Mold the Raw Talent of Athletes for Sales with JR Butler

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When I think of the coachability that we see in our candidates, it's kind of like, you know, they come from this world for like 20, 25 years where they've gotten to the elite level of sports because they listen to people, right? They, they, when they got constructive criticism or feedback, they didn't take it personally because they were like, okay, like, this is a, this is something that I can get better at. And if I listen to this person who's an expert, then and I, and I enact their feedback, that I'm going to see an outcome where it's positive and I'm not going to take it personally. Like, they're attacking me. And I think what happens with salespeople is they have some success. They get coaching and they're like, well, I've already had success, so I'm, I think I'm right. Whereas, like, we're getting very raw, like play doh, like talent. And it's like, hey, here's what it's going to take to be really good. And they're Listening. And they're, and they're, and they're being coachable. So, like, I just think, like, athletes have this weird combination of confidence and humility at the same time where it's like, they are very confident, they believe in themselves, but they've also gotten to the point where they've just worked on this muscle of like, taking feedback, not taking it personally. Yes coach, no coach, and then going and doing it, and then being able to see the outcome. So, and when we see that coachability and we actually do a personality assessment to see how coachable somebody is, and that's like a, that's, I think for me, if you ask me, which five were the most important for this early stage sales rep, that is the most important because they don't know anything, right? Like, they come in, they don't know anything. So if they aren't coachable, they are not going to be successful full stop. So that's a huge piece for us is the ability to take constructive criticism, not take it personally, not let it affect their confidence level, but use that, use that feedback to get better. Like, I grew up in a house, KD. My father's a high school hockey coach for 35 years. He's in the Massachusetts Hockey hall of Fame. So I have been like, I laugh all the time. People give me feedback and they're like, sorry, don't take this personally, Junior. And I'm like, I've been getting coaching since I was two years old, right? Like, my dad is. If I had, I wasn't like the kind of kid got in the car and my dad was like, oh, don't worry about it. You know, you had a tough game, big, no big deal. It was like, hey, here's, here's why you sucked, Junior. Here's all the things you did wrong. And I was like, okay, dad, like, I'm going to work on that stuff, right? So, like, I think we see that in our athletes all the time. That ability to take constructive criticism, not put that guard up that you're talking about and say, okay, like, I, I, I have enough humility that I'm going to use that feedback to get better. And I think that is like the number one indicator of the people that are going to be successful after we get them jobs is how coachable in our training, right? Because we give them so much feedback and so much training before they're getting in front of companies that we can tell pretty quickly how good a kid's gonna be in the long term, just through that, that characteristic alone.

Yeah. No, it's funny you mentioned that there. Cause like I, you know, having stepped out of, you know, direct leadership over the last six months has given me a lot of time to like, just look back and review and really like look at like what worked and what didn't work. And one of the things that like came up in that I was like, I think I knew within 90 days, I think almost always I knew within 90 days how someone was going to perform. I could only come up with like a couple examples in the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of reps that I have led where I'm like, that person surprised me. Like they were a late bloomer. It took them longer. Right. And I'm not talking about performance. I've seen people take more than 90 days to start performing. But the character traits you're talking about are they bought into practice. How do they take feedback? Do they put in the efforts and activity that almost always within 90 days I'm like, I didn't know how this.

Person'S going to do because as an athlete we had it right. We went to the gym Monday through Friday, we ran sprints on Wednesdays and Saturdays, we lifted on these days we shot pucks on. So we talk about bringing that same type of discipline to this industry into this career. That's, that's number one. I think probably the most important skill that all our candidates kind of walk away with. The other thing that's big for me, and it's always been big for me is research. Like being over prepared for every conversation, right? Like really understanding the background or the organization, depending on, you know, a combination of this person's background and this organization's background. Every time I'm writing an email, writing a LinkedIn message, making a cold call. So that, that account research is something that's our first course that we give them in the job, foundational skills stuff. I personally am like a huge believer in prospecting, like cold outreach, emails and cold calls. So like those are skills that we really hammer. Like you talked about game, game verse, fundamentals. Those are fundamentals you need to be able to prospect from forever. It's the most important skill you could have as a salesperson. So we try to hammer that home with these folks. And then the other, the other pieces we work on are like building rapport and doing discovery. Right? Like, and qualificate. And when I say discovery, I'm, I'm really talking about qualification. Like, you know, we, we try to, we ex. We have a course called Happy Years. And like, we don't we really want people to get to know faster than they get to. Yes. So we try to teach them that skill. That's a skill, like a fundamental skill that if you get really good at as a salesperson, you're not going to waste a lot of time in your career. And I've seen so many salespeople that had to learn the hard way of like, you know, I had a couple reps that had like the same deal in the pipeline for like six quarters in a row. And I'm like, when are you going to get this thing up, man? Like, but, but instead of having them learn it that way, we try to teach it early. Like, hey, your job salesperson is actually to get to know more than it is to get to. Yes. So like, those are kind of like some of the key foundational skills that we really preach on early on in our, in our, in our boot camps.

I like it. So I got two more call it like athlete questions and we'll shift to some, some life questions here in a second. So if we think about as two last things are going to be interviews and leading. And I'm gonna start with leading. Speak to the leaders out there. How should you lead a former athlete on your team? So you hire one. Do you make any recommendations on like how you should actually engage with that individual if you know, they had an athletic background?

Yeah, I think like, you know, from, from my perspective, you know, every, everybody is so different as when you're a leader, you can't really manage everybody the same. Right. Like, you know, you got sales reps whose motivation is they want to become sales leaders themselves. Right. So you've got to manage them in a certain way. You've got folks that are, you know, some of the best sales reps I've ever, that have ever worked for me were 100% coin operated individuals that just wanted to W2 as much money as possible. So every time we did a deal review, we'd start with the commission on the deal and then we'd work backwards from there to talk about how they were going to get to it. I think with, with athletes, they have a little bit unique, unique motivators and needs that they, that they really want to want to feel as being part of an organization. Like, I think, you know, fraternity is important for them. Like they want to feel like they're part of a team. They want to feel like they're being challenged. Like they want to feel like they're getting better. They want it, they want feedback, they want a scoreboard. They've had a scoreboard their entire life, so they want that leader to tell them, hey. And sometimes, especially nowadays, it's hard as a leader because you've got to kind of sometimes manage things with gloves on. But I think with athletes, you can kind of take those gloves off a little bit more and really like, dig in with them and give them that feedback because that's what they thrive off of and that's what they've always done. And I think the other thing with, with athletes is like experiential learning, like actually like just kind of throwing them in the fire is, is. Is typically a really good thing that, that they feed off of. So I think like, just paying attention to, making them feel like this is really a team atmosphere, giving them that, that direct feedback and assertion and then, and then, and then constantly testing them and showing them how they did on the test, if you know what I mean. Right. Like, I think those are things where, when leaders do that with our candidates, they have a ton of success. So I'm working with a kid and he's having trouble, you know, he's having trouble closing those cold calls, right. Like, he's having trouble getting the meeting, selling the meeting. Right. So when I say experiential learning, what I mean is we're going to practice it, but then I'm going to be right next to you, like, like I would as a coach, right? Like, okay, you need to work on your backhand. We're going to keep practicing it and I'm going to just be there with you to say, hey, this is what we talked about and this is what you just did. So it's like, it's kind of like one thing that an athlete doesn't Enjoy is like 10 months of practice and no games. Right? So getting the practice, but then saying, okay, let's give it a try, let's do it, let's do the game. And then, okay, let's, let's talk about the game. So, so like not just doing the role plays, but actually like practicing and then being there to coach them in a game and then after giving them the feedback because they, they want to go into the game after practice. So you got to give them that access to be able to try things in their, in the game situation. That's where they're going to get the best because that's just how they are as people.