11: Everyone Needs A Vision

Hey, everybody. It's John Barrows with Jay Barrows Consulting and Make It Happen Mondays. Happy Monday. Today's session is going to be about everybody needs a vision. And this got me thinking based on my week last week, which was pretty insane week last week. I don't know if any of you are following me on Snapchat or whatever, but I left Boston on Monday, did training in D.C. on Tuesday, San Francisco on Wednesday, Santa Barbara on Thursday, and then New York. Took the red eye from Santa Barbara to New York on Friday morning and landed and went to VaynerMedia, so Gary Vaynerchuk, and did their 4D, which is this deep dive on their business. Because the way it works is I actually looked at VaynerMedia to do my marketing for me, right?

And I looked into them, and I think it was about a half million dollars starting. So I was like, yeah, that's probably not going to happen. But what they did is now they have it so that you can, anybody, well, it's for 10 grand, but anybody can sign up for a one day deep dive where they go to VaynerMedia. And they go, all the department heads come in and they do a presentation on the different things like personal brand building, social media channels, all these different things. And it was from nine o'clock in the morning till seven o'clock at night. And then Gary comes in the end and does a Q&A, which was awesome. So it was a pretty cool experience. And I wouldn't say there was one huge takeaway.

There's a pic of me and Gary, by the way. I wouldn't say there was one huge takeaway because a lot of people have asked me, hey, John, what was the one key takeaway? I don't think there was one. But it definitely got me to think. And it got me to think about where things are going and some of the things I need to be doing to improve my business, improve my brand. And it also validated some of the stuff that I was doing too. But I think it goes in the realm, you know, under the umbrella of what I wanted to talk about today, which was, you know, everybody needs a vision. You know, I've been doing sales now and business development and starting companies and those type of things for about 20 plus years at this point.

And a lot of executives come up to me a lot and say, hey, John, you know, how do I get my team bought into what I'm trying to do? You know, I try to get them to do this. They just don't seem bought into it. And my first question of them all is, hey, okay, let's, you know, talk about some strategies and some things you can do to help people get all on the same page. But let me ask you, you know, when was the last time you articulated your vision, your true vision of the company or of the department or whatever, and share that with them and help them understand how they play a part in that, right? Because that's really my experience is the only way that you can get people to really be a part of something bigger than themselves and do more than just their job is to get them to feel like they're part of something bigger.

I remember my first company that, you know, that my friend Chris Merrill started, he, you know, for some reason, you know, the group that he hired and we had is from an executive standpoint, we all worked our asses off. We were all, you know, pretty smart, worked our asses off. And we all just felt part of something bigger, which is why we were willing to work for, you know, not that much money in the beginning and drive towards what we ultimately ended up selling to staples. So that piece of it, I can't tell you how important it is for you and your personal careers. Like what's your vision for, I'm sorry, forget about your career for your life, right? What's the vision? Where do you want to be?

You know, what kind of lifestyle you want to be living, paint that picture and then drive everything towards that, right? So that's where your goals and all that other stuff come into play about how it all supports that. And I've said this before, and I'll say it again, you know, if you don't set goals, um, on a regular basis, then you're just along for the ride. Um, you're letting somebody else dictate the path and you're just there for the ride. So I really recommend goal setting and that aligns with vision. And, and I say that for you personally, and then also as we work with our customers, right? Everybody needs a vision of where they're trying to get to and, and how we can help them get there.

And if they don't have a vision, it's our job to help them create that vision or at least show them what that vision could be. And, and why I think it's so important is because it gives direction. It allows us to, to help us understand if we are a fit here, because if we can help someone get to that vision, then we, we have the right to push. We have the right to be the challenger sale that everybody talks about, or be that thought leader or push people. If, if we can align with their vision and their goals of what they're trying to accomplish as a business or an individual, then we have no right to push. We have no right to challenge them in any way, shape or form. And so that's why a lot of what I do from an, uh, you know, when I'm talking to clients and executives and decision makers is to really help understand what they're trying to ultimately achieve, not just with the product or service I'm trying to sell them right now, but as a business, where are they trying to go?

You know, for their careers, what are they trying to get accomplished? And then really understand that and dig deep to find those. And then once I find those and I can tie that to something that I can help support, then again, that's where I can push. And that's why if you've been through any of the trainings like Sandler, right? Sandler has the, uh, the pain funnel. It's like you ask questions, you effectively just keep asking why, right? Like why, why is that important to you? What does that mean to you? Those types of things, because what you're trying to dig for is that ultimate pain of, Ooh, there's that quantifiable metric that I can push on, which is great, you know, and that's why we have to dig for those.

But what we can't lose track of is, is pleasure. And when I say that, you know, we're all taught to sell to pain in sales. It's like, Oh, you know, find the pain, quantify it, and then dig into it. But, but visionary stuff, you know, pleasure is something that can't be ignored either. And I think too much of us do, right? So we stop focusing on what they could do. And we try to focus on what their problem is here short term. So, cause it's an easier sale, ultimately like pain drives inbound leads there. It's easier for everybody to agree on pain. Um, and they're usually a lot shorter term sales cycles, right? So they're easier sales, ultimately, whereas pleasure oriented sales, where you're painting a vision for somebody and you're trying to help them get there, they take longer, but usually they're much bigger.

Um, they're less price sensitive and they really, um, they lead to much better relationships long-term. And so as much as I, I'm not going to say here, ignore pain, cause it's important, but also don't ignore pleasure. And that ties into what I was saying earlier about the vision is really helping somebody, you know, or at least trying to understand where they're trying to go, you know, in the next 12, for example, in the next 12 to 24 months, you know, when your CEO stood up and said, this is what we need to get accomplished this year or whatever, you know, what, what were those things? Help me understand what those were. And, and what about what we're talking about here helps align with those and helps can achieve those.

What are some of the metrics that you're going to use to help, um, justify that? Right. Because if, if the person that you're talking to doesn't know that, then you might be able to get something small, you know, a few licenses here or there, but when it comes to the bigger picture and a bigger deal, it's going to be a lot harder to justify that stuff. Right. Especially as you move upstream to go get budget, the people at the, above the power line, they understand hopefully what that vision is and they can tell whether or not that solution is going to help them get there. And if it can, they're going to be able to make a pretty quick decision on, yeah, that, yeah, that aligns or no, that doesn't.

And so that's why I asked those questions, even to people below that power line. So recommendations. And by the way, ask questions if you got them. Um, I don't know who's online right now, but you know, if you got questions, feel free to ask them. But, um, you know, recommendations for today is I'd really sit down and think through what your vision is for what you're doing, uh, and, and what your life wants to be. And then back into it with some goals of how to get there. For me, what the, what the day with VaynerMedia really did for me was help me realize I've always had a vision and goals, but I don't, I don't adjust them enough. I don't, um, change them enough. Right. It's like, cause they need to evolve.

And so for me right now, you know, I'm in the middle of trying to figure out from my business standpoint, a lot of stuff about, from a personal standpoint about how do I, how do I spend more time with my daughter and my wife, you know, how do I get off of a plane as much as I can? And I, and I've been overly fixated on this recurring revenue thing. Like how do I, you know, how do I drive recurring revenue so I can get myself off of a plane? And what I lost track of was, you know, you can't really create recurring revenue without creating recurring value. And so one of the things I'm trying to accomplish now is I need to reset my expectations of what I'm delivering out there so I can add recurring revenue or I'm sorry, recurring value.

So that then recurring revenue is usually in line with that. Okay. Um, the other thing is, you know, there's, there's a lot of different things going on right now for me. And so from an evolution standpoint for me and also the profession of sales, I'm looking at it right now, whereas I really felt while I was like, Hey, let me teach these kids sales techniques and things that they can do to help sell better today. Like that was really what this training did for me when I took it, uh, 10 years ago, it was okay. You know, here's a technique that I can do that, that I can send an email to an executive that'll drive a result right now. And that's awesome. I love it. Right. Cause I, I didn't, you know, appreciate the theory of sales and this huge long process or anything.

I wanted to know what can I do right now to drive results so I can, you know, hit my targets, make more money, whatever. And, um, and that's still the case, you know, the techniques, I mean, hopefully what you get out of me with tips and all the stuff that I share on social and stuff are things that you can do short term. But what I'm shifting to and what I'm noticing is that, you know, sales is evolving at such a rapid pace right now. And technology is coming into our world at a rate that is, that is scary. Uh, you know, I saw this, um, artificial intelligence and I mean, I talk about this all the time, but there's a company that I work with that created a, an email, right? One of the big things about this training used to be very technique oriented.

And there was this one email approach that was, um, uh, where it was about doing some homework on somebody and sending a very customized, thoughtful email to an executive, getting a referral down. And, um, and you know, I'd say probably three or four years ago, I mean, no joke, the results were obvious because the templated crap would get you a one to 2% response rate at best. But if you did your homework and you did this approach, right, you know, you're talking to 15 to 20% response rate. I mean, that's what I was getting about three, four years ago. It's not the case anymore. Um, because the, because the noise right now is so loud with, you know, content marketing and all that other stuff and artificial intelligence.

I mean, like I was saying, I, I partnered up with this company that, um, created an email and they sent it to me as an example, like, Hey John, here's an example of what our artificial intelligent, uh, bot can put together. And when I tell you this email was better than one that I could have written, I mean, I read it and I'm like, my immediate response back to them was there was no human involvement in this thing. Are you out of your mind? And they said, no, I mean, they, they picked the article that they told it to go look at, but that's it. They did one piece of input and they said, here, go, go write us an email. And the email was better than I could have written. And I'm sitting there going, Holy shit.

Like if, if that's happening right now, and this isn't, this isn't too far away, by the way, until that becomes mass, uh, mass appeal. I mean, as far as the ability for that to do that at scale is going to be here within the year. I've seen it. Okay. So if that's happening right now, then what in the world am I training, right? What am I teaching reps on how to do and, and how relevant is it going to be here for the next few? I mean, maybe for the next few years, but what, what else? What after that? And so now going back to vision and what I need to, what I'm working on right now is I'm thinking through what is my vision? What is my ultimate guiding light of what I'm trying to get accomplished here?

Um, and what am I trying to do for my quote unquote customers? Right. And, and I'm, I'm honing in on this evolution theme of helping sales reps evolve, helping sales reps stay ahead, or at least, you know, teach them the skills they, they need to, to get better on a consistent basis. I mean, I look at this for my daughter, right? You know, I don't know what's going to happen. She's, she's six years old. Okay. I don't know what she's going to grow up into quite honestly. I'm, I'm pretty scared to death about it, but you know, as far as education is concerned, you know, learning how to take a test, I'm not really all that concerned about that. What I'm really trying to figure out is how do I teach my daughter to think.

And so that like critical thinking skills, so that, so that when she's presented with an obstacle or a challenge or whatever it is that she can make a good decision, right? She can, she can do an assessment of it very quickly and make a decision one way or another of what to do. Okay. And that to me is what, you know, I'm trying to figure out with her and where I'm evolving my mindset on, on what my job is, is here as Jay Barrow's consulting and doing sales training and consulting services. It's I really want to change to try to, and I've been changing. I've been evolving this training over the years to, to really help reps evolve, help reps think about how to get better every day so that they don't become irrelevant when stuff like this artificial intelligence hits the road, you know, hits it's the mainstream.

And so that's why you'll hear me, you know, I've said it before, I'll say it again, you know, the number one tip that I can share with anybody. And the number one takeaway from all my trainings is, is AB split test, right? AB split test every single thing you do, you know? And when I say that, I mean, again, take one thing, whatever you're trying to figure out, you're trying to call into CFOs in the healthcare industry. Well, come up with two different approaches to CFOs in the healthcare industry and send 20 emails out with this approach and 20 emails out with that approach and see which one yields a higher response rate, you know, objection handling, write down the objection, come up with two different ways of approaching it 10 times, 10 times, see which one yields a higher response rate.

That way you get better all the time. And if you have that mentality, you know, you can really start to figure out what works for you personally, compared to what works for somebody else with a different personality or whatever. So right now, you know, this week that I'm home, actually, I'm home all week, this week, which is rare. You know, I'm going to be doing a lot of whiteboard sessions and strategy sessions, really trying to hone in on what that vision is for me. And then what are, this is another thing that came out of the Gary Vaynerchuk thing, which is, you know, what's your guiding, what's, what's that guiding light, if you will. And then what are the principles that the pillars that support that, you know, and I have 12 guiding principles for myself, right, which I've had those for a long time, which are my 12 guiding principles for success.

And I wrote that a long time ago, I came up, I don't know where I came up with that, or who suggested it or where I read it, but I was like, that makes sense. And so I wrote down 12 guiding principles for myself. And, and I use that, especially when I was just direct selling and also as a manager. And I, and I shared those with my, um, my employees. And I said, look, this is where I come from. Okay. This, these are my guiding principles here. I'm not saying that I need these to be yours, but I need you to understand where I'm coming from. So that when I give you feedback or when I, when I give you, you know, whatever it is or coaching, that's where it's coming from. Okay. And it was a nice way to just set expectations about where it was, but those guiding principles, I need to now again, refine because they should then everything that I do as a business should be part of those guiding principles that support the overall vision.

And so that's the exercise that I'm going to be going through this week is to kind of identify what is that guiding light? What are the core guiding principles? I have 12 of them. Um, when I asked Gary and them, they said, you know, you should really have no more than six because then, you know, you create content that supports those things. And you gotta just make sure if you have too many, they're too many. So what are those six guiding principles, um, that I'm going to hone in on and those are going to have to do with, um, you know, evolution, how to evolve, um, you know, how to get better every day. And I think that's, you know, that's the same thing. Um, how to do sales, right. Uh, you know, doing sales the right way.

I've always said that sales when done right is the best profession on the planet. When done wrong is the worst. And so how do you do sales the right way? Um, so those are the things I'm going to be figuring out. And then, then out of all that, like then from a content standpoint and a product and an offering standpoint, making sure that I always aligned with those as I put content out there. So, uh, you know, I share that with you because I I'd say that was the, the, the bigger takeaway from the day on Friday with VaynerMedia and Gary, um, you know, a lot of very specific tactical things as far as what technologies to use and what platforms and who's doing what, what to pay attention to, which you're going to see a lot me a lot more of doing me going forward from a social standpoint.

So Instagram, for instance, like I don't have an Instagram account. I'm going to put up an Instagram account. Um, you know, YouTube, I'm probably going to get a lot more aggressive with the YouTube channel and sharing things there. So there's going to be some tactical things, but the visionary thing really struck me as, you know what, I need to reset my vision, especially with, based on what I see going on in marketplace right now and what I'm trying to help reps evolve to. So, um, as I said before, I'll say it again, you know, sales is, uh, is I think one of the best professions and it gives us the opportunity to create our own path, right? It's a flexible, like this, the skill of sales, I don't think is ever going to be irrelevant.

Um, and, and sales, you know, artificial intelligence is going to take over a lot of jobs here in the future. And it's going to make a lot of industries and a lot of professions irrelevant in so many ways, including sales. And, but I think sales is one of those professions that, that if you're really good at it and you do it the right way with the right context and the right mentality that it's going to allow for, um, you, you to adapt a lot better moving forward. And that's what my hope is, is that I can help share that content with people that'll help them get better, help them evolve and stay with that one step ahead of what technology, what industries and, and, and what else is going on out there.

All right. So it doesn't look like there's any questions today. So, but hopefully you got some value out of this one. I'm going to cut this a little bit early unless somebody does have some direct questions here. Uh, cause I do have a call that I have to jump on here at one o'clock, but, um, but as always, you know, just hit me up. I'm going to, I'm also going to start, by the way, I'm also going to, uh, start messing around with different times cause we get a lot of views on this, on these videos, but not a lot of engagement when we light them up on Monday. So I'm figuring that the time is probably not a really great time for everybody. Mondays are tough. So I might flip this over to fucking Fridays where Friday afternoons, we just light it up.

And at the end of the week, people are just, um, you know, kind of detoxing from the week and have some questions and just want to rap. Maybe it'll just grab a beer or something like that. And we'll do fucking Fridays instead. So, uh, if you do watch this and you have some feedback or content on, around that stuff, and when would be a better time for you to watch this, um, live and ask questions, then, um, please feel free to hit me up on the comment section here. But, um, but anyways, again, thanks for everything, uh, for, for all your support on this and, uh, keep an eye out for all the social channels out there and, uh, spreading the word. All right. Thanks again. Make it happen. Bye.