153: How to Use Sales Skills to Become a Leader People Actually Follow | Mark Hunter

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here's what I tell leaders take care of your people and yourpeople will take care of their customers sales is not a

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job it's not a profession it's a lifestyle because I'm justhelping people jim Ran said it best you become

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the sum of the five people you associate with the most pickthem carefully and and it's taking the time to listen it's

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truly taking the time to listen i I'm I'm going to share onemore thing that leaders need to do the best salespeople they are leaders

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first and the best leaders they know how to sell ideasvision trust and if you

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don't get the connection between sales and leadership thisepisode is a great wakeup call for you welcome to the Learn

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It All Podcast the show for today's leaders who want to getahead and stay ahead because we believe great leaders

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aren't born or made they are always in the making i'm yourhost Damon Leby two-time best-selling author and CEO of

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Learnit a live learning platform that has helped upskillover 2 million people over the past three decades in a moment

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joining me is legendary sales strategist podcast host andauthor Mark Hunter aka

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the sales hunter i can't wait to have Mark share histhoughts on why trust not tactics is the foundation of every sale

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how discovery calls are being misused and how to fix thathow to prospect smarter in the age of AI and the

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surprising thing that great leaders do to really earnloyalty i'm a huge World War II buff so take us back to D-Day

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eisenhower sends a letter to every Allied troop the nightbefore Normandy was he selling or was he leading man you

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follow my content way too closely you are absolutely spotonbecause you're

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right was he selling or was he leading he was doing both andhave you ever met a great leader who's not a good

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salesperson a great salesperson who's not a great leader manman you could give by keynote couldn't you what does

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that show about what sales and leadership have in commonwell I think what what it shows is it's both about

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helping people it's it's about helping people and of coursemy definition of leadership is the same as definition for

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sales is helping others see and achieve what they did notthink was possible

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that's what that message that Dwight D eisenhower sent outto every one of those young men that were about ready to

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go into D-Day knowing it you know it was going to be a roughtime and now I'm not

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putting us into that kind of a situation but we in saleswhat are we doing we

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have to help our customers see and achieve what they did notthink was

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possible we can't do that until we first create a level oftrust a level of

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acceptance and we do that through listening listening towhat the customer that sounds so basic but you know what

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it still works listening building trust where do you seethat eroding these days

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especially when it comes to discovery calls well the problemis everybody wants to race their race through the

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discovery call so much because they're under so muchpressure because their KPI may be not just you know get the

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discovery call but book something after that or or whateverit is or they just you know their KPI is just to get the

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discovery call booked so what do they do they book a lot ofdiscovery calls with people who shouldn't be on a discovery call that thebiggest single problem we

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have in sales is the discovery call that is not takenseriously enough it is not

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the discovery call is when we discover it's not the setup tothe demo and this is what so many tech companies you know

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the discovery call is just to is just to get you turned overto an account manager or somebody who can do the demo

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no no no not at all i want to first find out whether or notyou're worth spending

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time with because if you're not worth spending time with I'mnot going to spend time with you and so I I I just

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think we can't spend enough time in the discovery call i Ireally feel this to

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speed up sales you got to slow down at the beginning tospeed up sales you slow down at the beginning because we're

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spending a tremendous amount of time on that initial call toget the discovery call and then we're taking as much time

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as we need on the discovery call to really uncover what thepain is because

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by the time you get to the next phase you want that customerleaning in you want that customer leaning in saying "I

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am in so much pain i'm in so much pain." Then itbecomes natural and I can I can actually accelerate my way through you

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said natural one of the challenges I see with a lot of salespeople especially new sales people these days it's like

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the robotic you know they come in they have their slide deckand Mark I love it when I'm on the other side of the fence

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where people are selling to me and they and they jump rightinto the slide deck and you try to have any type of organic

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conversation with them so how do you help these individualsgo from being

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let's say robotic to being more authentic rule number 38 thebest sales presentation ever made is the sales

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presentation never given i'll repeat rule number 38 the bestsales presentation ever made is the sales

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presentation never given in other words you know yourcontent so well but you can just have a dialogue you can just

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have a conversation that's what the customer wants but salespeople today are are driven by their managers or the

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company's owned by a PE firm or whatever but there's allthese metrics in place and you got to follow this exact exact

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exact script well excuse me if that's the case why don't wejust have an AI bot do the whole thing okay why Why

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don't we just get rid of salespeople completely oo oh wow his that uh 2029

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we're talking about or 2030 well that leads me to anotherquestion do you think AI will take over uh the

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sales world or where do you think it's going to fit inthat's I'll tell you what if I had an answer to that look excuse me let me goask chat that

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question right now here's the thing um AI's left the stationi mean it is a

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firm place in our lives today ai is not going to replacesalespeople just as we

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thought the internet was going to replace sales people justas we thought everything else along the way it changes the role of salespeopleit may change

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the types of things that people sell in other words there'sa lot more transactions that can just be handled

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you think about it 20 years ago uh to book an airline ticketyou called a travel agent you had to deal with a

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travel agent of course today what's a travel agent that'sunknown so again that's where internet progress moves

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through same thing today we're going to find this where therole of the salesperson is always going to be

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important is to de-educate the customer here's why everystudy says that

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customers don't want to deal with salespeople uh they don'twant to deal with so they interact as late as possible which means they'redoing all

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the research themselves problem is many times that researchis not good h yeah even AI gets it wrong a lot of the time

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so what happens is you the salesperson you actually have nowcome in and deeducate whoa does the customer want to

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be de-educated no but if I can create this level of trustand confidence with

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you then you'll listen to what I have to say and I'll beable to de-educate you to be able to educate you in the real

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solution that you're looking for we do that by questions thequestions we ask

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not the information we share it's the questions we ask whatare some of those questions well here's the questions

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here's some of the questions that I love to ask and and thatis that is why are why is this an issue why is why is this

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a problem and and what have you tried before and whathappens if you don't

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solve this issue what happens if you put in place a solutionthat doesn't

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work how tolerant are you of risk you know what's veryinteresting let's stop right there

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risk risk is only mitigated through value in other words ifI create enough

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value with you that mitigates the risk that you're you knowin other words if if I have something that's going to

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create so much value for you you're you're you're willing tobuy from me and

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for some that could be a risky proposition if they don'tunderstand value but see the more value I create

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for you the more value how do I create value it's trustbecause in the absence of trust low price is everything in the

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absence of trust the customer just says "Hey theinternet is telling me this my

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AI agent is telling me this i might as well do that why do Ineed you the salesperson?"

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So great guest I had on my show uh Matt Dixon uh talks aboutoh love Jolt Effect

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one of one of my favorite books talks about how most dealsare lost because of of non-decision uh or no decision in in

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status quo do you think that building this trust helpsalleviate some of that

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non-decision yes it does it it certainly does now some ofthat non-decision is still going to remain there because

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behind the non-decision may be financial capital mayberesources maybe other things but by having trust the customer

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is willing to stay engaged with you here's what I've alwaysfound the customer won't ghost you if there's a

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level of trust between the two of you right i mean that'sjust logical i mean

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if you have a friend if you have somebody who you who yourespect you deal with you're not going to ghost them if they're reached out toyou you're

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you're going to respond back so I find ghosting is ameasurement of the level

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of trust but going back to your original question that yes II really feel that

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no decision is our number one competitor and it always willbe our number compet

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our number one competitor and that's because we as salespeople don't do a good job of creating value because we

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don't understand the value that the customer is looking forit's not our value it's not it's not what we think

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it's what the customer perceives not what the customerbelieves is what customer perceives how do you understand

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a little bit more about what how they perceive it I guess iswhat I'm saying yeah that that great great question and

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what I got to do is I have to get them to be able to sharewith me what's going to happen if you don't

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solve this issue let's tie this into your other initiativesin your company

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what I love to do and this is what I tell sales people I gotto go upstream and downstream i got to understand the

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customer i got to understand what are their problemsupstream and I got to understand what their problems are downstream and I gotto tie my solution

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in to where it either fits one or the other upstream ordownstream or both now

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what does this mean that means if you don't buy from me ifyou don't buy now

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you're not going to be able to implement XXX it may be thatI may be a company

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that that sells a new type of flooring for your for yourfactories okay it's a

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new type flooring that can withstand more pounds per squareinch

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and it's important because you're going to be bringing innew equipment new equipment that's double the size double the weight and youbetter have flooring

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that can handle it and you're bringing in that equipmentbecause you've got customer orders that you need to be able

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to fulfill at a speed that you aren't able to f fulfill nowso by tying it in

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all the way downstream suddenly getting this new flooringthat's going to be

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able to have a a greater PSI h

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it make it makes sense but if I'm just trying to sellflooring doesn't doesn't have any meaning i got to tie it into

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something else so what I hear you saying is you're you'realso trying to learn how to solve their your customers

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customers challenges yes you know what's funny one way toreally understand your

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level of trust is are you able to bring to your customerinsights about their

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customers that they don't know h if I can bring insights tomy customers about

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their customers wow you don't think I don't earn a seat atthe table that's how I

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earn a seat at the table i mean that's next level i I thinkit also earns trust if whether it's a discovery call or even

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a you know a follow-up meeting being able to say things likeyou know other customers I work with in a similar

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situation like you and being able to share what they'reseeing out there in in different industries huge and this is

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where AI comes into play because I could I I I can plug yourindustry into AI okay I'm selling into your industry but

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now let me look at some of your customers and who are yourcustomers selling to what are they doing let's plug that in AI it's a greatknowledge

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source that literally within 15 20 minutes I can bebrilliant i can be

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brilliant now it's not that I know all the information it'sjust that I know more than any other salesperson they've

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ever talked to that's how I get a seat at the table and I'vetalked about this with many sales

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leaders these days to set yourself apart you have to have alittle personalization when it comes to either

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prospecting discovery and whether it's deep research in chatGBT or whatever

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it's really not that difficult and I don't think there's anyexcuse for the reps out there to and sales leaders to

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not be doing that little bit of extra work there's not andthink about the connection now think about how we opened

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the show very early on you talked about General Dwight Deisenhower in D-Day and

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it's like you got me right there because you were playingback to me something that I share in a lot of my keynote

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speeches it's like wow this guy actually remembers it yousee that

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personalization pulls the customer in and again this is anAI tool that we can

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use because we can we can go out to AI and and begin tounderstand where this person went to school where they yada

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yada yada and begin to piece but then when I can tie thattogether with information that you've heard them share

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this is where I say salespeople you've got to play back onevery subsequent conversation you have

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with the customer something they said on a previous calllater on this afternoon I'll be dealing

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with a prospect who happens to be the brother-in-law of aperson I know who

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was a VP of sales of a company I used to do a lot of workwith don't think that I'm not going to

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ask him hey how's Lou doing have you talked to him latelyand again it's that

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personalization it's that personal connection you're pullingit together i mean here's a tip if if these calls recorded in Fathom GongChorus it's so

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easy to throw all those summaries into um into chat GBT orClaude and pull that

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information out for you and it's also like asking thosequestions that you asked Mark or or Gold one other question

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I kind of like is okay if you're going to go for thesolution without me walk us through what that would look like

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have them say that and then in your followup I'm giving awaymy secrets here uh in your follow-up you could just

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verbatim have pull out from chatbt and how your organizationcould help with that exactly and and since you revealed

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a secret I'll reveal another one i love asking customers howhave you made decisions like this in the

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past because what I'm doing is I'm listening for namesbecause here's what I'm finding and Matt Dixon talk we were

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talking about Matt Dixon earlier uh more people are involvedin every decision than ever before and and titles

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mean less and less because of reorganizations and changesetc etc so I I'm listening hey how have you made

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decisions like this in the past i'm listening for othernames i'm listening for other people i'm guess what that's a

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contact I got to make that's a relationship I got to createbut it's all of these little tools and then guess

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what now I can go back in i can plug those names into AI ican plug those names into LinkedIn i can begin and I

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can really build a customer tree a customer tree where everyone of these

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people are a limb and there's all kinds of of of shade thatthey're throwing

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onto other things other topics guess what it makes me moreknowledgeable as I go in and speak with you does it slow

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down the selling process no it doesn't because of AI but itallows me to be so

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much more knowledgeable and this is quickly becoming tablestakes out there folks this is not this is not you know

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blue sky we're going to be doing this in 5 years this iswhat happening right now today so all these deals these days yeah

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they have sometimes 15 decision makers when it comes down orpeople involved in a decision a lot of times one of one of

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my sales rep comes to me and says you know I can't getaccess to this person or that person uh it's a big struggle do

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you have any tips for how you can go from the individualyou're speaking with

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to other stakeholders yeah i mean the easiest way is juststart reaching out to other people i I'm telling people

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today if if you got a company that you want to prospect intodon't go for one contact go for five six seven eight 10

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contacts and you're going to have to be hitting all of themand and you can hit all of them with basically the same messages may have tochange because of

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departments they're in etc etc but you're hitting it becauseI'm waiting to see who are the first couple voices that

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are going are going to perk up and I'm going to havemeetings i'm going to have conversations with any of them now here's the dealmany times what I find

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is that the initial people who respond to you those are justthe happy talkers those are just the happy talkers oh wow

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this is cool this is cool they they love a shiny object theylove a squirrel right right but they're not anywhere

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close to being the decision maker but it's okay i can usethem to gain information but see if if I if I if I

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stay with just them I'm never going to get very far i'mnever going to get very I'm dealing with that right now with a

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company in in uh uh Asia and uh this guy is just a happytalker and I've had to

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go around and make relationships with others in the companyfor a very simple reason otherwise I'm not I'm not going

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to get anywhere because here's the other thing that that ishappening happy talkers many times will say "Oh I I'm

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going to help you get this deal across." At best atbest they're a coach but not even a

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really good coach they're just on the side like go go gothey're not willing to put themselves on the carpet they're

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not willing to throw them you know we talk about championyou know med pick selling we talk about having a champion

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here's the deal i'm finding fewer people today want to bechampions than ever because they're afraid of being on the

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wrong side of the decision you know they're kind of like alittle more cautious a little more they they'll

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they'll kind of lean in but they really won't go to the matfor you they don't want to stick their neck out there they

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don't want to stick their neck out because they're afraidthat hey we just went through a reorg we might go through another reorg wedon't know what the

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economy is and I could be out of a job real soon i can'tafford to be there again this comes back to why you need

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multiple people curing your water now one of the

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ways that you do this is by way of social media we weretalking in the green room about social media and and

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and the power because again people find us and are attractedto us i I'm I was

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at a con I was at I was at a conference this morning and Iwas not speaking at I was just attending it and I had half a

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dozen people come up to me oh hey I saw your thing yesterdayi saw your thing on LinkedIn i saw this video yada yada yada

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and it's like I don't know who these people are but they'refollowing me they know who I

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am they know who I am and this is where brand equity andpersonal equity is

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becoming more and more important in this AI world because wehave to be engulfing

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we have to engulf more people than ever to be able to closethe sale i can't agree with you more on that but I still

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struggle with some of the sales individuals individualcontributors I uh coach or mentor who think it they're

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like I'm not a thought leader i don't need a personal brandi mean what do you have to say to individuals like that

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i'll tell you what that's fine because you know what thetrain left the station and they're they're not going to be on it you have gotto be seen as a thought

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leader here's why nobody's taking a meeting with anybodywithout first googling them

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without first going out and seeing what it says and I'lltell you what if if

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there's if the world is silent about you he I I tell this topeople i rarely carry business cards around anymore

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because I go "Hey look just Google me mark Hunter thesales hunter you'll find me." And and and you

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know if if if somebody can't be found on the internetsomething's wrong is this is this a person that you want to be

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spending time with so you do have to create your personalbrand you do have to create your brand equity um you have

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to be seen as a thought leader and it's not as difficult asit is because your what's your niche what's the niche that

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you play in stay tight don't they I I I know I know how manybillions of people there are on the face of the earth i

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don't care about all them knowing me i just want 100 peopleto know me or 200 people or whatever with that's it that's

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all I need and I can be very successful as a salespersonniche yourself understand

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where your audience lives and go to them we were talking wewere talking in the green room i'm very big in LinkedIn you

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have 350,000 subscri uh followers i'd say so well I mean heylook at you with

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900,000 on YouTube excuse me i I I bow to you i bow to you ibow to you man i'd

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love to have love to have 10% of those please send them myway work on that um but here's what we were talking about

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Tik Tok and and and one of my staff people told me"Mark

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you do have a Tik Tok account." I said "I didn'tknow that i did not know that." And we're kind to well should we dosomething i don't know i don't know

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you know again so I mean I've built my business off beingvery tight in the

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social media platform that is the most responsive for me forme it's LinkedIn for you it's YouTube and it's worked

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very well i have to say though in B2B sales which you knowLearn It plays in uh you know with our live learning

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platform uh without a doubt uh LinkedIn is is critical andand I just want to

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point out for anybody who's a sales rep out there uh youshould carve out time on your calendar be disciplined and

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whether it's commenting or creating uh content i I thinkyou're really a mess if you don't spend the time doing that i

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you have to and and it's not it it's not more than 10minutes 10 minutes a day and people say "I don't have time." Well

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excuse me how much time are you going to spend on Netflixtonight okay excuse me i mean it this is I mean we have far

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more time we have enough time to do what we feel we need todo it just people

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don't feel the need to do it i want to go back to theleadership side of things what are some of the great traits you

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see in uh sales leaders understanding each individual'spersonal

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goals you have to really and I'm not I'm not violating HRrules are not violating

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but it it it's just understanding your people well enough towhere you understand what their personal goals are

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and what motivates them because they may have a kid thatthey're trying to get

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into a specific school they may have an elderly parent thatthey're dealing with they may have who knows what the they

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may just be trying to move to another part of town orthey're into gardening or whatever it might be show an interest

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in that show an interest in that and it's amazing at whatpeople will do for

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you and that means you start the conversation we'll saythey're in the gardening and we're recording this in

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the spring of the year and you say "Hey what have youbeen able to plan so far?" You walk up to them and ask them

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that something on a Tuesday morning a Wednesday morning aMonday morning or you know you text them that or whatever

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they're going to "Hey thank you." They're going tobe blown it It's those personal thing here's what I tell

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leaders take care of your people and your people will takecare of their

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customers here's what I found as a leader treats theirpeople is the exact

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same way that their people their salespeople will treattheir customers what does this mean this means if you

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have a 2:00 meeting you show up at 2:00 you you you're thereyou're you're there

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early you you're there early you respect their time youunderstand them you also

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have to be willing to give them grace to vent let them letthem let them share

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ideas remember we don't hire people if if if you are hiringpeople to tell them

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what to do you're hiring the wrong people now okay nowthat's a broadstroke statement i totally get that and but

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Steve Jobs said something like that right eve Jobs said"Why is that we hire really smart people and we tell them

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what to do shouldn't they be telling us what to do?"Yeah this whole thing people aren't all latitude total totally

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get that but you have to be able to give your people enoughgrace to fail and if

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they fail it's okay it's okay we had a situation in mycompany recently where something

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did happen and um I owed an apology to some customers and II I sent the note i

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said "Hey I apologize i I I dropped the ball onit." My staff came back to me i said "Mark you didn't drop theball." I

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said "No I you know they they you know," I said"No I I was the one because you

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guys work for me i got to own it." And it's amazing butthat simple action

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um earned more credibility with them because again it's justlife happens

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right there for for all the leaders out there listeningyou're showing that you have your people's back you know uh even

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though you had in this particular case had nothing to dowith it but it was still probably somebody on your team so

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if it's if if it's somebody on your team they were on myteam that's your responsibility and you know I was a

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baseball player for all this and I I had some great coachesbut one coach that was um you know I said I never wanted to

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be like was when things went well he took all the credit itwas all about him

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but when things didn't go well Mark he pushed all the blameon you say "How am I supposed to do that how are we

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supposed to win if our fourth up hitter strikes out?"That was me you know so um having people's back is so crucial and

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there there's a flip side of that and it's all around ethicsand integrity i had a situation i had totally forgotten

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about this my wife my wife reminded me of this about 30years ago last

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corporate job I was in uh had a situation where we awardedsomething a a

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significant award to the wrong person and um it was somebodyon my team unfortunately had put the numbers

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together went to their manager and and by the time it got tome I figured my manager had checked the numbers but

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nobody had checked we didn't and I had to go in to the CEOand um so we did

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this the CEO sat there and immediately came up with a

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cockaman reason well the reason we did it this year wasbecause we wanted to call attention to this and made up this

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big fat and and and okay he was trying to cover my butt butI'll tell you what

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he stepped on all moments of ethics and integrity and Icould never view that

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individual cuz I went in and I went in i said "Hey Itake the blame i I'm going to write the note right now we're going

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to get it out we're going to correct the situation."And he said "No no no we're going to we're going to do this we're going todo this and so again you have

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to allow people to take responsibility when they step up andwant to take responsibility but again it's it's how

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you help them through it and in this situation this CEO u Inever had respect

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for that individual after that point in time ever period iwas going to say what what what was going through your mind

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when when you s there listening to him say that kind ofstuff i should have just quit right then because I'm not

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going to work for this and and it was funny probably abouttwo years later I did I did wind up I did wind up quitting

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um because again there was just no there was no how could Itrust anything that came from this person's mouth i couldn't

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and if you don't have trust what what do you have reallyespecially when it comes to the CEO of your organization now one

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story I came across uh about you that I loved that you couldshare about a

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different leader was a time I believe your dad was sick andum uh a gentleman

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uh stepped up to the plate for you can you share that onejohn Canavan i mean I

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can still tell you the exact office and everything i waswork I was working in New York and John was my boss and and uh

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li living in New York uh we didn't I I think we had one kidat the time we were broke we were broke and my father was in

28:48

Seattle and he had a major heart make major heart issue andum I walked in to

28:55

John's office and I said um John my dad has got real and Igot to go and John

29:03

without missing me he forgot to tell you that but there's ameeting in Seattle there's a meeting in Seattle

29:09

yeah you need to go right now what was that code for thatwas code for don't worry I'm going to pay for your tickets

29:15

i'm going to pay for your ticket and um he did and umwithout even without even

29:22

batting an eye and he earned so much respect for me so

29:27

much because when I got back 3 or 4 days later first thinghe asked me "How's your dad doing how's your mom doing?"

29:33

And there was no meeting in Seattle there was no meeting inSeattle there there was no Yeah yeah but I mean he

29:39

just without missing a beat he said "Mark there's amedia in Seattle you got to go right now." And um it that meant

29:47

so much to me now you could argue was that was that ethicsand integrity hey the amount of money for the airline

29:53

ticket compared to the tickets that we so as a departmentcuz we were travel 200 days it changed change um but he

30:01

earned so many extra hours of work out of me so much respecti mean there was time and time again um that I would

30:08

literally go to the mad go to the mad for that gentleman andyou know what's fascinating that gentleman um he was I I

30:17

just I held him I I was revered him i mean it was that muchrespect it was

30:24

interesting i didn't know this at the time but um he had aspecial needs

30:30

child he had a special needs child i I'd learned that halfafter a while and um

30:37

as I got to know John he shared with me he said "Youknow it's interesting but my son has helped me tremendously

30:47

understand how to deal with people how to understandlife." He loved his special needs child he spent hours and

30:53

hours with him and if you stop and think about that here wasa personal situation

30:58

that undoubtedly shaped John's career John's life and SatSatia Nardella CE

31:07

CEO of Microsoft um had a special needs child passed awayabout two years ago now maybe three and

31:14

Satia has said the same thing he said his his son made ahuge impact on me and

31:19

and it's taken the time to listen it's truly taken the timeto listen i I'm I'm going to share one more thing that

31:25

leaders need to do time is the most valuable asset any of ushave uh it's the only time it's the only asset that

31:32

you can't make more of you can't make more time and yourpeople are watching

31:37

how you use your time this is why I say everybody in theorganization needs to read the book by James Clear Atomic

31:42

Habits it's a powerful book because again if you don't useyour time well

31:47

how will your salespeople how will your people use theirtime well they won't so again that's just one of those side

31:53

things use your time well be incredibly efficient it's yourtime your mind and your network these are your three most

31:59

important assets okay so we just talked about your time youyour your idea is your your objective is to protect your

32:05

time every day in other words make the day work for you youdon't work you don't work for the day two your mind

32:11

expand your mind every day your objective is to learnsomething new that you can put in your mind and the third

32:16

one is your network you nurture your network and the keyword is nurture in

32:21

other words you're adding to the value of your networkyou're not using your network hey I need more referrals i need

32:26

more lead d no no you're helping them you're helping itevery salesperson

32:32

needs to have a quot every week of the number of referralsthey're going to give to other people whoa wow but I want

32:39

to have people in my network who not only we're tradingreferrals back and forth but I can I can ask them questions

32:45

they can ask me questions and and and we challenge we holdeach other accountable and we grow people have to be part of a

32:53

community when they're part of a team the old Africanproverb if you want to go fast go alone if you want to go far

32:59

go with others that's what your network is any investmentperson is going to say you spread your risk you spread your

33:06

risk you you you allocate your funds based on various thingssame thing with

33:12

your network you want to have your network consisting ofdifferent people different walks of life different

33:18

mindsets different again this is a collective pool becauseour moms were

33:23

right i'm sure your mom did i'm sure your mom told you whenyou went to school in the morning be careful who you play with at recess todayright i mean

33:31

I'm I'm I'm sure she did i mean all of our moms did this becareful the friends you choose that's what your network is

33:37

your your network is who you are jim Ran said it best youbecome the sum of the

33:43

five people you associate with the most pick them carefullythat's why you got to be careful of of the shows you watch

33:50

uh the websites you look at etc etc i mean in in this erathat we live in today uh news can be very toxic and man

33:58

it can work you up into a tizzy pretty quickly you can'tcontrol it the sun's still going to come up in the morning

34:04

that's a news news flash to everyone it will come uptomorrow morning and uh control focus on what you can control

34:11

and let the rest of it go if I'm going to onboard peoplevirtually I just have to be prepared that I'm going to have to

34:17

spend more time with them that means I got to go I got to goface to face Zoom to Zoom with them team to team with them

34:23

i got to be connected with them more than ever and you gotto have other people reaching out to them this is why

34:29

it's so important that even virtually you may need to say"Hey every morning we're going to have a 10-minute rally

34:35

call on Teams everybody's on their screens on here wego." Boom and you say

34:42

"We're going to end the day the same way." Inother words there there's still so many things that you can

34:47

do just because you're virtually doesn't mean you can't dothem you can do them i

34:52

I we had we had to put our dog down but um when I had a dogand no it's okay at

34:59

at the beginning of co my dog would bark and I go oh no nono then after a while

35:04

I said forget it when when my dog would bark I go supersales dog just closed another sale it's okay there there's

35:12

there's home life stuff that gets in the way that's okayaccept it accept this is

35:17

leaders you've got to be accepting that there will bedeviations and there will be

35:23

um more give and take in terms of the day i got to go pickthe kid up at

35:28

school i got to do But hey employees you owe your you oweyour company a favor

35:34

that if you are cutting out for 30 minutes every day thatyou're making sure that you're giving back to them that time you in other wordsit has to

35:41

be a two-way street we have lost work we as a workingpopulation have lost work

35:48

from home rights because we abused

35:53

it focus on the metrics that matter u so many times whatwhat happens is is we

36:00

focus on all kinds of all kinds of other other numbers ohyou got to make sure you do this this this who cares and at

36:07

the end of the day it's about putting points on thescoreboard closing sales i get that but I got to do that from the activities Ido for instance in in my

36:14

own company I have one metric every day five conversations ihave to have five conversation if I have five

36:19

conversations a day my company's running well and those arefive conversations with either customers prospects or

36:27

people who can refer me that's it and it's very simple it'sdon't don't

36:33

over complicate it too many managers over complicate thingsand then sales

36:39

people look at and go I don't know what I'm supposed to dothe same thing with priorities your your priority might be

36:44

okay this is the one service we need sold this quarter we weneed to make sure that we get this added on to our

36:51

orders this that's what you focus on don't sit there andgive them 18 different priorities because then they

36:58

look at it and go "Screw it i can't make those 18 andand I and I just go do what I want to do." Doesn't work sales is

37:05

just people it's people it it is just Here's the deal umsales is purely the

37:11

medium that I have chosen to be able to influence and impactpeople go back to

37:17

my definition of leadership it's helping others see andachieve what they didn't think was possible if I could do that

37:22

effectively by being a plumber I would have been a plumberif I could have done that effectively by being an electrician

37:27

I would have been an electrician i feel like I can do thatbest by being a salesperson here's the thing it's not

37:34

what I sell salespeople don't get hung up on what you sell ihear more sales people say "Well if only we had better

37:41

products." Hey your focus is people people your goaleach day is to earn the

37:47

right the privilege honor and respect to be able to comeback and have a conversation with that person you spoke to today again at alater time that's it

37:55

and if I can have enough of those conversations I'm going tofind success i'm only going to have those conver of

38:02

those conversations if I'm taking the time to show interestand listening to people and it's amazing at what can

38:09

happen sales is not a job it's not a profession it's alifestyle because I'm just helping people we have to be

38:17

continuously learning for instance my number one form oflearning is by

38:22

listening to podcasts on double speed or triple speed whenI'm working out in the morning and uh I listen to podcasts and

38:29

again that's the way I take in a lot of knowledge i alsoread a lot we have to be and people say I don't have time to

38:35

read that do you have time for Netflix do you have time forthis you have time to read i am eager to learn i'm going to

38:41

share a quick story charlie Munger he passed away about ayear and a half ago now charlie Munger was 99 when he passed

38:47

away he was the sidekick to Warren Buffett and he was beinginterviewed by Becky Quick one day becky Quick of uh uh

38:56

uh CNBC and uh Becky Quick was interviewing uh

39:02

Charlie Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and he asked him

39:08

uh what what books are you reading and I don't remember whatBill and I don't remember what Warren said but this is

39:15

when Charlie was about 92 he said "I'm reading a couplebooks on electrical

39:20

engineering." The look on Becky Quick's face was like"What why are you reading

39:25

books on electrical engineering?" and he said,"Idon't think I've ever learned really enough about it so I need to

39:31

learn now." And she said "Hold it at 92 years ofage don't you think you can get a pass on that?" He said "No no Ihave

39:39

to be continuously learning." Okay if this guy can bedigging into electrical

39:45

engineering books at the age of 92 with all success I thinkwe can do

39:51

the same every day it's a privilege to be able to go out andinfluence and impact others sales like I said earlier

39:58

helping others see and achieve but here's the deal comesdown to really prospecting so many people are afraid of

40:04

prospecting if you have the ability to help someone you oweit to them to reach out to them if you have the ability to

40:10

help someone you owe it to them to reach out to them i tellevery salesperson make the call because it's amazing at

40:17

what will happen when you can help customers mark wow what agreat

40:22

conversation we covered so much i feel like there'ssomething in there for everybody for leaders sales leaders and

40:28

sales reps we talked about how sales is leadership andleadership is sales uh you shared the three most important

40:35

assets that people could have time mind and networking yougave us great questions

40:41

to ask in discovery and talked about how important discoveryis and one of my favorites was if you have the ability to

40:48

help someone then it's you owe it to them to reach out andwe also got into the impact that AI will have on sales in

40:56

the future and so much more mark I can't say enough howgreat this conversation

41:01

was and thank you for being here and for our listenersplease do me a big favor if you haven't already rate and review

41:08

the Learn It All podcast on your favorite platform and I'dalso like you to take this episode and share it with

41:14

anybody that you know who's either in sales or wants to bein sales there's something for everyone and until next

41:20

time everybody stay curious keep learning and have a greatday thank you

41:25

i had this self-limiting belief around money that that wasfor other people

41:31

that somehow that was an evil and that took

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