What It Means to be An Educator in Sales with Krysten Conner

Foreign.

Welcome to the live Better Sell Better podcast with your host, Kevin Dorsey of Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders, where we dive in deep for tactical advice on how to book more meetings, close more deals faster, and lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the person in salesperson. We talk about mindset goals, time management, and so much more. So thank you for listening and if you're interested, head over to patreon.com inside sales excellence. Now with that, grab a notepad, get ready, and let's dive into the good stuff. What up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the live Better Sell Better podcast. This is your host, Kevin Dorsey, AKA kd. And today we are going to talk about one of my favorite favorite topics, but from a different angle. Anyone listening? Anyone who follows? You know how much of a believer I am in coaching, in training, in ongoing skill development. I talk about it all the time. But what I realized quite literally even this morning is we don't hear enough from reps on what they want, what type of training they need, what type of training would help them develop their skills. Which is why I'm so excited to have Kristin Connor on the show with me today. She's an enterprise account executive at Usergem, but also has worked at companies you may have heard of, like outreach, like Tableau. Like, she has been a part of high performing companies and being a high performer at them, but even she has gone out to say the training isn't always what it needs to be. And so we're going to dive in today what training should look like for a high performer, what reps actually want, but also how to take a little bit more ownership of your own development. So let's dive in here. Kristen, welcome to the show.

Hey, thank you so much. I'm huge. Been following you for a while and yeah, the focus on training is so important.

So in your tagline, right, you have always a teacher. Always, always a teacher. Talk to me about that real quick. Then we're going to get into the learning side of this. What does that mean?

So my background is I double majored in history and education and taught 8th grade history for a couple of years. My first teaching job was teaching kids who had been kicked out of their public school, which was actually one of my favorite jobs. But I realized that I love teaching, but public education is a grind. And then really kind of then tried to find my path. I was like, what am I good at? What do I like? And landed on sales, but have never really left that teaching role because there are so many. There are so many. There's always someone behind you. There's always someone in front of you. There's always someone next to you. And anytime, as reps on teams, we can say, hey, this is what's working for me. This is the email I sent. This is how I ran that meeting. It's hugely helpful. I've had people do that for me. And so I try to take any opportunity to do that for others.

I love that because, like, always a teacher. When I read that, I also read always a learner, right? Of like, hey, do you love to teach? And you also probably always love to learn. And so I was like, I wonder if she was. I wonder if she was a former teacher. I didn't know that about your, your background. I've hired some former teachers and they are amazing salespeople. Like, amazing. So. Well, see, now I gotta ask the transition question. How did you land there? Right? Because it was very subtle. You're like, yeah, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do and I landed on sales. You don't hear that from a lot of teachers. So, like, what, what was, what was that connected? How'd you connect the dots? You go like, I've been teaching eighth grade to, oh, yeah, I want to get into tech sales. Like, help me connect those dots real quick.

Yeah, yeah, not. Not a straight line for sure. So when I was a teacher, I was always very tech forward. I was raised by two entrepreneurs, people who run their own small organizations. And it was always about, how can we do this better? How can we do it smarter? And so I was always pushing for more tech, a better way to do it. And what I learned is public education does not always love innovation or doing things differently. It was not a. It was not a personality match. And, and so then when I was, I was. Got completely burned out of just banging my head against that wall. And my, My dad had a multinational insurance agency. And he was like, you know, at the time I was leaving, he was like, they needed an operations person. And I had worked there since I was 14. So I went back and kind of and ran that and ran different departments and worked in sales. And that's. I loved that. Of all the things that I like to do. And I also realized I did not love to run an insurance agency. And so I had to tell my dad, hey, I'm not going to buy this because I don't like it. And. But I Also was always the one pushing for more tech. I was the tech buyer in the agency. And so as I really sat down to try to figure out what do I, what do I want to do with my life again? And, and then just came out like, what do I, what am I always interested in? And I followed tech, I followed sales. And so it just kind of, after a process of kind of narrowing that down, that's what I, that's what I landed on. And then I had to figure out how do I get into tech? Because it's not a. You have to draw that line, right? You have to tell the story for someone. And so I was like, it has to be something that I have some experience in. And I, it just so happened that in Kansas City where I was at the time, there was Vista backed company that sold to K12. And so I already knew education, I knew the vocabulary, I knew what they cared about. And so that made it a bit easier for them to see why it might, they might want to take a chance on me. And they did. Very grateful.

I love it. And then this got even better because now we get to get a teacher's perspective on training and enablement because that is something that I've really spent a lot more time learning. It's like the science of learning, right. Because as leaders we're never taught how to teach. I mean we're never even taught how to manage, let alone how to teach. And those are different skill sets. We're never taught the science of learning. And so this is going to get really good now because of that teaching background, we can do it. So let's start with that. From what you know about education and what it requires to learn something and truly internalize it, what could the SAS industry learn from teachers? Right. In terms of how to actually educate their reps, how to actually develop the skills?

Yeah. So the first thing that you've talked about many times is practice. And the second thing is synthesis. So it's not enough to like most organizations do not carve out time in their reps day for practice. They barf information at them, send it to them in an email and then expect that they're just going to do it. And they don't dedicate any time to practice and they're not coaching them in that practice either. Right. Like that is like throwing someone at basketball and saying like go do this after you've sent them an email about how to do it and then just send them off to practice and hope that it's going well. No one would do that to an athlete, but we do it to salespeople all the time. So that's the first thing. It's practice and making sure that they have dedicated time and that you're actually coaching them in practice. And the second thing is synthesis. So synthesis is basically where you learn something and then you re state it or you redo it. So in other words, if you're given a demo script, then you go put it in your own words, you say it the way it would come out of your mouth and in the act of synthesis and the act of creating something new, that is how you learn. And so we don't, we don't ask, we don't, we don't know that in our training. And so we don't, we don't ask people to repeat it, we don't ask them to, to coach it. And we don't ask them to create it, make it their own, because that's how they're going to learn it.

The analogy I've actually started using more outside of like the sports analogies is like on a teacher side, you wouldn't like give a kid a test without prepping them for it, tell them they got the answers wrong, but not tell them what the right answers are, and then ask them to take the test again and expect them to be better. Like that's what happens is like, oh, and this is in SaaS sales, it's so prevalent, this idea that we learn by doing that we learn by going on the demo with the prospect that is not learning. That's the game, that's the test. We need to prep for it. So let's keep going down that process. If you think about, you know, the steps you would take to prepare a student for a test to build those in. So you talked about practice and synthesis. Let's keep going down this process. Right? So like, how do you help, you know, a rep synthesize, how do you help a rep. Okay, here's what we taught you. How do you teach them how to then make it their own words without changing the formula? Because I see that happen a lot too.

Right? Yeah. And you have to watch for that. But so to your point about the education example, like we give kids examples in pre algebra. We should probably also give examples to people who carry six and seven figure quotas. Right. Like, so I can't tell you the number of times, especially early in my career where I had a manager say, we really need to multi thread in that deal. Absolutely. What does that look like? What, how would you suggest That I do that, you know, or we need to get. Our team needs to get tighter. We need to run a better discovery. Agree. What does that sound like in this role? If these. If the questions that I'm asking are not the best ones, what do good discovery questions sound? Like in. And then on the synthesis part, like in. So in top organizations like Salesforce, that you will get a. You will get a script for a demo or a product or whatever, and you have to certify on that, which you have to record yourself, you know, doing that, and you have to hit all the points or you don't pass the certification. So top organizations are doing something like that. But what I always did, and many times they want you to hit all the lines like a. Like a puppet. And sometimes you play the game and do that. But for me, because I'm like, well, I'm selling this. I want it to sound like me. And so I would just. Without changing the intent of it, I would go back and just put the words, like, in less business, like B.S. like, just make it sound conversational, like I'm having a conversation. So you can change the tone of something without changing the intent?

Yes. And I love that call out because people, you know, they love to respond very strongly to scripts, right? They're like, oh, well, scripts make me sound robotic. And I'm always like, look, y', all, a script doesn't sound anything. You sound robotic. The script is a piece of paper that has. It doesn't sound anything, right? If you've ever watched a movie or a TV show or listened to a song on the radio, guess what? Those were all scripted. They were all written down. It's the artist's job to make it come to life. And that's. That's why we exist, is to make it come to life, right? And so to go through that and you touched on something really, really important. The acronym I've been using is Wiggle wgl, which stands for what good looks like. And to your point, so often reps come in and they say, we need to multi thread. But then there's no wiggle. There's no what good looks like. And so we're figuring it out. So how should companies do that? Right? Like how. Or some strategies or ideas on, like, how to compile that information, how to document that information so reps actually can see what good looks like. Because I'll get ahead of one. Because what a lot of companies do is, hey, go shadow Kristen. Kristen's a top performer. Just go shadow her. And they think that's what good looks like. Let's talk about this one a little bit.

Yeah, I mean, I think managers who have tools like gong, like you're able to flag. Like. This is a great question. This is a great section on Objection handling. This is a great section on how to talk about price. Like they have the ability to do that. So that's, that's an. It can be an easy one if you just have a. What I've been in places where they have a gong folder that says like this is like best practice library. And, and I used to listen like on my way to work. I would go into those and I would just put, put it on like via my phone and just. I would listen to 20 minutes of it every day on my way to work just so that I had that in my brain. So I think that's an easy way. The manager doesn't have to be the one delivering it, they can just be the one curating it and then. But to your point about the script, it's not the script, it's how you sound. I think we also have to. And this goes to like your own development. We have to be the ones to put in the work. And what a script does is allow you not to fumble and say and go on for three minutes when it could have been 30 seconds and you've already lost their attention. Like a script allows you to have a very tight talk track. And it's up to us. Like I have, I have note cards sitting here for things that I'm still like working on that I write it down and then I say it and I do five minutes of it in the morning before I start. I've done that at every job and I feel ridiculous. I feel like a seventh grader, but it's like it doesn't matter. I know that that's what works for me and so that's what I do well.

And the beauty is for anyone listening, it doesn't just work for you, it works for damn near anyone that does it. You're just willing to do it and that's the mindset around it. So actually we'll go back and forth here because what's starting to show up in your answers is the self development. So we can keep talking about what companies should do in terms of training. We'll come back to that. But I want to make sure people are hearing like the things that I did this on my own. I was listening to calls, I document my process, I practice in the morning, I prepare, like talk about that mindset a little bit because we always see this divide, you know, it's great LinkedIn fodder of like well I didn't get good enough training so that's why I failed. It's like, but did you do anything on your own to get there? So talk to about this like this mindset of self development, like taking ownership of that a little bit more.

Right. So I think, I think both can be, both things can be true, right? You can get, it can be true that you didn't get any good coaching and it can also be true that maybe you also didn't do any work. It can be true that you need to do work and the company needs to, you know, put in some, some do some inputs. So I think both can be true. But on that, but I do think we have a responsibility like to me, anybody, it's like you're the money. Half of your income in sales depends on your ability to execute it. So if you're not motivated by that, I don't understand you. Like what are you doing here? I don't understand. This is why I have never managed a team so far because I'm like if you are not internally motiv, not just, not just coin operated but I mean like if you don't want to be better, just in general, I don't understand you and I know what to, I don't know what to say to that. If you do want to get better and just don't know how that I can work with. But I think if you think about it like top performers are always doing things on their own. It fascinated me. LeBron James talks about like he spends I think 5 to 10% of his income on self development. He has like a trainer where they talk about sleep and recovery. He has like a chef, he has his own gym. He has the best resources that are available to him from his team and yet on top of that he devotes extra time, he devotes extra money to that and like that to me says that if that's what he's doing and we are expecting ourselves to perform at a high level, that's what we should do.

And you touched on one of the most frustrating things about leadership, bar none. It's what keeps me up at night, it's what causes me to lose my hair, that's why I gotta wear a hat, right? It's getting thin up there. Justin is like wanting it more for people than they want it for themselves. Like it's like you understand like all I'm asking you to do is Practice, it's all I'm asking for. So you can make more money, so you can have more resources, so you can take those vacations, so you can hit your goals so you're less stressed. Like that's all, that's all I'm asking for. Like why is this a fight? Right, so let's get even more specific here. So what are some of the things you've done on your own that you believe have led to you seeing the success that you had? Like what are some of your favorite kind of self development practices? You touched on a few already a little bit, but let's kind of touch on those of like, hey, these are things that I've seen myself do that I think have helped lead me to where I am career wise.

Yeah, probably the best thing I did in my first SaaS job was begun someone who had been a prior VP that I knew kind of personally to coach me. My manager was a first time manager. He was very smart, he wanted to help, he'd been a great rep, but he was not the person who was going to be able to devote a lot of time to coaching me. And also I was really embarrassed at how much I was googling in meetings. I have no idea what you mean when you say AST or ARR, like what are those again? And so like I wanted to be able to have an outside like third party person to be like, is it just me or you know, like I wanted to bounce something off someone that saved my bacon. I have spent probably $10,000 at this point in being coached, but it has paid off more than 10x solidly, more than 10x. It has leapfrogged me and, and made me better four times as fast than if I'd have tried. And to do it on my own, you can, it's just much easier to have someone help you. And I paid for that. And at the time I was not making a lot of money and it was a big deal. Like it was, it was a tough decision and it was a gamble, but God, did it pay off. Best decision I made, best decision I made. I would say the second one is there's a listening to top understanding, hunting down top performers and asking them what relentlessly what do you do, what books do you read, what podcasts do you listen to? And then doing that and the other thing kind of goes to the synthesis piece is I've started this practice where when I hear something in a podcast or read it in a book, I stop reading that book until I have applied whatever I Just learned. Because otherwise it just passes through, right. Like water. So I like, I have a third of the way through a book right now, and I won't let myself go on because I haven't practiced the thing. I haven't done the thing that I was so insightful. I have it sitting right here. That's what I'm going to work on later today. But, yeah, but taking the time. We have all these resources at our fingertips. It's just up to us. It's the application and the execution of it that's hard. It's not hard to find information.

I mean, you touched on. I love how you wrapped there because you pay. Information is everywhere now. You can find information, but what you pay for is insights. What you pay for is the application. Right? Like things that you learned from your coach you probably could have found in a book somewhere, you could have found in a YouTube video somewhere. But to hear it directly and have someone that holds you accountable to that is huge. I work with a coach as well. Same thing. Not a cheap thing. Not. Not every. Every time I renew, I'm like, oh, God. Like, no, every. It's paid so much more back on so many levels there. And so. And I hope people heard that last part you're talking about is like the application. It's one thing to listen, it's one thing to like, hear it, but then you have to apply it, right? So before I get in the application question, what are you reading right now? What's the book? What are you going through?

Yeah, this is. It's an old book, but it's called Secrets of Question Based Selling. Tom?

Yes, it's a great one.

There's so many nuggets in there. And I'd heard there are a lot of kind of famous sales books that make the rounds, like Gap Selling. Never split the difference. There's a lot of them that are tough. This one was not. But I think I finally had three people in a row recommend it. And I was like, okay, well, now I have to do it. And it's amazing. It's like blowing my mind because just to me, discovery is one of the hardest things to really do.

Well.

I'm constantly working on it. I'll probably never be done with it. And the questions, the questions that we ask and not throwing questions away, not wasting questions on stupid things, but really be intentional about the questions is for a long time. And you can always work with it.

I love that book. That's where, when I started teaching my teams, it's like, don't Ask a question that you're not going to use, period. If you're not going to use the answer to this question, don't even ask it. It's not worth it. But also what I love about some of the older books is they teach sales. Not so segmented as how we teach it now. Now we teach it as prospecting. Disco demo, proof of concept. Close question based selling the concept there is disco never stops. Like you're never in prospecting, you have to ask great questions. In the disco you ask great questions. In the demo you ask great. So great read. Like I'm excited that you're on that one because again that's not one that a lot of people get into because it's older. It's like we need to get back to some of the basics there a little bit.

Yeah.

So then let's go one level deeper here now. So when you learn something, how do you apply it? Like what you know, as you've mentioned, you know, synthesized a few times. So writing it out, making it your own. But then how do you kind of either force yourself or get comfortable enough to then actually apply it? Right. So it's one thing to read it, one thing to go ask the best rep, what do you do? Or I listen to the calls. How do you then get your state of being able to apply it and actually get confident or competent at it?

Yeah, So I have. So whenever I have like my slides for my calls, I am one. I write out everything that I'm going to say, especially when I'm new because I want to just. I don't want to waste time. I want it to be very tight and I practice it so it sounds natural. And so anyway, so whenever I. So whenever I have a better discovery question that I want to make sure I ask, I will put it in the script. Whenever I'm planning the call, I part of my pre call prep is what other two things do I want to know? And I plan the questions that I'm going to ask and I write them down. I have stickies on the bottom of my monitor. I might tape one next to the. Especially if it was like I can't leave this call without asking these two questions. I will with zoom. It's great, right? Because they can't see it. So it's just stuck to the monitor. So I'm not going to forget to ask them. It sounds ridiculous, but at point this point in my career, like I know it works for me and I'm not afraid to be kind of ridiculous because I Know, it works.

And like, so what I'm loving as I'm hearing this, there's like, these underlying themes. There's a lack of ego here. Whereas, like, I don't care if it looks ridiculous, it works. I don't care if someone else knows it better than me. I want to learn from them. I don't care if I feel uncomfortable here. I'm going to actually practice it. Like, there needs to be this lack of ego in order to actually improve at anything. And as we all know, in the sales industry, there are egos. And everywhere where it's like, sometimes I feel like people look at a top performer and almost do the opposite. They're like, well, I need to come up with my own way. Because, you know, I don't want them to feel like, well, I was using what they were using or doing what they were doing, versus, like, if it works, it works. Why not get better at it?

Why. Why would we reinvent the wheel? Like, I also don't. This is me. I also don't take advice from anyone who's not executing well. Like, they will give it to you. And it's. Thank you so much. I appreciate that because it was nice of them to, like, take their time. But if you haven't proved that you are delivering and performing in this role, there are definitely people that are. And I'm going to spend my time bugging them to be like, what would you, you know, how do you do this? And I've been very fortunate that at the, the companies that I've worked at, I. There have been top performers who will spend. Have spent time with me and have been very transparent. And they are. Most of the time, I'm talking about reps that are the single rep for JP Morgan Chase. Like, these are reps for big companies and they have no ego. Like, they'll tell you, gosh, I messed that up. And so that when you find people that are not just posing, but that have actually, like, walked the walk, they're going to be transparent with you and be like, I didn't know what I was doing for three years. And so that's such a gift. Because then you're like, oh, God, I'm not the only one that feels like.

I very, very rarely have I ever met a top performer that is unwilling to share what they do or how they do it. I will say I'm always careful with asking a top performer what they do. I ask them for the examples, right? Like, could you send me a call where you got this objection? Or could you send me a demo where you were facing this Persona. Because a lot of times, truthfully, top performers don't know what they do differently. So sometimes their answers are actually off. It's like, hey, so Kristen, like, how do you do this? You're like, oh, here's how I do it. But then in reality, there's other things that you're doing around it. So I love to listen, to observe, like, hey, could I just listen to your calls to get a feel for it? But they share it all the time. All the time. And so now actually we can pivot back then to the training side. Because what I see missing often in companies trainings is top performers are not consulted on it at all. Like, they're not involved in it. They don't even look at it. In fact, more often they disagree with it. They're like, that's. That's not what I do. So how. How can companies bridge that gap? Because there's nothing worse than you join a company, you go to the onboarding, you're like, okay, I'm ready. Then you go talk to you. You're a top performer. They say, how do you run disco? And it's completely different. And now that new reps, like, what the hell am I supposed to do? So how could companies bridge that a little bit better to take from top performance and get that into the training and onboard?

Yeah, I mean, I think asking, right? Like, I mean, I saw this done very well at Tableau where their enablement department, like, they. If they were training you on something new for every concept, like, I remember sitting in a one hour training and they were training on three different concepts, and for every single one, they had a different top performer say, this is how I do this, and this is the result. And they quantified it. They're like, well, Brianna here is the top rep and she did 3x last year and has gone to president's club twice. And you're like, I don't know, Brianna, but I am listening right now. And then she says. And they have her say it, right? And. And you know, like, okay, so I would say, yeah, the enablement department, like finding the reps and asking them or working together and having them deliver it. Right? Because reps listen to other reps and if you get the high performance to be a part of that, it will go much. That's probably the best I've ever seen it done. It's quantifying their results and then letting them tell. And you're like, I have a position.

Just let them Go. It's hilarious to me. And again, back to ego. Sometimes you see enablement and leaders, like, well, I want them to do it my way or I want, like, this is what I believe is best. I don't care if, you know, Kristen does it that way. Like, I want to teach my method, right? And so I think it's so important, like, no, what is best. Pull them in, right? Like I was. Can't remember whose podcast I was on. They talked about, you know, you know, 10 year people leaving too fast and da, da, da. I was like, look, y', all, I will take a top performer for six months. Like, if I true, if I have, if I have a superstar on my team, I will, I would gladly sign up for a six month tenure there because I will learn everything I need to learn from them in those six months to then go make the rest of the team better. I'm going to study what they do. I assigned my managers every quarter. We called it studying greatness, where they had to study the positive outliers. As leaders, we almost always, you know, we focus on what's broken, we focus on what's wrong. Every quarter, I would assign my managers one metric. So, Kristen, you have close rate. Who has the highest close rate on the team? Study them. What is it they do differently? Is it their messaging? Who they're targeting? How they do pricing? Is it their demo? So we took the time to study the best and then we take from the best and teach it to everybody. And then to your point, who could help lead that training, that top performing rep? Because I also love that you brought in quantified. Like, it's not just, oh, she's the top performer. It's like, no, she's 3x in her quota. Her close rate is 42%. Like, she maybe listen and then you bridge that, bridge that in. And so I think that's so cute. Pull them in, y'. All. If you're listening, pull in your top performers. Because if you're not teaching what your top performers do, it creates so much dissonance in a new rep's mind because they get taught one thing, they see another thing. Now they don't know what to do. And so then as we get close to wrapping up here, what else? Like, what else? Because you've been a part of some amazing companies, amazing teams, call it optically from the outside, what are the best practices internally? Right? If you look at, like, what the best of the best do in terms of training their reps, what else would you throw out there? That should be included.

Training and executive conversations. How to have a conversation with an executive. This is like you. We expect a 26 year old rep to run a meeting with a 56 year old executive who has 30 years of industry knowledge. And we're going to throw them in there and tell them like get to the decision maker and they've gotten there, but they don't know what the hell they're doing. They don't know how to speak, they don't, they don't know how to read a 10k. They don't know what's happening in the industry. Like this person who has 30 years of industry knowledge, equip them to be in that room, Equip them for that. And if all you're doing is training them on product knowledge, don't be surprised when that's what they talk about. And don't be surprised if that leader never takes a meeting with them again. You get delegated to who you sound like. And if you sound like an end user, you will only speak to end users.

Say that again please.

That I'm a little fiery about that gold.

Say that again. Oh, that was fire. One more time. I'll let you say it. I'm not going to say it again.

Yeah, So yeah, you get delegated to who you sound like. If you sound like an end user and you talk about feature function, you will only ever talk to end users. If you want to talk. If you want to hang in a conversation with a vp, if you want an intrigue, a VP in conversation, you talk about risk. What risk are they avoiding? What projects are they worried about that aren't going to be coming in on time that you can affect? Possibly three of those. What are their peers doing? Right? And here's the thing. In an organization, the managers, the directors, the VPs, they know what's happening across the industry because they're in all of those calls. Tell the reps, tell the reps across the industry we're seeing this. People always want to know what other people are doing. But if you, if you can't even do it that way, just train them how to talk to executives. Train them what executives care about. If you want them to have better conversations and like better close rates.

That made the entire episode right there. That was just. It's so true. It's so true. If you sound like a user, that's all you're going to get access to. The VP is never going to talk to you again. The C suite sure as hell isn't going to talk to you. Again, right. And making sure you know how. Because what's been lost, right, as in SaaS is, you know, all these products are so new. These companies grow so fast. There's a complete lack of industry knowledge and prospect knowledge. Well, we just teach them the product. They don't know the industry they're in. And they're talking to a CEO that's been in that industry for 10 years, 15 years, sometimes 20 years. And we want an SDR to call that person.

Like, get high call.

I just, I could not disagree with that more. Right. Of like, that is not who I want my SDR talking to. They are not ready. And so especially in enterprise sales, I love teaming up SDRs with AES. I want my SDRs going low for information and middle for insight. Giving that to the AE so the AE can go to the top for insight, influence. But my gosh, my SDR should not be speaking to the CEO of HashiCorp trying to set a meeting like, oh, my God. Okay, that was amazing. So as we, as we wrap here, Kristen, this is exactly what I was hoping it would be. And actually then some, because the teacher background gave an even stronger pull to this. The name of this podcast is Live better Sell Better. Because I also have this weird idea, right, that if we took better care of ourselves, if we had more energy, more joy, more fulfillment, more happiness, that the sales would also improve. What is your live better advice for people listening?

There's a lot that I could say there because I think we have similar ideas around journaling and meditation, that sort of thing. I'll just say I'll stay with the journaling part. So I have a gratitude. I have a journal that the first thing I do is list three things that I'm grateful for, two things I've done well, and three feelings that I'm noticing. Like every day I want to check in with myself about those things. I want to train. The gratitude is because I want to train my brain to look for the good things. And how about growth, like mindset? But I think most of so much of selling is being having good emotional intelligence. And that starts with self awareness. What am I feeling? What am I noticing? If I can't notice that, then I can't notice what anybody. What's going on with anybody else. But I 100% agree that if we take care of ourselves and for those of us that are leaders, if we take care of the people that are on our teams, like, everything's going to go better. It's all connected, right? There's no Professional life versus personal life. We have one life wherever we go. Like, there we are. So it all. It all goes together.

I love that. I do not believe in work life balance. There's life. That's it. Work life balance assumes they're on different ends of the teeter totter. Like, you have a life, you need to live it the best that you can throughout it. So I, I love that for sure. And you know how I feel about journaling and gratitude. Same thing, right? I'm even in a wework today. Brought my journal with me, did my same, like, you know, setup there. So I love this. This is amazing. Kristen, where can people get more of you? Where can they find you? Where are you putting out content? Like, how can they get more of what you're putting out there?

Yeah, LinkedIn is where. Where I'm at and where. Because that's where reps are, right? And that's where sales. That's where sales people are. I love salespeople. God bless them. So, yeah, LinkedIn.

Well, I appreciate you. Thank you for the conversation, the energy and the insights. This was phenomenal. Hopefully people are taking notes, but even more importantly, hopefully people apply it, synthesize it, and actually put it into action. So awesome. Thank you so much today.

Thanks so much. This is awesome.