Sales & Cigars | Serve Up and Coach Down with Nathan Jamail | Episode 223

[00:00:07] Hello and welcome to Sales and Cigars, the sales podcast where the only smoke we blow is cigar smoke. I'm your host Walter Crosby. Smoking a staple today are what's left of my cigar, Padron 5000, one of my favorites. I'm abstaining from the bourbon today because of Passover. Today we're going to talk to Nathan Jamail about leadership, selling skills, and building winning teams. I was anticipating a great conversation because Nathan is a sales guy at heart.

[00:00:35] This is one, this one was a lot of fun. He sold Encyclopedia Britannica door to door when he was a kid. Those were the books that we used to do research in school before the internet. A ton of value today. Anybody who wants to improve their leadership skills and scale your business, this one's for you. Go grab a cigar, a cocktail and strap in for another exciting episode of Sales and Cigars. Nathan, welcome to the program. I appreciate you taking some time out of your busy schedule.

[00:01:04] My pleasure, Walter. Thanks for having me, man. We just had a fun little conversation about horses and girls and daughters and we won't get back into that. Too much pain. Yeah, could be. Let's jump right in. I want to talk about your business, but how do we get to where we are today? You've had an interesting journey. Kind of hit the highlights for everybody, kind of give them a little bit of your background. Yeah, so I've been in sales all my life. I tell people all the time, you can see me coming. I mean, I just blame sales guy.

[00:01:34] I sold Encyclopedia Britannica door-to-door when I wasn't working retail at Circuit City. I had two days off and nothing to do, so I sold. And both of those places are out of business now. Well, it's funny. I don't want to tie my sales record to that, but it is true. It might tell you something. But what's funny is most people don't even, like today, they don't even know what Encyclopedia Britannica is. That's true. Yeah, so I have to explain that it's books that cost a lot of money that we used to sell door-to-door. In fact, it used to be the only way you could do a homework assignment.

[00:02:03] I did that, did retail. I got into the financial service business very young. I sold life and health insurance and went from there and went in telecom and sold beepers and pagers. And so, I mean, they sell this guy driving around with a roll of quarters. I mean, you know what I'm talking about. I do. I look for phone booths and not because I was Superman, because I had to call the office. Yeah, yeah. Hey, I'm on my way to the appointment, you know. And then, yeah, you got the Ultra M, big brick phone, and that was when you're living large.

[00:02:31] And so, I did that, and I became, that's when I got my first sales management job. I became the regional manager of MobileCom in New Orleans in 96. And then, in December of 96, my old boss approached me about being the business sales manager for a new company coming out called Sprint PCS in January of 1997. And so, I was 100 and something, there wasn't many, I was 100 and something employees. And I was the business to business sales manager in New Orleans, Louisiana. And I said, well, what does the phone look like? He says, I don't know.

[00:03:00] Where does it work? We're not sure, but it's going to be amazing. And I said, those are the ones that you could click to talk, like the Kowalki Kowalki thing? That was Nextel, which ended up merging with Sprint. But Sprint and Primeco, it was like the first digital phone out there. And it was back in the Wild West days. I mean, like, it was owned by three different cable companies. It was nuts. And it was just, it was fun. I started that, and we killed it. It was awesome. And then, I stayed with Sprint for nine more years. I became the director of Memphis, Tennessee, and then the region director out of Texas.

[00:03:30] And I ran all the Southeast region. Went to Puerto Rico for a while. Then I became the director out in California. And I was there a long time, over nine and a half years. And I did B2B, indirect distribution, internet sales. So, I went through all stages and all distributions of sales. And then, my brother called me, and I used to go around and sell Sprint lookalike stores. So, the teams would bring in all these owners, entrepreneurs.

[00:03:57] And I'd come, and I'd pitch why you should open your own Sprint stores. And by the way, being an entrepreneur now, I would have bought eight of them. Like, I had no idea what, like, how great that was. Anyway, so, I got the nickname, The Preacher. And I started doing, you know, selling skills workshops for my clients and leadership workshops. And just for fun, because it helped me grow my business. And one day, my brother called me and said, you ever going to start that speaking business? And I said, sure am. He just said, great. I quit my job. Will you hire me? And so, I left.

[00:04:27] I lived in California at the time. I flew to Dallas. I said, rent a hotel room. Call everyone you know. We're going to get a video crew, and we're going to make a demo video. It was terrible. It was terrible. And I left corporate America. Wrote my first book in 2007. Published in 08. The rest is history. I've been doing executive coaching. I do keynotes and workshops. And I travel the world. And I lived the dream. You literally live in the dream. I really am. Which one of those jobs? Because you didn't sell dirt.

[00:04:57] I sold dirt at one point. I buy a lot of dirt owning a ranch. But yes. We've got to make sure we hit that before we end your business now. But of all those roles that you had, is there lessons from each one of them? Is there one big lesson you learned from those that inform what you're doing now with entrepreneurs and leadership? Absolutely. I can think of something from each one. Like when I sold life and health insurance, I was young.

[00:05:27] I wasn't even able. I was 20 years old. I couldn't even drink legally. Now, I looked old. I've always looked old. And so, you know, there's no problem to go to take a client to a bar because I looked older than they did. But I was young. But no one knew I was so young. And back then, you didn't have the internet. So I would go to libraries and I'd write down – who would listen to someone who thought they were 22? I was 19. No, a 30-year-old, 40-year-old, 50-year-old man or woman is not going to listen to me. So I would go – I literally went to the libraries and I would get marriage licenses.

[00:05:57] And I'd write down names and phone numbers of everyone who was born in the late 60s who were married two years ago. And I'd call them and sell universal life insurance because I figured if they'd been married two years, if they're still married – somebody tell you to do that or did you just do it? A mentor said – I was driving with a mentor. He says, man, you need to talk to young married couples because no one else is going to talk to you. My mentor did. He goes, you need to go get marriage licenses. And I said, okay. And so I kind of ran with it. And that was my platform for almost two years. I would go there. I could write them all down.

[00:06:27] I'd mail them letters. Brother, it's been – that was 1992. I can still tell you what my letter said. Hello, my name is Nathan Jamell, Comprehensive Finance Services. The reason for my call is I mailed you a letter a week ago. I don't know if you remember. I get like – I mean, I did it so many times. You just dropped right into it. That's awesome. I could – and I did it. And they always threw the letter away. So I would just call and I'd ask and I'd go sell to get your table. Here's what I learned in insurance.

[00:06:54] How to sell something no one wants to buy but really needs it. And so to overcome the fear of being liked because you have something cool but being liked because you bring value. Like you want to see one someone run, say, hey, my name is Nathan Jamell. I sell life insurance. It's elbows and heels, man. That's what I learned there.

[00:07:15] When I sold pagers and alphanumeric paging systems, I learned that what we sell – the biggest problem in selling pagers I had to overcome was a short-term inconvenience for a long-term gain, which is significant. Because I do a lot in technology these days. And so one of the things when we were selling pagers back then in technology today is there was a large upfront cost that people had to take in, either an upfront cost or a learning curve. Most likely both.

[00:07:44] And I would learn that we had to convince customers or show customers that we should not make a long-term decision based off of short-term inconvenience. And I've used that since those days. I learned something today. I mean, I learned something every single day. I do executive coaching, and I learned just as much as my clients. I have 26 executives I coach one-on-one, and I have a handful of group coachings that I do. And I learned something from them all the time.

[00:08:12] I tell people all the time, it's amazing to me. I'm 53, and I have more awareness of how stupid I am than I ever have. Like, if I knew how little I knew at 32, I'd be a lot smarter than I am now. Like, I tell people, I now realize I know – I believe I know less now than I've ever known, yet I know more than I've ever known. And it's because of my awareness of how little I know.

[00:08:39] But awareness – I mean, awareness is important in sales, but awareness that we know very little is how you start to learn, right? Because you have to start to recognize – it starts with the ability to be humble, right? And to realize that there's so much more out there. And if we're not learning along the way – and we can learn from our kids, we can learn from our clients, we can learn from the waitress at a diner.

[00:09:08] It's there if you're just open to the idea of picking something up. And I don't see that a lot in leaders. And when we were talking before I turned the recording on, I shared a story about a leader who just sucked the air out of the room by going first and saying, here's what I think. And then he asked everybody what they thought. And nobody had the balls to be able to say, dude, you're wrong.

[00:09:34] But when I called him out on it afterwards, he was like, I had no idea. And I was like, well, that's what happens. And he's like, well, I've been doing that a long time. I'm like, I know. I've watched you do it. I think you should kind of think about stopping. And we talked a little bit about what he could do, how he could start the conversation and then just shut up and listen and be the last one to talk. Because he might learn something and change his opinion and drive the conversation.

[00:10:03] But you get to do that on the regular. And you have this cool, cool isn't the right word. I guess I'm old. I am older than you. But I didn't sell Encyclopedia Britannica. Not donor door? I did not. I sold vacuum cleaners for a couple of minutes, which is a different experience. But what I was told by my mentor, 100% closing. In a living room. You just don't leave. You're going to close. Move in or close it. One or the other.

[00:10:33] Yeah. Put on a pot of coffee. We're not going anywhere. This idea of serve up and coach down. That's intriguing to me. There's probably 27 different ways we could go and have a conversation here. But can we talk about that as a start? Like what does that mean? And what can leaders, because mostly who's out there right now are entrepreneurs who are listening to this. And they could use help with how to communicate with their team. So I'm going to smoke my cigar and shut up and let you talk. Puff away.

[00:11:03] You know, I'll tie that into the leadership playbook. And the reason why is it's funny. When I wrote serve up, coach down, I wrote it because of my executive coaching clients. Like I was dealing with all this stuff that we always talk about how to lead people. We never talk about how to follow. And I've heard all these things crazy in my career, like great leaders aren't good followers. And I've learned that is so not true. Great leaders were always great followers because that's where the followers they had learn how to follow.

[00:11:32] And so one of the things that serve up coach down is about, it's not about sucking up. And it's funny, I just did a keynote for a workshop and the CEO hired me. He says, now listen, I don't want them to think that I'm telling you to say this. Because upper manager leaders think serving up is I'm telling you to be obedient. It's not. I'm telling us that we need to be in alignment. When I first saw that, I went the other way. I thought it was like we're supposed to be helping and trying to understand and gain that perspective.

[00:12:01] I didn't think of it as a negative. That's interesting. Well, because I debunked servant leadership. I think all the old books of servant leadership, I think the intent is right. Love your people, sacrifice for them, commit to them. But what it's led to is entitlement. Our job is not to fix our people's problems, it's to make them bigger than the problems. There's an old saying that says problems don't come in different sizes, people come in different sizes. Our job, and so the reason why the book is called Serve Up, Coach Down,

[00:12:30] the way we serve our people who follow us is by coaching them. The two greatest competitive advantages in any industry, in any country, in any market is the ability to speed up change, organizational alignment. When the CEO and the front-level sales rep have the same understanding, vision, and execution. That alignment is the most powerful thing we can have. And so Serve Up, Coach Down, it's about me as a follower.

[00:13:00] So think of it as a leader. No one wants to be called the middle manager. Everyone's a leader in the middle. Even the CEOs I coach, I prepare them for quarterly board meetings. They're serving the board. Someone's got, you're getting direction, or you're trying to show someone the direction you're choosing, and then you're leading people to get there. And so Serving Up is about believing in the organization you work with and the people you follow. And there's two reasons this is very important. You said this earlier about being humble. As humans, we're wrong.

[00:13:29] If you ever read one of the greatest books of all time, other than mine, of course, for your listeners, but one of the old greatest books of all time is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. And in Dale Carnegie's book, he says, which is, by the way, still extremely relevant today, he says that we are wrong 80% of the time, yet we'll argue our perception 100% of the time. And so my challenge to people is this. If you don't agree with your leader, believe in them the way you want your followers to believe in you.

[00:13:56] And if there is a direction that you're leading, if I go to you and say, Walter, we're going this direction, and my goal is to get to this end result. Well, if you go, well, I think you're wrong. And I say, well, Walter, I need your buying on this. And I convince you that I'm right. Every time I'm wrong, you're going to say, see, I told you. But if I believe in you, Walter, you're my boss, and you say, we're going to go this way. I say, boss, do you want feedback or is this a margin order? You say, man, we got to do it. And I give you grace. I know that there are 80% chances that we're going to have to make a U-turn or turn.

[00:14:26] Now, when I go that way, you said, hey, this isn't working. Let's go left. Now I'm working with you instead of trying to prove you wrong. All of us as leaders think our perception sometimes is more accurate than others' beliefs or visions. So my challenge to leaders in the middle is if your boss says let's go left, you can ask why to understand. But don't ask why to prove wrong. Find a way to make it right. I'll give you a perfect example. Every leader in this organization.

[00:14:54] Now, by the way, there's a leader responsibility significantly here on Clarity. But if you talk to every leader, I go to the CEO and I say, who's the VP that will run through the wall for you? They'll say Johnny. I go to Johnny and say, who's the director that will run through? Who's the man? If I need something done, I call Walter. Is he a suck up? No. But I'll tell you this. He shows up every single day. He will do what I ask him to do. And if he sees there's something wrong, he'll look at me and say, hey, boss, are you open to some ideas? Because I got some different ones.

[00:15:24] And I know that because Walter owns every decision he has given, I can take his input. And whether I use it or not, he owns it. And that's what leadership is about. It's about taking the vision and connecting it to the execution. And so as leaders, you said this earlier about the leader walking in the room and taking the air out of the room. I tell leaders there's a difference between direction and opinions. If you want other people's opinions, don't give yours first, to your point. Don't suck the air out of the room.

[00:15:52] Because once you give it, I don't know if everybody's going to be comfortable arguing. By the way, some of your strongest leaders look at you and go, if the boss wants that as an opinion, then we need to figure out how to achieve it. That's what great people do. If you're looking for others' opinion, speak last. At the same time, if you want something done a certain way, don't make them guess and they get mad when they don't do it. Be prescriptive. I spend a ton of time with leaders on expectations.

[00:16:18] And I say, like Nathan, these people are high-level executives. They should know what to do. They do know what to do. They know what they want to do. But they don't know what you want them to do. They're not mind readers. That's not. I always tell leaders, I know what you expect from me. It doesn't stifle my creativity. It gives me a framework so I know exactly what you want. Now I can go to you and say, hey, boss, you said you want me to do this, this, and this. What do you think of this? And I go, hmm, try it. Here's what I've always found.

[00:16:47] Your super studs will use your prescriptive expectations as the floorboard as they step to a higher level. Your weak employees who don't want to strive, who don't want to be a significant part of the team, they'll use it for what they reach for. And just how people respond to your expectations will tell you exactly what kind of follow you have on your team. And there's all kinds of ties into this. Entrepreneurs and business leaders are just as guilty of this as everyone else in leadership.

[00:17:15] Is that we accept subpar performance, not because we're nice, but because we're selfish. Explain that. Okay. So let's put this in perspective. If you ask any leader, you know this better than anyone, Walter. How hard is it to find good people? Hard. You know why? Good people aren't looking for jobs. That's why they're good people. They're focused on the job they're doing. They're not on Indeed. They're not looking for the next bigger, better deal. The reason they're such great contributors is because they're focused on the job. Good people are hard to find because good people aren't looking.

[00:17:44] And so what has to happen, if I know that, and then I've got someone on my team who's doing half the work, I'm like, well, man, you know, yeah, they're not doing this. They're not doing that. And they've been with me for a long time. And I know they're bad. But if I get rid of them, then I got to go find someone new, which takes six to eight weeks, six months, a year. Then I got to train them, and that takes another six weeks. You know what?

[00:18:13] I'll just keep the half body instead of look for the good body. That's how our standard's lower. And I see that all the time in sales with what I call an accepting mediocrity. That has an effect on the team as well. The performers are like, why are we tolerating Bozo over here? Right? And why am I busting my butt? Right? And in sales, I can look at the top performers and say, we're working on the problem. Right? But put your head down and continue to do what you're doing because you're getting compensated on what you move, what you sell.

[00:18:43] Right? But we're working on this problem. You're 100% right. But if they're not working on that problem, that's a big problem. Accepting that mediocrity, it's one of the things I talk about in my book. And alignment was another one. But how do you get that leader to think differently about that problem of mediocrity or being selfish because I don't want to go do the work to replace that person? How do you get them to see that differently? Well, and here's where I'll outline the selfishness.

[00:19:11] If you hold someone accountable, is it better for the company? Yes. Is it better for the customer or client? Yes. Is it better for the team? Yes. Is it better for the individual holding accountable? Because, by the way, sometimes it's your guy or gal who's a superstar who's jogging. Like if you really push them, they can be twice as good. But since they're hitting bare minimum, we're going to keep them. So it's better for everyone, including the individual. The only one who suffers and holding people accountable is the person, the leader themselves. And so I tell people it's the same reason why we hold our kids.

[00:19:39] I mean, if my 14-year-old daughter did some of the things of these 30-year-old employees did, I'd ground her for a month. Is it because I don't like the employees or I don't like my daughter? We're at the trouble. And so this is why I call people, I tell people, holding people accountable is a selfless act. Here's what I do believe. I believe if someone's struggling in their job, not only struggling in their performance, they're probably not happy in the job. They're keeping this job because they think they need it. Yet good employees are one of the most limited resources. I go to you and say, hey, brother, this ain't the right fit for you.

[00:20:08] Go find happiness. Go be successful. You're a good person. Like you're a stud. Go do it. You're just in the wrong role. Go be successful someplace else. Get in the right spot. Listen, when you get rid of the bad body and you have no body, it makes you act. It makes you put someone else in charge of something. It makes you go look for someone that you didn't need. It creates a sense of urgency. That's what we need as leaders. Now, as a follower, this is where I talk about Serve Up Coach Down being a two-way street.

[00:20:36] If I'm serving up to my boss, that means I believe in them. Let me tell you something. If you don't believe in who you're working for, you should quit your job. I was doing an interview when I first was Serve Up Coach Down on some radio show, and the guy was very old and groggy. He's like, Nathan, in your book, you said that if someone doesn't like their job, they should just quit. And I said, yes, that's exactly what I said in my book. He goes, I don't think that's reasonable because not everybody can quit their job. I said, sure they can. I said, you can quit a job anytime you want. Your kids don't care if you're rich or successful, live in a house or an apartment.

[00:21:05] But let me ask you another question. What's the option? If you were my boss and you were paying me to show up to work every day, and then you heard me tell everyone that you know that you're a jerk and I hate working for you, and that it's the worst job in the world, and the company's terrible, and I was telling everyone that, what do you want me to say with you? What's more unethical? I think if you're paying me, I should believe in you. Everybody should be, I mean, you're not going to be happy every day, right? No.

[00:21:34] But, I mean, overall, you should be proud of what you're doing. You should have some, feel some significance that you're helping raise the whole everybody up, and that you get some gratification out of it. Aside from a paycheck, if you're not happy, you're in the wrong spot. Unless you have got some other issue happening. I've left jobs where I was making a ton of money because the culture was so freaking toxic. By the way, sometimes it's just a different culture.

[00:22:01] My culture isn't for everyone, and everyone's, like, make sure this is where the alignment comes into place. You know, I said earlier I live the dream. I love what I do. Man, I love being on stage. I love doing keynotes. I just got back from Kansas City doing one. I love it. Do I like sitting on airplanes 18 hours out of a week? Amherst clubs and all that? Do I like all this craziness to travel? No. I hate it. I get home. I land typically at 11 o'clock at night, and I get home by almost 1 in the morning.

[00:22:31] I hate that part of the job. But here's the thing. I love the other part so much, it's worth it. That's what I think you're saying. Like, you've got to love the good part of your job. And quite candidly, I tell salespeople all the time, if you don't believe in what you're selling, you should go sell something else because the only person who can sell something they don't believe in is a con man. Exactly. A hundred percent. And it relates to everybody else in the organization because we're all selling something, right? We're selling the company vision.

[00:22:58] We're selling the idea that we're trying to move this project forward. And if we don't believe in it because there's something unethical or we just don't believe in it because it doesn't match up with our ethics or integrity, then you've got to get gone. You've got to move on. And in this economy, I took a job in 08 when things were tanking, and I was there three days.

[00:23:25] And I went to the guy that hired me, and I said, look, I think we made a mistake, man. And he's like, what are you talking about? I was like, you got me sitting here reading these books that don't make any sense. I don't give a shit about any of this. If I got to know this engineering code to go sell this stuff, then I'm the wrong guy, right? And he's like, well, who do you think you are? And I'm like, the guy that's bored. Get me in front of people. I need to go talk to people. I need to learn something, right? This isn't working.

[00:23:51] And he ultimately was gone, but I wasn't doing, I wasn't growing. I wasn't able to do my craft. I wasn't able to learn the things I needed to learn. Like, tell me, give me eight questions. I can go ask a prospect, and I can go. I don't need to know every little thing about the product. And they had never had somebody push back on. Like, well, everybody reads those books. I'm like, well, I'm not everybody. And that goes back to that alignment thing, right? You were not in alignment with it.

[00:24:21] And sometimes you just got to, it's kind of like my daughters, I would never want any of my daughters being a bad marriage. I'd want them out of it. Now, I don't mean we run from everything, but, you know, life's too short to be unhappy. And I've never seen someone who's truly successful as they can be unhappy. I've never seen it in 53 years. Yeah, that's a good question. I don't think I've ever seen anybody be really unhappy and have them be successful either. I mean, Bezos looks pretty happy. Yeah, he's doing okay. Yeah.

[00:24:51] Well, sending your wife up in the, or your fiancee up in the, to go out of the atmosphere might be a bad idea. But, so you've dropped a bunch of like what I call little golden nuggets. And it's like the little tip of the iceberg. So what's the best way for somebody to get in touch with you, learn more, get your books? Where are you going to point them? The easiest way and the best way is to go to my website, www.nathanjamel.com. That's nathanjamel.com. And in there we have online selling courses for salespeople.

[00:25:21] One of the most popular things right now, we have VIP group coaching. It's for top sales leaders. It's a group coaching session. We have executives and sales leaders from all over the country in many different industries, from hospitality to banking to finance to technology. And so that's the best place to go. That's where you'll get all the resources, the blogs. We write a blog every single week. I also have, by the way, you want something fun. Let me give you this. I actually have my own AI. Your own AI. Yeah.

[00:25:49] So you want to do something cool? Watch this. You can ask me a question, right? This is, this is my AI. We can actually do this right here. Watch this. Hello. My name is Minnie Nathan. I'm your AI business coach. What's up? Hey, Nathan, I got an employee who's not meeting expectations. What should I do? First, it's important to clearly define what not meeting expectations looks like. Set specific. Measurable. So I created this mini AI.

[00:26:17] And by the way, the phone number, because it's so your audience has it and we put it in notes, is 848-277-0867. Now that's 848-277-0867. I give it to all my clients and listeners and your listeners. What it does, it's basically a closed caption AI. So it's, it's my voice and it uses only my content. So it does not use internet at all. And the reason why, Walter, it's so funny when they first created Minnie. And I came up with Minnie Nathan.

[00:26:47] I think I got to change it because younger people don't know it. It's from Austin Powers. You know, Minnie me? Yeah. That's what I thought. Yeah. I'm like, let's do Minnie Nathan. And then some people who don't know Austin Powers is like, what a weird thing to call yourself. Who doesn't know Austin Powers? Well, I think, buddy, if you're under the age of, listen, do you know my daughters don't know what a Rolodex is? By the way, even this one, here's one even better. Ask someone who's under the age of 20 what the yellow pages are. Yeah. That's, I get that. Yeah.

[00:27:16] And so, and so when they, Minnie me, they have no idea, but, but you can ask me any questions. And so the reason why I had to do closed circuit is because when they first said, Hey, Nathan, Minnie Nathan, what would you do if my guy's not hitting sales quote? And it says, well, I'd first make sure you're getting all the right tools. I'm like, okay, I would never say that. Right. Right. Because, but, but you're also giving all your stuff away to the world, right? If, if it's not closed, that's a great idea. Well, and I want everyone to listen. Here's what I, someone asked me the other day and I stole this from someone else.

[00:27:46] They said, Nathan, aren't you worried that that's going to replace you? Like your Minnie, now I don't need you anymore. And I'm like, you don't, people don't pay me to answer their questions. They pay me to ask them questions. That's what sales is. And it's what coaching is too. Coaching and sales are like a parallel track, right? Because we got to do the same thing. What should I do here, boss? Like, well, what, what have you tried? What do you think would work? Have you ever run into this before? Sure. Well, yeah. Okay.

[00:28:14] Well, I mean, I just asked five or six questions before I have to even think. And then they're, they're off to the races and they retain that, right? Your people retain that when they come up with their own answer, they own it and they run out and they're all excited. They think they figured it out. That's, they did. Well, and one of the things that I teach a ton of, if you ever, when you see my stuff, you'll say I'm big on, you call it role-playing. I call it scrimmaging. And the reason why is everybody hates to role-play. We've used it in corporate America to judge people.

[00:28:42] You think, you know, how to ask qualifying questions. You think, you know, you think, you know, all right, let's go. And everybody gets judged and they make it up and it's fake and all these other excuses. But I scrimmage with Michael. And I'm not talking about, I scrimmage with frontline salespeople. But I'm talking, I scrimmage with CEOs, presidents, vice presidents every single day. I've scrimmaged twice today. And one was with a CFO. And what I do is I get into character and we role-play. And the reason why I do it, I do it for two reasons.

[00:29:11] One is it's a lot easier instead of telling someone what to do. Say, well, let's, whenever someone says, hey, what do you think here? What would you do? I said, let's scrimmage it. Because now I say we get into character. Now I do it. And they go, oh, I like that. They'll take a little nugget. And I say, okay, now you go. Now they'll take to your point. They'll take what they know and grab that little nugget. And we go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And what I tell people is if we were going on a sales call and we were going to be, you

[00:29:38] and I got into character, I got into character between the first person acting like the person and we scrimmaged, what are the chances we do a better job? And they say, a hundred percent. I said, then why don't we do it? Because we're lazy. And by the way, it's because leaders don't mandate it. Here's what's interesting. When it comes to leaderships as well, how many times have you gone to have a difficult conversation with someone on your team? It didn't go the way you wanted it to. The outcome was different than you wanted. I tell people all the time, the goal, and this comes back to that coaching, right?

[00:30:08] Scrimmaging is just a key part of coaching, is the goal is to make sure my words match my intent. And there's an old saying I use all the time in my workshops. And I said, words said by two different people being two different things. Let me give you a perfect example, Walter. Let's see how you do on this. My wife walks into the closet. My wife says, I have nothing to wear. What's my wife saying? She can't find something that she's excited about wearing. Right. So what does she want to go do? Go shopping. She wants to go shopping. I walk in the closet. I say the exact same words.

[00:30:36] I don't have anything to wear. Walter, what am I saying? You don't have anything to wear. Why? Because you don't want to go shopping. No, because all my clothes are dirty and someone needs to do laundry. All right. That was going to get you in trouble, Nathan. No, it's because. And here's what's funny, because every man and woman know it. And the moral of the story is not like, I'm not trying to play the sexist card. I've been married 18 years. I'm terrified of my wife. I love her to death, but I'm terrified of her.

[00:31:06] Is just because we say the same words don't mean they have the same meaning. And so as a leader, my job is to make sure that people understand my intentions before I give them my words. And that way we have alignment and understanding. That's a really good point. I'm reading a book right now about perspective. The book is called The Cure for Stupid, which is a great title. I saw the guy speak, so I bought his book. He was hilarious. But he's talking about a serious topic and it's communication. Right?

[00:31:34] And he's covering things like you just mentioned. Like, what did you think I said? Right? And it happens all the time with spouses and children. And we say this, but my perspective on your words is completely different than what. And then we're going to fight about who's right. Right? And we get nowhere. So once you understand these dynamics, it becomes easier to communicate. So having that leader be clear about what the intent is and then sharing the words is

[00:32:04] great perspective. So again, I'm going to encourage people, have all the show notes, just click on the links below and get a hold of Nathan. Read the book. Go look at the playbooks. It's all there. And I might steal that scrimmage idea. You could Google Nathan Jameleon scrimmage. I've probably written 30 articles on it. It's in all three of my books. I'm a big believer in it. I'll tell you, anyone who's listening to your show right now, I'll guarantee you, if

[00:32:30] you literally implement scrimmaging in your sales practice, in your leadership practice, a 30% increase in revenue. Here's what I tell people. And this is what I'll end with on this for you. If we don't practice our scrimmage selling skills, we can't take credit for any of our success. Here's the facts. Whatever religion you believe in, whatever you believe, whoever you think made you, whatever your God is or science, your talents are gifts. You didn't earn them. You didn't create them. You didn't earn it. You have no credit for it. You can't take any credit for it. Your attributes, you can't take care of those. Those are gifts for people around you.

[00:33:00] Somewhere from the chemical makeup of who you are, from the person who told you how and what not to do. Those are gifts. And my challenge to everyone who's successful in life today, if you're successful with the gifts that you've been given, how much more successful could you be with practice in scrimmaging and developing your skill? 30% is bare minimum. I was going to say, that's a low number. Because if you think about it, sales and athletics are prepared all the time. But here's the big difference. Athletes expect to be coached.

[00:33:29] They expect to have to do the work, right? They expect to be in a gym. They expect to be at batting practice. They expect to be on the practice field. In sales, it's like, I know what I'm doing. Like, eh, right? Like, you missed your number the last two months. By the way, the person who needs to practice the most is the same thing in sports. The superstars don't practice the least because they know they're the best. They practice the most. That's why they are the best. Nobody outworked Michael Jordan. No!

[00:33:58] He was always looking for that edge. And sales is a slight-edge business, right? You can win or lose for the silliest of reasons. And if you're not practicing, you're not growing, like I said, go check out the website. Install that scrimmaging idea in your business. Especially for the CEOs. Because they got to have tougher conversations and they need to practice. And you need somebody that can help you. So, call Nathan. Last question, Nathan. Past or present, any relationship with cigars? Any stories?

[00:34:27] I'm a former nicotine, maybe current, if I'm completely honest, addict. You know, I smoked cigarettes back a long time ago and did all that stuff. And so, cigars became my quitting tool. And then, but I don't smoke cigars all the time. But I smoke them in some of the key areas. And so, what I do is my cousin, when he comes to town, that's our thing. We sit on the back porch. We have a little bourbon. And we smoke a cigar. And then, every year at Guy's Weekend, my brothers and my cousins, we all get together.

[00:34:56] We sit on the fire. And so, cigar for me, it's kind of like me and the boys getting together. And we're sitting usually in the woods, telling lies and drinking a little bourbon. And so, you know, it's a happy place for me. I wish I had more frequency of it. I'm jealous. You know, you're actually enjoying your cigar while we're talking. I think that's my tie to a cigar, is that it's typically around with my most important people in my life, which is my family. And usually hanging out outside in nature, drinking bourbon, telling lies. My wife talks about it.

[00:35:25] I developed two bad habits one summer. Golf and cigars. You know, the cigar tea, have you ever seen that you plug it in the ground? I've got all the tools. One on the golf cart, one that you put over there, right? And usually it's in my hand. I can't do what Jimenez does and keep it in my mouth and swing. I didn't perfect that. But to me, it was you're outside. You're with friends. There's usually some brown involved, right? Some bourbon. And you're just having a good time.

[00:35:53] And it just went hand in hand. And it's become part of my existence. I had a private cigar lounge I built on my property. And then I started doing this consulting work. So it became my office. So I get to smoke cigars all day long. And it freaks people out. I have some people like, what are you? You're having a cigar? Yeah. We're in a business meeting. Uh-huh. Is the smoke bothering you?

[00:36:23] And they're like, well, no. I'm like, okay, what's the problem? Well, I'm a little jealous. I'm like, okay, I'll take that. A little envious. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, go outside or do what you got to do. But there's some people that just like, you shouldn't be having a good time. We're working. Sales is too hard. If I'm not having fun, then I'm doing it wrong as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. Listen, I want to have a good time everywhere. I'm going to have a good time when I die. This life's too short.

[00:36:50] Man, I tell my kids all the time, smiling's free and no one paid for a grouch. Enjoy your life, man. It is. I mean, listen, we don't get, you ever, I do a bit on stage all the time about life suckers. And if you ever watch my demo videos, you'll, you'll see them on there. But it's like, if you don't know who the life sucker is, you don't know a life sucker. It's probably you. Life's too short, man. You got to love it. And so, you know, we talk about expectations. I have a rule. If you work at my office or you work with me, you got to bring your smile. I don't deal with cranky people, man. I just don't.

[00:37:20] I love it. On that note, best of luck, people. Go check out Nathan's stuff. There's a lot there. Bring him in. He's got a cool retreat in Texas where you can go do a company retreat. What do people do when they come to your place besides meet your horse? Man. And so other than ride horses, we do a submerging into workshop. We, my wife and I went and tore down a house built in 1860 and we rebuilt it on property.

[00:37:47] And what you didn't, what I didn't know in the 1860s, they, in the 1900s, they used newspapers, wall installation. So when we tore the building bound, we found all these 1907 newspapers and we put it in brains. But so we have an executive chef. We have a cold, we have two cold plunges. We have wood burning sauna. We have a volleyball court. We do team building activities, skate shooting, horseback riding, welding.

[00:38:10] You know, it's literally, as I told you, my mailbox is a mile from my front door and it's being out in the middle of nowhere, sitting around bonfire bonding. We have no TVs in any rooms. We sleep 31 people and there are no TVs. We do have high speed internet, but you have to go to the common area with your buddies to use it. That's awesome. Thank you so much. This was even more fun than I thought it was going to be. Well, good. Hey, Walter, I had a great time, man. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Take care, sir.

[00:38:42] Thanks so much for listening to Sales and Cigars. If you like what you heard or you want to share your two cents about the show, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. We'd love to hear from you. Now, if listening made you realize you need a little extra sales help, you can check out helixsalesdevelopment.com where you can find free sales tools, blog posts, and an opportunity to reach out and optimize your sales team.

[00:39:09] If you really want to get inside my head, you're in luck because I wrote a book. Check out the link in the show notes to snag a copy of Scale Your Sales, Avoid the Seven Critical Mistakes CEOs Make. It's compact. It gets to the point and you can read it over a cigar and two or three cups of coffee. I'm no one biased, but I highly recommend it. Sales and Cigars is executive produced by me, Walter Crosby, and it's produced by Courtney Blomquist.

[00:39:35] Editing and further production support is done by my team at Resonate Recordings. Thanks for listening.