Sales and Cigars | Nate Tutas | How to Think Differently About Sales | Episode 153

[00:00:00] Hey everyone, Walter Crosby with Healing Sales Development, your host of Sales and Cigars. Today is an episode with my buddy Nate Tutas where we talk about how to think differently about sales and the topic today is the common mistakes that salespeople make that cause them to lose business

[00:00:20] and you know we discuss five of these ideas that range from you know how to make a first good impression and business acuum is we really get into that and how you as an entrepreneur,

[00:00:32] as a CEO, as a business owner need to help your salespeople understand how to think about quantifying the problems that you solve and that we really need to step in as business owners to help our salespeople get better at this because salespeople traditionally don't have

[00:00:50] the business acuum that they need to carry the day so go grab a cigar, grab a cocktail, strap in for another impactful episode of sales and cigars. So Nate welcome to Sales and Cigars How to Think Differently About Sales.

[00:01:29] I wish I would have checked to make sure like this has got to be we've got to be close to a year into doing these right? Oh at least at least a year that you and I have been doing it.

[00:01:38] And as I said in the previous episode we really shouldn't be missing months of this because I catch it for from some of our listeners. I don't have 50,000 downloads a month but the people that are listening one of the reasons they're listening

[00:01:59] is because of this these episodes so we got to do a better job of staying on top of this. This is my fault, Niteers. So what I wanted to talk about in this episode is some of the common reasons salespeople fail. Some of the common reasons salespeople lose

[00:02:24] deals and losing deals I know is the wrong way to say it because you can't lose something you never had but when they don't win something there's usually some common themes.

[00:02:37] As Curlin has so nurturingly told us who are OMG partners that if you lose a deal it's because you did a shitty job of discovery and I can't argue with that because it's usually the case

[00:02:56] assuming that it's a deal that somebody was the right person to begin with. They were qualified. But I think I'd like to run through some of these ideas that I had. I've been sort of cataloging

[00:03:11] things over the last couple of quarters and I'm kind of curious as to your thoughts and maybe we dig into one or two of these. One of them is that salespeople just don't have good business acuum. They don't understand the finance, they don't understand ROI

[00:03:34] especially in the context of their prospects and their customers. I think another one is that they simply just don't provide valuable insights, they don't provide helpful information to their customers because they don't truly understand their customer's business. They haven't

[00:03:56] done the work to understand the industry, what goes into the space, they don't speak the vernacular. Those are three, a really simple thing that anybody should be able to do is like show up

[00:04:15] when you say you're going to show up, do what you say you're going to do, be freaking reliable. Be that customer-servers person. In my past life I've won business simply because they showed up

[00:04:31] on time and I literally had a prospect say, what are you doing? We had a two o'clock appointment, I know I'm five minutes early but you want me to wait? He's like, no, I've called Theria you guys

[00:04:45] and you're the first one to show up. I go okay, well what do you want to do? I got business simply because I showed up. Woody Allen says it's what? Half a life is just showing up and doing the work.

[00:05:02] I think the other one we talked about in the last episode a little bit but they spend too much time talking about themselves. They're trying to build this report and make this

[00:05:14] connection and this friendship and it's perceived like they don't do it because of vanity, they do it because they think it's important and they don't really value what the prospect values in their

[00:05:35] time. I think a prospect like if they give you 30 minutes you better give them 45 minutes of value and that starts with respecting the time. So there's five things there, you pick off the menu,

[00:05:53] where should we go first? Well I'll start with the very last point that you noted specifically to respecting the other person's time because that is a major sticking point for me personally.

[00:06:08] I'm a big fan of you know this Dan Kennedy's book No BS Guide to Ruthless Time Management for Entrepreneurs which is all about controlling your time. It's one of my absolute favorites but he is Ruthless. He is Ruthless. If you have a 20 minute call with him,

[00:06:27] he hangs up at 20 minutes whether you're talking or not. He's done. Which I'm a fan of right? But that being said we also part of it comes from my time in the Marine Corps because we had

[00:06:39] a rule in the Marine Corps and a phrase that they grilled into us over and over again amongst many other things but it was if you're not 15 minutes early you're already late right

[00:06:50] and part of that actually comes from Sung Soo in the Art of War because he always talked about the military general that arrives at the battlefield early will always have the leg up because they can

[00:06:59] see how the other military is approaching. All those different things, what route they're taking, how tired they are. They just get a leg up on everything and I always looked at that the

[00:07:11] same way right? And I always looked at I'm going to respect my customer's time, my prospect's time and whatnot and I'm going to be there and not only am I going to be there so that one

[00:07:21] I can get into the right mental state because if you're running late and you're in traffic and you're running and rushing to get to an appointment and even if you're right on time

[00:07:34] you don't have that time to actually reset and get your brain into the right state to go into that focus solely on the customer and focus solely on how do I bring value to this meeting

[00:07:42] and deliver that back to them. You're thinking about oh crap I'm running late and I gotta I gotta get in here and oh yeah what was it that we were going to be talking about and

[00:07:49] where are my notes and that's not a great way to start out for anybody let alone a prospect in a business relationship. Disrespectful, right? It's disrespectful if you think about it with your

[00:08:01] friends. You show up late for an event, for dinner, like if you had a six o'clock reservation for dinner and somebody shows up at 6.15, screw them in my world. I remember 25 years old New York

[00:08:20] City Fortune 500 company meeting the CFO. I had the guy that owned the company that I worked for with me. We're standing in the lobby waiting for this guy to show up. We had an appointment

[00:08:34] at the top of the hour, 10 minutes past the hour. My boss says let's go. Before cell phones, I'm old so I'm like what do you mean go? He's not here yet. He's like I wait 10 minutes for

[00:08:49] anybody 11 minutes for no one. That stuck in my brain and so you fast forward like that afternoon the CFO called me and said like what the hell I showed up and you weren't there. I'm like yeah we left after 10 minutes. I was like 15, 20 minutes late. Yeah well

[00:09:08] we wait 10 minutes for anybody 11 minutes for no one. I just repeated what the boss told me and the CFO said what? I'm like 10 minutes for anyone 11 minutes for no one because you

[00:09:20] want my business. I do but what do you want from me? I couldn't just sit around and wait for you. I didn't know if you're showing up or not. That created a level, I mean it was sort of

[00:09:34] a dick move if you will but that generated respect with that CFO that like okay we value our time because we were going to do something and he's like is there any way you can come down there

[00:09:49] this afternoon blah blah blah right? And we ended up working it through and closing the deal eventually but that stuck with me being respectful of other people and being respectful of yourself.

[00:10:03] And to this day I'll wait but today it should be five minutes not 10 minutes because we have the technology to text somebody like I got a customer who's like long-winded give me

[00:10:19] three minutes I really apologize. All right I'll wait for that guy. Yeah it's common courtesy if you are going to be late because things do happen, things do occur but if it's gonna happen then you

[00:10:31] at least say hey you know what I've got another appointment that I'm supposed to be at I need two seconds to just text this person and call them whatever and let them know I'm gonna be

[00:10:40] running late because I don't want to disrespect their time I want to make sure they know I haven't forgotten about you know it's there for your boss and for the CFO that was running late

[00:10:51] in my mind that's them putting their time at a higher value than yours which I just spent for outstanding days last week with Dr. Richard Bammler the co-founder of NLP and one of the

[00:11:04] things that he says commonly and I absolutely love the phrase is that time is the currency of living right? Time is the currency of what? Living. Living okay it's currency of life because it's

[00:11:16] also the only thing you cannot get back. Right you take the CEO of a Fortune 100 company that is pardon my French but balls are the wall mocked three with their hair on fire but doesn't have

[00:11:29] time to spend with their kids and their family and whatnot and you take them out to the end of their life when they're sitting on their death bed and the one thing that they will say

[00:11:38] that they regret is that they didn't take the time to spend with their kids and their family and to a certain extent a lot of them will say yeah I wish I actually would have had

[00:11:46] a lesser role a lesser job whatever so I could have been the person at home spending time with my kids and family and things like that because time is the currency of living and how you spend

[00:11:55] your moments is how you spend your life right it's all choices yeah and you get to make the choice yep and you know in the context of sales sales people put themselves in a hole

[00:12:15] because they beg and plead and like okay can I can I get an appointment with you and I catch you at a really bad time I'm really sorry right no my time is just as valuable as yours because

[00:12:26] I'm going to deliver value to you and if you don't believe that you're in the wrong job I sent a doctor a bill right I went to the appointment I had an appointment at a particular

[00:12:41] time I showed up 10 minutes early to fill out paperwork I was there on time I sat in that waiting room for 30 minutes and I went up to the little desk I said you know I had an appointment at 10

[00:12:52] yeah he's running late like I'm leaving you can't leave watch me and I sent that doctor a bill for half hour of my time I didn't get paid but you got the point across I think I did the doctor actually called me because I got this

[00:13:11] cute little bill like okay you have the address to be able to send the check he's like I'm not sending you a check but I understand what you're saying he's like you realize that you're not

[00:13:24] my only patient I'm like yeah but I'm the only patient that I care about if we have an appointment at 10 o'clock and you're running five minutes late somebody says hey Walter he's got a thing and

[00:13:33] you know okay but you expected me to wait to whenever you needed me to wait and there was no courtesy yep so um and I think that applies sales people we don't respect our own time

[00:13:48] so we're not really respecting our prospects and our customers time and you know I think that leads to something that we've talked about in the past but I believe I believe in an upfront agreement

[00:14:03] mm-hmm so when I'm talking to a prospect the first time it's like hey I really appreciate the opportunity for us to kind of get to know each other and see if we have a fit I'm not sure yet

[00:14:15] um uh if we if I can really help you so I'm gonna have some questions I want to cover A and B um I think you told me you wanted to cover C and D is there anything else that you wanted to cover

[00:14:27] no okay where would you like to start because we only have 30 minutes and then it becomes my job to play timekeeper mm-hmm and to me that's a great way to start off every I control the meeting I set the agenda I'm respectful of everybody's time sales people don't

[00:14:45] do that I'm all of a sudden elevated it's not rude it's professional it is but some people think it's it's rude and and I'd like to kind of talk through that with you because you're more

[00:15:01] you have a higher EQ than I do um despite being a marine and despite being high D but okay maybe the first time I've ever been said so I'm glad we have this recorded

[00:15:16] but let me rephrase you can fake it better than me okay yeah I did I did my one semester in college was for acting so I'll go with that acting really mm-hmm yeah okay my professor

[00:15:28] was actually a regular on Seinfeld too he was pretty big deal who is the character oh someone would ask me that I'll look it up and I'll send it to you because I'm not a huge Seinfeld fan aside from

[00:15:46] aside from now I'm even blanking on their names George uh George Kramer yep so I'll have to do some research and come back to you with who that was okay um because it's just a rabbit hole

[00:16:00] we went down we didn't really need to go down anyway um so I think controlling that conversation respecting our time respecting our customer's time these are all important things that we need

[00:16:09] to do a salesperson and I think that building rapport is important but we do that by being respectful and being a professional um and if you're in somebody's office you can spend two

[00:16:25] or three minutes trying to be polite but if you're if you're in a virtual call really everybody's doing back-to-back calls these days so um get to it and and and deal with it so

[00:16:39] you get to pick out of the next the other ones that I brought up where's another one you'd like to go Nate um I think the the lack of business acumen is one we definitely could

[00:16:49] dig into because that was one that we had kind of talked about um a little bit and I feel like that's one of those that gets put out there a lot um I see a lot of social media posts on how sales

[00:17:00] people need to have better business acumen and I know I personally spent a lot of time going well what does that even mean and how do I figure that out I'm like there's no there's no book you

[00:17:11] could pick up that's like business acumen for salespeople you know uh or what's what's the the common title business acumen uh for idiots um there probably is a book on that if not I

[00:17:21] should write it because uh it makes sense yeah we could write a book on that that would be a it would be a value it it definitely wouldn't and that's that's an area that I think we

[00:17:32] definitely should dig into because I feel like there are a lot of sales people out there that truly would like to have more business acumen but at the same time or at a loss going

[00:17:46] what does that mean and how do I make it applicable for me so I can actually leverage that business acumen when I'm in the right context okay and I think that's that's the

[00:17:55] right way to look at it how do I how do I understand what business acumen it means as it relates to a sales call because you don't need to you don't need to be able to read a p&l and and discuss it

[00:18:08] with your chief financial officer that's not what we're talking about we're talking about how that's helpful right it's it's a it's a value add but if somebody's running a p&l you should know what that means and somebody has budget responsibility you should know what that means

[00:18:30] so I believe that the CEO the president the hiring manager should assume that the salesperson that they just hired has no freaking idea what they need to know when it comes to business acumen for their prospects and their customers

[00:18:53] so what I recommend to our our clients when they're doing we do sales hiring for them that in the onboarding process one of the several steps that are required is that the CEO spends two sessions with the new salesperson and I'm saying the CEO it could be

[00:19:18] business owner it could be the president I don't care but it's the person it could be the founder right but the person that's up there at the top that understands these things better than anybody

[00:19:30] else and they can get in the head of their customers and their prospects and they should be able to help that new salesperson understand how to talk about their service their product their differentiators as a company as it relates to the problems the business problems the

[00:19:55] financial problems how do we quantify right because one of the things that we teach in baseline selling is you know that they need to quantify the problem we've identified a compelling reason

[00:20:07] that somebody should do something all right what is that all right so we figured that out and then we get to the step where the milestone where it's like quantify this how do we quantify it

[00:20:21] what questions do we ask and I think the CEO can can do that I talked to a guy a couple of months ago and he had a problem I could solve and it was costing him $50,000 a month by not we

[00:20:36] like we quantified it $50,000 a month I'm like you know Bob that's a $50,000 it's a lot of money because oh yeah it's a lot of money you know every month yep this is that that's big

[00:20:49] enough problem for you to solve I didn't make an assumption he's like it is a big enough problem I need to solve it however I have a problem that's costing me a half a million dollars every quarter

[00:21:05] and I'm like do tell so we just talked about that problem I could talk to him about the problem I could understand what the problem was but I couldn't help him and I'm like Bob I can't help you

[00:21:21] with that problem and that's a way bigger problem than my your little $50,000 a month problem I make two million bucks I mean shit it's a ton I can't help you I know a guy

[00:21:36] if you haven't got a if you haven't got a strategy for this he's well who do you know and I and we had that conversation I go I'll make an introduction

[00:21:44] and maybe he can help you but can we reconvene in a couple of months to come back and have a conversation about your $50,000 problem now if I didn't have any business acumen and I didn't

[00:21:58] have any understanding of quantification of a problem because this was money it was time I mean it was it was like risk that was involved and so I had to like take all of that put it together

[00:22:14] and then I had to do one other thing have empathy for that customer that that was a bigger problem right and I wasn't going to whine and complain and try to get them to fix the little thing right

[00:22:27] you got to fix that man you really got to fix that otherwise you're not going to have a business that's so I mean to me that's that's what business acumen is so how aside from the CEO helping that

[00:22:42] conversation what what could you what do you see that you've done in the past to be able to help you understand business like when you're in the packaging business or you know you've had

[00:22:55] a couple of different roles like what how did you gain that understanding hey thanks for being part of the sales and cigar community I wanted to share that I wrote a book the seven critical

[00:23:07] mistakes CEOs make with their sales organization the CEOs who've read it tell me I cut to the chase quickly get to the point explain exactly what they're experiencing why they're experience it

[00:23:19] and how to fix it so if you want a free copy go check out the link in the show notes now let's get back to the interview um well the one thing is that I was I was blessed with in my early days of

[00:23:31] selling the company that I actually worked at we were in safety right so we were constantly having to go back and we were selling systems that were upwards of half a million dollars to install

[00:23:42] I mean they were they're big big purchases by some of these companies and the safety manager the EHS manager had to be able to compute and deliver back to the company why it was worth

[00:23:53] investing that much money into a safety product that wasn't going to make them any money like the fact of the matter was it was either going to save them money because they were about to

[00:24:02] get fined by OSHA it was going to save them money from the potential lawsuits and insurance mitigate risk exactly it was all about mitigating risk so I had to learn how do I quantify this

[00:24:15] in a way that basically is the case of hey your risk is that this happens and all it has to do is happen once and here's all the things that could potentially fall out from that it could be

[00:24:26] the death of a worker it could be a lifelong injury of that worker where they're immobilized for the rest of their lives um I just is actually worse which is actually worse than a death and uh in

[00:24:37] a certain sense in a financial yeah I mean depending on um there's there's multiple different ways to quantify that one I mean I just I literally just got done watching Mandy and I last night

[00:24:47] watched a documentary on HBO that just came out about it's called The Boy Who Lived and it's about Harry Potter's stunt double who in the filming of the last movie they did a simple stunt that

[00:25:00] it was a simple pullback where all he does is stand there and a wire pulls him back and they had miscalculated the weight and for some reason one of the safety checks didn't take

[00:25:11] place and he snapped his neck and he's now paralyzed he's been through I don't know 10-12 surgeries I mean it's it's uh you're watching it going here's this guy that was this awesome

[00:25:22] stunt guy like top of his game top of the world working on this great movie and life as he knew it was over in an instant um and and he shared the story and it was very I mean it's a sad

[00:25:34] and endearing story all at the same time but um I had to be able to communicate how that worked out so that when they looked at our costs and they went ooh you know $500,000 for this

[00:25:45] piece of equipment for the system that guys are going to commit and install or geez this costs two million dollars two million bucks if it happens once let alone a countersuit let

[00:25:54] alone this let alone what I'm gonna have to live with on my mind going this person's injured and has been injured and I could have done something to fix it you know those kinds of things um so

[00:26:04] I had a good foundation from that perspective to be able to dig in and understand what those elements were because you covered all of that that arc right time yep money saving and making

[00:26:17] and risk because everything falls into those three buckets right and if if you just took those three buckets as a salesperson though and when I get into other industries because I did change industries when I got into those other industries I leveraged the fact that

[00:26:32] I have a bit of a baby face and I could say hey you know so um you'll have to forgive my ignorance but can you help me understand how this plays out in your world like I know and I would

[00:26:42] relate how it was in my previous job and then go but I'm kind of confused how does how does that work for you like how does that work in packaging when we're talking about this and that and the

[00:26:50] other and um you know I've heard some of my colleagues say that like if we put an automated packaging machine in place and it replaces eight workers then that's you know their salary

[00:27:00] times whatever and I'd have the person go oh no no it's not just their salary it's the salary it's the FICA it's the 401k match it's this it's that and it was like oh so it's not

[00:27:11] x amount of dollars at an hour it's x amount of dollars plus blah blah blah hmm that changes the calculation a little bit and how often to those yeah and then you'd start going into quantifying

[00:27:21] how often do those workers call in sick and what does that mean from a production level and our production drops off and what if that happens during busy season and you started going through

[00:27:29] all those different questions and all of a sudden you were building a business case around holy crap we can't afford not to get this system now because that system is going to help us in

[00:27:40] in times where we absolutely need it and we can't have any downtime um but I was able to sort those things out by literally focusing on time risk money how all those three things

[00:27:54] kind of tie up and and tie together and I leveraged the fact that I could ask the customer for their feedback on that so I would encourage any salesperson that's out there yes get with your

[00:28:04] ceo if you're a sales manager I'd be I'd be drilling my sales team going okay so we're you know driving along and we're heading out to lunch or whatever so tell me about a scenario where

[00:28:16] you saved a customer money and how did you help to quantify that and I'd be as a sales manager going did they dig into this did they dig into that did they focus you know whatever is applicable

[00:28:26] to their particular business but you want to make sure your sales people know that the sales manager needs to do that absolutely but a lot of people that listen to this are are founders CEOs entrepreneurs

[00:28:41] and I I think that they need to make sure it's their responsibility to make sure that they're sales leaders sales managers they're sales people get it understand it right because sometimes you got people that have skills but they're not willing to put in the extra effort and

[00:29:02] if you if you push this idea and you help them help them understand why it's important you give them the why you connect the strategy to it and you connect them like this is how you do it

[00:29:14] with these you know these three or four questions and it opens it up because it is work to go through and quantify it because it's math right and it's a great it's a great exercise to to do

[00:29:28] in a with a customer like I hold on I'm right I gotta write this down like I can't do math in my head I'm just a dumb sales guy and you start writing things down like you got a calculator and

[00:29:40] what is this and this and this and this because it's not algebra it's not calculus luckily for us and you you you just adding things up and like $50,000 is that a lot of money

[00:29:55] of course it's a lot of money but is it enough money to do something about it because it mean you have to ask the question yep and that's where sales people get stuck

[00:30:07] they're afraid to ask the question because oh that might not but that's how you take it to you get that credibility you elevate that professionalism by saying but by diminishing

[00:30:20] what it is that you're offering like it's you we you know I was taught as a sandler guy that gets a negative reverse like $50,000 is not something that you're going to do something different

[00:30:32] you're not going to change what you're doing to save $50,000 in one right and now they have to be able to defend that but it's just a technique but the thing is if you don't understand how to get

[00:30:45] there so if you're a salesperson and you want to get better at this you have I don't care who you work for you can walk into somebody in the C-suite's office and say hey I'm a dumb sales

[00:31:01] guy and I'm trying to quantify the problems we solve that might be the CEO that might be the CFO that might be some you know VP of sales that's two levels above you

[00:31:16] if you walk in there and say hey I got a question I'm trying to understand this quantification process you're going to have instant credibility within your organization because nobody's going in there and saying hey I don't know this I need help

[00:31:31] yep and those people are going to think of you like all of a sudden you go up and in their mind they're going to give you the data that you need they're going to give you that time

[00:31:41] and then you're going to get access to that person down the road and they're going to notice when you start closing more business because it's something that they help yep you got to go

[00:31:50] you got to go use the information and there's what you do yes um and there's a couple things I would add to that so you mentioned that the CEO should be having at least one or two

[00:32:03] meetings with the sales people to talk about that one thing I would add is I would film that and make that part of your standard operating procedures so that a sales people can go back

[00:32:14] and review that video and b you can figure out where there's gaps because you may film it the first time for a sales person and then it may be the second or third time that you're going

[00:32:24] through it and you might go ah shit I've been I've been leaving out this big piece of the puzzle and I need to add that but when you do that that then becomes so that

[00:32:34] if a sales person goes through it once great but if they can go back and I have a tendency to watch things on 2x speed two and a half time speed so that I can get through things real quickly

[00:32:43] but I'm the type of person I'll go back and review that a couple times before I go in to meet with a customer so it's fresh on my brain and then when I go in and meet with the

[00:32:51] customer and I know I'm a total nerd with with that kind of stuff but I'll go do that so that it's fresh on my brain and I'm going into the call with my ears already tuned in to listen

[00:33:00] for those things the other thing you're not a nerd you're you're a heightened professional I don't know what we call it but we call it nowadays and you're the guy that's making money doing

[00:33:17] and able to teach that to other people so well and the other thing that that you can do there too is I'd recommend you get the CEO and you get the top salesperson at the company

[00:33:33] to do that as an exercise whiteboarding it out because the CEO may find out their stuff that the salesperson's tapped into that he wasn't even thinking of here she wasn't thinking of and vice versa the top salesperson may go oh interesting I was never looking at it

[00:33:47] from that perspective and you might get some subtle nuances that can be that can be enhanced there yeah there's there's gold when you when you when you involve a whiteboard there's gold when you involve somebody recording it so there's pieces of it and you and you just

[00:34:02] like I've been telling CEOs to like all right let's just record a video of how you do this and record a video of how you do this but the the idea of of taking that to that next level

[00:34:16] and and like because now now they're willing to do that because it it makes their time they leverage their time but I think there's still in that in that new that that new relationship with that

[00:34:32] salesperson they can hear it from that person and they get that passion and then they can go listen to that video and go listen to the other video those those are really powerful so

[00:34:45] that's also a great exercise for a sales meeting as the sales leader to just hold up the marker and say okay come up to the whiteboard we're going to role play it out and I'm gonna have you you

[00:34:55] know write whiteboard out the math on what the problem is quantifying it and let's start the conversation here's here's the premise I'm an xyz customer this is what I've shared with

[00:35:05] you so far take it away and in the yeah role playing things out is practice and it's it's it's not done enough but I think the other thing that a sales leader and a sales manager

[00:35:20] should do a couple times a year it's a quarter with intent with purpose with a specific topic in mind invite the CEO in don't tell the salespeople don't tell them yep and say here it is I mean I

[00:35:36] had a I had a class a political science class I took it in college and professor was a a nerd he had worked for several presidents um and the last session he didn't tell anybody

[00:35:53] didn't tell anybody it was happening so if you didn't show up on the last day of class because it was the last day of class and there wasn't really going to be something there

[00:36:00] he invited jerry ford president jerry ford into the last class so we're sitting in this huge this huge hall and all these guys wearing black suits come come in the side doors and all of a sudden from the stage jerry ford walks in hey professor how you doing

[00:36:18] and he did 20 minutes on politics and did q&a and for the 75 of us out of the 250 that were in the class we got an audience with an alumni a president former president of the united states

[00:36:37] and you can say what you want about him as a president and but I could tell you it was wildly entertaining um and memorable and college was a long time ago for me I can't I remember that so

[00:36:52] but bringing those people into your meeting and asking them to share their insight is going to change the game for everybody because it's not just you talking about it like they're hearing it and those guys are going to bring a different level of experience to the party so

[00:37:10] I mean I know we didn't cover all five of those I didn't have intent to cover all five of those but I think again people can salespeople they need to be focused on having that

[00:37:26] idea of elevating their skills right we talk about it from a perspective of elevating the sales profession that's one of our core values but it comes down to the individual wanting to get better and if you look around your organization there's people that are having success

[00:37:46] you can you can go talk to them whether they become a mentor or or not go get a nugget right this podcast there's nuggets that are dropped throughout this conversations that you and I have other guests have that that might resonate with somebody

[00:38:05] and just listening to reading a book listening to a newsletter you have a newsletter that is insightful that gives people insights to getting better at their profession if you're not trying to get better you're you're you're staying in the same spot which means you're falling behind

[00:38:24] so we have to update this mate we have to update how people subscribe to your your newsletter so we need to put that hub that in the show notes for this episode but any last thoughts here that you want to talk about before we wrap up

[00:38:41] I think the biggest thing is kind of like we've talked about throughout the entire the entire episode really I think it goes back to the theme of this series of thinking differently about sales right I think if we take a step back and we think about some of

[00:38:56] these core issues and we think through how do we actually affect them for our team how do we affect them for others it really comes down to that being professional and saying how do we improve

[00:39:08] in each of these areas breaking it down and then going cool a simple thing like recording a session where we talk through how we actually quantify a problem for a customer can then be

[00:39:19] reused over and over and over again and can be improved on and perfected and now you've got a tool that many times I've been in positions where a leader of some sort says well why doesn't

[00:39:30] the salesperson know this or why don't they understand that and it's because the salesperson one didn't know to go find that information and two they didn't have it but if you have those

[00:39:42] things there you eliminate the excuses so I mean I have I have clients who like I told them this how many times well I told I know I've told them that at least once okay your salespeople

[00:40:00] have if you ever tried to teach your child to walk and if they didn't get it the first time did you give up on teaching them to walk it's not a perfect metaphor but the point is it takes

[00:40:15] sometimes more than one little conversation for people I've taken lessons in golf I've taken lessons in tennis and I had a tennis coach who she was like she said the same thing to me five times

[00:40:29] she literally said the same thing to me five times in different ways the fifth time oh got it why didn't you say that the first time right and she was very nurturing like me and she drilled me in the chest with a tennis ball I like this again

[00:40:49] sounds like she would have been very effective she was no not she was very effective but because she had the tools to go to to get it to like my dumb brain now what she didn't have was the NLP

[00:41:03] ability to know that welter needed to hear this in a way that resonated with my dumb brain but once she hit it that time like oh you just want me to lean forward and hold

[00:41:15] I'd be on my toes and get the racket in this spot and not be right on top of the thing right and I remember I remember the lesson I remember exactly where I was on the court I remember exactly

[00:41:26] where the court was and I remember her looking at me like asshole and she just like drilled and she hit me square in a sternum and I didn't miss many many valleys after that

[00:41:42] all right I appreciate this I think we're a little over time so my folks that I think but we added a lot of value here from salespeople if you want to get better at something there's

[00:41:53] opportunities to you know to call Nate call me to talk to people in your organization to understand those things from a business acuum from you know the story that that how we differentiate ourselves take the balls and go walk into the C-suite and say hey I don't

[00:42:13] understand this can you help me and in those people if you're asking for advice I mean you might you might be the wrong moment but they will they'll come to you

[00:42:24] they want to help you yep oh thank you my pleasure I love sharing secrets when I figured them out that's why I created this program called sales hiring secrets earlier in my sales management career

[00:42:38] I was terrible at hiring salespeople they failed more often than not then I discovered the secret that you can't hire salespeople the same way you hire everyone else that's why everyone fails

[00:42:51] in sales hiring secrets I'm going to teach you all of the secrets the secrets to understanding what you really need your salesperson to do how to attract an ideal candidate with a unique job

[00:43:02] posting I'll teach you how to save time and money by only interviewing candidates that are a good fit I'll share the secrets to an interviewing process that ensures success and the one big

[00:43:15] secret that everybody gets wrong is how to onboard a good salesperson so they ramp up quickly and stick around I'm doing the sales hiring secrets program on a monthly basis you can click the

[00:43:29] link below to figure out when the next sales hiring secrets program is scheduled and you can sign up the click the link below and you get all the details and it's designed for you to

[00:43:41] bring your entire team so you can get everybody up to speed quickly thanks look forward to seeing you on the other side