Scaling Skills for Succes⁠—Dedication & Non-Negotiables with Zach Selch Part 2

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In the military or in sales in the military.

Because most People don't do it in.

So like how like military, like we used to do. So one thing people don't think about, right? And I, I always, again, this is one of these things that people don't think about in civilian life. You talk to somebody say, well, I, I went down to the range and I'm a fantastic shot. You're like, yeah, you are one guy standing in front of a piece of paper, right? What happens when there are 12 people in the room, right? So what we would do in the military would be, first of all, we'd go, we'd say, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna shoot at this piece of paper, right? Then what we're gonna do is we're gonna be 12 guys standing in a line shooting at this piece of paper. Then we're gonna be 12 guys running around shooting at this piece of paper and trying not to hit each other. And then we're gonna do it in the dark, right? And at the end of the day, because what's important is you, you, you want to hit the target, but you also don't want to. That's part of it, right? So you're doing stuff like this and you're training, you know, you're going, okay, can I build a building that looks a lot like the enemy's building? And then we're gonna play around with that building, right? We're gonna. And so one of the things, like, you know, we were, we're just touched on the issue of like approaching your mission. So I remember we used to do, you know, you navigate to get someplace in the middle, you know, through the night, maybe a three, four hour walk with, you know, having to find your way and you get there. Now if you got there early, that was almost as bad as not getting there on time and getting there late. Why? Because then, you know, 12 guys are standing around outside an enemy building at 2 in the morning for half an hour and something bad could happen, right? And I was saying to somebody else, and I'm on one of these discussions is when I go to visit a customer in Turkey, I'm working, right? I'm not going to get there and do something stupid in the hotel. I'm not going to get there and do something, you know, and if people who work for me think that they can, that's poor judgment, right? Because I don't know, you know, what happens if one of my guys goes and he's wearing a stupid racist T shirt and he's walking down the street and he sees a customer and that customer says, well, I can't do business with that guy, right? So for me, that's. That's a problem. I'm not. That isn't his personal life that now impacts my revenue, that impacts my company, right. If that guy is going to do something stupid, if he's going to go out whoring or whatever on my business time, those type of things, that impacts me. So I get involved in people's personal lives when they work for, you know, and I think that's fair, right? If you're calling somebody and that person can't, you know, you're entering his space on the phone, then, okay, whatever you do at home, that's fine. But if you're traveling out to see a customer, you know, you. You have to be thinking about the whole environment as far as I'm concerned. Right?

Yeah. And what's interesting there, right, because it's funny, I was just working with a client a couple weeks ago and I was talking about the idea of, like, the goals of their people and getting aligned on them. They're like, well, isn't that too personal? Like to ask those types of questions. And I was like, I guess that's up for you to decide. But even the word that you're using, describe, it's too personal. Personal is very close to personnel. And if you are trying to motivate your team, AKA the personnel, don't you need to know what the person wants? So this is up to you to decide. But trying to motivate someone without knowing what they want is really hard.

And in my business, like, I typically end up with people from all over the world, right. I manage global teams. So I always say the guy from Sweden and the guy from Italy have very different ways they're going to spend their money right? Now, I can give them money and say, spend it however you want. But if I go and I give a fancy watch to a guy from Sweden or I give a family vacation to the guy from Italy, they're not going to be happy if I switch those, they're going to be thrilled. So knowing that makes me better at understanding the motivation of my team and getting the best results out of them, right?

Yeah. No, I love that. I love that. And so, okay, so where we're at now, y', all, right, we're talking about talking about the greater good, right? What we're here to do, we've talked about, like, what's the mission? Preparing for it, preparing for multiple scenarios. Scenarios. We've talked about drilling high repetition micro skills, right? You're not practicing the pitch. You're practicing the intro. You're practicing these three disco questions at high repetition. I don't think we touched on this enough. Just as a quick call out, y'.

All.

High repetition. Zach, how many times did you practice cleaning your gun?

So let me tell you this, right? I did the calculation, and I said, I can't tell you about cleaning my gun, but I can tell you I fired about 750,000 rounds during my training, right? And you say that like you talk to people and they say, I'm a really, really. I'm a fantastic shot. You know, I put 500 rounds through my gun, right? I'm like, you're talking about a totally different scale of things. Yeah, right? And that's the thing. And you're doing it when you're exhausted. We used to do exercises where we would, like, run seven kilometers and then shoot at a target, right? And try and get your breath. Try and steady yourself. Try and get your hands from shaking after doing that running, right? We would do it. Do three days without sleep and then shoot. Do all sorts of stuff like that, because that's more realistic. Now, again, you say, well, what happens if you're going to a trade show and two of your team come down with the flu and you get to the trade show and you were supposed to be five, now you're three. And the trade show organizers gave you the wrong booth, so your. Your stuff doesn't fit, what happens then? You know, you still have to produce the same sales, right? You still have to do the work, figure it out in the field. So again, if you're not ready to work, you know, if you get there and you go, boy, this isn't what I signed up for. I'm going back to my hotel room. That doesn't do anything, right? You gotta. You gotta push through these problems, right? Yeah.

No, it's just. It's so important, and that's also a big part of it. It's like hard work is a part of this. It just is. That commitment to excellence is a part of this. That commitment to practice is just part of this. Right? But I want to make a quick pivot here because I know some people are going to be listening.

Like, what?

But, but, but, Zach, what about work, life, balance? I can't. I can't be shooting 750,000 rounds and doing all these things like, how do I balance it? Which I. I'm excited for this part of this because you already shared this with me a little bit already. It's like, you can do both. So talk to me a little about this idea. Like, you know, how, you know, call it work life balance or work life integration or however you want to label it. Like, how can you dedicate yourself to excellence in your job in sales, but also dedicate yourself to excellence in your home life, whether it's family, relationships, kids, health, whatever?

So that's a great question. And first of all, it's about longevity, right? We're talking about two things here. One is excellence and longevity, right? And you can be a mediocre sales guy without being excellent and doing it for a couple of years. A lot of people do this for a couple of years and leave, right? I wanted to be in for the long term, I think. I think you do, right? But it kills you if you. If you are. And, and I'll be very frank, I was not good at work life balance until I was about 35, right? I was typically good at balancing two things. But you need to be able to balance a little bit more than that right? Now. First of all, I'll tell you what, I typically look at this as I go. What's my strategy in life? Where do I want to be at the end? And I'll tell you what, I decided a long time ago that I wanted to be married, right? You know, they're. Aside from the fact that I love my wife, it's sort of like there's a lot of evidence that says being married is good for you. So I was like, so I'm just not going to screw around with that, right? And I, you know, the first thing I put into my calendar is, well, I want to make sure I spend some time with my wife, right? And I used to travel 160 days a year. That's killer, right? But I always said, somebody once told me the difference between being married and being divorced was that 160, first day on the road. So I was like, okay, this is where I draw the line, right? But I also say, now I play a few tricks. Like, we never celebrate birthdays, anniversaries on time, but we always celebrate them, right? That way, if somebody says to me, I need you to be at this trade show on your wife's birthday, I don't say, no, I can't do it. I just say, fine. But we started out that way, right? I buy my wife gifts. I'll buy six or seven things that I think she's gonna like at once, and I'll give them to her over the course of a year. But it's not like she's expecting Valentine's Day. I'm gonna be home with a gift. And I did the same thing for my kids. So with my kids, I'll go, okay, I'm gonna give them, I'm gonna be there for two concerts and two plays and two games over the course of the year. But we're gonna do stuff like I'll take them on. You know, I've been to the amusement park with my kids and three times this year, right? Because I can, when I know that I can, I'll take an afternoon off and I'll go to an amusement park with them, right? So it's really important to set those. In my opinion, it's really important to set those things in stone. Ditto exercise, right? I let myself, you know, I worked so damn hard in my 20s and early 30s and I just said, you know what, I don't need to be fit anymore. And I stopped exercising. And then when I was about 35, I said, you know what? I'm not going to be able, I'm not going to be alive to play with my grandkids. I have to get fit again. And I just said, okay, I'm going to exercise for an hour every day. And I put that in my calendar. And typically I'm getting up first thing in the morning and exercising. So I'm putting like, I'm doing every, I'm putting everything in my calendar that I have to do and then I'm making sure that I'm setting time for exercise and time for my family. Wife, right? And I'll throw out like a couple of extremely tactical tips, right? The killer for salespeople. How many good dinners do you have in a work environment over the course of a year? Kd?

Well, I guess now it's, it's different. But like, wait, like, right, because now we're like fully remote and all those things we're like selling, selling. Like I was having, I was having some good meals.

So. And that was killing me because there was a time when I was probably having 100 really, really high end meals a year, right? So what I picked up was I take protein powder with me on every trip and right before I go out for dinner, I put a scoop of protein powder and some water and I drink it and that fills me up. So you could put the best steak in the world in front of me. I'm gonna have like a fifth of it. I'll push around my plate and I won't be able to finish the rest of it, right? And that Just that one little thing probably added 10 years to my life, right? Because I would. I would have died of a heart attack years ago. So I do stuff like that. I know I keep track of gyms in every city I go to. Right side plan out. If there's a good running track, I'll go running. If there's a place to rent bikes, I'll do that. If there's a good pool, I'll swim and then I'll go to a gym. There are four or five cities that I'll go for a box. I know where I can go and get a boxing coach to give me a lesson for an hour. I'm always looking for that when I'm traveling. And I lock into that. It's non negotiable.

I love that. And you used a word there that again. Back to the military as we wrap up is things are non negotiable. And that is something that in sales and sales leadership that I think we often get wrong where like, we teach something or we expect something, but it's never really presented as a. This is a non. This is a non negotiable. Aka you will get kicked out if you don't do it. If your instructor, your sergeant, your general was like, we're running seven miles today. You couldn't be like, I'll give you five. Like, you couldn't do that. But that happens all the time on sales teams across. We want 50 dials. I'll do 32 today. We want you to put notes in the CRM.

So I'll tell you what, like, I have this guy who was a great. He turned out to be a great performer. And he joined my team with couple with a few years experience from a really, really good company. And the first week of training, everybody said to me, you know, in the middle of training, he's saying, we used to do it this way at this company. Do you want to learn? Do you want me to talk about what we used to do? And it was driving all the trainers crazy and all. This first week after hiring him, I say, let's have breakfast, just you and me. I said, look, I don't think you're. I'm not sure you're happy here. It's only been a week. I bet if you called your old boss, you could get your, your job back, no harm done. And he's like, zach, what do you mean? I said, well, you're obviously not happy on my team. I don't want you to not to be happy. I think you could probably you know, it's only been a week. I bet you could get your old job back. He's going, no, no, I want to be here. I said, well, this is it. You're on my team. This is how we do things. We don't do things the way you did them in your other company. I'm sorry, you have to learn my stuff. In the end of the day, you want to do things slightly differently and you produce results, that's fine. But you have to learn my way of doing. Yes, non negotiable. And I never had a problem with him, and he was one of my best performers after that. Right. But you have to. You can't accept. You can't be flexible on that. Right? It has to be this my way or the highway. And I know, I'm sure there are dozens of people listening to this who are going, well, that's a bastard. He doesn't know what he's talking about. Right? But I'm responsible for revenue, right? I need people to produce. If they don't produce, they're taking money from my kids. Yeah. So I can't be flexible on this. Right?

What I. What I would tell people in the onboarding is, in onboarding, in onboarding, do this for 90 days to the letter. Do this for 90 days to the letter, and then we can readjust, and then I'd share them. Go find the people doing this that aren't succeeding. Go find them. Go find the person using this stuff that isn't succeeding. You're gonna find a lot of people that aren't using it that aren't succeeding. But do this right? What we would say is like, okay, if you do what I ask you to do, and it doesn't work, what's broken me? What I asked, what I asked you to do was broken, that's on me. But you don't do what I ask you to do, and it doesn't work. What's broken? You. And I don't have time for broken people here. And so it is this concept. And I know people like, they. They push back sometimes on this idea, but it's like, look, if I know a way to succeed, and this is the caveat, there are a lot of leaders out there that what they're suggesting isn't right. And I understand that. That's different. But if I know what I'm asking you to do works, I owe it to you to hold you to it. I owe it to you, your team members, your managers, and everyone else, because we know it works. It's a non negotiable.

And you're in a position to say, like I like to say, find. Look on LinkedIn, find everybody who's worked with me and ask them if, if they succeeded or not and if what I said was right or not. I'm not even gonna tell you who. Find people, ask them about me. And you're in the same position, right? You've succeeded. So if you're saying do it this way, you have a track record, they should just listen. Like, listen to. I don't get this whole thing of people saying, I wanna work for Katie, but I'm gonna do it my. You know, I'm gonna. So what? Why work for a good leader if you don't want to learn from.

Oh, man. We don't have enough time to unpack that right now. So what we'll do is we wrap this up, my man, because we've, we've touched on both here. We've talked on the sell side, this repetition, the discipline, the focus, the practice. But we also touched on that live better side of like balance. And would you use something there that I thought was very. It's the intention, right? It's not attention, it's intention, right? Whether that's gifts, whether that's travel, it's not on the day it happens, it's that it happens with full intention. Right? And all that matters on so many levels.

And if you make your family understand that my kids grew up this, right, and they knew that we might not celebrate their birthday. We'd celebrate their birthday. We might not celebrate it on their birthday. There are a couple of holidays that I'm always home for. There are a couple holidays I'm never home for. They know. My kids know all the trade shows I go to. Right? But that's because that's the thing. And I remember years ago, I said there was something happened in the Middle east. Oil prices dropped, there was an economy thing. I said we might not be going. You might. Kids might not be going to camp this year because of something that happened in Saudi Arabia. My sales are down. I'm trying to fix it. But I'm giving you warning now, right? And they're part of our economic unit. They understand what's going on.

I like that. I like that a lot. So, my man, as we wrap up here, where can people find more of you? Where are you putting out content? How can they get in touch? It's been amazing.

I post on LinkedIn twice a day. You can find me. I'm the only Zach Selch on LinkedIn. I also have a website called Global Sales Mentor with a lot of free content. If you do any business internationally, come to my website, raid the content. Don't even look me up if you don't want to. There's a lot of free stuff. There's. If what you're looking for is somebody who can really help you grow internationally, reach out. Talk to me. Maybe I can help you, maybe I can't. Maybe I can connect you to somebody who can. But probably I can give you some help growing internationally. A lot of people get thrown into this job without any training or support and it's critical for their long term goals to succeed as VP of International Sales because the next job is going to be Senior VP of Global Sales or whatever. If you need help, if you think you want some help, reach out. Chat.

Love it.

My man.

This was everything I was hoping it would be and more. I appreciate the energy and insight.

I really enjoyed this. Katie. This was one of the podcasts I really wanted to get on.

Hell yeah, my man. Well, I'm sure we'll be doing a part two soon enough, so we'll be in touch. Dude. Appreciate you Sam.