Swinging for the Fences with Brandon Roberts

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Welcome to the show, kd. I'm so pumped about this. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited. I woke up and I was super pumped about this. Love baseball, love sales, everything about it. And I'm excited to dive in.

Nah, man, I'm pumped for it. Like, as a fellow baseball nerd and baseball fan and baseball player, it's like I feel like we're going to connect on a good level here and we're going to go after it. So like, so we're going to dive right into this, right? We're riffing a little bit before we started recording. But how and why the shift from baseball to sales? Like, how did that transition happen kind of in your career?

Yeah, absolutely. And for some background. I was drafted when I was 20 years old, hadn't even finished college at Cal Poly, and I ended up playing eight years in the minor leagues for the Reds, Twins, Rockies. Throughout that stint and through that period, I was super focused on baseball and I was getting my degree in the off season. I ended up getting my NBA online. But towards the end of my career, injuries started happening and I started thinking, you know, I was in my mid-20s thinking of like, okay, wait a minute, even if I make a career out of baseball, I still have a lot of life to live afterwards. What in the world am I going to do? I was a Kinese major. And so, you know, you naturally have those thoughts, especially when you start getting injured and you start getting a little bit more of a negative outlook of making it to the big leagues based on what's happening. And so sales is something that gets brought up to, to players when you're playing baseball. Like, hey, a lot of baseball players are successful in sales afterwards and we don't really know why. In the moment I'm like, okay, well, all right, I guess so. But it just kind of puts it in your head and you start thinking like, okay, that's a good place for some decent income. And it's the similar mindset. And obviously now that I'm more than a decade into the sales industry, just it makes so much sense and it all has tied in together. So really how I got the shift was in my last season, before my last season of baseball, I took a part time SDR gig and I was like, look, I can only work for five months because I'm going back to spring training. I already got a contract with the Rockies, but I just need to do something because I don't have any more degrees to chase. And I'm just sitting here training and so I was able to join a typical SDR bullpen where I was making cold calls for, like, three hours, and then I'd go train, you know, for spring training. And so that's where I got my intro to sales, and that's where I fell in love with it, because then I started realizing, wait a minute, I want to be at the top of the leaderboard. What's happening? So that's how it started.

I love it. What also is exciting, I didn't know before this call. I don't actually get to talk to a lot of VPs and sales leaders that are former SDRs. There aren't actually that many of us out there that actually know what that life was like in doing that day in and day out. And so I guess before we keep going, like, so what. What did you fall in love with? With sales. Right. Cause sales isn't for everybody. Right. And they. They preach it to athletes all the time. But I also know plenty of athletes that haven't made it in the sales world either. Like, what did you fall in love with? Like, why do you think it connected for you?

That's a great question. Because think about, you know, I was. I was traveling around for years on buses, just, you know, sleeping until noon, and then playing at the. Playing a game every night at 7. And then all of a sudden, you flip completely 180, and it's like, you're 9 to 5. You're sitting at a computer, and you're talking about software. When I started, I'm like, I don't even like software. I don't know what this is. I don't understand it. I don't want to call people. And so that was part of it. But the major part that clicked for me was, okay, wait a minute. I can actually control how much money I make. And the even bigger part of it was, oh, there's a leaderboard here. Why is Andrew on the leaderboard? Why is Caitlin on the leaderboard? Why. Why am I. Wait a minute. I can be. I can be the best in this group, or I can, you know, kind of set. Set the bar a little bit higher. And so what's funny about that is I just took my. I just took my strength finder assessment again, and of course, a competitor was one of the top five. I'm like, all right, Embarrassing, but, yes, I get it. And so that was a. That was a component as well. So that's why I fell in love with it. And that's why I knew immediately. I'm like, okay. Sales is where I'm going to go with this, because I can really tap into it.

I love it. And also, there's a lot of people that don't actually understand. I'm going to ask this question before I make it a statement. What does being competitive mean to you? Because I think a lot of people get competitive and wanting to win confused. So when you say you're competitive, what does that mean?

Okay, I see it in two different ways. So, number one, I am competitive within myself. I'm competitive against myself, my past self. And I'm just really ambitious to continue to grow and develop skill sets and improve, no matter what. The other thing that I try to teach my teams is competition is healthy when you're paving the path for others. Because we know salespeople are competitive. We want to win over competition. We want to win the deal. But when it's competitive at the cost of your teammates, it is really bad in a culture of a sales team. And so I'm really clear, look, it's cool to want to be on the top of the leaderboard, but competition is healthy if it's a way to pave the path for others. And I'm always about, like, boosting each other up and team acceleration and how can we make each other better? But at the same time, yeah, you want to be at the top and you want to make a lot of money, but you got to bring people with you. You have to bring people with you in order for us to be successful. And as an organization, I love that.

And I think it's one of the reasons why I've enjoyed, you know, working with baseball players over certain other sports is because in baseball, I feel like people have a better understanding that one, not everyone can and should be the superstar, and everyone knows what their role is to play, to succeed as a team. Right. And the competing with oneself, that's so important. I hope people caught that. There's something else subtle. You said, I hope people caught. Here is when he was talking about the leaderboard, I want you all to rewind and hear what he said. He asked, why are they at the top? This is something that a lot of top performers do. They don't. People pay attention to is they look at the top and they go, why? What is it they do that got them to the top? And then they model those behaviors. They don't just look at the people at the top and go, I want to beat them. They figure out why they've been successful and then how they can replicate that activity. So so, hell yeah, my man. I'm already loving this. There's no way we're gonna keep this to an hour. We'll see. So. All right, so let's dive into some of the carryover here. Right, so you had a long career in baseball, like, and one of the foundational pieces of baseball that I wish people carried over into their sales creators is practice. I don't believe that people practice enough. So, like, how should sales teams approach practice in a way that actually will make them better at what they do?

Yeah, this was a really interesting one for me because when I, you know, I talked about when I was a part time sdr and then I did my last full season, and then I was a full time account executive, you know, kind of at my start. And I remember showing up with a sales floor with hundreds of folks thinking, oh, I don't know the software and I don't know how to use a CRM or like, what's the salesforce thing? And, you know, like, all this stuff. But I had this one thing over them, which was this eight years of professional baseball that I had no clue what I was learning through that period, but I just thought about things differently and I saw the world differently, you know, and so I think that practice is a main critical component of that, because in baseball, you literally never stop practicing. Sure, people want to hit 300, but once you hit 300, you're not going to say, all right, I hit 300, I don't have to practice anymore. I'm just going to play it the next year. Like, that's literally. That literally never happens. In fact, you practice 90% of the time, you're even at the ballpark, and then you only perform a little bit of it. And so it was that mindset of, like, I have to continually get better every single day, every single week, every single month, no matter what, in order for me to look at myself in two years and know that I've improved. One of my biggest fears, Katie, is for me to wake up, fast forward 12 months, and for me to wake up and have the exact same skill sets and competencies. Ooh, that is like. Like, wait a minute. No, no, no, no. I'm thinking one year out, two years out. What experiences, what skill sets, what practice do I need to embrace? And so I really try to try to ingrain this in my sales teams. I even wrote an article on LinkedIn, the mindset of practice. And I think about this in a couple different ways. And I'm excited for you to potentially challenge me because one of them is a little bit controversial. In fact, I got into an argument with a football player who thought he thinks about it differently. And I. I love the healthy conflict. But anyway, so I view practice as repetition, evaluation, and adaptation in an effort to improve your skills. It's in a nutshell. That's what it is. You repeat stuff, you evaluate what's happening, and you adapt yourself or improve your skills. And I see it in two different ways. There's a traditional practice where you pull yourself away, you do some intentional practicing. You're either working on your pitch or objection, rebuttal, or whatever the case may be. But I also think that people can have a mindset of practice while they're performing, while they're cold calling, while they're doing their demos. And this is where it's controversial and where the football player said, wait a minute, what about this game time mindset? You know? And that's the difference between football and baseball, right? Football, you wake up on Sunday and it's game time, and you go, and you've practiced this whole time. Whereas when you come from baseball, you play 162 days in a row, it's like Groundhog Day, and you just go for it. And so the way I think about it is, okay, yeah, I'm going to cold call this person and I want to get a demo. Sure. I want to drive the outcome. So you could think of it as performing and trying to get to an outcome, but really, what do I need to accomplish over the next month, year, two years, three years? I need to take every single interaction and experience and improve upon that. And if I think of it as a mindset of practice, and my outcome of this call is to get better or to learn something or to improve something, fast forward two years and guess how good I'm going to be. I'm going to be way better than if I just went through the motions and tried to execute every time. So it's a controversial way to think about it, but I believe in it.

Yeah. And so I think I'm actually pretty aligned with you. I just have different terminology right. For me, practice is when there's not a score. So when you're doing it, there isn't a score. Once you have the prospect on to me, that is game time. You're applying your practice, but it shouldn't. And this is what a lot of people do with practice. They'll talk with the manager. The manager says, you know what? You should use this line. And the rep goes, yeah, I should use that. Line. And the first time they're using it is when they get a prospect on.

Yeah, okay, there you go.

And to me. And they think that, like that to me, no, no, you're practicing with the prospect. That is not how you want to do it. That'd be like, you know, analogy. If I wanted to learn how to switch hit in games.

Yeah, I can't do that.

Right. And so I think the practice is doing it with repetition. You're applying practice in the game, but then you're still paying attention to the results. Right. So I think we're pretty close there. I just believe that the practice is like, okay, this is when you're doing it over and over again so you can apply it in the game. So many reps. And this is also. This will be a good segue to. The next question is, you know, managers think they're coaching when they just tell someone to do something. And to me, that's not coaching, right? Like, that's telling someone. Whereas you got to practice with them if you're really going to coach and they need to work with you. So, like, let's go to that part of, like, how do. How should managers change their thinking so they can be better coaches? Because managing and coaching are two totally different things. Actually, for baseball, people know this. You have a manager, you've got position coaches, right? You've got speed coaches, strength coaches, psychologists, you've got all sorts of coaches. So it's all about how managers can be better coaches.

Yeah. No, I love it. So when I tell my manager, I say, right or wrong. This is what I've said before. Your number one job is to make the people on your team better. Just make them better, help them make them improve and make them better. And essentially when you say that, what you're doing is you're asking to change people, because improving is change, right? So you're going through some change management. And so I think that just recognizing that that is your number one job is to improve the people that are reporting into you. Whether that's, you know, your coaching strategies, your practice, your whatever, whatever the case may be, whatever that is, that is your number one job. And so I think the other, the other thing that sales managers should think about is their commitment to this. You know, there's stats out there, well, how much should sales managers, how much time should they spend on coaching? Is it 75% of their time? Is it, you know, 50? Like, whatever the, whatever the benchmark or the industry standard is there. But I think we need to be intentional about it. I think we need to be committed and I think we need to evaluate, okay, I just worked 50 hours this week. How many of. How much of that was firefighting, was working with other departments, was doing all these other things, and how much of it was actually making my people better at their jobs? Because that has a dual benefit, right? Not only is it helping you as a manager to hit your quota better, but it's also helping other people and it's developing other competencies and skill sets and even leaders within your group. The other thing that I would say on this is that I think that managers are most effective when they are tapping into people's strengths. And there's this argument around, well, do we focus on strengths or do we fix the things that people are doing wrong and focus on their weaknesses? And I am a huge fan of focusing on strengths and capitalizing and optimizing to the fullest potential, number one, because you usually can have a little bit more return on investment by focusing in that. And number two, how much more engaged are you as an individual if your coach is focusing on something that you're good at? You know, if Katie, your manager, was like, oh, you're amazing at podcasting and we're going to tap into that and take you to the next level, it's like, well, that's what I'm excited about and that's what gets me engaged and motivated. And so, you know, I think that's where we can stretch people beyond their, their abilities.

So let's go a layer deeper there. How, how do you help your managers identify strengths? Right? Because I think even spotting that sometimes managers aren't always the best at. So, like, how do you guide or coach, coach your coaches on how to identify those strengths?

That's a good question. How do you identify? So we go through the skill will quadrant in terms of how do we need to focus and tailor our coaching to the individual. I think of coaching as similar to motivation of a sales team. If you use a blanket approach, it's not going to be that effective because people are motivated by different things. Like a spiff, for example. Well, some people are going to be motivated by it, some people maybe don't. And so I think that tapping into individuality when you're going through your coaching and that helps you with your skill. Well, matrix, like, okay, wait a minute, where are we falling short here? And is this person really skilled up, but they're not motivated for whatever reason and that helps you focus on what are ways we can get them more motivated? Do we give them more empowerment, do we give them more responsibility? Do we give them more experiences, opportunities. Okay, wait a minute. This person is so motivated, so extremely motivated, but their skills aren't there.

Great.

Their coaching plan is different than the other person we just talked about because we're doing more, you know, sales trainings or product trainings or whatever the case may be. And so focusing on the individual, I think is what's important. And naturally, the closer you are to your sales team and the more you're thinking about that, you're going to know what their strengths and weaknesses are.

I really like that. And you said a word there a few times. I think that should be where we take this combo next, which is motivation. And this is another reason why I really enjoy baseball players over football, which was also, by the way, I played football. Right. Actually, unfortunately, I'll say in quotes, picked football over baseball. I look back and go, dang, like, what could that have been? Oh, I know, dude. My knees and everything today know it for sure. Where there's some sports where it's like you have to get hype for, you know, you got to build up like the energy to go do it. Whereas you mentioned earlier, baseball, you playing 162 games, you're not hyping yourself up before every single one of those games. But you do need to maintain a certain level of motivation. So I guess how do you help motive? Because sales is very similar. It's a slog there, is it. There isn't even an end to the season. Like day in, day out, it's the same things over and over again. Some days you go over five, other days you go four for four. Like, how do you help maintain the motivation of your team in this 162 game season that we play? That is called sales.

Yeah. Oh, that's perfect. Yeah. No, I am motivating people so hard. Right. Such a challenging, such a challenging role. Right. I am a believer that you can't actually motivate someone in it of itself.

Right.

Because you're essentially trying to force something upon them that's really more like emotional or like kind of intrinsic. And so what I try to think about is how do I create an environment where motivation can thrive within that environment? And so I go back to God. What was that old book called? Drive from Daniel Pink, where the ways people are motivated are developing mastery. So this is all about practice and improvement and continuing. Making sure that we have a culture where we're continuing education or continual learning or improvement is part of it. Autonomy and purpose. Purpose is a big one. Why are we even here? Like, why are you doing this? Why are you blasting calls all day long? What are your goals in two year? Is it to create more income for your family? Are you trying to buy a new fancy car? I mean, is it less than income related? Is it you? Like our company and the purpose that we're serving and we're helping these businesses, we're helping, you know, fitness owners, you know, improve their businesses so that they can improve the lives of other people in terms of wellness. And so, like, why are you actually here? So the why is important to me. And really just creating the. Creating the environment where people can be motivated as opposed to taking an approach of how can I motivate that one person? It's like, now let's create an environment where they can be motivated.

I love that answer. And I'm also. I'm glad you called out the beginning. Like one, the challenges of motivation, but sometimes even questioning if you can motivate versus creating an environment that is motivating. Those are two very different things. And I love that that's the way that you approach it, because I think that is key to it. Trying to motivate individuals is a really hard thing to do. Can create a motivating environment that then people start to fall into and it starts to get everyone around it because, like, there's so much psychology that goes into sales, but also into leadership. And something that I don't think a lot of people know is how much these professional teams spend on psychology. Right? Like they have certified psychologists, therapists, peak performance mindset coaches for all of these teams. A lot of people don't even know that this exists in. Shoot, I'm forgetting the title of the book. There's a really good book, a business book that was written by the former sports psychologist for the St. Louis Cardinals. And he was who went in when they won like their first World series after like six, 70 years, and like, got them into the right place. So, like, talk to me a little bit about, like, the sports psychology, like, what did you learn kind of in the majors? And then how do you kind of apply that to your teams now?

Yeah, that's a really good topic. So I remember when I was in college, this was in 2003 or four or whatever, we were introduced to a sports psychologist that was kind of working, you know, at Cal Poly or whatever. I'm thinking, what is this? And it's. It's evolved definitely even from then. And I have a. A former. Well, I mean, he's one of my good friends, but he was a former roommate teammate at Cal Poly. He played in the minor leagues for quite a bit, coached a lot. His name is Jimmy Van Ostrin. I'll give him a plug. He is the peak performance mental mindset coach for the Blue Jays. His job is literally to focus on 25 people and their mindset and the way they're thinking about things and the way that their attitude is exclusively like, that's literally his job. And so when you think about sales teams and you think about the parallels between baseball and sales, we're like, wow, should we have a mindset coach for our sales team? And so I talk about it a lot in my team meetings and when I'm talking to managers and stuff like that. And I'm trying to really, you know, help them understand why mindset is so critically important in our sales performance. It's not just about building skills or figuring out a rebuttal. It's about discipline. It's about attitude. It's about positivity. So it's funny because he actually has a peak performance mindset, just like a booklet that he uses. And he sent it over to me, and I'm like, yes, I've got the Blue Jays booklet on peak performance. And so it's literally. It's littered with everything from gratitude to leadership, confidence, choices, process over results, how to focus on process as opposed to focusing on results because you can't control results. Dealing with adversity, having a growth mindset. I mean, there's so many parallels and similarities. But, yeah, that was one of the other factors when I came into a sales organization is like, wow, they mindset was so critically important when I was playing baseball. We worked on it a lot. We worked on positive mental imagery and visualization and being calm and breathing. And then, like, now it's like, there's nothing. I felt like that gave me a bit of an edge.

No, 100%. Also, I just remembered the book. It's called Executive Toughness. That's the name of the book and similar that process goals versus product goals, he talks about in there, gratitude, work, visualization. And also in that book, he talks about visualization, the good and the bad. So, yes, you want to picture things going well, but you also want to picture things not going well, and how will you respond? Right? Preparing yourself for adversity. Because if all we ever do is picture it going perfectly, then it doesn't. It crushes us versus you. Picture it going well, great. But also, okay, picture yourself. And we've done this exercise with my team. Picture yourself getting hung up on, like, see it vividly. Picture someone like cussing you out. But then picture what you're going to do about it. Picture yourself taking a couple deep breaths. Picture yourself laughing it off to one of your coworkers. Picture yourself journaling it real fast and making that next call. But you need to see yourself responding to adversity, not just picturing it. So I'm with you. So prior to 2020, I was looking into like bringing in a full time like mindset therapy, like performance coach into my team because it was something where like you to me, it's just such a no brainer. It's such a no brainer to do, especially in sales. So now that like we're hopefully out of some of this Covid nonsense, I can bring this topic back up and get after it. Because mindset is everything. And it's one of the reasons why I think more people don't last as long in sales is they can't handle the mental sales side of it, especially when they get into a slump, which happens in baseball a lot too, because when you're doing 162 games, you can get into a two game, four game, 10 game slump where just everything seems to be going wrong and you can't figure it out. Can happen in sales too. Like how, like how do you help people get out of a sales? I think this is one of the most common questions I get from people. How do you get out of a slump? What did you learn in like baseball that you've carried over into sales?

Oh, and you just, you just brought me back. Cause baseball slumps are absolutely the worst. And you know when they're the worst is when it's at the beginning of the season because your batting average is shown on every single game, every single at bat. And then you got hecklers in the stand saying you're hitting 100 and so you've got nothing to build it off of. But anyway, yeah, so baseball slumps are an absolute real thing. They happen no matter what to every single player. I remember Derek Jeter won historic year. He was like over 36 to start off the season or something like that. And they're like, wow, is Jeter done? Of course he wasn't. But it's just everybody goes through it. And so it's not about how to, how to avoid a sales slump. It is how to embrace yourself and how to, how to get out of a sales slump faster. And so I have a really, really good strategy for this one. And I love. I love the. It's the Sandler BAT triangle approach, and I love it because obviously BAT is the acronym, which is meaningful for me, but it's really, really powerful. And so what BAT means, it's the three things that you have within your control no matter what. So we alluded to it a little bit earlier. You can't control the results. You can't control whether or not this person that you're. That's in your pipeline is going to sign on the last day of the month. Like, that's not a controllable. The controllable is these things right here. And so what BAT stands for are behaviors, attitudes, and techniques. So getting out of a sales slump is focusing on behaviors, attitudes, and techniques. And what those mean, if we were to just impact those for a little bit. Behaviors is all around how disciplined you are, your routines. I mean, your life routines, as well as your work routines, the activities that you're doing. Like, what are you actually doing to drive results, the activities that are in there. So those are your behaviors. So that's, number one, 100% controllable, within your control. The behaviors that you're doing, the activities that you're doing, the routines that you're taking, you name it. Number two is attitude. So this is around your confidence, your visualization, your gratitude, or your positivity. You know, are you doing daily gratitude to get yourself in the right mindset to go through this grind that we go through? Are you staying confident? Are you using strategies to be confident, which include preparation, which you alluded to when you were talking about, hey, you got to prepare for that, you know, the negative output as well. Are you using your body language to, you know, get yourself in a more confident mindset? You know, we hear smiling and dialing. Ultimately, that just. It changes your tone, but it also gets you into more of a positive frame. So your attitude, which is number two, and then your techniques, which is what we started talking about. Practice. Are you improving? Are you working on your skill sets? Are you training? Are you growing? Are you getting new experiences? The way to get out of the sales slump is to focus on behaviors, attitudes, techniques, and just pulling yourself out of the results and focusing on the things that are more controllable, that drive those results, the things that are controllable, that drive to the results and trust the process. So that's. I don't know. That's my take on it.

I love it. And I'll tell this story real quick because I know you'll appreciate it. Did you see the interview with Alex Rodriguez, Frank Thomas, and Pete Rose. This is about eight, nine years ago now, where they asked Pete Rose. And for anyone listening, Pete Rose is one of the, if not the greatest hitter of all time in Major League Baseball. He'll never be in the hall of Fame, unfortunately. Most hits, just this dude is an animal. Long story there, but one of the best hitters ever. Then you have Alex Rodriguez and Frank Thomas, both, you know, future hall of Famers. Thomas in yet? I don't know if Thomas is in yet, but either way, they asked him, how do you get out of a slump? And his response sticks with me. I use this all the time with my own team. He said, well, the first thing you don't do is change your swing.

Oh, my gosh, I have to look up this interview.

Oh, God, you're going to love this interview. Like, people listening right now are probably, what the hell, Katie? He's like, just hang with me. You'll get it. He says, the first thing you don't do is change your swing. Your swing is what got you to the majors. That's what got you here. He's like, what you change is maybe the pitches you're swinging at. What you change is where you stand in the box. What you change is maybe you choke up just a little bit, but you don't change your swing. And so often with salespeople, especially if they've been successful, they get into a slump and they start to change their swing. They change what got them there in the first place. They start doubting everything. And I tell this to my team all the time. It's like, hey, are you doing what made you successful before? So kind of back to your bat. Analogy is like, have you changed your swing? Has your swing changed? Because if your swing has changed, that's what's causing the slump. If your swing is still the same, then you gotta trust you're gonna get yourself out of it. So go look up. That is one of my favorite.

I'm going to.

Absolutely.

I can't wait to watch it. Yeah.

And also, too, it's Pete Rose talking to Alex Rodriguez and Frank Thomas. You're like, this is just unreal. So go look that up. But everyone listening, don't change your swing. Right? Or pay attention to see if your swing has changed. Because so often we may think we're doing everything the same, but we're not. We forgot something small. We're skipping steps, right? And so now I want to carry this over. I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately. And, you know, in sales, a lot of times people say, you know, if you have a 30% close rate, you know, you're doing well. And, you know, because if you have a 30%, you know, or 300 batting average in baseball, you'll be a Hall of Famer. Right? It's always the analogy that gets used, but I don't believe everyone still actually has that mindset of, like, it's okay to miss 70% of the time and they focus on the misses versus the hits. Like, do you have ways or techniques or how you work with your team for them to better embrace like, or accept that, you know, 30% is good, not bad, right? To not focus on just the bad things happening, but also focus on the hits that you're getting. I don't know if I asked that well, but hopefully you can take that and run with it.

Not only is it. Is it okay to lose that deal because to your point, the stats are, you know, 30% conversion rate is incredible, but you're going to lose deals and you better just gear up for that and know that. And I think I was talking, I mentioned something earlier, and this kind of leads to, you know, some other good talking points. But it's like if you find yourself at the end of the month and you need one more deal and you're relying on this one person to close, you're gonna.

Maybe.

That'S where you dip into not doing the best sales behaviors to try to get this deal over the fence, Right? And so this reliant on this one deal. And so what I'm a fan of is like, if you're falling short, don't push and push and squeeze at the very end of the funnel. You need to look at your pipeline and you need to acknowledge that you're gonna lose 70% or not win 70% of these. And you need to play the percentages and reverse engineer and always set yourself up with your pipeline and to where you don't have to be in those situations where you're pushing or probing or being, you know, whatever. Why sales has a bad reputation, essentially, is what I'm saying. And so by building it and by acknowledging that you're going to live with your conversion rates, that's where you're going to see yourself successful. And so the other thing, so I think it's an acknowledgement of your conversion rates and reverse engineering. That is what I would say. And that's kind of what happens in baseball, too. It's not that you're pissed off that you Struck out one time, you're gonna strike out a lot. You're gonna strike out a ton of times. And in fact, that doesn't even really matter that much. Nobody's looking at Cody Bellinger and saying, well, he's horrible because he struck out more than a hundred times in the year. It's like, no, they're looking at the home runs that he hit and the fact that he almost hit 50 home runs one year. And so, yes, I totally agree with you. It's okay to not win 70% of those. And let's focus on these 30% that we are. That we are closing. And the other thing that you alluded to was this focus of positivity or focus on the good experiences, because that just builds momentum within itself. We also can't dwell on the ones that we're not closing. And we need to almost have, like, a short memory or a bad memory on the ones that we don't close. And we need to really focus and just keep top of mind these big wins, these big successes that we're having. And by having those in place, that's going to lead to more momentum. Momentum leads to more motivation, and ultimately, you're going to see better sales results. So, anyway, I don't know if I took that in a different direction, but that's essentially what I think about when I see the parallels between a.300 batting average and a 30% conversion rate.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to do is like, one understanding that is going to be what it is. It just is. 30% is what it's going to be. You want every deal, but you can't. And I think one analogy too, with baseball is paying attention to what you should swing at and what you shouldn't. Like, more often than not, like, you have a lower batting average when you're swinging at the wrong things. You think you can hit everything when you can't. I still actually remember it was like my junior, I'd, like, never walked ever. Like, I was a swinger. I'm a swinging. I want to hit. And I remember my coach, Coach Padrone, my man, one time he said, you're not allowed to swing at the first seven pitches you see today. I was like, that sounds awful. Of course I'm going to swing. He's like, no, you are not allowed to swing. You are going to take the first seven pitches. I don't care if that's one at bat, two at bat, you are going to take the first seven.

Yeah, right there.

And I remember thinking, this is the worst idea I've ever heard in my life and took like the first three pitches and I thought all of them for sure were going to be strikes and they were all balls. It's like, oh, all right. So maybe I've just been swinging at things that I don't need to be swinging at. Right? And so I think that's something I hope people take from this is not every pitch, not every demo, not every company is going to be home run or a hit, but you need to pay attention to what you're swinging at that might be affecting that average as well. And so as we get to towards the end of this, there's another question I want to ask here. Again, like, understanding, like kind of the hierarchy of how baseball teams are organized. Right. And you've led large teams as well. How do you help lead leaders? Right? Because like with a baseball team, you've got, you know, the manager, you've got a hitting coach, you've got infield, outfield coaches, strength coach. Like, there's a lot of coaches that then roll up to, you know, a manager, general manager. How do you, I guess, lead your leaders or manage your managers? Because at a certain point, you're not supposed to be the best at everything. You're not supposed to be the one figuring out how to close all these deals. You need to get it done through people. So how do you apply some of that same baseball hierarchy, maybe to your teams and your orgs?

That's a great question, because I think back to John Maxwell's five layers of leadership, and the pinnacle one is developing other leaders. That's essentially what it's all about. And if you're living kind of this path or this journey towards, you know, higher level growth of leadership, you should be developing other leaders however you can. And I think this is one of the biggest moments in my career, or kind of like shifts in mindset, was when I first became a director where I was overseeing managers and I just realized, okay, wait a minute, I have to. Not only am I. So when I was a manager, I was trying to figure out how to be a good leader for myself. I'm like, okay, I need to research leadership and be a good leader leader. And now I was in a position where I had to develop other leaders. Not only develop other leaders, but live by the leadership principles that I was learning and kind of holding myself accountable to set the example. So a couple things that I think about are just continually making it part of the culture and holding your organization accountable to a culture of growth, which means simple things. Like every Friday we're going to do a leadership collaborative session and we're going to talk about concepts and we're going to prioritize this and we're going to develop together. And sure, maybe I'll teach a couple of concepts here and there or give you some material to talk through, but it's going to be collaborative and we're going to grow together and we're going to do this. And that's where team acceleration comes in. How do we help each other and play with each other's strengths and weaknesses to really level each other up? And then the other thing is I really try to. This is tough for young managers, right, that just get into management, especially if you're a top performing sales rep and you jump into management. It is like a really big mindset change.

Okay.

You are no longer measured on you. You are now measured on your team, the people on your team. So the measurement of your success is how much you can improve and how good you can get and how much you can maximize. The people on your team that report to you, there's no more. I'm a really good individual contributor and I can crush it by myself. Nope, that doesn't matter anymore. How well can you maximize the strengths and the. I don't know. Yeah, I guess I'll just say the strengths of your team to accelerate this unit, to drive more incremental results to the business. So those are a couple ways I think about that.

I love it. You said something earlier in our conversation that once my manager's here, they're going to smile, probably grimace a little bit, maybe roll their eyes. Cause if you were to hit them up on the street and say, yo, what's your job? What's your job? They would say, make my people better. And we talk about it every single leadership meeting, every single one on one. And like that's something we grill in is like, that is your job is to make your people better, not hit a number. Hitting a number only happens if you hit a make your people better. Right. And if it's relying on you to do it, then you're actually not a good manager even if you're hitting your number. I think people lose track of that. If you're not. If I give you a team and a year later, six months later, they're not any better, what do I need you there for? Like I need you there to make them better, actually. Shoot. Another question popped in my head that I wanted to ask because you were talking about it earlier you've actually mentioned a couple times like one year later, two years later, will I be a better person? A better version that I'm going towards it, I guess. How do you help people think a little bit more long term? Because sales reps can. Managers can't even leaders can get very stuck in. Am I going to hit my number today? Am I going to do this today versus are you going to be a better person a year from now? How do you help encourage that mindset? Because I think it's very important because most people aren't comparing themselves now to who they were a year ago and unfortunately a lot of people are the same as they were a year ago. So I guess how do you help encourage people to think a little bit more long term than just short term in the moment?

What a great question. I think they'll be transparent enough to say, I don't even know if I've cracked the code on that one. It's something I'm trying and I'm absolutely working on and I continually talk this way, but I mean, I don't know if I've cracked the code. And I have a recipe for how to get people to think about. But one thing I talked about the other day with one of my managers is think about it this way. So think about a 12 month period. You get done with that 12 month period. Do you want to have 12 months of experience as a sales manager or do you think you can actually pack in 24 months of experience in that? And that's how I've thought about over the past couple years is like, you know, when I first got into, I was in sales operations for a short stint and I was new to it and I was trying to learn as much as I could. I'm like, how can I learn two years of sales operations in one year? How can I accelerate my learning as much as possible? Sure. Going through the motions and going through my 50 hour workweek or whatever the case may be, I'm going to get one year of experience. But what else can I do? How else can I tap into this? What communities can I be in? What udemy courses can I watch? What, you know, other sort of like, you know, things can I tap into to just absolutely 100% be a sponge, commit myself and dedicate myself and just accelerate my learnings and accelerate my experience and accelerate my growth as fast as possible. And I think the reason this actually ties back to baseball, the reason I think that I think like that, that's kind of a weird statement. Is because I spent eight years in my 20s playing baseball. So I was an SDR when I was 26. Right. And so I almost had a chip of like, I am behind, I am behind, and I want to speed up and I want to learn and I want to grow and I want to get into leadership. And I, you know, had my own ambitions. And so I almost feel like that's where it came from, where I felt like, well, shoot, I haven't been working since I was 21 in sales. I don't have a lot, you know, 20 years of sales experience here. So anyway, I think about like, okay, over the next 12 months, how can you get 24 months of experience? What does that look like? What does that look like? Does that just mean continually learning and devoting yourself to the. To whatever trait you're in or whatever skills you want to develop?

I think that's key. And I think you nailed it right there at the end too, of like, you know, one. Playing catch up. But also listening to you describe it, I wish more athletes actually remembered how long it took them to get good at something. And I think this is where this gap happens sometimes with athletes coming into sales is like you're talking to a collegiate athlete, potentially even a professional athlete. You've played baseball since you were 6 years old, which means you have taken hundreds of thousands of ground balls and T swings and everything else. But then people are told, hey, you'd be good at sales. And so then people get into sales and they're shocked when they're not good right away, but they're not willing to dedicate the same amount of practice to their craft. I use this example with every hiring class that joins my team. Let's say who played a sport, musical instrument, or had a hobby in high school or college, Everyone raises their hand. I say, all right, like, what is it? Baseball, guitar, band, whatever else. And I say, cool. How many shows did you do a month when you were in a band? Oh, we did a show every weekend. How long was the show generally? Like three to four hours.

Cool.

How many hours did you practice per week for that three hour show? On the weekends, you'd be like, at least two hours a day, three hours a day. I'm like, exactly. You practiced 15 hours for that three hour show. We get into sales and people don't practice. They get in there and they just take swings all day long and they wonder why it doesn't land. You have to dedicate time to the craft. And I think it's so important for people to remember. And so, as we wrap up here, man, I got two last questions here. The first one I called the big three.

Right.

So we've been riffing on baseball and psychology and mindset for almost an hour now. If you wanted people to remember three key things from our conversation, what would those three things be?

Yeah, that's a great way to end. So I would say one takeaway is one of the things that I've used for years that I just love. I talked about it earlier. It is the bat methodology. These are the three things that you can focus on, that you can control to not only lead to success and consistency month over month, but to get out of those, the sales slump. And that's behaviors, attitudes, and continually developing your techniques. So that's one. Just a reiteration. You've hit on it so many times, and it sounds like you do an incredible job drilling this into your sales team. But practice is great, critical, and important. And I see practices repetition, evaluation, and adaptation of your skills to improve your skills. And then the last thing is really maybe more focused on the leaders that are listening, which is tap into the strengths and try to accomplish this thing called team acceleration, where you're maximizing what you can get out of your team to really get you to that. To that next level. So, you know, focus on strengths, maximize people, stretch them beyond what they can do, because that motivates people as well, believe it or not. So those, I don't know, those are the big three.

I love it. I love it, man. And I fully agree. Like, that bat analogy is something I'm going to run with as well, because it's just so true. It's so simple. Like, my team knows I love a good analogy or not analogy acronym love. I got acronyms for literally everything in our org. So I love that. And this is the question I always love to wrap on, man is, you know the name of this podcast is Live better sell better.

Right?

Like, I have this really weird idea that if we took better care of ourselves, if we lived better, if we had more joy in our life outside of work, that our sales would be better because of that. What would your live better advice be to people listening? Like, how to get more joy or fulfillment or energy out of life that we are living.

Yeah. I'm going to keep this one simple. Help people, whether or not you're selling to them or you're leading them or they're your peer that you're chasing on the leaderboard. Help other people, help prospects and their businesses. Help your team. Become better. Help your peer, your group, the people on your team, help them get better. Because it's all about everybody kind of getting better together and accelerating as a unit. And that's really what's gonna make you feel good at the end of the day, is you're spending time and you're helping people and you're improving them, and that's gonna keep you motivated, and it's the right way to do it.

I love that. One of our org's virtues, right? So we have our own virtues in the sales Org. There's company values, and we have our own virtues. One of our virtues is help ytp. And I told you I like acronyms. Help ytp. Help yourself, help your team, help your prospect. And it's one of, like, the core virtues that we try to do is one, help yourself. Right? But then help your team, help your prospect. And if that's all we're trying to do is help other things start to fall into line. So, my man, this was good. Like, I'm having a hard time wrapping this up. There's still so many analogies and rabbit holes I want to go through. But, like, how can people get more of you? Where can they find you? What do you got out there? Like, how can people get more of what you're doing in their life?

Yeah. So right now, it's LinkedIn. Post a little bit out there. If I've got a good thought or if I think there's a good concept that I want to share out, I've got a couple articles that I've put out there. I got one in the works that might hit. So, yeah, LinkedIn is the place. Absolutely.

Hell, yeah. My man. Well, this was amazing. Thank you so much for your time, your energy, your insights here, and I can't wait for people to hear this. Hopefully start getting to practice. And then we're just going to have to have some baseball chats afterwards anyway, because I can talk about this stuff all day. So I appreciate you, man. Thank you so much.

All right, kd, thank you.

All right.