't be better if you are seeking out that type of info Now I want to get tactical here though. What's something like super creative? You did that like you're proud of like something like, oh, this was a, this was a good one. Even if it didn't work or not. I don't care if it didn't work. I care about the ideas. What's something you did? You're like yeah, that was good. That was outside the box and I liked it.

This is probably not going to sound outside the box to you, but there's a couple things. So first off, I through modern sales pros find emerging emerging tech and like really small companies. So I actually go and I do demos with them as a prospect so I can understand, you know, how are they demoing this and get ideas on how I can improve my own. But I'll talk about two things you talked about. BDRs, closers, all these things. I take pride in the fact that I do the full sales cycle even though I have a BDR and I'm hell yeah. So one thing at degree that I did in Q3 is I look after Las Vegas. So there's a lot of hospitality in my region. They've obviously Been really hurt by Covid and they're not a vertical that degreed has a of clients in. So what I actually did is I reached out to a partner vendor of ours and we collabed on a digital summit that we put together that was specifically for the hospitality industry. And I said, you know, this is about sort of the journey back. What's going to happen in the next 12 months? What are the challenges that you're experiencing? What are, you know, other people in your peers in your industry thinking about? And I think Gartner does a lot of events like this as well where they're bringing leaders together to start collaborating with each other on really overcoming some of these big challenges. We can't expect to be solved within a vacuum or within a silo. That was amazing. It actually helps me develop a relationship with a C level executive at a 90,000 person company. She even gave me her home address for the gift that I was sending over and I was like, oh no, you don't have to do it through fundo so you can just pop it in. So that was really creative and I've continued that spirit. I'm an individual contributor but I don't care if I find something that works. I'm going to go out to my team and I'm going to tell them I'm a bit of a peacock. Katie So I created this cheese board workshop that we've been doing every quarter with our prospects. It's a no business talk, all fun relationship building exercise that we've been doing and we do it once a quarter with our prospects, we invite them, we give them free gourmet cheese and it's really fun. And it's through a third party vendor called Alice's Table. Again, another really creative way to start conversations, develop a relationship that has nothing to do with our product.

I love that, like the creativity. Unfortunately, so many sales reps, they're so short term focused, if it's not gonna work now, I'm not going to do it. Versus if you can be memorable in any sense, like they just remember you. You may not get it now, but two months later, four months later, like if you do it right for long enough, that's when you start tripping into three or four deals out of nowhere where they just come back and they say, hey, I remember you, Aaron, now's the time to talk.

You know, you gotta feed yourself today, but you have to feed yourself tomorrow. And that is especially, I mean in every context, but especially an enterprise, you have to do that. Especially in our Context, where we have a book of business, we have a territory, we have the set accounts that unless their headquarters move, they're not going to change. And that's exactly what I thought about with the hospitality. I'm like, no one's going after them right now because I'm not going after them, but engaging them in conversations because they have been so hurt. So why don't we be seen as the salespeople that have actually supported them when you know what? We can't get a commission off of them, we're going to want to support them anyway. And then all of a sudden we're like part of the 1% that actually truly cares.

You know, I love that. I love that. And especially the last word you put there. Like, if you truly care about your prospect, you do these things because it's just more fun. I literally just got off a huddle with my SDR team of, like, have more fun with this, y'.

All.

Like, why not? Cold calling is hard enough. Prospecting is hard enough. Closing deals is hard enough. Yeah, it's going to be hard whether you have fun or not. So why not have some fun while. While it's still going to be a challenge and being intentional about that, which I just think is so, so important to do. Because it's easy for me, people like myself and too, like, it's easy for me to get caught up in the data sometimes, right? I'm like, hey, here are the metrics, here's the data. What are we scaling? Where's the efficiency gains and things like that. But also too, data is one of the things that's surprising still to me how few teams actually really work with. Right. And something you had mentioned, you know, when we were going back and forth via emails, collaborating with data. Right. Like making sure that you're allowing data to help drive collaboration of whether internal, external, or, you know, making changes. So, like, how do you collaborate with data to get more done or more success?

Yeah, I mean, God, it's a really good question. I've been fortunate enough to work for some companies that were super data driven in their approach, which I really appreciate. So with all of the emerging, emerging tech and enablement tools that are out there, there's a plethora of data at your fingertips that you can use as a salesperson or just a professional in the world. Right. And I think that you talk a lot about this, you know, a b testing your stuff. If you have an outreach or a sales loft, like, go into the numbers, you have access to everyone's Stuff what is, you know, the sequences that are getting the biggest open rates, the biggest reply rates, and things like that. Obviously, that's super classic, so stuff. But I also do that, you know, testing my email subject lines, as well as, you know, what call times are getting the most connects, as well as, you know, which buyers am I going after. But I think the other thing, a secret sauce for salespeople is make sales ops and sales enablement people within your company your best friends, because they have a ton of data at your fingertips. You may not even have to run the report. They might actually do it for you. And I've oftentimes found, especially in sales ops, if you become good friends with them, they don't get asked about these things a lot of the time. So they're actually super excited to kind of show you their world because oftentimes they're not being asked. And that can include, especially when you don't have a defined territory, like, what company should I be going after, which ones are the most likely to close, what players and competitors are typically involved in my sales. So I know which battle cards to focus on, especially in the beginning. That's really, I think, going to level up. So sales for most people. For example, I reached out to our sales ops guy, Joe, who I just absolutely love. He likes baseball. I love baseball. So we connected over that. And I said, hey, Joe, can you actually run me a list in salesforce of all the public companies in my territory? Boom, two seconds. I would have taken me four hours to do. I have a flip phone, right. So for me, it would have been really hard. And then all of a sudden, I had this amazing, beautiful list, and I could all of a sudden personalize outreach to their 10ks and their quarterly earnings reports rather than scrolling through 400 accounts in my territory.

So I love that. First of all, who's your team, though this might end.

Oh, no, we're gonna podcast.

So who is your team?

The Red Sox. But you guys took Mookie from us. Are you a Dodgers fan?

I am a Dodgers fan, yes. As long as you didn't say the Giants or the Astros. We were good.

So, okay, I did. I babysat a Giant guy, a Giants player back in the day. So, okay, all right. You know, was a Hall of Famer, Red Sox.

So, okay, there we go. Then. I got no hate for the Red Sox at all, just Giants. So. All right, anyway, back to the topic at hands here. So I hope. I hope everyone listening, like, caught that.

Right.

So we're talking about data, but she still finds a way to bring it to collaboration. She's talking about hiring up with us. Pair up with enablement salespeople. They're smarter than we are. They are smarter than we are. Leverage that they know things that we do not know. And sometimes too, sharing your struggles with us, sharing your struggles with enablement, like back to Collab, like, just tell them what you may not know the right question to ask, but if you share the struggles, the amount of times that I've been like, God, this just sucks. If we cannot figure this out and someone in office goes, oh, let me pull that for you real quick. Oh, you know what? It is actually 42% of the pipeline created over the last 60 days fell into this bucket. Nine months ago, it was in a different bucket. Maybe you should move back to that bucket. You go, yeah, I knew that. I was just. I was just testing. I was just texting you to see if you knew that. So that is. That is phenomenal. So, like, salespeople, y' all team up with ops also, like, not where she was going. This make friends with engineering too, because, like, they from a product standpoint, but also they might be able to build you something that solves some of your key problems internally. So collaboration. There are people smarter than us, y'.

All.

We are nothing special as salespeople. Right. We're in fact, we're just a little bit on. Probably on the spectrum, a little bit like, we're just not normal.

Yeah.

Other people can help here. And so, I mean, I love this and I think it's something that crosses over so many lines and help people establish it so much. I mean, I guess what other tips would you give on collaboration that we haven't touched on?

So one thing that's been really helpful for me, and obviously this is like plugging my company, but I'm not meaning for it to be. But Degreed has done really well because we're this learning experience platform and you can create groups within the platform. When I was onboarding, all of a sudden I had access to the learnings and the things that the different people in my onboarding cohort were learning. So that was really cool because Chris Gunn, who's up in Toronto, he is just an absolute beast. He is probably even more enthusiastic about learning than I am. I was actually able to go into his profile and see all the articles that he was reading, and so I could start to mimic his mind, where I probably wouldn't even have thought to do that. The other thing is, again, on Slack, as soon as I Onboarded, I found the other four people at my level that were starting at the same time. I immediately started a group chat for us on Slack and I was like, hey guys, we're all going to be best friends. We still have that chat ongoing today. We share our struggles, we share our wins, we share the messaging that's hitting what's not and we also share a lot of memes and gifs and laugh together. So that's been hugely helpful because we're all going along the same maturity journey as each other and learning from each other. So that's been really fun too.

I love that. One of my favorite quotes to give new reps, but also to I remind myself at least once a quarter, imitate first, innovate second. If, if there is someone succeeding at the thing you want to succeed at, imitate first, just do what they do, right?

Yep.

Innovate second. And this is where, you know, as salespeople and I get to talk noise about salespeople because I'm a salesperson and I lead salespeople and go through. This is like we come in and just try to innovate, like, oh, this is how Aaron does it. Watch me do it a different way. No, it's, it's just awful. Like it's so funny. When I came into Patient Pop, I did a one on one with every single rep. Every single rep. It was two and a half years, actually over two and a half years ago now. Every single rabbi sat down. And the most common theme of the top performers far and away, they all said it. They learned from the top performers. They sought them out, they shadowed them and they just did what they were doing. They didn't try to change the recipe, they didn't go through it. They just found the best and did it. Imitate first, innovate second. And I think that's such a key to everything.

That is really funny. I was joking with my manager the other day because we're a global company and I saw in the channel where all of our wins come through this guy Rico in the Netherlands that kept coming through and winning and then all of a sudden I had a bi weekly sync on my calendar with him and Mason and I were joking. He's like, oh yeah, you have me as your first point of contact and then you go to Rico and then you go to Mark and then you go to this person and I'm like, I have five managers here at Degreed but it's really helpful to understand what other people are doing and how they're successful. And something else that just pops into my mind as well is don't be afraid to put yourself out there. And something that I have done is say in the slack, hey, if anyone here wants to jump on a zoom and do cold calls for an hour and give each other feedback, hit me up. And then I started doing it with people. And the VP of Global sales reached out to me and he was like, aaron, I love that you did that, because everyone else is starting to level up as well. So if you do that, you might actually get recognized by leadership. So don't be afraid to put yourself in a situation like that.

I love that. I love that. Something that actually popped into my mind real quick before we wrap on this, is how do you balance collaboration and seeking out knowledge with paralysis? Analysis or analysis by paralysis, whichever it is, because I also just talked about this with my team recently is the Silver Bullet Seekers, which initially it comes across as collaboration. It comes across as like, wow, like this rep really is seeking out knowledge, but then they're not putting any of it to use. They're not actually executing. So how do you balance collabing and asking people for feedback and all this with actually what you wake up and then actually do?

Yeah, I'm glad that you asked that, because that's the conversation that I had with my manager, especially in the beginning when I was doing my territory planning. It was the first time in an enterprise context where I went through an exercise that was as robust as what we do here at Degreed. And I did. I suffered from analysis paralysis. I thought that I had to get it perfect. So if you looked at the wall behind my computer here, you'll notice I've written progress over perfection. And so visually, I have to look at that every day and remind myself. But a lot of how we learn is by failing. There's actually a neuroscience podcast that talks about this called the Huberman Lab. And he talks about the biggest opportunities to learn is when you fail, because that's actually where your neural pathways start to reform. So I just have to remind myself that. And I think we all can suffer from analysis paralysis. Pick up the phone. It's not that scary. People are human. And just try and iterate and iterate. Use the data to back up while you're pivoting and you're good to go.

No, I think that's key. I'm glad we touched on that, because it can sometimes. And we'll seek and we'll seek and we'll see. Excuse me, seek. But we'll never do and then it's like. Or we do the classic salesperson one. Those people love the number one. If it works once. Oh, I've got this magic line like, oh, you want to know how to handle this? This is what I do. Because it worked once or the opposite. We try it once and it doesn't work. And we say, nope, never going to do it again. Like it didn't work once. And we get tired of that. So I'm glad you touched on Take action measure. Bring it back to the data to make sure you're moving forward. So cool. So we've been riffing now on collaboration for almost 45 minutes. So I got two questions left for you here. So the first one is, you know, as we've been going through this, if you could leave people with three key takeaways from our conversation, right? Because people remember what they hear at the beginning, they remember what they hear at the end. In the middle, sometimes they throw away. What would the three key things you want people to remember or take away from this conversation about collaboration?

Yeah, I'll say Number one is put yourself out there. The more that you do it, the easier it gets. Right. Number two, if you're in sales or anywhere actually really in your professional life, get an internal crew going. Don't be afraid to add more people into it as you go. And start sharing best practices amongst yourselves. And not only share your wins, but also share your losses. Give each other feedback and be vulnerable. The third is walk and talk because it will change your life.

Oh, that's a perfect segue. Actually, I don't have time to show this, so one of the best things I've ever done for myself was get this little baby treadmill under my stand up desk. It is the best thing I've done for my health, I think. In God, I don't even know how long. I haven't missed less than five miles a day walking since the beginning of January. And I can do it while working. It is the best thing I've ever. I'll send it to you. It's 350 bucks. You know, like, this is not that expensive. Every single day, just walk in, walk in, walk in and going through. So yes, walk and talk, which actually a perfect segue here, right? The name of the podcast is Live better sell better. Right? I've got this weird, weird idea that if we lived better, if we took better care of ourselves, if we took care of the person in salesperson, that sales would go up too. And so outside of walking and talking, what would Your live better advice be for people listening in terms of how to get more out of life.

Yeah. So I wrote a few things down for this. I thought of a few things for this and I'm a really big advocate for this. And this is probably not the LinkedIn post friendly way of thinking, but take breaks, be human. Don't be afraid to be vulnerable. Don't glamorize the grind. We work to live, not the other way around. And challenge your thoughts and assumptions every day, especially if you're white and especially if you're male or both.

Cynthia Barnes said something just a couple weeks ago now that I'd never heard before and I will never forget. She said, you know, I've been in the sales industry now for, you know, 20 some years and it always has been male, pale and stale.

Yeah.

And I was like, damn, Cynthia. She just got it. But it is questioning yourself assumptions. Right? So actually I have this little problem solving checklist on here. I've talked about it a few times on here. So I keep this right at my desk. Right. And it's got how I solve problems. Right.

Oh, I love it.

And one of the things on there is could I be wrong? Could I be wrong? Right. So often we're not even willing to ask ourselves that question. Right. Of like, even to question our assumptions is a sign of weakness or whatever else. We're like, could I be wrong about this problem? Could there be something different here? So, Aaron, that is phenomenal advice to wrap up with. I mean, where can people get more of you? Where can they follow? Where do you post? Where do you share? Like, how can they get more Aaron Bell in their lives?

Yeah, definitely follow me on LinkedIn. I'm E R Y N N Bell. Different spelling. And yeah, I post there occasionally. So follow me.

Hell yeah. Maybe you should post a little bit more because you clearly got some good stuff up there you should be putting out there. But Aaron, this was amazing. This was a fun collaboration. I think people are gonna get a ton of value of it. I really appreciate your time, energy and focus today. We'll be in touch again soon.

Thanks, Katie. Appreciate it.

Hell yeah.