BoneChat #72 - Sales, sales, sales...stupid., Fear, and greed, the eternal drivers of every deal.

Foreign.

This is Bone Chat Discussion 72, as requested by the members. It's a conversation with Mark Maloney and it's unscripted. And I gotta say Mark's tagline, it's sales, sales, sales stupid.

Join us.

Join us and we'll talk about sex, fear, greed, and external drivers of every deal. That's, it's all yours, Mark.

Thanks.

Thanks. Yeah, it's, it's kind of unscripted. I, I, I hope everybody has fun. And since I'm not getting paid, I didn't really prep a whole lot for this. I figured we would just roll through it. The, the style that I laughingly say I used, I stole from Thomas Wolfe called Neo Pretentious, which I thought was great. He used that once to describe how he dressed, and nobody had any idea what he meant, but it sounded awesome. So, so the sales, sales, sales stupid is another kind of a line that I stole. Long time ago in the first orthopedic residency program I sat in on at UAB in Birmingham. The, the professor, the, the instructor, he gave these guys two rules. He said, I'm gonna give you two rules. Never forget this. He said, stability, stability, stability, stupid. And he said, if it doesn't move, it doesn't hurt. And the other one is, bone is your friend. And, you know, you still hear those every year at every residency program that ever starts off. You know, their axioms. So I think the same thing you can say about, for sales, you know, and every startup company I've ever been involved in, no matter how great our product was and how smart we were, how brilliant our advisors were and everything else, at the end of the day, it was really all about sales. It was just everything revolved around that. And so I wouldn't say I made a science of it because I'm really not a student of science. I was an English major. And we're not science people per se, but I respect that. I respect people that make a science of something and study it and do the Malcolm Gladwell thing and, you know, write their theses and their dissertations and everything else. And my graduate program at USC was in behavioral science. Again, I'm not a scientist, but I thought it was interesting. And, you know, I think whether it's a, you know, whether it's an undergraduate degree or a graduate degree or a high school diploma, at the end of the day, it's always the Father Guido Sarducci school of thought. You know, five years later, you just remember one thing, so, or three things or something like that. And the thing I remember from that program was that we learn through our eyes and ears primarily. This is why film and movie and theater is so critically beautiful and important and how we learn so much that way and so forth and so on. And it's why Saturday morning cartoons are so deadly for children because they don't have any filters. It just pours into their little brains. So whenever I, you know, was trying to quote, sell something or tell a story, you know, I always try to remember that and to combine, you know, my voice with visuals, to sort of multimedia it in a way. And I think that, and I think that that led me to a couple of other fundamentals. By the way, it'd be great if somebody could ask some questions today. Like. Well, one of the, one of the dinner conversation questions I ask when I'm with sales people or marketing people is this. Tell me about a deal you made that was life and death for you. And you know, like that fit like FedEx going to Vegas to bet the payroll. Tell me about a deal that was so critical that you had to have it, you know, and what's kind of one, what's one, what's more important when in a business or startup, is it the ride or the destination? You know, which do you want more? Which do you like more? Which is more fun to you? And also another thing I like is do great salespeople, marketing people, do they have a look, you know, or do they have a sound? And I don't know the answer to those things because they're all different. I will tell you about a deal I. Well, a couple of deals that I made that basically were life or death to me. When I got out of the army, I moved to UAB Birmingham. I was there about a year and I borrowed $50,000 from central bank to start my first business. And it was a CPM rental business. It was the first one in Alabama. And I didn't know jack about it. I just knew these CPMs seemed like they were pretty cool and doctors liked them and the rental market looked good. So I basically, after about a year I had all the business in town, including the contract at UAB and everything else. And then UAB decided to put it out on bid. I didn't know what that meant. Next thing I know, some silk suit wearing guy from Jackson, Mississippi's there. You know, they're, they're pretty slick. And he's trying to outbid me, underbid me and everything else. And so what I did was I hired a private detective to take him to dinner and I told the private detective to dinner to tell him that you want to buy his company and that you're getting into the medical business. I just kind of coached him and try to figure out a way to talk about why he's in town and if. What he's doing there. Well, the idiot told the detective everything, including what he was going to bid. And so a couple days later, they're opening the bids and I. I underbidding by a quarter.

Okay.

And he was. All of a sudden, I remember. I didn't forget it. It was on a side street there by UAB where the, like supply or where the bid was being opened. All of a sudden, the two double doors, like, burst open like a bomb.

Boom.

And this guy comes walking out. I've never seen anybody so red, so mad in my life. He knew that he got. He got screwed and nobody showed up to kill me at night. So it worked. It worked and I got the bid. So. And I never did anything like that before and never did anything like that since. It wasn't exactly illegal, but I'm not sure in hindsight it was the most ethical thing one could ever do. I don't know, who knows? But it was. It does answer the question. That was a deal that I really felt like I had to have, and I did get the deal, and I paid off the loan and I sold the business and I was done with. When people talk about selling, you know, like sales, sales, sales. Stupid. I. I often. I like to ask them, what does that really mean? I'm not even sure I know what that word means. Is it like, is it just creating a relationship? Is it just a conversation? You know, is. As humans, one thing I have learned or seen through the years is that when I'm talking and you're listening, the energy is only going one way. And if I don't stop talking and you start talking, the energy can't go back to me. And you can't buy if that. If that buying is an activity. If buying is something that you have to do something positively, it can only go one way or the other. So I used to tell sales people, I said, you got to rehearse and visualize that sales presentation, that sales process, so that kind of like you literally can almost look down from above and see yourself talking and see the candidate, see the other person reacting, and then tell yourself what to do next. You have to become that re. That. That rehearsed and that visualized ahead of time to really. And if you do that, I believe that most of the Time. It's a foregone conclusion. So anyway, there's a couple of other things too, that I want to throw out. I guess that if I were going to give a title to today's talk, it would be to, you know, if you want to be successful, get uncomfortable. Most of us probably have been sales coaches or marketing coaches or regional managers or VPs of sales or CEOs, and, you know, you fly into town, you got a new product, a new gig. I know Patrick's done this, and, you know, next thing you know, you're sitting in the right seat of a car, going to see a doc or whatever, and you might have one or two appointments. One of the things that I used to. I learned early to do is.

When.

I would find a town, try to make a new market, I would tell the person that I was working with or they put me with, to do not take me to anybody's. I want. I want to be as uncomfortable as possible with you. I want to go where. I don't only want to go where you're not doing business, where maybe they don't like you or you piss them off or, you know, whatever. Something like that let us make ourselves as uncomfortable as possible. And I think that in every case where I've ever done that, the people that I was with and myself, we made something happen. We made something unexpected happen. And it was that that sparked that catalyst that was just really, really rewarding. I think in hindsight, I think rule number one is probably find the tip of your spear. It's always easier than it sounds. And to me, the tip of the spear is like, you know, the, the. The cognac or the perfume or whatever your story is. It's the haiku of your novel that you've written that you've distilled down to seven words. It's incredibly hard to do. And the way I sort of used it on a practical basis in numerous occasions is to make what I would call the one minute sales presentation. So I guess the. The first sort of national position that I had was as director of sales at a bone grill stimulator company, an external fixation company. And so, you know, they brought me into Phoenix and name of the company was Orthologic. And I rented a sound studio, like a taping, you know, audio studio. And I kind of locked myself into it, and I had all of the manuals and books and everything. And I stayed there for three days until I came out with an audio tape that was, I guess about 50 seconds long, 45 seconds long. I mean, this kind of dates it as. It was literally an audio tape. Okay. Wasn't even a cd. And we mass produced that, and we sent that to every dealer and every rep and we just said, pop it in your car when you're going to, try to, quote, sell bone growth stimulator or something like that. And it was a formula that kind of consisted of three things. Number one, it was like an outrageous statement. Like, you know, I've got the biggest head of hair you've ever seen. No, it was just, I think if I recall, that was like, you know, the statement was. Excuse me, doctor, if you give me just a minute, I'll tell you something that you've never heard before. Really? Okay, well, that, you know, that'll stop him. And then I think the next thing we said on that tape was our bone go stimulator works in 30 minutes a day versus 24 hours. If it's that easy, why wouldn't you use it? Can I have your next patient? I mean, it was kind of boom, boom, boom, like that outrageous statement, truthful benefit statement, and then a trial close. I did the same thing, actually, when we did, when we rolled out the first digital imaging product, because at the time, you know, the whole world was analog X ray film was the standard for the last, you know, 50, 70, 500 years. And I think that the, the, the outrageous statement on that, if I recall, was.

Is this E Trauma, Mark?

Yeah, this was E Trauma. Yeah. I said, are you thinking about going digital this year? But I'm, you know, this is like, what, 1999? What does that even mean, to go digital? And that was the point, because.

Like.

I said, I don't really believe in selling per se. If that person was not like, you know, by the world around them, by the news station, you know, by everything they read, by everything they knew, if they were not sort of preconditioned to even understand what that meant, I could never sell it. So if they didn't say yes, I told the salesforce, move on. Say, thanks. Have a great day, Elizabeth.

Yeah, I just, I'm a word nerd. Etymology is my. One of my hobbies. And so I looked up the word to sell. It's from old English selling. And the first thing it says is to give. The sell is to give. And I love it.

Right.

And so it strikes me, Mark, that you talked about an outrageous statement, because I've, I've really always just kind of done that naturally. My pitch for my Misery Loves comedy is I say, hi, my name's Elizabeth. And I'm a psycho therapist and I've done stand up comedy in LA once, but. And you know, it's an attention getter and that's, that's what we need. I mean, it's hard enough to, to garner someone's attention, much less keep it. So, yeah, I think you're giving, but my point was I think you're giving something in the, in the outrageous statement. A lot of people walk through their days, they're just ticking off boxes, they're bored, they're not, you know, they're looking for something a little, it's like a little gift. When you give them something different, they can laugh about it or think about it.

I totally agree. And I think it also tunes in completely with what I'm talking about when I'm talking about the energy to humans, which is like universal and, and I think it's a real thing. And I think it's, I think the energy can, it's like electricity. It only goes one way. It can either be going to you or it can be coming back to me, you know, so if you are giving something that's, that makes a lot of sense. So if you're not going digital, I moved on and basically that was the one minute sales pitch for that one. It's not always possible, I think, to boil things down to, you know, 45 seconds or a minute. You know, some, some of the things that we are involved, involved in are a little more complicated than that. But I think it is also. But I know it's always possible to, like Elizabeth said, to give, to grab their attention, to throw something at somebody to get them. The. One of the things that I never forgot that some pharmaceutical company was interviewing me once. I hated pharmaceutical people, by the way. I never really understood the whole thing. Bless their hearts. The. I, I became more tolerant, much, much more tolerant. But this guy was a really student of the art and he told a story which I'm sure some of you may have heard, called the Invisible Tattoo. You ever heard that one? Okay, it's real simple. The guy says, I don't care whether you're going on a date or, or doing a sales presentation or, you know, interviewing for a job. He said, everybody you talk to has an invisible tattoo on their heart and it says, make me feel special. Damn, that's so true. When, when friends of mine would go for job interviews and so forth, I would always ask them, I would say, tell me in the hour you're with that person, how much did you talk and how much did they talk? Give me a ratio. If they said, oh man, I talk for an hour. I just told them everything. I just would say, well, you didn't get the job. And I said, because he was not selling you or she was not selling you. I mean, if you're going to get a job, that person on the other end's got to be giving to you. The energy's got to reverse at some point. It has to. So anyway, I love that tip of the spear thing. Limit sales call. Another thing too is that, you know, Tiger, I, I started Healthcare Recruiters in Birmingham in 1986. I sold it after three years. Yeah, huh.

That's the Rolodex years.

Yeah. So I really wasn't a very good recruiter. Okay. But I was a really good student of the art of top salespeople. And whenever I'd get a resume in or that was like somebody was number one sales in their sales force, I would literally, I would do anything to get them into interview. And after doing that many times, I discovered that these people that were top of their game, the top 5 percenters, they were highly self aware. There was no, it was never an accident, but their edge was always something different. Like there was one guy, I think he was number one, his company called Physio Control, they called, they sold capital equipment. He came in, he was a smart guy, University of Alabama mba, which you know, to some people may, you know, may not be that great. But you know, it was, it was a, it was NBA and sharp guy. And he had a, he had a little, little book, okay. And his handwriting was like Leonardo da Vinci, small and stylish. Okay. I, so I asked the guy, I said, okay, what is your secret? And he looked at me very seriously. He said, immaculate organization. Immaculate. And that's the word he used, immaculate. And I'm thinking to myself, this guy's going to eat a gun. I swear to God. He is so tightly wrapped. He would. This was like in January. He told me that he knew so much about his territory and his sales. It was capital sales, he said, he said, I can tell you what I'm going to sell in June. I have no idea how he knew that, but it was an example of a person that knew his edge, that he was that self aware. I found that as I was sort of interviewing all of these what I call top salespeople. And again, I'm, I didn't do the Malcolm Gladwell thing and make a career out of or anything, but I was fascinated by it. I learned that they all Knew why. And I'd learned that there was a couple of other common denominators. And I quickly made a theory that I could take any sales force in the world, give them a 15 minute test and I could tell you who sells the most. And it was an IQ test. I know it sounds kind of dumb, but smart people sell more than dumb people. And I think it's not their eq, it's not probably really their iq. I just think the, they just remember more, they don't lose details, you know, they're more organized somehow. And I always, I thought that was pretty cool. Another couple of things that, that I wanted to share today is that when I got into the medical device business, kind of just purely by accident, I, I was 31, my marriage falling apart. I resigned from the army, had no plan, no job, left Germany, went to Idaho for a flying job. That was a piece of crap job, twelve hundred dollars a month and you know, to live on the ski slopes or something stupid. And I kind of. My dad convinced me to come back to Atlanta about a couple weeks later and go to this job fair because he was pretty sure I'd throw my life away. He wasn't happy. So I showed up. Stryker had a booth there, a couple of guys there, they were both ex military, ex pilots. We had a few beers at Hula Hands On Peachtree. And I had a job. That's how I got medical sales. I mean unplanned, you know, I think I'm definitely more the ride guy than the destination guy, truth be known. So. But a couple of things in my background really kind of helped me step into that. Number one, I'm very stoic. I read Marcus Aurelius Meditations when I was 13. I've been a student of meditation and stoicism since that age. I was at seminary studying be the priesthood, studying for the priesthood. It didn't stick obviously, so. But I learned some things that, that stood me in good stead. Another, another thing that helped me a.

Lot.

Was I was a student of Clausewitz. There's two books you should have in your library. One is Marcus Aureli's Meditations and the other was Clausewitz on War. Clausewitz was a Polish military cavalry officer and I was in the cavalry. So of course I liked him with Napoleon, Napoleon's great gift and the way he won wars. He was really, really good at getting groups like an army from point A to point B at exactly the right time, exactly the right place, with the right resources, the beans, the bullets, you know, the Blankets, all the stuff you got to have he was on. And he could move those troops so fast, nobody, I don't think, since Hannibal or Caesar had that gift as like as he did. And Clause was, wrote about that. But Clausewitz invented a concept called friction, which he just made the wheel and he made it up. And friction to Clausewitz was that sort of crazy, indefinable thing that keeps you from reaching your goals or your destinations on time with everything you need. And I always tell people, I said, this is why it's so hard to get to church on Sunday with all the kids. You know, you're walking out the door, somebody's got to go to the bathroom or something. Oh my God, that's friction. Okay, so that's closet. So that is a book that I would totally recommend. If you don't have it, you should have it. There's two or three more. I think one is maybe, you know, one that I read in Vietnam. Mao say tongues. Little Red Book. The lesson that I took from that is that Mao say tongue and guerrilla war taught people to not just make war, but to personalize it. And when I say personalize means you don't send a message to the village that you're coming to burn down the village. You send a message to the village that you're coming to kill the chief. That's personal. A chief's not going to sit around, let me tell you. So he's gonna either make peace or. Or do something. But from that personalization, I come up with another axiom that I use in my business all the time we've talked about before. That is Dr. Sell doctors. The when we started, Dr. Tony Russell was a guy that I knew from the trauma business in Memphis, you know, was a famous orthopedic town, obviously. So when we started, I knew him from the xfix business and from my friends at Synthes and so forth and so on. And he, of course, was one of the inventors of the Russell Taylor into medullary nail and had done well. He was part of the Campbell Clinic, you know, Campbell's Orthopedics. Very famous, respectable place. So I went to see him saying that we were getting ready to launch this new technology. And give me some advice and what do you think? And this and that and so forth. And that was for the digital imaging, by the way. That was in 1999. And Dr. Russell told me, he said, well, he said, this is big change. He said, you need a great sales force. It's called doctors. And he said, if you can get 10, get 10. He said, but here's what he told me. If you can get a hundred, get a hundred. He also said, don't pay anybody. He said, you gotta find people that. For their own real desire for recognition, their own desire for ambition, their own whatever it is, whatever their motivation is, it has to be intrinsic to them. And so we put together a really cool group. I mean, this year's Academy president was on. Was in that group. Okay. Bill Richie, former president, was in that group. David Halford, AO North America president, was in that group. Roy Sanders, editor of the Journal of Orthopedic Trauma and Florida Orthopedic Institute, was in that group. We got guys in the same room that hated each other because. But they all had a reason. And that was kind of. And that was really, I think, really, really good advice. And then one that I've used many times before, and I'm using it now, launching this AI Every time I send out a message, somebody, hey, listen to this. I always in it say, Dr. So and so says that you might be interested in this doctor selling doctors.

Mark, can I ask a question?

You. I'm. I'm tired of talking.

I didn't raise my hand. I'm not like, I'm not as adept and skilled at that. Hey, I'm kind of curious. Like, I, I love hearing about all this. This has been amazing. But you've gone through. And so for me, my sales experience is not like, I've really never been in sales. Right. Just the last maybe 10 years and then. But I wonder, how does it change in times like these? Do you see a different approach that's needed when economy is uncertain or it's the same approach, just rinse and receipt, rinse and repeat.

I think the. Well, I don't know about rinse and repeat. Yeah, it's good word. But I think the fundamentals are the same. But not. You know, a couple of meetings ago, we, you know, we, we, we, we. We threw out a whole bunch of, you know, trite sayings. And one of this, nothing sells itself.

So I don't think approaching business any differently today than you did a month ago, two months ago.

I think it's harder. It's harder. Yeah. The noise level is incredible. You know, I'm, I'm from the orthopedic business. We're so high, we're so high on the bell curve of development of so many things that it is kind of sometimes hard to break through. But at the same time, I believe that. I believe with all my heart that, you know, if you have an edge, you'll get a piece. You'll get your piece. Yeah, yeah. I can remember what, I remember walking down the hall of the academy behind the guy who was my counterpart at the other Bone Grill stimulator company and I remember overhearing him say that the business has gone to hell. Everybody's got one now. There's two or three companies out there, they're all alike, not like the good old days. And I, I was walking with my CEO and I leaned over to him and I said, we own that guy. He's done. So I'm sure there's a lifespan there.

Let's like.

Yes. Can you talk about social media for a minute?

Yeah, I want to talk about exactly my question is the one minute manager or one minute sales pitch? The three questions just can that convey to social media now? And if so, how?

And you know, I'll tell you in five years. I don't know, but I, I don't see how it. I think everything is compressed. I think the 1 minute sales pitch has to be maybe the 10 second sales pitch now. I don't know.

Yeah. Can I just add that I, perhaps they've been doing this for a while and I only just noticed. But if you go to do a Google search and you want to look a video now, there's a separate category that says short videos. I mean, our attention span is just collapsing.

And that may make Mark's, you know, surprising opening statement even more important. If you can condense it down to 10 seconds.

Maybe two things.

Yeah, there's two things. I believe everything is cyclical. Right. Like, but I also think that when a space gets super crowded, the innovative ones and the leaders find a way to break out.

Absolutely.

I think right now when we look at social media, that space is so crowded, there's so much content. AI people are generating content and ads and video every single day and it's starting to get really overwhelming. And so hence Elizabeth, great call this short video. Right. It's a great example of that. And so where is the, the where is what's next? You know, if we, if I had a little crystal ball, I still can't figure it out, but I believe we're on the precipice of either bringing something back. You know, I was with, I joined this group, I just moved to San Diego not too long ago, joined this group called Spark Golf. It's the craziest thing. My husband doesn't want to golf because, you know, for a million reasons. So I have to golf by myself. So I'm like, well, I'm not gonna stop golfing, and I don't know anybody, so let me just do this. So I go and I jo.

Group of.

It turns out they're all kids. Like, I'm the oldest person by 20 years in this group, and we play at the shittiest golf courses. I cannot even tell you. So I'm out there with these kids and I'm like. And my first impression was like, dang. You know? But then I was like, maybe they're making me feel a little old. Turns out, holy moly, this is an untapped market because they're all early career execs that are trying to make a name for themselves with their bosses. So what an amazing market that is. But it was so funny. I also realized I was in the middle of this singles group, you know, and I was like. So I said, hey, you guys still meet on, like, match.com and Tinder? And they're like, no, Colleen, we never do that. That's for old people. Like, okay. That's how I met my husband, but okay, you know, so he goes. So then they said. I said, well, how do you meet people now? And they're like, colleen's all about meeting organically now. So I'm thinking, you know, what's this mean to them? And so I was like, well, what does that mean? And I said, well, you're in the middle of an organic meet, Colleen. It's like, oh, shoot. You know, I'm like getting this big singles golf thing. But let me just tell you, I still go, and I have the time of my life, and every single time, I've gone three weeks in a row, left with three contacts because it's this great space. But I'm like, is it the organic reach? Is it. There's this, right? Organic is how we met people when we were younger, right? We just. We golf, we played, we met friends, we did things through people. We went places. Bar, I mean, met a lot of. Lot of boyfriends and ex husband husbands at bars.

You know, it's calling the sick thing because I think there's. There's only so much that people want to attach to machines at some point. They want to be seen again. They want somebody to read the tattoo on the heart that says, make me feel special. Or, you know, not to read it, but to make it happen. So I. I think, yeah, maybe we're going to see some simplification of some things. I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. Threads? Is that Instagram threads? Is that. I don't know what that is. Is that a simplification of Instagram? Does anybody know?

No, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. But I know that one thing Colleen did was make herself uncomfortable, which is. Something happened. You know what I mean?

I like that.

Yeah. You got out. You. That was, that was the whole theme of today. Uncomfortable. So cope.

Why don't you chime in? Because you, you, you have a lot of video interaction with clients.

Yeah.

And, and in person, you know, does it convey the. With new clients?

Yeah, it does. And I look at the use of social media and specifically video differently than I think maybe folks on here do. And I'm not saying correctly versus incorrectly. I'm just saying I think differently. I have found that social media just lets me get what I do and who I can help out exponentially in greater numbers than I used to be able to. Right. And so now I try to make it interesting. I try to make it helpful. I was coming up with this the other day, so don't, don't hold me too. Don't put this on one of your short clips, tiger, unless I nail it. But it was like charm. It was sort of M. Was memorable. Let me see. I was literally trying to memorize this this morning. I think I saved it. But I'm trying to be helpful, available, recognizable, memorable. Camera. What the heck? The C was. So I'm not going to call it harm. I know there's a C in there somewhere. And, and what I found is it's a, it's a way to help people that I think I can help. Like, my whole goal is I tell people, if you don't, I would love for you not to need to hire me. I'd love for you to just. It sounds, it sounds. I don't mean for it to sound neo pretentious. Mark, if I can hearken back to your fantastic Tom Wolf quote is that, like, if they just follow what I, what I talk about and they learn from it, they can do it themselves. It's a diy. It's just if they want to accelerate the process, that's when they should consider talking to me. But I found that, like, the video is, is. Is sort of what Mark talked about. The Foot stompers, we used to call them, like, saying to somebody, like, we used to do it to surgeons all the time, hey, want to see something cool? Right? Who. Who doesn't? Who says no? Who's like, now I'm not interested in that Sort of thing.

Right.

And you. Sort of. Because our brain's designed to catch changes in patterns. Like we're watching this. What's that? What is that? Zebra? What is that? Weird. You know, so it lets me do some of that, but it also lets me help people who don't ever really need to deal with me. And I get all this stuff out of my brain because I'm also trying to get out of my head so that my. My kid decides she wants to get in sales, she can somehow grab something of that. I. I talked to somebody who does it, who literally does all this to document what he's doing for work, for his grandkids. And I was like, that's fascinating. I have found it to be very effective and not. But I. I know, like, it feels like our attention spans are getting shorter, and I have no, no proof of this. What if. What if we're getting better at catching attention, like, you know, at scale? I don't know. I don't know. But I have found it. I wish I'd started doing this 10 years ago. I'm building. I'm building a complete consulting business at a pace that I never would have anticipated because of doing this and because of things like, you know, Tiger being on yours. So I think. I don't. I don't know if it's good or bad, but I think it's a medium that's like a Super bowl commercial. But you get to make your own for next to nothing, you know, except the time you put in. But I love talking to. Like I. As I said, I can listen to Mark talk about this, his experiences all day long, because they're fascinating. I sometimes wonder if people on here who aren't in sales are like, what. Is this really what sales is like? And to an extent, it might be. I was going to say that to you, Mark. Like, you and I have been in sales for a long time. Colleen says she doesn't have any experience, but I actually think everybody has more experience than they actually realize. Right. If you've ever had to persuade anybody of anything, get the kids in a car to go to church Sunday. You're in sales to an extent.

Yeah, sure.

But, like, what. What's the advice you would give to folks who are on here or who are going to watch this, who aren't sales. Don't think of sales, but have a business to run or a product they've designed? Like, what.

What would.

What would you tell them over beers?

Yeah, to help them.

You know, people.

A lot of people on this call. Their job is to hire salespeople. Their job is to hire sales and marketing to build their market. They don't physically do that. I would first of all, always encourage them to, if they want to see the sky lay down on the ground, that is to get out in the field a little bit, you know, actually spend some time doing that. But as far as the people that they hire, our industry tends to recycle some pretty tired people. And a couple of things that I always like to say is that product knowledge and high and experience are highly overrated compared to potential. The most critical thing I can find on a resume that tells me this person is going to be number one or CEO. And I know people that I rode with them when they were sales reps. And I wrote in my little book that I've carried all my life, this guy's going to run his own company someday. And they did. And the reason is they were interesting, okay? I think highly accomplished people find a way to lead a very interesting life. They, they really work at, they're mindful about it. They're, they're aware of it. And I think those kind of people, and not everybody, don't get me wrong, you know, there's all kinds of people that are fascinating. And I, I'm one of those people that really, I'm like Will Rogers. I like everybody. But in the world of sales, in the law of attraction, so to speak, when you're sitting around a dinner table with surgeons that have lead, that have led fairly boring lives, okay? They were in school till they were in their 30s. Give me a break. They want somebody at that table, okay? You know, that played hockey for Notre Dame, that was on the National Olympic Club at 16, you know, that lost a leg fighting sharks in Hawaii. They love that stuff, right? So I would say hire interesting people. What do you think? Preaching to the choir.

Another way of saying that is some people like to the comfort of a role their whole life. You know, they like a defined role. And other people like to experiment. They have a curiosity, an intellectual curiosity. And I, I think that's the latter.

You know, I was sitting with a group. I was at my EVP's house when I was with Target stores, and it was sitting there with a bunch of EVPs in this room and, and his daughter comes over and, and tries to sell us in the middle of this business meeting, really confidently. She's like 11 years old. She comes over and she goes, you all have a lot of money. You should buy lottery tickets and take care of My school or something like that, you know, and, and we're laughing about this kid, right? We're like. And I looked him, I'm like, jim, this, like, this is awesome. And it prompted this conversation though. He goes, you know what? He goes, think about how like we were at this point in Target's history. We were salivating over an Ivy League. We were trying to figure. We spent so much time figuring out how to get Ivy League talent into our organization that we were distracted by it. And it was so funny because my boss looks at me and he's like, Colleen, he goes, think about it. Charisma is the difference maker, nothing else. If you look at every single person who's been successful in this company, every single person who has crossed the finish line, changed the world, it's because they showed up with a level of charisma. And I wonder if that was the C you are missing in your story. That's all I could think of.

Yeah.

And that makes me think it's got to be hard for introverts, right? Because they're not going to come forward with the witty aphorisms and whatnot, typically. Or, or maybe they are. Maybe that's all they say, you know. But yeah, I think it's. The world is. The world is your oyster if you're an extrovert to a certain extent.

And that goes back to Mark's point about being interesting and interested. I sat at, I've been at five, you know, I don't know how many thousands of, you know, dinners with doctors and a lot of the times they know why, they know why they're there, they know why you're there. They know at some point there's going to be some degree of some sort of, you know, product related discussion. But most of the time you're just sort of circling in conversation to find a topic that is not related to the product that there's some common knowledge on. And once you can like click on that, whether it's a sports interest or some obscure band or, you know, some tv, you know, maybe you're of the same age as a doctor, so you had the same, you know, you watch the same sort of ridiculous television shows when you were teenagers or something, you know, something like that, that you're just sort of like, you kind of bounce around from topic to topic to topic waiting for something where there's like a mutual, like a shared, you know, an actual interest that you can, that you can share and then you just sort of are, are latching onto that. But if you're 1, 2. If you have too low of an EQ that you think like, you know, like you're just like a hype man for the product, first of all, people can smell, they can sniff that out immediately. Think about the times you've been sold. You know, you hate, we hate, we all hate being sold to. But then you need the, you need the sincere level of interest in other people to, to be willing to sometimes be patient enough to kind of dance around different topics. And, you know, that's why I always liked when I hiring salespeople. I like people who know a little bit about a lot of things because those people can keep themselves in lots of different conversations. Not every prospective customer, I don't care what your industry is. Not every prospective customer is just solely interested in topic A. There's some people like history, some people like music, some people, you know, there's a million different, different things. But, but keeping people, you know, you don't even have to be, I don't know if it's an introvert, extrovert thing. It's just, but it is a level of you have to be, you know, at some, you know, past the 25% degree or something on the introvert, extrovert scale or, you know, something like that to be able to just be able to genuinely want to stay in conversations enough even if you don't sort of click with someone right away, you know.

To your point, I remember many years ago, when I was just starting out, 21 years ago in Ortho, Bob Booth and he wanted to talk for a while about antiques. That was his hobby.

He loved it.

And you know, I got quite the lesson and I, I showed interest and I learned. And so even if you don't walk in with a great deal of knowledge about XYZ topic, you can show interest and they'll probably be excited that you're interested and hoping to share and that can build a relationship for sure.

There's, you know, there's so few per. So few people that that person who's interested in antiques like could ever like go to with the, you know, to, to talk about their, you know. So to Mark's point about. I forget exactly your phrase, but the stamp on someone's heart or something, you know, if you make them feel interesting, that person has an obscure hobby. Antiques that, you know, various. Very rarely do they feel, you know, interesting.

So I. Golf is a great equalizer, right? You get four hours. You can't talk about your product for four hours. But it's a relationship that ultimately it's a connection. It's a relationship. It's about how you make each other feel. That really is the ultimate closer.

You should never talk about. I mean, I've seen lots of deals get, you know, either killed or put on the back burner because the rep doesn't shut up.

They don't.

They didn't even. They were. They were too busy. They were too in their own head pitching. They didn't even realize they were at. Yes. A half an hour ago. And they just kept on going and going and going and then finally said something that made the. That made the customer irritated.

See, I like, we have a couple of regional managers that fly in every once in a while. I wouldn't even go to dinner with these guys. They will not shut up. And the doctor customers, they won't. They won't. After once or twice, they won't come back. It's crazy. So I really. Patrick, you said something I want to say. Thanks for saying a couple of things there. One is the. The part about the conversation. Have you ever been. Have you ever been to dinner with clients and the dinner's over and you realize that you forgot to talk about your product and the guy said, hey, bring it back, you're sold.

Yeah, me too.

I love that. So I can tell from Mark's reaction and tigers that, you know, that's happened to them, too.

Multiple times. Yeah, multiple times.

Yeah.

And also, I've never heard a better advertisement for one of my. One of my pet topics. Liberal arts majors.

Yeah. I was thinking about these.

Hand up. Yeah.

Wow.

When I was in the army, quickly, wherever I was, all my fellow officers learned that if they asked me to write their efficiency reports, I could Write them in 10 minutes, and they was. They would. They would be really good. And most of them were not liberal arts majors, and it took them hours to write the crappiest piece of junk you've ever seen. And poor guys. I just. I felt sorry for him, you know? But thanks a lot. I appreciate that.

Yeah. Liberal arts majors teach you to know lots of things about lots of different topics. They teach you how to write well, which is basically a, you know, a way of saying you can construct an argument. You can sort of take thoughts, Disparate thoughts in your head and put them together, you know, in a way that. That is argumentative. They teach you communication skills. Of course, there's a million different, you know, different things. And if we don't think communication skills matter, take a look at some of the surgeons that we call on that have, you know, brilliant sort of minds and scientific minds and stuff. But, but, but haven't, you know, haven't written anything more than one page for, for, for, for a long time. That it's a, there's a, sometimes the com, you know, the, the, the, the EQ skills are wildly variable.

Yeah. We have, we have to talk again one of these days about how AI is going to affect writing and creating and thinking and you know, as my Latin teacher used to say, the fine art of ratiocination or the art of reason.

Best writing skill I ever learned was where I went to school at the University of Wisconsin. They had this thing called the Writing center, which is basically any paper you ever wanted to write you could bring in. And they had TAs. You just made schedule an appointment. It was free. You bring in your paper, you had to bring in a draft. You couldn't just sort of go in and talk to somebody. You had to bring in a draft and they would help you with your, your writing. But no matter what you did, no matter what, where the conversation ended, step one of any appointment at the writing center was you had to bring in what you wrote and you had to read it out loud to them. You would be amazed at the things that you discover when you just, just have to go through the exercise of reading out loud what it is that you wrote. I don't mean whisper to yourself, I mean in a speaking voice at the normal tone that you would, you would talk to somebody else. And there's so many things that come out of that. I still make sure to do that on important emails or, you know, anything like that that, you know, needs to, to, to resonate. I will sit here and, and read, you know, read things out loud just to make sure you're not, you know, it sounds like what you want it to say because there's definitely things that get lost from your brain to your fingers.

Great point.

That's another. That's, that's one, that's one I don't do. But that's, that's a good one. Yeah, go. Okay. Colleen, call me.

See you, Colleen. Thanks. Go ahead.

Yeah. Who knew, who knew a liberal arts English major discussion was going to break out on Bone Chat? Yes. Who saw that comment?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Liberal arts English major right here. I'm sitting here.

Wow.

I did, by the way, the C. The C was credible, but I like charisma better. But number one, and I was going to ask Colleen, did she have that 11 year old's resume? I know some people that could hire Her. And. Yeah, and I do think, here's one of the tricks I saw somebody teach me years ago when I got into medical. I was at pharma, actually, despite Mark's dislike of pharma. That's where I started selling to doctors. And I watched somebody do this, and they're like, oh, yeah, it works every time. And. And it was a. It's a great conversation piece to have with any doctor that you're having, regardless of where they are in their career, is just, you're sitting there, table. You're on the golf course, or you say, hey, so what made you get into whatever. They're in family practice, but, you know, orthopedics, neurosurgery. And there's usually one of three or four answers. But it's. It's fascinating to hear. You know, people like, oh, I was an athlete and I got hurt, or my mom got sick and I watched what she went through and. Or I was born and, like, I came out of the womb and I knew. I just knew, like. And they're. They're fascinating answers. And I think you end up seeming charismatic because you just listen to them and they're telling you this story, because everybody's got a story. And I'm. I'm fascinated by people. And when they tell their stories, there's always interesting things. That's why Maloney jumps off. He hired a private detective genius. I'm irritated. I never thought of that.

Plenty of people are uncomfortable talking about themselves, but you oftentimes need to get them talking about themselves to open up conversation. So asking them, how did you get into XYZ is an eloquent way of saying, tell me more about yourself.

Yeah. And it's not. They're not like, people don't like to. Most people don't like to brag about themselves or dominate a conversation about themselves, but nobody doesn't like to tell them a little bit about themselves. And. And of course, you're. I'm interested in. In, you know, I love everyone. You guys all talk about what you were doing or where you came from back in Memphis in 1991. Or Elizabeth is saying, would you say, what was it? Loves comedy. What was that?

My business. Misery. Loves comedy.

Three Loves comedy. Right. Like my client. I gotta learn more about that. That's interesting. Right? So I didn't know Patrick was a liberal arts guy. This is fascinating. So I just like that you'd be amazed at what people will tell you. And they don't feel like they're bragging. They're Very open about it. They tend to be.

So, yeah, when I started it Orthopedics this week, all those years ago, one of the first things I did, and this lasted for a while, was write surgeon profiles. Their entire lives. It was fascinating. And sometimes it was not just surgeons. Like I wrote one about one or two of the Viscogliosi brothers. And, you know, I mean, really just they were thrilled. And then I'd get. Robin would tell me, people are saying, when's Elizabeth going to write a profile about me? You know, so, yeah, the people want to see their, their faces and their stories. And, And I tell you what, funny one happened one time, a surgeon called me in a panic after he said, is it already published? And I said, yeah, yeah. He said, because I showed it to my daughter. And she said, dad, you mentioned my brothers. You did not mention me.

Brutal.

Yeah.

Hey, Corey, you've been kind of quiet, but you got a zillion stories and advice too. Any. Anything come to mind?

Well, I just, I think that I've been affirmed in some of the. My thought process as it relates to sales. And Mr. Maloney, I think, highlighted a couple of those. And, and one of them is self awareness. You know, if you're not, if you're not self, aware, you're not reading or you're not reading who you're talking to, you could get yourself into trouble. So. And, and surgeons aren't hard to read because they're not social animals. So I think that was, that's one good takeaway for me. The other one on his charisma standpoint or on Mark charisma standpoint. I actually got hauled into to Naples to give a talk to the other distributors for Arthrex on how to hire people. And it wasn't because I think I was an expert at it. I mean, I hired people that I liked and I also hired mostly they were Division 1 athletes. And in my opinion, if they have an interesting background and they have the.

Charisma.

But at the same time not talk too much, then they were going to be successful. People like to be around athletes, and especially in the sports medicine world.

Absolutely.

So you get somebody that's not, if you get somebody that's not really good at reading the room or reading the person they're talking to, I think those people don't wind up being very good salespeople. That's my $0.02.

That's a great summary. I think the IQ thing that Mark was talking about, it goes back to. I, my. It goes back to adaptability, being able to think on the fly, I think, as opposed to people who are less smart, they just follow a script and, you know, it looks. Feels more like sales. I don't know. I've never sold directly, but I've traveled with a lot of salespeople and watched them in action.

You're absolutely right. And it's not just adaptability. It's, you know, from a Darwinian standpoint, it's survivability. The more adaptable, flexible, resilient you are as a human, spiritually, physically, mentally, the more likely you are to survive the storm that always comes sooner or later.

So how do you.

Mr. Maloney, something you said earlier. I'll just. I'll put it. I'll phrase it a different way.

When.

When people think about who they've met in the past, they don't necessarily remember what you said, but they remember how you made them feel.

Yes.

That's excellent.

I just had a quick question. I loved your 60 second concept that you talked about earlier, and you said you memorized it, which I. I tend to do some of that, too, for the purpose of them being able to read the reaction. Because if you're. But do you.

How.

How do you balance that with sounding like you've rehearsed and memorized it? You know?

Well, because a great actor has. Has learned his lines so well that they're no longer. They're no longer a learned line. They're literally infused into their being. And I was. I didn't take to that naturally because when I first got into sales, you know, everybody goes, you know, they want to learn how to probe, present clothes and learn to pitch and everything. I was extremely resistant to that. I thought, well, that's stupid. That's artificial and unnatural and everything else. And then I remembered what I'd learned in the army about how people fight like they train. And the harder they train, the better they fight because it becomes reflexive and intuitive and they, you know, they become creative. And I just, I switched. I transferred that obviously learned lesson into this and learned. I just, I just wasn't practicing enough.

And you don't have to think about the pitch either.

Pardon?

When you, when you know the pitch so well, you don't have to think about it at the time of delivery, and therefore you can think about whatever it is that you're.

Yeah.

Target. Your customer is saying, looking at, thinking, responding to whatever. That's especially important in this industry, I think, where you'll never meet salespeople who sell less than this industry. Yeah, you. You know, there's Lots of people that have sales XYZ on their business card that sell like 15 minutes a week. I mean, you know, like, and. And absolutely. It's all service.

It's all service.

Yeah, we all hate it. I don't like doing the role playing either. It makes you uncomfortable, to Mark's point. Like, it sucks. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's all true. And you still need to do it because you get out of practice and you look like formulaic if you're out of practice. You look rigid, you look stiff, you look formulaic because you are like, nervous, and you're nervous because you're not doing it frequently enough. And, and in this industry where things are measured over very, very long time horizons, sales people don't sell that much. I mean, go. If you ever want to see like the, the, you know, the. Call any salesperson from a big company at least, and just ask them, like, what are you doing tomorrow? And the first thing they'll do is talk about, like, the cases they are covering, you know, and then the instruments that they are moving to different hospitals after they cover those cases. And then like three Wednesdays from now, they have a lunch appointment or something like that. Like it. They're. They're just. There's a. There is a. An infrequency to. To selling, despite that being not only the primary point of the job, but also the. The sort of insurance policy of the job all.

I went on a sales call today at noon, one of my reps. So I got there 15 minutes early, and I'm talking to the guy. His name is Nick. So, Nick, I said, how much did you practice for this? Well, I learned it. I drilled down on him. I said, how much did you actually practice? I said, where'd this guy go to school? Where did he grow up? How many kids he have? You know, if you do all of that beforehand, it's almost a foregone conclusion. And Corey, you're an Arthritx dealer.

Yeah. Distributor for 20 years. Yeah.

So, okay, that's. That's a. There's a lot of standing around the OR in that business, isn't there?

Too much?

Yeah. To Patrick's point.

Is or do. I've watched sales people sell in the operating room. They always say that's the best place to sell.

Yeah.

Is that not true?

No.

What you're selling is your competency. So I always told my guys, I said, look, first and foremost, they have to like you. That means that goes back to the charisma that goes Back to listening. That goes back to reading people. And then I said, second of all, they have to know that you know what the hell you're doing. Because if you're in the or, the best way you can sell in the OR is to help with a positive outcome. You help with a positive outcome, patient's happy. If the patient's happy, the doctor's happy and you're welcome back. You don't, you don't ever try to sell anybody anything while you're in the. I don't think that's a good idea.

I think the OR is a good place to move a sales conversation maybe down the road. But, like, in low stakes terms, like, the OR can be a good time to like, hey, is it all right if I call your office to set up an appointment for two weeks from now? Something that doesn't take mental energy from the customer. If you're like, hitting them up in the OR about design, implant design philosophy, that's too much mental calories burning for them where they need to be concentrating on like something else other than, you know, other than, than that.

What about the lounge or the sink or, you know, dinners? Those, those are okay. You talk about a new bone graft or whatever the heck you want to upsell.

Well, this, the scrub sinks is a great place if you've got a good enough relationship with them. But, you know, I, again, it comes back to relationships. I said, you're not, you're not in sales. You're in relationship building. Once you build a relationship and a rapport with somebody, then you can start talking about the product. So, yeah, lounge. But I think the best is just to get them outside of all that environment if you really want to try to talk to them about a product.

And Corey's right. What's so funny is like, the companies, they like, they provide no training at all, though, on relationship skills. Like, I used to hammer Zimmer when I was there on this. Like, I was like, you guys will give this, like, thoughtful presentation about a new product and every feature benefit, product attribute, sizing dimensions, compatibility, all that sort of stuff. And then you'll wrap up this perfectly scripted hour long presentation and say, but at the end of the day, we know it's the relationships that you guys have that matters. It's like, what did we just spend the last hour on? Why don't we train? Why don't we train on what you. What we're all admitting is the most important thing here. Of course it's more of an art than a science, but it's like, why are we focusing on the. The. The admitted less important, you know, parts? That drives me crazy.

I'm talking to somebody that wants to. Like. Yesterday, Dr. Scott Quisling called me and said, I got a new. A new Auburn grad that is a friend of the family. I want you to talk to her about medical sales. I talked to her today, and I said. I said, forget the word medical sales. I said, think Jerry Maguire and sports stars. That's the job. Your job is to make that surgeon feel super special, do everything for them. You're the posse. And so I don't think that people that have that kind of a relationship situation even get that many opportunities to sell tradition in a traditional sense. You know, it's like. It's really, really, really. It's a whole. This is. This is an interesting subject, by the way.

Fascinating. I. I learned about sales. Oh, Jesus. A young engineer. I was at Smith and Nephew. We just designed the genesis knee, and we had a surgeon come in, we presented him the Genesis knee, and he said, I love your product. He goes, I. He goes, you have the best knee on the market. But I will never use it because my best friend is my rep. He goes, and we go boating every weekend. And, I mean, I was like, whoa, the best product doesn't win. You know, that. That opened my eyes up, especially in orthopedics.

And this is like, a hobby horse of mine that I've probably mentioned on these conversations, but in orthopedics, everything is 510k. All right? So by definition, by the company's own admission, there's a product that's close enough, that's out there. Okay, so you are talking in degree. Like, you know, differences in degree, not differences in kind from product to product. So the relationships do matter. The reps do matter. It all matters, like, because whether or not the doctors will articulate it in the same way that I just did, they can just, like, see, oh, okay, this is like this. With this little difference, or this is close enough to this, and you can make improvements on things. No, no, no doubt about it. But, like, you know, the best product, especially with the crappy clinical studies that tend to percolate around orthopedics, at least compared to other therapeutic areas, the, you know, the best product is very, like, you know, up for. You know, it's.

It's.

It's by debt, you know, by design. It's designed to clump stuff into a close enough sort of like, pool and. And, you know, and then a bunch of other things sort of take over and importance survey.

That was done years ago.

I remember.

I remember. God, it was a long time ago, but they. They asked these surgeons to rank the reasons that they use a certain product, and I think the actual product itself was third. So what? And one of. One of my best friends is an orthopedic surgeon, and, you know, he explains to his wife, he goes, look, I spend more time with Steve Rule, who is one of my reps, than I do my own wife. So if I'm. If I'm spending that much time on a daily basis with somebody, you better darn believe they're going to have a good relationship.

So better believe it.

Interesting. Well, this is. We could go on forever. This has been.

I know.

All right, thanks.

Great, Tiger.

Yeah, this is. Man, I love this subject. And it's. Maybe next time we'll talk about how sales has changed and what it's going to look like in the next five years.

So I think. I think social media would be a great topic and Mark's success in that and so forth. And so anyway, thanks a million.

Thank you, Patrick, as always, tiger, thanks.

Yeah, everyone, great, great call. Really enjoyed it, you guys.

Thank.

You.