Ambiverts, AI & Sales–Marketing Alignment w/ James Buckley | RevIntel [Archive]

Well, we're back in it again then. So we started the conversation and James said, push, push the mic.

Hit the button. Yeah. You want to, you want to, you want to lay it out? All right. All right. So what we're talking about, what we're talking about is kind of a difference in cultural selling and personalities. I've spent a lot of time in Europe and my man here is currently in the UK. But spent 15 years here in the States. I haven't spent 15 years in Europe, but I spent enough time in Europe to know that your assertion, if I wanna get this right, and you have to say that it's your assertion because if I say it, it comes out jacked up, right? The assertion here is that the people, the buyers of the UK are serious and wanna be taken more serious. And don't appreciate the loud, outgoing nature of boisterous Americans, for lack of a better term, right? Like, like myself, that are outgoing and have a lot of energy coming from us. It's off-putting. Your words, am I right?

Exactly. Spot on.

Okay. All right. Here is my question. Shane, this— I don't know how I ended up interviewing you on your show. You consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert?

All right, so let's just—

and you have to define them. We have to define them.

Define it. So give a one-liner on an introvert and run one-liner. Yeah, go ahead. No, you, you tell me.

Okay, so, so here's, here's how I define introvert and extrovert. Okay. An introvert thinks of all the possible outcomes first before saying a word. They— there's no outward expression before they've thought about all the possible outcomes, right?

Yeah.

An extrovert like myself, I have to speak in— something outward has to be happening for me to form a thought.

I'm introvert, 100%.

I, I 100% disagree. Okay. Okay. But what about this? What about this? Let me tell you about, let me tell you about what I've learned about Europeans.

Okay.

Most of them are ambiverts. You familiar with this term?

No, I'm not.

This term is defined as a person that knows when to turn it on and be that outgoing, loud person. And when to turn it off, be reserved, be quiet, hold your tongue.

That's very interesting.

These individuals are actually much rarer than introverts and extroverts. Uh, I don't know if you've ever seen the Divergent series, probably a weird analogy, but the Divergent series is a good example of like, peop— most people are introverts or extroverts, but there's this little sliver of humans that know when to be which. I am not that person. I am definitely an extrovert.

I think I will actually. All right. So that, that, that I do always enjoy being the rarity. I, and what you've just said that it's an ambivert.

That's the term that, that, that I've, I've seen. Yes.

Okay. So I will tell you why I believe I'm, there's a, I'm trying to figure out how the extrovert, I've always been told I'm an extrovert, honestly. And I've somewhat believed it, but the way you said it, that You think of the outcomes before anything comes out. That's how my brain just processes and processes. And I sometimes confuse myself, others, cuz I have so much to say.

Mm-hmm.

But this ambivalent thing that you've just mentioned, that personality, because I was in prison and I knew how to manipulate correctional officers who are not easy people to manipulate.

I don't know. We can talk about the standard of intelligence level in our correctional facilities if you like, but I think that might be a road we don't want to go down.

We do actually budget it. You're still over there. You're still over there, so they might can too. But in terms of even coming out, and then I had a conversation with, um, my dad's friend. Okay. And I had come out and I started, John actually ripped me for this about, uh, Grant Cardone. I found Grant Cardone on Monthlyly. He had all the closing stuff.

Y'all don't see my face. This is getting uncomfortable fast.

But this is what people understand and see is close, close, close. And that's what I first went to before I realized it's not just about that. Right. But I started to adopt his behavior and say, I'm the best. I'm the greatest. I'm the greatest. And, um, I believe I'm good. I'm be, it's, it's my confidence. And I sat at dinner and my dad's. His body basically said, no, you just sound arrogant as fuck.

So I'll say that there is a very interesting balance between arrogance and confidence, and sometimes the two get muddled very easily. I don't like to throw names around. I'll say that I don't appreciate a lot of the tricks, and I'm using quotes here, tricks. That some of the folks that provide sales techniques and tactics, I think they're tricks and I don't like tricking people. I spent a long time in my sales career tricking people and I don't like doing it. It makes me feel bad. I did door-to-door B2B and door-to-door residential. And when you use tricks like the yes, yes, and for those of you that don't know that technique, it's when I subtly shake my head yes the entire time I speak to someone. And it becomes natural for them to do the same. And then it's even harder for them to disagree with me. And most of the time I can get folks— you're doing it right now, Shane. I know.

I see that.

It's very difficult not to shake your head yes while I shake my head yes and speak to you. Right. And I did this for many years with a lot of buyers. And after a while, it starts to feel really shitty and you want to walk away from it. When I came into the software sales industry, I was a cold caller. So I came from knocking on doors in the heat, walking around in a suit from business to business in Tennessee in like 99-degree weather. No thank you, right? I come inside and I'm in the air conditioning. Holy shit, there's a ping pong table in here, right? And you're like, let's go beanbags. I'm in laptops. All right, solid, dude. There's a fucking PlayStation over there. Let's go. Right? So I'm in the SaaS industry in Knoxville, Tennessee, the weirdest place to be in the SaaS world. And sure enough, you know, I started having these conversations with Salesforce users and I didn't even know what Salesforce was at the time, but I had a really good trainer. So this was my, my entree into my onboarding, if you would, into what SaaS can do for a salesperson. I had never used Salesforce before. And Zach Metters, at the time, Zach Metters was my, my SDR leader. And he was like, okay. I got you a Salesforce login. We sell a product that integrates Salesforce with people's inboxes. We're just going to give you Salesforce for now, and you're going to manage a pipeline inside of Salesforce. Go. So for 30 days or so, I created my tasks manually in Salesforce. I updated them in Salesforce. I created contacts and leads and accounts in Salesforce. I learned the basics, basically, of operating as a sales professional in Salesforce. And then he goes, okay, now I'm going to give you the product. Suddenly, from my inbox, I'm doing all these amazing things. I'm automating my updates. I'm saving emails to Salesforce, like, by clicking a button. And it was an eye-opener for me, right? Like, this is what streamlining is about. That was how I learned about like products that help salespeople sell better, basically.

Okay.

Yeah. This is the type of experience that our prospects have to get. It's harder to transfer that experience into a prospect. Yeah. It's easy to do it with an employee, but it's really hard to get a prospect to take that journey with you. But my ambiverted nature allowed me to, uh, reach out to a lot of people in a lot of places. It's an interesting thing when you start thinking about how you can be more effective instead of how you can get people to talk to you or agree with you more. Of course, it's so much easier to point our fingers outwards and go, these people aren't responsive, or this person doesn't want to talk to me, or that guy's a dick, right? Like, we say these things instead of being like, what can I change about myself? And I think that's That's the thing that needs to happen in 2024 for salespeople, marketers too. I think in general there's this like shift happening where it's becoming very self-reflective and being like, what can I change? What can I systemize? What can I use? I'm guilty of feeling like AI is just like a passing trend. It's not, you know, it's changing lives. Like if you use it right and you're letting it, I think it was like, I wanna say it was Jeb Blount. I think that he put out this video way back, like 2016, '17, and he said there's like 3 types of people. There are non-adopters for tech.

I remember this. Okay.

Yeah. And then there are like the ho-hum adopters, the people that like grab the stuff that they like and they just, you know, do those things. And then there's like the big-time adopters.

Yeah.

And these people are usually in the top 10%. Yeah. Right? Of like performance.

Yeah.

I think this rings very true even still today.

Yeah, I would agree. I would agree. Yeah. And, but so, but this is what, this is what I was getting at with that, right? Um, I looked at Grant and quickly realized that his tactics were not the types of tactics that will work in selling financial training courses to a banker, right? It's not going to work. You try to be Grant Cardone selling to fucking bankers.

Listen, man, if you're doing content from your, if you're doing content from your jet, you're not for me. Like that's it. I don't even want to, like it is that simple.

But that's what it got to though.

It got to be that way. Nice pool table in the back.

Your crib is dope. Like that's all I can keep looking at is the red pool table because I love playing pool. I love playing pool. But what I was mentioning is I got to a place where it just didn't resonate. And then I got into Brian Burns. This was my journey of learning.

Oh yeah. The Brutal Truth About Sales. What a great show.

Oh my God.

That was, that was, I was on that show as a guest on that show.

I remember. And this was in 2015.

Yeah.

And then I pulled away from it because everything I was doing, I felt like I was going and seeking information, but I wasn't able to grab anything that I could bring back. And then it became all execution and application were the only things that worked. Those are the only things that drove an actual tangible result. And where I feel like this has become in my journey today and why I believe I can help a lot of people and why I want to is because I've sifted out a ton of the bullshit that's gone along the way. And I can quickly see those joke artists that don't know how to sell really. And I'll give you another example. Have you seen that dude Andy Elliot yet?

I don't know who that name— the name is familiar, but I don't know.

He's a bald-headed sales trainer. His name is Elliot Army. He wears tight pants, looks like a ballerina, and a tight shirt. He's done it for a long time. He's created a great brand, but I picked it apart the other day when he was doing a masterclass and he was telling somebody, I tell them when they're going to buy and I'm going to close that motherfucker on the spot. And for me, that was like, this is why people think sales is tacky and shit, because When you talk about treating a customer or talking to about a customer in that, in that fashion, you lose all credibility, especially from me. And the way I've seen it is I've gone through that phase of just wanting to close a deal to cash a check. And then I've got into the business world of trying to close a deal to cash a check. And then it came to a place of I don't want to work with anybody unless I can actually help them.

And I want to, I want to. I want to say that I agree with your premise if that is conducive to your buyer. I always come back to, do you know your buyer? Here's what I know. Some people sell quite transactionally and some people buy quite transactionally. Some people sell with relationships and trust, and some people buy with relationships and trust. Every seller, I don't care how bad they are at it. They have an ideal buyer out there that likes their approach. Somebody out there, somebody out there in the TAM, the total addressable market, is like, I like the way that person sells. What matters here is how many people can you adjust your approach to so that you can find the way that they like to be sold to? Once again, let's full circle it back to this ambivert. I'm not saying don't be authentic, don't be yourself. I'm not saying coat it in this magical dust that's probably, you know, 90% bullshit. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is I have an outgoing personality, for example. My energy is quite high. I transfer that energy quite well on my sales calls.

Yeah.

There are, there are more reserved buyers out there that are turned off, much like our conversation started about this, regional selling, right? Over in the UK, that energy is considered a turnoff. Some buyers just naturally avoid these high-energy people because they prefer a more controlled, steady, uh, more reserved delivery. That's what they gravitate towards.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. We have to know as sellers, can I sell to this person or do I have a colleague that would be a better fit to sell to this human?

I just spoke to somebody about that today and the value in a seller having an ego and the difference between you elevating yourself beyond just the selfish egotistical seller and becoming a business professional. And that fine line is one point I'm addressing right now where selling is manipulative and I don't agree with anything being manipulative in a sales journey.

Yeah.

No matter how—

Never tell somebody what they want to hear for the sake of closing a deal. That's not a, that's never setting a good expectation.

Of course, or even control. You can control a sale, but to control the narrative so much that, no, you're gonna do this, and it's kind of pressured, that, that's bullshit.

So pressure, let's talk about pressure, because I think pressure exists in a certain situation. I'll give you a couple different examples. First of all, I think if you're selling something transactional, and I'll use something that's very different than SaaS, because we have to, we have to take our, our SaaS blinders off. Sales is so much bigger than SaaS, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah. I've sold a lot of things in my time, man. You know what I'm saying? So, so when you think about the connotation it is to be a salesperson, if you Google, everybody right now, just stop what you're doing and Google top jobs or top careers in 2024. If you, if you Google top careers, top jobs in 2024 and read them off, I guarantee you're going to get at least 15 in And you're not going to— you're not going to see sales. Salesperson will not be— there it is. 21 more rows right there. Boom. Best jobs according to Indeed. Salesperson is not on this list.

Wow. What a bunch of choke artists.

Here's what's crazy. Here's what's crazy. Sales is both the largest and highest paid profession in the world and the largest and lowest paid position in the world. It holds both of those titles. So the question becomes, so the question becomes, like, if we're going to change the connotation of being in sales, if you're in sales right now and you're listening to this, ask yourself, when, when a motherfucker in your family says, what are you doing? These days. How's the job? Are you like, I'm a sales professional, yo?

No.

I'm business development, client relationship manager. I'm a professional. I'm a client engagement specialist. I'm a technical consultant. There's everything except— Sales engineer. I don't want to talk sales engineers down. I refuse to do that with you. You will not drag me into that. How dare you, Shane? How dare you? So, so here's the thing. What I'm saying is, is that we've got to get to these, these youngsters and show them the right way to run businesses today.

I agree. Fully agree.

With the customer first and with your ideal customers in mind and with a strategy that is all-encompassing. I'm speaking next week for Knox County Schools to a group of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. And we're talking about media as a profession. And I'm literally walking them through my career trajectory. I did this type of sales for this long and I was making this much money. Before I got my education, I was making this much money, right? I got a, I got a degree and then I went here and I was making X. The following year I did so well that year that I got a raise and I made Y. And the following year after that I did well again and I got another raise and I made Z, right? And now I move companies and this was my mark and I hit it and I got this for my next job. And then I got a call from John Barrows and he said this, and I threw out a number that I thought was ridiculous. And he was like, let's do it. And I was like, let's go. And like, dude, but they don't think about it from these perspectives. I'm going to give them the numbers and everything. It was crazy. Think about what I'm saying here. I'm telling you now, when you ask 6th, 7th, and 8th graders, how much money do you want to make? The numbers you get are staggering because they have no concept. Of economy or inflation or what it takes to live. So they say things like, I want to make $10,000 a year. And you're like, okay, no, right? Like you can't live on that. Who else has a number? And they're like, I want to make a million. And you're like, you watch too much TV, right? Or they're like, I want to make $10 million. And you're like, TikTok addict. Let's talk about, let's talk about a realistic path to revenue and what's happened to me over the last 10 years. And I started in sales and I never would've thought that it would've taken me to media. No way.

So for those who don't know you that well, give us a highlight reel in 1 minute on that, on that journey from start to where you are today.

Sure. 2015, I left door-to-door sales and the restaurant business to become a full-time SDR at my first SaaS and tech company.

Okay.

I was there for 4 years. The company sold to a Texas Holdings company and I moved to a data orchestration company. That was then picked up by ZoomInfo. Then in 2020, I got a call from John Barrows and my content in that window of time from 2015 to 2005, I built my brand, Say What Sales, hashtag Say What Sales. If you're a salesperson, we're the same person. I've been saying that shit for years. Right? And it just pulls salespeople in my direction. And I love that, man. That's my thing. I want to help salespeople win. That's my job.

Exactly.

Right? So, so here we go. I start with John and Morgan J. Ingram on the sales training side. 2020 comes along, March hits, COVID shuts the world down. What do we, what do we have to do? We pivot to digital. Once we go to digital, we, it hits us like, we have these great roots in sales training and now we're on this thing where these webinars that we're doing are attracting like thousands of people. Let's do it instead of doing 2 a month, let's do you know, one a week and we were doing 4 a month. And then my, my business partner and our co-founder Chris Merrill says, I think we could do this every day. John Barrows himself was like, no fucking way. This will never happen. And Chris, Chris and John, to give you the background, Chris and John have known each other since they were 5 years old. Chris was like, I accept your challenge. And now 2 years later, we are the longest running daily sales show, sellbetter.xyz. You can go and you can sign up for all the shows that are upcoming in advance.

We send out all the recordings.

Yeah, it's a fantastic show. I get the— I have the best job in the world of hosting the best sales leaders in the world. And they come in and we just get tactics from them. We get frontline reps that come and do cold calling with us, mock cold calls with us. We get people that submit their emails and we review them live on screen with real sales leaders that get real results. And they give them feedback and tips for improvement. It is a full, engaging, interactive experience for the audience, myself, and the experts in the room. And it is the best possible way that someone can do something consistently and get a little bit better every single day. I love it. Sellbetter.xyz. Check it out.

I love it. I've, uh, I went on it the other day and I was looking at like, how, how can I elevate what I do? And I thought, you know, I follow, I'm connected with you. I'm following you on Instagram. And it's just, Everything is crisp, right? And this is where now, now, now what, let's say somebody's about to go into the media agency journey, uh, or become a media professional, right? They want to take a step into personal branding, which I think is the entry point. I took that journey in March. I wanted to take it in 2020, but I didn't because, uh, I had an indifference of opinions with my co-founder at the time, but when I said Fuck it, bro. I just, let's start. Let's start the fucking podcast. And well, all we're doing is recording on, on Zoom. We have Zooms all the time. It will get better. It's nothing is ever perfect when you start. And eventually it has got to a point where I was paying an agency. I got to a point where I couldn't afford to pay the agency anymore. And I, the person who was sponsoring the podcast at the time, they said, yo, dude, go. You're not stupid. Go do it yourself. Take all the money and go do it yourself.

Best advice ever.

It is. And I did it and I started to earn and that was like, holy shit. Like I'm getting paid now to speak to people. And it wasn't just that I was having fun. And then I got—

The job that you do is supposed to be fun. People forget.

I don't. And again, like now I don't, I always say I don't have a job. I don't really have a job. I wake up. I enjoy what I do. I go have my breakfast. I watch my, a few YouTube videos. I can, I watch podcasts, classrooms, everything. And then I have my calls with people like yourself, with my partners, with my clients, and they're all in a short schedule, right? But along this journey, along this journey of, fuck, I lost my train of thought again.

You were going to ask me what advice I had for somebody coming into media.

Yes. Okay. So yeah, so back on that. So I've got to that point where now I know how to repurpose content. I've built a strategy, a solution. Uh, I'm repurposing hundreds of videos. I've just worked with somebody today. Uh, I've, I've instructed him, uh, through the course that I learned how to build a 7-hour course. He's built the whole thing. He's built on School the Community. And why I'm saying this is because through just fucking up, getting, getting on it, going through it. You will learn and you will become good. What is the ideal path though? There is a missing piece that I don't know where to go next.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think, I think that journey of, of somebody who wants to start recording podcasting and get to an outcome that is an ideal situation for them to earn.

Yeah, sure. So there's a couple of things that are worth noting here. The first thing is What, what is the purpose of the content that you're creating consistently? Who's the target audience? Because you're going to want to go and talk to all of the companies and the people that are also speaking to that audience. Those are the people that are likely to work with you. So that's the first thing that you should do is think about your target audience and the people that are going to be listening, and then draw the lines that go directly to the value that might be interesting for them to take part in. Those companies will pay you for that type of thing. Scott Leese and I had this great conversation about the ambassador role on the show just last year, and he was like, this is an up-and-coming role. I mean, think about 2022, 2023, how many people changed their title on LinkedIn to evangelist?

Oh, wow. Yeah, you're right.

A lot, right? I was an evangelist for a minute, right? The, the Sell Better by JB Sales evangelist before it became the Daily Show. When you think about, when you think about what you can do to get started and how you can monetize, first of all, don't even think about monetizing until you've got the following to monetize.

Because what is that? If you just don't know, number— there's no way we'll have a starting number. 100, 1,000, 10,000.

That's not true. The only numbers that matter are the numbers that matter to the people that are paying for those numbers. Right. That is, that is the key. There is an equation to be found. Find the equation that works. And here's why I say this, because we always want to monetize right away. But how many webinars have you been to, Shane? I can, I, I don't have enough fingers or toes to count on the number of webinars that I've been to that had big names. I mean, big names. And there are 11 people in the room.

Yep. I agree.

If your, if your sponsor paid for that to be a hit and it's a flop, how do you justify that payment? That's a tough thing to do. I would caution everyone thinking about creating content and monetizing, ask yourself what your threshold is. Find the data. You know, I got two ladies that work with me and I can't, I can't not talk about them when I talk about this because I, I consider myself data-oriented. These two ladies are extremely data-oriented. Mm-hmm. Vicky and Maria, look at the data and tell me what works. Without them, I, I don't know what I should keep doing and what I should let go of.

Yep. You're right.

I'd eventually find out about it, but it doesn't grow without their data. You see? Mm-hmm. You have to be able to consistently create something, look at what it's drawing, How do I improve it? How do I keep my numbers consistently increasing? And who wants it? That's the equation to find, make that list, right? We always want to monetize, but we never think, what am I monetizing? I would be very upset if I paid $10,000, $20,000, $50,000 to any organization to be a sponsor of an event. Only to turn around and get, you know, let's say 45 leads from that particular endeavor. Now, let me be very clear. If every single one of those 45 leads are fantastic and qualified and a little bit of discovery was done and your ACV is hundreds of thousands of dollars, this fucking message doesn't apply to you. That's a, that's a healthy investment right there.

So I'll, I'll give you an example.

But most people don't have that equation.

Yeah, no, you are, you are right about that. So I'll give you two things. So the, where, where I think the podcasting element can be monetized, if somebody is on a journey and they want to do it, there's gonna come a point such as where I'm at now where there's too much content to organize and get it posting by myself and focus on all my other things. So I need to outsource certain priorities, certain tasks within this engine that I'm building. On the, and where companies will sponsor a podcast, it's typically, I've seen, let's say, Stephen Bartlett. Do you know Stephen Bartlett? The guy from the UK Diary of a CEO?

Uh, yes, I do know Diary of a CEO.

Okay, so he has Huel and a few other brands that midway through, this is what I did with one of mine, it was an email sponsor, midway through you just say something like, hey look, we are sponsored by this brand, they do this, this, this. And that's it. And the amount of brands that are paying for that is ridiculous. Even if I was wearing a branded t-shirt, it's crazy. So that's another thing. And those are, I think you like, uh, there's a guy called Dodge Woodall. I asked him about his podcast. He said it's £5,000 to be on my podcast. I said, I'll talk to you later. I can't do that right now.

That is not, in my opinion, it is not, it's not a tasteful way to monetize your brand, your podcast.

Yeah, I agree.

I think that for me it worked. It was very healthy for me to be at the company I started at in 2015 and build Say What Sales at that company. I was selling to salespeople that were using Salesforce. So, okay, starting Say What Sales, because I sold to salespeople, it was like a big lead gen engine for me. This is what 2024 selling has become about, y'all. Like, create enough of a magnet that it pulls magnets. I think it was, it might've been Seth Godin, it might've been Gary Vee, it might've been Benioff, Mark Benioff that said this, magnets have two poles. On one end of the magnet, people are really attracted to you. They like your energy and they want to talk to you. You can sell to these people. On the other end of that magnet, it's repelling. Some people are naturally repelled from you. Your chances of selling to those people are slim to none. Okay? Recognize which pole these people are attracted to and run at the ones that are pulled in your direction because they want to run with you.

So I agree with that. And then on the other side, I want to ask you about this, where I've seen a lot of things, uh, or a lot of marketing strategies are always about the generation of leads, right? Everybody wants more leads. But what if someone— this is, this is why, this is why I, I just, I hated that conversation of I do something for you and then I know, or you know yourself, the quality of the leads you produce for every show. You know the quality of the lead and we know that you're just bringing awareness into the funnel and whoever's watching it is just slow and it's never a linear path, but they're going through as they go, as, as they go through their journey. The client, I'm not speaking bad or in ill manner, but the client always has a different perspective of what you believe is a good lead versus what they understand is a good lead. And that battle I'm not willing to fight ever again. I'm not willing to fight that battle. But, but let me finish on that. Cause I see, look, you're antsy.

You're ready.

On the other side, I'm having these conversations with high-level business leaders about important things that are happening and the dialogue that's happening in the room when there's no public involved, there's no need to generate leads. It's just those 10 people in the room. And then after that happens, 3 of them start, they, they, they do business. Like they actually do business and that little environment of sponsorship where let's say we're speaking about AI intent data and how to protect yourself from data leaks. I don't know. And Sixth Sense sponsors it and they have 10 CEOs in that. And then there's one of their marketing directors and one of their engineers. And the topic comes up where they are just so happy to be an expert on the topics that are challenging for those other group members. Sixth Sense is getting a fucking deal at the end of that call, 100%, because the caliber of individuals in that room is different. So now jump on your piece, what you was about to say.

I'm only gonna ask you this question and it will prove my point. Are you ready?

Okay, go.

Jeopardy is sponsored by Tylenol, but Jeopardy is not a show for people with headaches.

Yes.

Tylenol pays Jeopardy to have that slot on the show. No.

Yeah, but that's strange. Like there doesn't, there's no relevance.

Is it? Tylenol's one of the largest medicine providers.

I used to love Tylenol. Tylenol at nighttime.

But the point, the point, the point that I'm making is that like, we think that a lead has to have a certain level of quality, but that depends on the person buying it and the product they sell and whether or not it can be attached to that lead. We don't know that side of it.

Yep.

That's not— that targeting is everything. Conversations have to happen at the sales level for these types of relationships to form.

Exactly.

A process must exist for this to work for your sponsors. Otherwise they wouldn't come back to you.

So let me ask you this then. Now that's where you made a point before on there's, this is an era where sales and marketing are coming together. Before from what any position I've been, it's been very disconnected. And the biggest disconnection came from our first opportunity with our, one of our first clients where they said they were heavily inbound orientated. They were very successful with inbound for the past 3, 4 years.

Right.

It happened and they needed outbound. And Mr. Mahi, yours truly, had spoken to their CEO 3 years ago. She never answers cold calls. And she said, That was phenomenal. I never speak to cold callers. I want to speak to you. She ended up spending £37,000 on me over 7 weeks and every opportunity was a flop. Like we ran a webinar for her with 100 guaranteed leads. There was 3 people on the webinar and 2 other, 2 of them were from her own company. That's how bad it was. But what I'm mentioning is when we went outbound, the challenge we always had was with their marketer. And what we were providing as sales accepted opportunities. And a sales accepted opportunity in their eyes was a construction operations manager that had a problem of too much paper trails in their processes. Our job was to call them in to identify a tactical and strategic strategy that they could use in the immediate term with a no-code solution. We would tell them you can't just fucking qualify a tactical and strategic need on a first call. You have to have a conversation with them, like stuff like that. And that disconnect was the reason why the contract broke in the end.

That is why you have to know what your role is and you have to have the resources to be able to refer business to those that can help solve those problems. Let me give you a great example. If we have a new startup that sells to salespeople that wants to sponsor the Sell Better Daily Sales Show. They also are going to get this question from us when they buy from us. What does your follow-up process look like for these people?

Oh, wow.

And if they don't have a good answer, we take a step back. We have to, because our brand is on the line here. You're a reflection of that. If we're going to sing your praises, let us show you someone that can help you with a great follow-up process. And we have lots of people to choose from. But if you're not going to do a great follow-up process for the people that we're putting you in front of, man, this is not going to work no matter what we do. And I refuse to be on a call 3 months later where you say we didn't close any of our business from this initiative with you. Well, no, like, I want to make sure that before you decide to do business with us, you are ready for this type of volume. You are ready for these types of leads. You have messaging in place that we know to be effective with our audience, right? Like, it's not, it goes beyond, can I sell you a list? Which is what I think a lot of people think it is.

Mm-hmm.

Right? That's what they see. They see, oh, uh, I don't know if you remember, but back in like 2017 through 2019, there was this rash of people that were like, hey, I can get you a list of 1,000 Salesforce users. Hey, I can get you a list of 2 million HubSpot customers. I still got 'em. Yeah. Selling lists has always been a popular thing to do. I don't think businesses need lists anymore. I think lists are important. I think lists are important, but I think what they need are engaged people on lists. I think that's more important. I think having a system in place that gives your salespeople the context and the strategies and the relevance in their messaging when they first start reaching out to these humans, man, that is what Sell Better provides, right? For our sponsors, for the people that work with us that sponsor the show. If you give me a dollar, I wanna give you 3 to 5 back. That's the move, right? And if I can't do that, what the fuck we talking about?

Well, this is the thing because I think then this is where I see a very mismanaged expectation and a very big problem in how companies operate. Maybe not the more experienced side, but then, but where you do have companies where the marketing team and the sales team or the marketing director and the sales agency, they don't see eye to eye.

Ah, well, that's usually because they're compensated for the same things.

Such as?

Marketing's— let's use a PLG motion, right? Marketing is compensated for the number of free trials that start every month from the main page. Salespeople are often compensated for getting a free trial started at the organizations they're selling to. The difference is, is that in one instance, I can get that free trial started from the homepage. Without the need of a salesperson. Or I can click this other button and I can schedule a demo and that salesperson can talk to me first. And then at the end, I'll probably be asked to start a trial. Right? But in the end, the trial is the goal.

Of course.

I was at a company where at one point in time, marketing leads were being scored and qualified and then funneled into the hands of SDRs. And then one day that marketing leader was let go. And the new marketing leader that came in was told that this person was going to be compensated for trial starts. Before I knew it, none of the team was getting any more inbound information. No, no names were coming in our direction. It became very cold and the inbound process just stopped. It was fine because we, we knew how to prospect outbound, so we, we just pivoted to start making lists and, you know, let's go out. I, I don't care, you know, whatever.

Like, no, I'm not gonna say it.

I accept your challenge. So that's what we did and it worked out fine. But if you think about what happened there, it was like, what can I turn off so that the majority of the opportunities are accredited to the marketing team? And not so much the sales team. Well, the sales team is compensated differently than the marketing team is. Mm-hmm. Marketing team usually full of salaried employees and salespeople have to dance for their dinner every fucking month. Exactly. This is the way of the world, right? It's the way it'll always be stretched out. So here's the, here's the real, here's the real play in my view, and you can disagree with me. I'd love your opinion. If we don't start learning how to be marketers ourselves as salespeople from the marketers that we're surrounded by every day. We're probably going to eventually struggle to get our own leads in the door. We have to learn to market. That's important for us in the modern age. It's a two-sided coin. And if marketers don't eventually start embracing the fact that salespeople need to know how to market, and it helps them when marketing helps them learn who their ICPs are, learn what their challenges are, talk to them about the deals that close, you know, very, very transactionally so that they can learn to leverage those strategies and leverage those conversations. How are you upping your sales team? How are you helping to create more revenue? The two teams need communication. And there's a great quote that I said on one of the shows that we did, and I can't even remember who was on the show. It might have been Will Aitken, now that I think about it. But communication is often the cause and the solution to our problems. That's the, that's the quote. And it's a great quote. Talk to your salespeople more. Talk to your marketing people more. Hold meetings where you guys share these insights and talk about changes you can make to your language. I think this is the move that has to happen in 2024. And if we don't start seeing it happen, you're gonna see another bottom of the 10% fall out of the bucket at the end of the year.

How do you feel about this message that came from Gary Vee the other day? And it was on, look at my shoe, look at this swoosh, right? I've got Jordans on right now. I just bought a new pair of Air Maxes. I never buy any other sneaker other than Air Max because of number one, because of comfort. And just because Nike from a very young age has just been that brand that I fucking love. It's so comfortable. Everything.

Brand loyalty is what that is.

Oh, 100%, right? I've read a load of books that actually address it too. But then I went to the Nike store to return a pair of joggers the other day. And yo, this store, I'm telling you, looked like fucking Japan. Like I was in Japan and like, so everything's on shelves and lights and banners going round. The new— and I looked at it and thought like, this customer acquisition cost is so fucking low because Nike brand, like there is no salespeople. Unless you're at the top of the, in corporate, there are no—

It took them a very long time to get there.

So how do you help people realize that that gap is very far to become Nike as a brand? And if you're starting today as a salesperson, how, what should their mindset be to get to that or understand the journey towards that?

It's a good question. Consistency is probably the best answer and patience. Nothing that you ever truly gave a shit about happened overnight. Nothing, literally nothing. If you got a trophy because your team was the best, you worked through a lot of other teams and it took months to get there and then you won. If you became certified in something that you had to take an exam for, it took the time to learn that skill and get that done. Everything that you truly give a shit about takes time. Your, your career is probably the most important thing to take your time with. So don't think you're going to wake up tomorrow and be successful at anything. In fact, just try to get a little bit better every day and learn something new as often as you can. Read a lot of books. I read ridiculous books and it's, it helps you. And once you get into the mindset of growth, it's really hard to look away. And then you find the things that you can systemize and then profit starts rolling in.

How do you keep people focused on reading? Like, so I, I'm a big believer in just shortening the path to success. And again, for me, I believe this year will be a breakthrough year for me, and people will say it's an overnight success, but they don't realize this shit has been happening since 2008, bro.

They only see the top of the iceberg.

Exactly. I've been through it, like really, really, really, really tough times, but I embrace them. I love who it's helped me become.

Makes us who we are.

Exactly. Now, that's a big journey, right? That's a long journey. It takes a lot of time. For those that are in a rush, you said patience, you said consistency.

Yeah.

Give a bit of detail on those consistent actions and how do you prevent yourself from reading the wrong stuff and wasting time?

Yeah, I guard my vibe. What I mean by that is that if I see something negative, instead of immediately jumping to reply to it, I think about whether or not I need to reply to it, and most often I'll ignore it. And that's probably an optimistic perspective. Some people have a hard time turning away from negativity. Know this, everybody out there is gonna judge you. Everyone out there is gonna say something about the stuff you're creating. There's always gonna be somebody out there that's talking behind your back saying terrible things. You should not care about this. Because if you are—

Some people it's hard, like for me, I guess I'm at an age where it's starting to become less important, but it affects me, it still pisses me off.

Me off. It does affect us. I'm not saying it doesn't affect us. I'm saying we cannot give, we cannot give the trolls the satisfaction of a reaction. When we do that and engage, it just draws our spirit down to that depth and it becomes harder for us to justify what we're doing. The way that I look at it like this, I ride this, uh, this fence and on this fence there's two sides and on one side of the fence there's all these people that want to be where I am. So I'm always reaching down and helping them up on my fence. On the other side of my fence, there's all these people that are where I want to be. So I surround myself with them and I'm always reaching up so they can help me onto their fence. If I just stay on the fence, I'm going to win. But you can't look, you can't look behind you on the fences. You have to keep moving forward. You can pull people with you that want to be with you.

Yep.

But you can't look to the last fence you were on constantly, or you'll end up back on that fence. So when I, when I, when I think about how, how quickly this happened for me, the only thing I can say that happened quickly is I learned to make change in myself quickly because I had no choice. It was easier for me to control what I was putting out there than it was for me to control the trolls.

I'll ask you this then. So at what point do you know if you're moving too fast or slow? And the reason why I say that is because when you're in a job, for example, the resume wants you to be there for 2 to 3 years to show consistency, right?

18 months is the average tenure for an employee. Anyway, there you go.

And then your boss wants to see a certain amount of time. And there, there was one moment where I said, okay, I can't trust the manager, and you may push back on this, but he said, I believe you're better off as a delegate salesperson. And I wanted to go to sponsorship sales. He didn't realize my motive was to earn more. That's all I cared about. I didn't enjoy the job. I was good at it. I was able to book people to attend events, but I saw sponsorship was closing half a million dollars in revenue. And I said, I want to be part of that. I want that's It was only 2 people, but I want to, I want to be part of that group. And he said no. He said no. And I was, I was like, what the fuck?

Why?

Like, why would you want to stop me from going there? And then he hired my best friend to be my team leader. And my ego, I said I quit. And I got a job at Gartner. After I got a job at Gartner, they found out about my criminal record and fired me 6 weeks later, 6 weeks before I started. And so I couldn't start there. And had to go on another one. But the point I'm making is I went through every single job until the most recent one. Every year I moved. Two jobs I moved, the next, the last one I stayed there for four years. After four years, I started my company. How fast did you last? Yeah.

All right. So here's the question. Really, there's really only one question. Every time you move jobs, did you make a little bit more money? Were you a little more comfortable?

Double the salary, then you ran at, then you ran at your pace, bud.

Yeah. That's the truth of it is that everybody has a different standard of living, a different set of goals. When I first started in sales, my goal was that I wanted to take my family to dinner without having to check my bank account first to make sure that I could, because I come from nothing. Right. So I was like, I gotta, I gotta get to a point where we live comfortably. That was the goal. So I did. That's still the goal today. We live comfortably. Like, I'm fine. I make more money now than I've ever done in my life. Money was only the metric until I hit the metric.

Of course.

And then it became about like growth and development and impact and like, you know, network and like people that I could help. And what I was putting out there became like a big focus for me. Only for the first year or two was my job, and I use the word job, And not career about money.

Yeah.

I knew it was about money when I got the job. That's why I took the job. It's the vehicle.

It's the vehicle to get you to the next place.

But it becomes about something completely different. And if people just realize this sooner, and that's the hard part to realize sooner because we get the job because we need the money.

Yeah.

Then we get the money and we go, what's next? I got the money. I'm comfortable. I like, we figured it out. We made it. So now what? And then obviously, as you focus on the other things, money comes easier suddenly, right? My first 3 years, I got a base pay raise and a commissions raise every year on end, on end, and it was substantial. Then when I became an account executive, it all changed. And then when I became a leader, it became more of a team thing, and it just grew and grew and grew. And each time I stepped forward, I got a little bit more comfortable. And as long as you're doing that, you are in great shape. And let me be very clear, I am not saying go chase the shiny quarter.

Yep. Don't do that. I did that.

We train, we train and coach and help a lot of salespeople. And I will talk to a 25-year-old SDR that started a week ago and they're like, oh my God, this is the best job. I am so happy. I can't believe I'm getting paid for this. There's a ping pong table in here, yo. A ping pong table. We play ping pong at lunch. They're so amped. 6 months later, you can talk to that same rep and they're like, if I'm not promoted by the end of the year, I'm gonna fucking quit. This place is bullshit. It's a mess. It's a mess. You're like, what? Like, you fucking know. You've been here 6 months. Like, what happened in that time period that you're like, fuck this, I'm going back to Taco Bell? Like, what? I don't get it, man.

But that's when they're supposed to get the change. That's when— That, that I believe that those hard moments when I wanted to give up is when they want it is when they're supposed to understand that those pivotal points are when the change happens. You got to stick it out. Now, another thing that's interesting when you look at your journey and as you said it, and then being mindful of the other journey, which is not everybody's built to be a leader.

Yeah.

So for that top performer that gets. You've heard the story plenty time and time again, that top leader, he gets promoted. You are doing fucking great. I'm making you sales manager. And he becomes sales manager and he crumbles. And that happened to me because I didn't know how to coach somebody. I knew how to be good myself. I didn't know how to coach my abilities into somebody. So how do you know which path to take? Oh, so you don't get into like the the carriageway or the fucking, or whatever, the road down the line where you're stuck in a role where you're like, oh my God, I made the wrong choice. I wish I knew this before. And then you obviously help them know what this is.

So obviously culture plays a big role in a transition from an individual contributor into a leadership role. I know that, and it's very common to see that top performers often don't make great leaders, but there are exceptions. Leadership for me was always more about helping people to point inward and find ways to improve themselves and talking to them on a very, like, real level about what their goals are and helping them achieve those goals. I actually have a great newsletter that I subscribe to from Gabrielle Blackwell, GB, uh, the One-on-One. The One-on-One, yeah, it's a good leadership newsletter, um, and every, every time I read one of them, there's always a little nugget that I take away and I think about how it applies to the leaders that I've had in the past. And I'll tell you, good leaders, smart leaders hire smart people and then let them go be smart. They don't hire—

Wow. Different way of putting it.

Well, I think it was Steve Jobs that said that. And it's a very real problem in our space. A lot of smart leaders out there, they hire smart people, but then proceed to like tell them how to be smart and then they become less smart. It's a bad circle.

I know what you're saying.

Yeah, here's, here's the leadership skill that I think a lot of them miss is the what motivates every individual person that is underneath me and how do I coach to those things. Uh, the reason why this is important is because your 27-year-old recent college grad that lives at home with mom and drives his aunt's car to work every day is not motivated in the same way that your 43-year-old father of two is motivated. Very, very true. So a good leader understands the circumstances that everyday life looks like for their people, and they provide opportunity for growth that improves those circumstances and helps them reach those goals. That's the skill that I think a lot of leaders miss. We can all hold you accountable for metrics and results. How do I make you a better human? That is difficult.

I think it's a very difficult task. Those— it was extremely difficult. And I loved being a people person, and there was all kinds of messages that I got of, uh, you need— I always hired people because I said, look, I'm hiring you because I believe you're more intelligent than me in this area, and I want to be able to trust that you can take that task and I don't have to do it. And I kind of, as, as, as some may think it's silly as it sounds, but I would like, you're the boss in this. I can't, as much as I own the company or I run the company, I'm kind of reporting to you because I trust in your ability to do this. That was one thing that was that subservient or that servant leadership that, that really helped a lot. Uh, motivational management. I read a lot of things by Sandler, which is one of the top trainers. Um, and But the thing is, again, I realized I'm more of a sole producer, and I had—

sometimes it's best to own something start to finish on your own. Sometimes it's best to involve other people for different reasons, perspective, assistance, knowledge, education, experience, right? I think, I think what we've gotten good at as business professionals in the modern age is being resourceful.

Yes.

Uh, there's no excuse in, in the modern world because we have the world at our fingertips all the time. So if you can't do something, find the solution that enables you to do it. If you can't enable yourself to do it through a product, find a person that can help you to do it, or that can do it for you, or that can teach you how to do it. So now you have that knowledge.

Of course. No, I agree with you fully. And, and I think what you mean, what you're saying, even in, in terms of resourcefulness It is. I truly believe this is the true— this is the future. We're in a day and age where you have a very select set of skills. I do too. We know how to be resourceful without having to spend thousands and thousands of it on a huge team to get a job done. You can now do it with small agencies, small assistants, smaller groups. There are many ways that individuals are learning to be entrepreneurs. Increase their kind of net profits for themselves, their own ownerships, and they can build one-man army, one-man businesses that are going to be extremely successful. And those are going to be a lot of the groups that kind of come together and they could be resourceful to bigger companies. I believe we're in a great era that's happening.

I do too. I think the part that's subjective is extremely successful. A one-man company making $250,000 a year. Horribly successful. Holy shit, you killed it.

Of course, right?

But a company of 10 making $250,000 a year and trying to provide insurance to those humans, that's going to be tough. That's going to be tough at $250,000 a year.

I made it. I did that.

Right? So, so exactly. So, so when you think about what success looks like, I wrote my thesis in college on success. When you think about what success looks like, you have to look at what it's coming from. That part can't be ignored. I know people that make $15,000 a year that are happy as shit. They don't have, they don't have the need to make six figures. They don't measure their love of life in dollars earned. These people are wildly happy. We, other individuals, we, you, people in business today, we associate a dollar amount with a level of happiness and success and comfort. Those things are not dependent on one another all the time.

No, you're absolutely right.

They help.

They help.

And no fool, no fool is foolish enough to tell you that money will not help you find comfort.

Right?

But some people find that happiness quite literally without the need for all that money. I envy those people.

It's a very different world we live in.

And with that, join us next time on Cheap Thoughts.

That's exactly how 59 minutes will look. Again, I think this is really cool. Um, one thing that I think you're, you're highlighting a lot on is the ability to filter through the right information and get down to the right pieces. So if you guys want to learn more about the right bits of information, and if you agree with what James is saying, like, share, subscribe this, this show, this episode, this channel, go to his. I've got to put your links on the—

Yeah, @SidWhiteSales. Connect with me. I've never met a stranger in my life.

Thank you again, dude. I really appreciate your time. First off, wow. So