The Realest Sales Trainer in the Game with John Barrows

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Kd. What's going on, my man? I'm psyched to be here and psyched to have this conversation. Let's put some formality around some of our conversations that you and I have offline about this type of stuff. So I'm glad to have this one out loud with everybody here. I'm excited for it.

And actually, I think that's an interesting point to even call out from the beginning is I don't think people understand how much some of us in this game talk to each other and bounce ideas off each other and ask the what do you think? And do you agree with this? And go back and forth? Like, John and I still have those conversations to this day. So I think that's actually a cool thing to open with. And something that you and I riffed on, this was even a couple years ago, was, you know, we were both at a conference, we both had done some presentations, and we'll get to the one story that we have to tell in this, but there was one where both of us, like, people came up and saying, thank you for being real. That was the compliment after the presentation. And so I want to open with this and say, why is being real so important in sales? Because I feel like we've lost it.

Yeah, well, I think we've lost it in general. I think sales, definitely. But in general, we live in this Instagram world where everybody puts on this face of how cool things are. But it's like, I got friends. If you follow them on Instagram, you would think they got the perfect life, right? But I know they don't. I know they're a train wreck. I know they always argue with their, you know, and fight with their kids and fight. You know what I mean? So, like, we live in this, and I think people are just craving authenticity. They're craving somebody to be straight with them and not bull. I mean, think about the politics and, you know, and all the messaging that we get pushed at us. And once you come across somebody that is like, just no bullshit, a normal human being, it's like a. Sadly enough. It's like a breath of fresh air these days. And I think. I don't know about you. It really took me. I was caught off guard by that feedback because it was usually. I mean, you know this, right? When we do presentations, the goal is to have people come up to you afterwards and be like, yo, that was insane. Like, what you put up there was insane. Oh, by the way, I loved how you delivered it, right? But it almost didn't matter what you and I delivered that day. The feedback was overwhelmingly, thank you for being real. Thank you for not just talking down to us and that type of thing. And I think it's. I think sales is probably a microcosm of where we are in overall society, of that, because everybody thinks they got to figure, pretend like they know what they're talking about, and most of us have no clue.

And so, you know, I'm going to learn a little bit about you today as well. Is. Was this always how you were, or did you reach a point or a shift where you're like, I'm going to be me? Because it's one. Like, you know, I know I went on a journey. Like, I wasn't always, I think, my authentic self in my role with my team. Did you go on a similar journey or have you kind of embraced this the whole way through?

I. I think there was no conscious moment, you know, I tried to bullshit some stuff, you know, early as a kid and, you know, pretend like I was what I wasn't in some ways. But I. I'm a. I'm a terrible liar, always have been. And so I felt like it was way too much effort for me to put on this front that I was trying to live up to versus just being me. And I think at the end of the day, you know, from a business standpoint, you go through. I mean, I think I read Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich, right? And in there he talks about, like, know your core values. And early. Early in my career, I wrote down my core values and I just said, all right, this is me, you know, and so this is how I'm gonna roll. If you don't like it, you don't like it. But I know I'm trying to come from at least a good place, right? Fundamentally, I'm not trying to screw anybody. Fundamentally, I trying to get. I genuinely believe in the giver's game mentality and doing right by others and what goes around comes around. So once I really settled in on, look, I'm probably gonna piss people off. I'm gonna say stuff that I probably shouldn't. I might even talk shit sometimes in the background when I'm frustrated with somebody or whatever it is. But ultimately, it's fundamentally coming from a good place. And that's where it settled in. And I just was like, all right, I'm me. And I remember one more quick example. The, you know, the disc profiles and all that stuff, right? Well, we, as a super young management team at my first company, Thrive, we were all like 23, 24. And it compares how you are in kind of like a chaotic or a stress state compared to how you are normal, right? And we partnered up with our friend, with our, you know, another one of the directors and kind of gave each other feedback on what we saw about each other's profiles. And when the consultant looked to the kid I was partnering with, kid Josh, he's like, all right, Josh, you know, talk to us about how John is different when he's stressed and when he's, you know, regular. And the charts was exactly the same. He was like, well, I mean, there's really no difference here. Apparently John is who he is. And that's kind of how I've always been, whether you like it or not, right?

And it's embracing that. And I think it's a good example of. And what I want people to hear from this too is like, it is a choice, though. You have to. You have to choose, like, hey, like, this is who I'm going to be. And if you caught what he said, be okay with some of those repercussions. Because, you know, what is it? If you try to please everyone, you please no one, and you lose yourself, right? Like, you still didn't win and you lose yourself.

Well, and let's translate that to sales, right? Not every customer is a good customer for us, right? Like, like too many sales reps look at every opportunity as an opera. Like every. Every phone call, everything. Opportunity. I can stuff this down your throat because our shit's so good. No, no, no, no, no, it's not. Your stuff is really good for a certain segment of the audience, but for everybody else, it's average at best. It's the same thing with you as a person, right? Like, I connect with people who share my core values. I connect with people. But if you don't, that's okay. And I'm fine with that. You know, I hope you don't take offense to something. I hope I don't fundamentally make you think that I'm better than you or something like that. Like, that bothers me. But if you don't like me or if you don't like my style, I could give a shit. I really could.

So it's so funny. A good mentor of mine. I was talking. This was about a year know, it's about two years ago now. I was talking through this is when I think I was finally, like, really actually coming into my own a little bit. And, like, LinkedIn started blowing up for whatever reason, right? Like, I never got into this game to be an influencer, whatever the hell I am now. Like, you know, so I was like, I didn't know how to handle it, you know, And I was, you know, you start to get some of the shit talking and all that start to happen. I was talking to a good mentor of mine. He's like, all right, we're not gonna get into religion here, kd, but I need you to think about this real quick. Half the world hates Jesus. So if you think if you. That in any way that you are going to make everyone happy, you're not gonna. All right, Half the world hates that dude. And he was supposedly perfect. So, like, basically he was like, get over yourselves. Like, if this dude has half the world hating him, you're gonna have your haters. And so, actually, let's talk about this real quick. How would you encourage people to kind of. To think through this, right? Like, when you get people talking noise or talking shit, I know this is something that, like, prevents a lot of reps, one, from creating content. But two, there's always that fear of that negative response, you know, like, okay, I sent this email. I got a bad response. How do you work through some of that negativity? Or how do you encourage the people you coach and work with to get through that?

Yeah, it's tough because this is a tough game, right? I mean, it's the 99 nos to get one, maybe, right? And you just gotta keep grinding. The first part is, obviously, don't take it personal. You know what I mean? Like, they don't know you. You know, they don't like you. And I have this conversation a lot when somebody presents themselves to either you or me and be like, oh, you know kd? Oh, he's my boy. I'm like, oh, really? Oh, hold on a second. Hey, Katie, you know this dude, right? Got it to me a bunch of times. I'm like, yeah, I kind of know him, I guess. And it's like they're putting on this front. So, you know, I think being okay with, you know, knowing that this isn't. It's not personal. You get hung up on it. Who knows what that person on the other end of line is going through? I've actually really, you know, what Covid's done for me. And I gotta check myself every once in a while because I still get angry. But, you know, somebody on the road or somebody in line who snips at you or yells at you or cuts you off or gives you the finger or whatever, you have no idea. If that person's family's in the hospital right now with COVID and he can't see his kid because, like, give each other a break at this point right now, if it gets, if it goes overboard, then, okay, you got to do something. I'm a kind of a three strikes and you're out type of dude, right? Yeah. Like, you fuck up once, you come at me once, whatever, I get it. Come at me twice, you're on notice. Come on three times. And all right, now we have an issue, but I think with this, like, not taking it personally, looking at it as an opportunity. And we hear this all the time, like, failure is the key to success, right? You fail enough, and as long as you're learning from it, right, it's better to fail and get a, like, and when I say fail, like, get a really bad response from a client, lose a contract, get yelled at by your boss, right? Like, those are all things that quote, unquote, failures. But if you look at them as learning opportunities, all of a sudden, right, you can, you can start to parlay that into more success. I mean, I talk a lot about, you know, reps tactically, right? And I think now more than ever, you gotta be a scientist in sales. You gotta look at the numbers, you gotta figure it out and it helps you disassociate from the personal part of like the here. Because if you make 50 dials in a day, you get no meetings. That sucks. But if you make 50 dials and you take two approaches and do 25 and 25 and still get no meetings, that's not bad because you just figured out a couple of things that don't work. And if you start moving in that direction of thinking of things as little wins along the way, right? And yeah, a bunch of no's and a bunch of negatives and trolls are going to hit you up. So I'm fortunate in the sense that I don't have to deal with some of the shit that a lot of other people do. In the sense I'm white, I'm a 45 year old man, right, who's been pretty much promoted his entire life. For everything else, everybody gets shit on for. You know what I mean? Like aggression and all this other stuff. So my trolls aren't. I don't really have a ton of trolls, but I do have a few. And. And at first I was like, who this was, this mother? You know what I mean? I'd be like, right? I'm like. And I'm trying to change his mind. I ain't gonna change his mind. That dude doesn't know me. He doesn't know me. Like, he doesn't sit in my house, he doesn't have drinks with me, he doesn't smoke a joint with me. Like, we don't, like, we don't know each other. So for him to judge me, who fucking cares? That's his judgment. So I don't know, I think it's. It just. You gotta learn a thick skin, learn how to get it. And I think that's why that entry level sales role is so critical, right? You just take an ass whooping, but then you get through it and you realize this world ain't that bad. And last point I'll make is it's all about perspective. I used to watch the news. I still do, but I try to avoid it because of how just real bad it is on the politics side of the house. But the reason I used to watch the news every night was because no matter how bad I felt my day went, right? No matter. I could literally have the worst day of my life. And all I got to do is turn on the news and be like, damn, ain't that bad, right?

So it's perspective. No, I think, I think it's massive, right? And it's taking that pause, right, to like, just remove yourself from a second. So I hope people caught that, right? It's like looking at the actions, looking at that. What were you testing? What was your scripting? It wasn't about you, it was about your scripting, it was about your messaging. It was about your process, not about you, right? And making sure that you look at it that. Right, that way. And so actually we'll step into the messaging a little bit here, right? So we've been talking about, like, realness and authenticity. And in a overly templated and automated sales world, how can a rep, sdr, ae, whatever, bring some of that authenticity and realness into their outreach? Messaging.

It's hard, man. It really is right now just because of how noisy it is out there. I think videos, you know, the short answer to that one is video, right? A personalized, not the stupid. Put the, you know, name of the person superimposed. And when they open it up, be like, hey, you, what, you know, you know, so that the very short term tactical answer to that question is, I think is videos. You can put your. Because then it's You, Right, But I think it's, you know, you probably saw this on LinkedIn, a little clip that we put out that got pretty popular, which was me and Morgan chopping it up on the give a shit factor, right? Like, do you give a shit? And I think if you genuinely give a shit, which means that you stop treating that person on the other end of the phone as a phone number or as a quota hit, quota to hit, and you stop treating those emails like, I gotta send these out so I can hit my activity metrics. And I understand the pressure from management and all that other stuff, but once we take that lens and put it on, we can start to differentiate. Because when people genuinely can tell that you put in the effort, gave a shit, tried whatever it is, they'll give you the. They'll give you a lot of leeway to do some stuff. I mean, there's been people that. I have had zero interest in their products, but because of how thoughtful they were with their outreach, right? Like, here's a quick one about somebody you and I Both know, Scott McGregor, right? Over at Something new, right? So I don't even know when I met Scott, like years and years and years ago, okay? This dude, and I don't know why he was even prospecting or nurturing me because I was a one man show. And I told him I was never going to hire. So I was like, scott, love you. But you know, probably, no, I'll refer some people to you, whatever. And like almost like clockwork, you know, a couple times a year I would get this thing in the mail that was like when my daughter was born. I'm obviously a New England Patriots fan, and Malcolm Mitchell was a Patriots player and he wrote a book. He wrote a kid's book. So all of a sudden I get in the mail, this book, Malcolm Mitchell, signed by Malcolm Mitchell to my daughter Charlotte, from Scott, saying, hey, John, I know you're a huge Pats fan, and I'm guessing Charlotte's at the age now where you're reading books to her, thought you might like this. And I was like, what in the fuck? I was like, I don't get gifts like this for my family, for crying out loud. Right? And I'm sitting there like, why is this guy. I kept asking my wife, I'm like, why is he giving me this shit? Like, I feel bad. Guess What? I'm now 10 people. And three of the people I've hired are through Scott, because you play the long game. And that's why I think too many people are Short term focused here, and they're not long term. I think that's the one thing, the one rub I'm going to give to the Millennial crew is that they're too impatient. I'm not. Look, I love impatience. I. I love aggression. I love going and getting it. But it's. There's a. There's a skip the skip the line mentality right now is I don't have to. I don't. I shouldn't have to do all this dirty work because look at how sexy it is. And this goes back to our first point about the, you know, the inauthentic world that we live in, when people just see the outcome outside and they don't know what it took to get there.

Yeah, no, it's. I'm glad you touched on the long game because, like, what he's saying here, too, is you have to care more than once. Like, all of y' all listening? Like, well, I did. I personalized the first email, and it didn't work. And it's like, so you cared once you cared about them enough for one time to personalize an email, you need to do it more often than that and be willing to play that long game, because if anything in life, if you just did it one time, you're not going to get the response if.

That you needed to.

I think you and I shared something very similar earlier this year around. Like, you went on a vacation and you came back and you used your inbox as a data set.

Right?

And I did the exact same thing, and it was atrocious. I don't know if people saw this. Talk about what you came back to with all the emails in your inbox.

It was. So I get 200 emails a day. I was gone for two weeks. Long story short, I had 2004, 40 emails in my inbox when I came back. And this is the first time in my life, in my professional career, where I did not check emails. Usually, you know, wife and daughter go to bed, I open up the phone, and I'm kind of like, all right, just let me just delete the spam. Right? But that's not healthy because it doesn't let you disconnect. And so this time, I disconnected, came back to 2000. I was like, oh, all right, well, I gotta mow through these. But let me mow through them with purpose here, because I do. I am curious where I spend the majority of my time. I am curious, like, where this stuff is. So I broke it down, and it was subscription services, marketing, emails and then sales, right? And I considered a sales email. Somebody was trying to get a meeting with me for me to see their. Whatever it was, right? And I forget the numbers, but I think like 70 of them were sales. So which I. Which I was actually a little surprised it was that low. But then like, I think it was like four or five of them were personalized and that was about it. No, actually, oh, zero were personalized. Wasn't was such a low number. Yeah, yeah, I think it was such. It was such a low number that it was like, what the fuck? And then I looked at LinkedIn and there was like 368 LinkedIn messages in my inbox. And four, that's one. Four of them were personalized. One of them was video. And that was the one I responded to right now. Obvious. I'm a little partial to certain things like that, obviously, but. But it just showed me like, wait a minute. We all. Everybody talks about personalization, Everybody talks about empathy, everybody talks about this. I mean, they're great talking points for a lot of people. But it is blatantly obvious that very few people are doing it.

Nobody is. I did a very similar experiment. I also did an unplug. Real quick tangent here. I hope y' all also hearing this here. We did a true unplug. Like a true unplug. Not a check in email at night. Not a. Also too, for people like me and John. Like, there's parts of what we do that we really enjoy too. It actually is sometimes hard to unplug because we enjoy what we do. Came back from an unplug, had about 200 sales messages, right? Cause I got the VP title at a software company, so I got all of this 200. Only seven of the 200 were personalized. But then what? I went one step further. I actually put this on a spreadsheet I tracked to see who followed up. So of the 200, only 60 ish or so followed up a second time, which that actually surprised me the most because, like, aren't I in a sequence, right?

Yeah, exactly. Aren't you just pressing play anyways, so why not press play multiple times?

So I was shocked at the drop off to touch2.

That is shocked touch2.

No personalization. There was not a single one. No one personalizes twice. It's like they shoot their best shot. Like, well, that was it. I found out what school you went to and that didn't do it. So let's bring it back here real quick. One, I hope y' all are like, when we talk about Being real, it's.

Hard, but it isn't.

Like, he had over a hundred outreaches, and only seven of them were even personalized. And we're easy to find. That's what makes me so disappointed in this, is I'm easy to find. Shit on you are easy to find.

I'm also not shy about what I buy. I tell people I'm like, we need a new marketing automation thing. Man, I wish we had something like this. Look at me, you know, And I do screenshots of some of the shit I use. Like. And I'm still an old school classic, you know, Salesforce, which everybody drives people crazy. But, you know, and at least to some people's credit, when I post that, I'll get a Salesforce consultant that'll chime in and say, hey, John, I know you said, you know, that you're old school and you like Salesforce, you know, classic over lightning, you know, not for anything, I could help you make that transition. So, hey, at least that. Right? But I mean, it's. It's. It's harsh, man, right now, but that give a shit factor is a real thing, you know, Morgan had it. He. He didn't have it. I'm sorry. When he came on board here, he was doing his thing, and we came up with cadences and we did all this stuff, and he was getting good results based on. And he came to me, and when it plateaued, and he goes, john, I'm doing all the right things here, man. Like, I just. I don't know why I can't get above this. And I said, well, I'll tell you exactly why, Morgan. It's like, why. I was like, until you start giving a shit, ain't gonna change. And he was like. And he was, like, almost offended. I was like, dude, I'm not saying I know you give a shit about your job. I know you give a shit about what you do. But until you give a shit about that person that you're reaching out to, really thinking of them as a person and having true empathy for their role, their situation, their industry, their company, results are gonna remain average.

They give a shit is everything. And real quick sidebar. Classic for life, baby.

Classic everything. Give a shit about friendships, give a shit about family, give a shit about your career, your health, you name it.

Yeah, it has to be everywhere. And that's something that I think is missing. So let's get a little bit tactical here, right? So when we think about messaging, whether that is an email or a video or, you know, a cold Call script. What are some of the foundational things that reps need to have in there to I guess one come across as real, but grab that attention, right? I saw a quote recently that said like everyone's wrong. Everyone says that time is our most precious resource. And like that's not the case. It's attention. We all have the same amount of time where we put our attention. Attention is actually the scarcest resource. So how do you coach and teach people to kind of grab that attention through their messaging?

So I think there's, you know, there's always this debate on structure versus scripts. Right. Richard Harris and I got into a little bit of an argument on this on our little webinar that we had. You know, and I think it's a little bit of semantics. But you know, my mentality on this is, look, I think, you know, scripts are. They have their place. Especially when you're first getting started, right. You don't know what you don't know yet. So here's something. Best practices that somebody else has put a formula around that helps you kind of get that intro. But I look at it as a little bit more like structure. Right? So let's talk about specifically phone legitimately. How you introduce yourself matters. How you say hello makes a difference on where the conversation goes, right. And then you break it down into, okay, once you figure that out and this is something you could test. I mean gong does a great job on this about extracting certain things. Things, you know, mine is, you know, hey Katie, thanks for taking my call. Do you got a couple of minutes? I don't even. I used to say, hi, this is John Barrows with JB Sales. How you doing today? Right? And that's an automatic, sorry, take me off your list. Because it's so route in people's minds that that's a sales call. But when I pattern interrupt. Hey Katie, thanks for taking my call, man. You got a minute? And I usually get, well, not really, but who is this? What do you want? Guess what I just did in that three seconds right there? I just earned. Earned an extra minute. Right, right. Because that's what we're doing, and this is important for people to hear is when you are prospecting, you are not selling your products or services. You are not, or you at least you shouldn't be. Because if you could sell your pit, if you could sell your product or service in a 30 second pitch, then we don't need you as a sales rep. I get.

Say that again, please.

Please just say that again. If you can Sell your shit in a 30 second pitch or a one page email. I do not need you as a sales rep. That is a transactional sale. That is a marketing tool that can optimize, okay? So that pattern interrupt like getting into it to earn. So when I get back to it, you're selling time, you're selling the next step. And I don't mean just a discovery call. I mean again the way you introduce yourself is selling an extra minute so you can maybe ask, ask a question or give a small value proposition that minute. You are now selling an extra two to five minutes to keep that person on the phone to get their desire up there, right? We go the old school Aida structure, right? With Glengarry Glen Ross. Attention, interest, desire, action. That is the fundamental process of sales, right? St. Elmo Lewis came up with it 1898 guy by the, he said these are the four main things that we got to do, go through before we buy something. For something that's got to get our attention, then we have to be interested, then we have to have a desire, then we have to move to act. So that framework is a call, is an email, is everything call. How you introduce yourself, that gets your attention, the reason for your call, that kind of gets them interested, right? And creates some desire around that call to action. What's your call to action? Right, Same thing with an email. Subject line gets my attention. Check this out. The first sentence tells me whether or not I'm interested, okay? Now what am I interested in?

Me.

I don't give a shit about you, right? I mean I do, obviously.

Katie put.

But you know what I'm talking about. People care mostly about themselves. So when you start your emails off it, I'd like to introduce myself to you or we're the leading provider of or you know, recent surveys say none of that's about me. I'm not interested in any of that. So why do you, what do you got to do? I mean just let's talk real tactical. I mean I see your name, I see the subject line and I see the first 10 words of that email right there. If that isn't about me in some way, shape or form, I'm delete, delete, delete, and then desire. What's your value proposition? Right? So hey Katie, you know I was on your website and I saw some cool shit. The reason I wanted to reach out to you is value statement, call to action. That structure right there, you can start to tweak in there. Maybe I'll do the same structure email. But I'LL tweak the subject line, see if I get better open rates. Maybe I'll tweak my intro sentence to see if I can get better, you know, people at least reading through it, that type of stuff. Then you can micro test a bunch of stuff and figure out where it works and then make it yours. Because that's kind of the ultimate key of what your question, you know, I think, is, you know, take that structure, best practices from other people, but if you can't make it yours in a very short period of time, then you're just a robot, right? I mean, I told Morgan that. I said, well, look, when you come on board, you got to deliver my presentation exactly how I want you to deliver, because I got to know that you can go through the slides and have the timing and that type of stuff. But I told him, I go, look, dude, three months in, if I audit one of your classes, and you are still telling the same damn jokes. My jokes. If your delivery is exactly the same, I'm gonna be disappointed with you right now.

I want to. Man, he threw a lot at y'. All. I want you to be very careful here. There's a difference between making something your own and changing the formula. Yeah, this is where reps go wrong. A lot of times they want to make it their own, but you change the formula, that is no longer making it your own. You ruined it.

Right?

Like, I like to compare it to cooking, right? Like, if I'm going to make a pizza, all right, there's some foundational things that are going to go into that pizza. Now, maybe this person likes it with some barbecue sauce. Cool. Foundational, still a pizza. This person wants pineapple.

Cool.

Still a pizza. But this person over here decides, you know, I'm going to make it my own. And they're like, you know what? I'm just not going to put eggs in the dough. Just not going to. Because I want to make it my own. Now, this is no longer a pizza. So, like, I want you all to hear that, like, pay attention to that formula. Make sure the formula is there when you're making it your own, not that you're changing the formula.

And this is for all those managers. I'm sure you probably heard me and Morgan talk about this. KD is. You know, I think there's a. I think the divide between Gen Xers and Millennials is greater in a lot of ways than a lot of other generational divides. Because. Because we were the last ones that grew up without technology, and Millennials grew up in Technology, right? But so we like. And I'm making mass generalizations here, right? But in general, Gen Xers and above, like, we don't like structure, right? Like, we were the last ones where, you know, if I was bored in the house, my mom would kick me out the house and say, just be home before dark, right? And I'd have to go figure shit out. I had to break stuff, you know, burn stuff down, whatever it was. As long as I was home by dinner, I didn't get in trouble. Well, now every kid. And I see this with my daughter, every kid's life is structured, right? They go from school to this hour to this hour. Then they have soccer practice for 30 minutes, you know, two hours, and then they have their iPad for 30 minutes. And then. And so they go through their whole lives structured. And then they get out into the real world, and they get somebody like you and I to say, hey, figure it out. And they look at you sideways and they're like, what are you talking about? Figure it out. Tell me what to do. And the gut reaction from somebody like us is because we don't like being in structure. We like building structure. So the reaction is, if you don't know, well, then here's a script. Here's a template. And what do you. What if you're a kid that's been your whole life structured, taught to the test, mcas, all that stuff, and you get given a script, what are you gonna do? You're gonna do the script. You're gonna sound like a robot. So that's not the answer. Figure it out isn't the answer. The answer is structure, because we can build it. I can build structure. I don't like being in it. You put me in structure and I break it, but I like building it. And these kids who are coming up now, they thrive within structure better than you and I ever would. Okay, so that's that. That connective tissue there of millennials and Gen Xers or managers and reps. You create a structure as a manager, you create a structure as a leadership. And then you let your team play within that structure and test things out within their own merits, and you will see some special things happen.

Now, it's interesting, though, because you touched on something that I think is actually one of my bigger struggles sometimes. Like, you know, I've been hiring, you know, for the past 10 years, and they keep getting younger and younger, and I keep getting older and older, right? Like. And, you know, like, watching the differences here now, because it's funny, and I talk about this. In our onboarding as human beings, we crave novelty, but we hate change. We love structure but hate micromanagement. And it tears at us, right? I actually wish all my reps just followed the script like that. That it's actually because it doesn't get followed where they don't. They don't make it come alive. If I had a team of robots right now, like, they're actually following the script, even with a semi proper tone, we'd actually have better results. It's when they all get off on it, right? It's like, yes, I want structure. And I say this. And I was like, who would like an ABCDEFG formula to success? Everyone raises their hand. It's like, all right, who wants to be micromanaged? No one raises their hand. And I go, okay, so now do you see where we're already in a divide? I might have this A, B, C, D, E, F, G formula for you, but you're gonna have to follow it. And I owe it to you to hold you to that process. So it's just human beings, man. We are an interesting creature.

We are messed up. Talk about a virus.

So let's actually talk people, right? What causes people to make a change? Right. If you think about sales, at its core, right, we are trying to drive change, whereas change in thought, change in behavior, change in purchasing. What are some of the things about human beings that, you know, lead to change? Because I think this could help people start to craft their messaging a little bit.

So I hate it, but the data is undeniable. Of people are. I think it's four times more likely to avoid pain than they are to achieve gain. So for instance, if I said, katie, I can make you $20,000, I can give you something that's gonna make you 20 GS, or I can make sure you don't lose 20 GS. You will choose, don't lose 20 GS three times over. You know, three out of four times, right? Yep. So I think the pain obviously gets people to change. Like, I had a little bit of a health scare recently, you know, in the sense that I had a little high blood pressure. My parents have, you know, and I've been treating my body like a train wreck, you know, for 45 years. I'm a dumpster fire. I've been blessed with a frame that doesn't. That I have a high metabolism. So it looks good without, you know, with a shirt on type of thing. You take the shirt off. But, you know, but around 45 years old. All of a sudden, some health issues are popping up. Well, guess who's getting their ass back in gear, you know what I mean? Like, I'm getting back in. I'm getting back in the gym. I'm trying to eat right, I'm trying to pay attention. So I think there's. There obviously pain is what gets people to change, or I think having a real vision, and that's the pleasure side of it, is that I don't think too many people look any more than 10ft in front of their face as far as what today is going to look like. And I get that in today's world too. I mean, it's hard today just to get up and get motivated to get through a day in this world right now. So how could you possibly look 4, 5, 6, 10 years out to see what you want your life to look like? But I think when you do kind of settle into your own a little bit there and understand that you can control a lot more than you think you can as far as your path, your success, and you see what other people are doing that you want to emulate, I think that creates change as well. So we take that personally. We also take that for customers. There are customers that are on fire right now and they need help and so they're looking for solutions for that thing. There's other clients who are out there saying, like, this is the next two to three years for me. That's where I gotta go. Help me get there. That's why I tell people, look, I don't sell you shit. Like, I literally do not sell shit. I help you achieve your goals or solve your problems. That's it. And if your goals aren't big enough and your problems aren't big enough, why are we having this conversation? That's why reps lose to no decision. Like, everybody's biggest competition is no decision. Because it's kind of okay. It's not a priority for me right now. It hasn't come up to that top of that list. We all got a million priorities. It's one of the one or two that I'm working on right now. And if you can have a solution for that, I will talk to you. If you don't, call me in six months.

And so we'll get super tactical here, y'.

All.

For your listening, this is what your cadence or sequence should be made up of. Problem based language, visionary based language. Problem based language, visionary Desires and fears. You have to alternate because one, you don't know which email I'm going To open. And two, I might be one of those gain people, I might be one of the fear people, but that language needs to alternate. I'd be willing to bet most reps you go read your emails, they're almost all future based, will make you more money, we'll get you more leads, we'll get you more appointments, we'll get you like what's the opposite of these things? Go, right, go rewrite all your emails to the complete opposite.

And you know, we talk about empathy. Here's something that I think reps need to focus on that not too many are. And I didn't either. And so this is coming from an old man telling my 22 year old self to, right? I always say the number one thing I would be split test, right? Just constantly be a scientist. That's the number one. But my second one is be way more proactive with your business acumen. And I mean that in the sense that my business acumen was a byproduct of my activities. I would just do, do, do, do, do. And then I would do something dumb and I'd learn from it, right? So like for instance, I'd sit in from a CEO in front of a CEO and ask a stupid question and the CEO would say, that's a stupid question. I'd say, okay, right. And I wouldn't ask that question again. But now, and I always, I always used to say, tell me about your priorities, right? A really generic, stupid thing to say. Now that now I know. But if I were to take a step back and say, wait a minute, going back to really putting yourself in somebody else's shoes, right? Well if I'm reaching out to a ciso, okay, which I didn't go to school for, right. I don't know what a CISO does, I know what their title does, I know what they're responsible for in general, but I don't know what their day to day looks like. Well, guess who does? Google, dumbass. Like literally open up Google and type in CISOs, priorities, challenges, 20, 21, whatever it is. Read a few articles, right? Talk to your internal resources to understand what does a day in the life look like for somebody like that. What are they being held accountable? Who's the executive? What are the their bosses asking them? And then when you have that like actual understanding at a, you know, at a more than a super surface level, you can then be thoughtful with your outreach because now you can ask real questions, right? Right. Like I, you know, go back to Aida again if we're going to go tactical. You know, a great way I'm using these days to start emails instead of. I used to say I was researching your company and all that other stuff, which is fine. I take the word research because it's gone overused. But now I ask you a question. Oh, yeah. Hey, kd, how are you keeping your reps motivated and engaged now that everybody's working from home? The reason I ask is because a lot of VPs of sales who are having a challenge keeping their reps motivated engaged, are leveraging our live training to be able to give them the tools, techniques and motivation to get through this mess stronger on the other side. Thought it'd be worth the conversation. And by the way, for everybody out there, that's an email if you want to do this, which I don't really recommend, but I know the world we live in. That email that I just said you could send a 50 vps of sales all at the same time. Because it's relevant.

It's relevant to the Persona. Right? And that is key. So like, yeah, y' all first sentences. So funny enough, I actually don't even split test subject lines anymore. It's all first sentence sentences. Yeah, like the first sentence. I have emails that have the same subject lines and I'm split testing the first sentence because that's where I've seen a larger impact to open rates now, right? People, they read it, right? It goes, name sentence, subject. That's how people read. Now do I know who it is? Okay, I'm going to open it, right? If I get an email from you, the subject line and the first sentence doesn't matter. I know who you are. I'm gonna open it. If I don't know who you are, I wanna know, what do you want? And the subject line doesn't tell me that. That first sentence does. And if it says, oh, I was recently assigned your account and wanted to deuces.

Like to introduce myself. Shut the.

Unless it says, I'd like to reintroduce myself, my name is Hov. I'm probably not opening up that email actually. Funny. Just real quick, sidebar. I got an email. It's actually a couple months ago now. The subject line was the best motherfucking data.

You're opening that one up.

And I was like, that email is getting opened, right? Because. Well, I think you're about to go here. Go for it.

I was going to say, did they know you?

Yes. Like they, they, like they, they knew that would resonate with me. Again, this is what we were saying earlier about it's easy to find. It says in my LinkedIn profile, avid swearer. Like, it's right. It's right there. It's right, right there. So, you know, I'm not going to be offended by that email. Right. So it's just, it's using what you can learn about your people as an individual or to your point to wrap back is the Persona understanding their world and what they're going through and what they do and the language they use.

Can I. Can I give all the managers and executive leaders out there a tip who are listening to this?

Yes, please.

We guess a lot of. In sales, our reps guess a lot. Right. And look, let's go baseline. Baseline is a pitch about us and how great we are. Right? That's the elevator pitch approach. Sucks. Level up a little bit. You're relevant to people. Right? So I'm your VP of sales. Level up from that is personalized and relevance. Right. But we're still guessing. And when I say personalized, like, hey, I'm doing research on you, Katie, and I noticed that you just posted did something about this or your company just did that. So I'm kind of. I got a hypothesis here that when that happens, my solution helps. I don't know whether you need it or not, but I'm so I'm taking a guess.

So.

But you know, who knows what works? Customers with this whole world of getting back to connected. Like, I think this is such a great opportunity to bring everybody onto one page here with customer success, sales, marketing, and everybody else. What I would do if I was a VP of sales right now, but you know, 2050s, however many reps I would get, I would talk to my customer success leader and I'd say, okay, who are the Personas that we're going after? All right, say it's CROs and healthcare. Hey, customer success. Do we have two CROs in healthcare that we could do a little lunch and learn with? Right? Yeah, sure. We got, you know, obviously they want to see us successful, right. So now we do a little bit zoom session like this with the CROs and just do a Q and A session from the VP or whoever to say, hey, what's your day to day look like? What messages resonate with you? What's your priorities? How they have they changed since last year? Those type of things, that conversation along with a little bit of homework where afterwards I would actually do this beforehand, I would have all the reps do research on, you know, CISO's healthcare priorities challenges 20 so they can come up with some, like, thoughtful and interesting questions for them, right? So we learn that Persona, we learn what they care about, we understand, and then we can craft messaging. Like, we're putting together panel customer advisory boards where we create messaging based on the research that we do on the priorities and the challenges of the people in today's world. We craft it using our little formula here, whatever. And before it goes out, we actually send it to our advisory board of customers who are that Persona. And we say, hey, would. Would you. Would. Would you open these? Would. Would this resonate with you? And they come back with all sorts of feedback. Oh, no, no, no, no. Dude, that is so fun. I know that's what they teach you in the books, but that's not how it rolls. Like, this is what it. Oh, cool. Switch it up. Fire off that cadence. Afterwards, you got a lot more context, a lot more knowledge. Business acumen happens. People learn to care a little bit more. Right? Because when you do that research, you start to be off genuinely.

No, that's huge. It's part of our onboarding process. It's actually where I even started my role at Patient Pop. I joined. I didn't come from healthcare. I'm good at sales, but I didn't know healthcare hit up. 50 customers called them. I actually got in a little bit of trouble because I didn't ask permission at first, so should have asked permission, But I just started calling. I'm like, oh, give me a customer list. Let's go. And you start to learn how they talk, how they describe their problem, how they describe what the product does. Most perhaps don't even know what the product actually does for their person.

Well, I think this comes full circle, man, on the authenticity factor. I'm sure you've watched as many of these type of interviews as I have with, like, big baller CIOs or, you know, huge companies. And, you know, somebody's asking them, hey, what. What gets through? And, you know, what do you respond to? And 9 out of 10 of the interviews, the executive's like, I don't know if they would just treat me like a normal human being. Like, I wake up in the morning just like everybody else, and they talk normal language to me as opposed to putting all this word salad in there about how. And trying to impress me on how smart they are. Look, I'm sorry, if you're a sales rep, you're not as smart as I am in this space, so stop trying. Like, this Challenger sale bullshit is ridiculous when it comes to somebody, a sales rep who doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about. That's like giving a five year old a shotgun.

It just doesn't work so bad. It's so funny. The challenger sale. First of all, most people say they've read it when they actually haven't. They have not read it. The second part, very few people understand what it actually meant to be a challenger seller. It was not challenging them, it was challenging the status quo through insights. And if you don't have an insight for that ceso, you can't be a challenger.

You just can't. It's like Gary Vee says, you can't be a 22 year old life coach.

You haven't stop, just stop trying. Like I still think it's shocking to me too. Like especially, you know, people that are going after like C suite level individuals that they even allow their reps to talk to them for the first time. Like the first CSO you want your SDR or your AE to talk to is going to be a prospect, right? Like I said this actually at Rainmaker this a few years ago, right? The best practice on purpose. The rest practice on prospects. That's what you're, you are practicing with a prospect. And if they're not ready, they are not ready. And it's just so bad. I still everywhere, like I answer at least five cold calls a month just to see what's happening, right? Just, just to see what's happening. And the amount of times that one they're not ready for me to answer, first of all, just not ready to. They've done no research. This is by the way, this is the most common question I'll ask them. Like someone's like hey, like you know, was, you know. Oh yeah, like you know, I was hoping you have a second real quick. I'm like sure, let's go. Like oh, like I work for blah blah blah lead company. We generate like leads, dah dah dah dah dah. We can get you all the direct contacts, blah blah blah blah. And I go, do you know what industry I target? Do you know what industry I sell to? Oh well I was like go find out and then tell me if you have those leads, right? Like this. And this is basic stuff that people just aren't doing. So I want to wrap up on this because we already, I can't believe actually how quickly this has gone. We've already covered so much stuff here. I knew this was going to happen. But so what I like to do is we've been going for about 45 minutes already. I like to ask this question of, like, what's the big three, right? Like, of all we've talked about, about realness, authenticity, attention, like messaging. Like, what would be the three key takeaways that you want people to remember if they forgot everything else we talked about? But three things, what would you want those to be?

Give a shit is number one. Give a shit. I think that encompasses almost everything I'll say is really give a shit. Give a shit about your career, give a shit about the people you're reaching out to. Give a shit about your messaging. Be a scientist. And when I say be a scientist, I mean now more than ever. And this is hopefully hit for a lot of kids out there. You know, look, sales, a brutal job, especially SDRs. It's the hardest job in sales. I think it's one of the most important jobs in sales, but I also think it's the hardest job in sales. And what used to make that, because, I mean, you get 99 no's, you get 100, maybe, right? And you got to keep grinding through it. And look, what made it tolerable was that we all used to be sitting in a bullpen together getting our asses handed to us together, right? So if I got on a bag, if I got ripped up by somebody, when I made a cold call to him, you know, I could, I could look next to you and be like, yo, that was brutal. I just called somebody who was dead. Like, can you believe that shit, right? And. Or let's go grab a drink right now, though. Like, you, like, you don't got anybody to commiserate with. You're sitting at your house with your cat. And so when you're having a bad day, there ain't nobody else to share that bad day with you. And so if you become a scientist, though, you can actually get through this. It'll make this job a lot more interesting because going back to that example, 50 dials, right? 25. 25. If you can say at the end of the day you figured something out, whether you figured it didn't work or it did, you can keep going. And guess what, you're going to come out of this way stronger and way better because you'll know your process, you'll know what works for you. You, not somebody else, right? As long as you follow in those confines right there. And I think the other one, I would say, is, to your point there, trust the process. Do the process work within the process that you're being told to work in and execute at the level you're being asked to execute and then go, let's go back to being a scientist and measure those results. Because where management will not listen to you is when you are not hitting your results and you don't know why. Where management will listen to you is when you come to them and say, look, I haven't hit my results. I've been doing it your way like this, okay? And I've been measuring the shit out of my approach here, and I've done it your way, and this is what it looks like now. I did a little side hustle here on the other side, and I took a few accounts and I did my approach, which, hey, might be different than what you told me to do. So I am going to break that rule a little bit, right? But I'm taking this approach and check out the results here. So which one do you want me to do, Katie? You all of a sudden become my best friend as a manager, right? If you can tell me. Because the biggest challenge managers have is not knowing where to help. And because most managers were promoted because they were the best reps, they're usually hard to translate that art, if you will, down to other reps. So if I see a rep who's struggling, the rep can't tell me why they're struggling, then I'm going to give them my opinion of what they should do because it worked for me. And then you're going to go execute it, and you're not going to do it as well as I do. And so I'm going to get inherently frustrated with you. But if you come to me with a process and say, john, here's how I map things out, man, I get a good intro, but, man, when I get that intro, when I get somebody on the phone, I basically puke on myself and I can't figure it out. So, like, help me with my message right there. Or, look, I do great meetings, I do great demos, but none of them convert to opportunities, man. What's going on there? I like, obviously something's wrong. Like I said, if you do that, you will become my best friend as a manager, because now I know where to help.

I love it. And it's just. It's the self awareness. It's again, giving a shit. You have to care enough about your career to be willing to do those things, which I think is just so, so important. So then we'll wrap with my favorite question here, man. And I know it's something that you love and enjoy too, right? The name of this podcast is Live better, sell better, right? Like, I have this weird idea that if we lived a little bit better, if we took better care of ourselves, if we were in a better mental state, like, if we lived better, that the results will follow. What would be your live better advice to people listening? Like, how to live better? Fulfillment, joy, energy, whatever it is. What would that advice be?

Smoke a lot of weed. No, I'm kidding. That's part of it. No, but I got it here. I have a little pot. What do I call it? It's good things Journal. Gratitude Journal, a lot of people call it. I write down something every day that I'm thankful for. And you will be amazed at how far gratitude will take you. And I mean little things, too. Somebody opened the door for you today. Pete Buttigieg got confirmed the first LGBT ever in a cabinet position, breaking a ceiling. Like, small. Like, whatever happens, you know, and if you're on the other side, whatever that happens, right? Those little things of taking just five minutes at the end of the day to reflect on something positive that happened that day will change your mind, will change your mentality, and will change your results. And this is one more. And this is on the negative front, too. This is an exercise that I had my friend go through, this woman that I was pretty close with. She was having. This was years ago. She was having really bad. Just real bad run, right? Real depression, stuff like that. Therapist and everything. I said, hey, do me a favor. And I gave her a journal. I said, could you do me a favor? Just write down every positive thing that happens to you today. And I said, I don't care how small it is. You made a green light instead of a red light. Somebody opened the door for you. You got a text from a friend. Whatever that is, just do me a favor, right? And she's like, why? I go, just. Just humor me here for one day. She came back at that end of that day with six pages of notes, and she goes, oh, my God, John, I had one of the best days I've had in years. And I said, can I ask you, do you think that's because today was any different than any other day, or do you think it was because you just had a different lens on today than you've had for the past couple of years? And she stopped for a second. She was like, holy shit. And so we missed the little thing. So if I'm going to recommend something to anybody out there, especially in this hard time, I do this with my wife and daughter before my wife goes to bed every night. What are we thankful for? And that alone changes your state, changes your mentality and roles in the future. And the gratefulness and thankfulness for the little things helps you get through all this shit.

I love that we do something very similar in my household. We call the rose and the thorn. And you know, like, what was your rose of the day and what was the thorn of the day? And what we love about this, and we will call out very regularly as a family, is that sometimes it's hard to come up with the thorn. Like if, you know, did anything bad actually happen today? If you're forcing it? No, you don't have a thorn today and that's fine. So, my man. Dude, this was long overdue.

Absolutely.

And I'll take full. I'll take full credit and blame for that, man. Where can people get more of you? Like what, what do you got out there that people can go get more of? What you're teaching, how you're teaching it? Because the shit works. Like where, where can they go? Where should they go?

Appreciate always. LinkedIn is the easiest way to find me. JBarrows.com Though, if you go there. We've released this new on demand platform and it's fire right now we got all sorts. It's like Netflix for sales. Like real Netflix for sales, not just a tagline here. Yeah, we got Morgan stuff in there, we got James stuff in there. We're getting Doug Landis stuff in there. Richard Harris. Right. So we're basically building a masterclass for sales with just high quality content in there. So it's like 400 bucks for the year. Everybody gets everything that I train. Some of those baller clients that you just mentioned in the beginning with Salesforce is the linkedins and all that stuff. The same training I give them is in there. And so if you're looking to invest in yourself, we're actually even right now because my birthday is coming up up on Monday. We're doing a two for one. So you get, you buy one and you can give one. Try to pay it forward right now. So I'd recommend people checking that out.

Hell yeah. I actually just sent that link out in my Patreon the other day because someone was like, hey, I've got some extra personal dev money for my company. Where should I spend it on? Go find it. So, my man, thank you so much. I appreciate your thoughts, your energy, your wisdom every time. We'll do it again soon.

Always, brother. Talk to you soon. Thanks.

Later, my man.