115: Under The Skin of Successful Salespeople With Mary Grothe

Thank you to our partners, SalesLoft, LeadIQ, and Costello for helping us put this one on. Find all our upcoming events at jbarrows.com slash events. Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrows. Make it happen Mondays. Hopefully, y'all had a fantastic weekend. I am very excited for our guest today because we are going to be talking about something that is near and dear to my heart, which is just drive and effort and what it takes to be successful as a sales professional and having the right mentality around it to be successful. I would like to introduce Mary, the CEO of SalesBQ. Mary, tell everybody hello and where you're coming from and what your background is a little bit, if you don't mind.

Hey, well, it's good morning here in Denver and located here in beautiful Denver, Colorado. My background, man, I didn't have a college degree. I was working a whole bunch of part-time jobs. I didn't know anything about the professional corporate world, but at 22, I got really sick of working four or five jobs every single week. And I opened up this thing. It's a big sheet of paper and it has ink on it. It's called a newspaper. Not sure. I opened it up. 22 years old, I found an ad on there to go be a sales assistant, an administrative assistant for a sales team. Didn't know anything about sales or the professional world, but I got the job and I had two years studying under an incredible mentor.

I learned the trade. I learned the vernacular. It happened to be the payroll and HR industry. And I earned a spot on the mid-market sales team. And it was quite fun because nobody thought I could succeed. I was 24, never sold anything. And of course I heard lots of nice comments about how you could never put me in front of an executive. That's nice. Number one rep in 30 days. My annual quota for that year was 150,000. I sold 758,000 in my first year. Second year, they flew me out to corporate and said, hi, we would like to learn what you're doing because people sell at this level. And they cut my territory in half. They gave me twice the amount of quota and gave me a responsibility for coaching and developing other reps.

And I sold even more, 850,000 in my second year, finished number one again. I really had the time of my life working for that company and building out my career. I stepped into the world of entrepreneurship and my passion is in rebuilding sales departments. And that's what we do for a living. I love it. I love it. So, um, because you know, it's funny and I'm sure you get it a lot is, uh, you know, I get a lot of requests from kids being like, Hey John, they just redid my commission plan. They just cut my territory in half and I have a bad territory. What should I do? Should I say something? And I'm like, no, go fucking get it. Like, like, I, like, I don't like, look, I get it. It sucks sometimes when you're flying high and all of a sudden that, that new commission plan comes in and it really does punch.

It's a gut punch, but inevitably you see the top reps, they might get a little grumpy about it. But as soon as they do that, as soon as they kind of get over that initial reaction, the first thing they do is go figure out, okay, now how am I going to execute? What am I going to do to now hit my new target? So I think the mentality here, and you talk a lot about, I mean, you actually named your company sales BQ. Could you explain what is BQ and why it's important compared to EQ versus IQ? Yeah, absolutely. BQ is the behavioral quotient of behavioral intelligence. So you've heard of IQ, intellectual intelligence, then you have EQ, emotional intelligence. And now we're in the world of BQ. We firmly believe that behavior drives results.

I challenged myself when I was working for that payroll HR company to train other salespeople. And John, it was crazy because they had me focusing on the product, the technology. They wanted me to train them on everything I knew about the industry. They wanted to shadow me and see me in the sales meeting. They wanted to look at the sales effectiveness, how I was engaging the buyer more on the EQ scale. But at the end of the day, people couldn't replicate my success because they didn't have the BQ. They didn't have the get up and go. They didn't have the drive, the grit, the perseverance, the willingness to do whatever it takes ethically to get the job done. You're talking about a comp plan being redone.

Oh my gosh, story of my life. Every year, my former company, I'm watching all the salespeople wait. It was doomsday waiting for the new comp plan to come out. There was all sort of concern about the territories being restructured or cut or new divisions. I'm like, if y'all focus on this, you're focusing on the wrong things. The fact of the matter is we work for a company with a big branding, with a decent product, and we can crush a competition, but you have to show up and get it done. And I love that saying, whether you think you can or you can't, you're right. And focusing on all that negativity and everything that's not going right, that's what you're making more of. But the BQ piece, we look at IQ is important, right?

You need to speak intelligently. You know what you sell. You should be able to articulate. It is extremely important that you leverage your support staff. So you have a sales engineer, you have your product export experts, and you've got your service team, your manager, whatnot, plug them in where you need to and sound intelligent. Yes. Be emotionally intelligent. Yes. Be able to use empathy, sit in the sales meeting, sell to multiple personalities, be able to engage the buyer consistently and walk down the sidewalk with them, not from across the street shouting at them. But at the end of the day, you have to make the decision. I set my alarm every morning for 445. I was the first one in the office.

I was super detailed and organized. I had my call list ready to go. I dialed all my executives between 7 and 8 a.m. before the receptionist came in. I was leaving the office when other reps were coming in. And I set four appointments every single day. If I didn't have an appointment, I was dropping in on somebody or progressing something at 9, 11, 1 and 3 p.m. Four meetings a day, no 10 and two. It's just kills your morning and afternoon. I was coming back to the office. I was arriving about 430 when everyone else was taking their foot off the gas and hanging up their hat for the day. And I came back and I hammered out all my paperwork and I updated my CRM. My manager never had to ask me one time to put anything in the CRM, but I owned my success.

That's BQ. I showed up and got it done. So where does, Mary, where does that come from? So because, like, so my daughter, right, she's 8. And, you know, and I have a very similar drive, if you will, in the sense that nobody ever had to tell me to work hard. Like, I just did. And I remember, like, at my, you know, first job, DeWalt, you know, I was 17 hours a day, six days a week, just getting out there. Xerox. It was funny because I was showing up and doing what I just thought was my job. Like, literally, that was in the job description. Like, you have to hit your quota, you have to do these things. And I was getting so much smoke blown up my ass because I would show up, similar to you, around six o'clock in the morning, you know, and I'd work all day and I'd, you know, go home at six, seven o'clock at night.

And then I'd go out to events that evening and do some stuff. And I'm sitting there like, what, why is this special? Like, this, like, I'm just doing what I need to do to be successful here. And then same thing, you know, the next company and so on. And so obviously I think there's an inherent drive that, that you can't teach. Um, but I'm wondering nature, nurture, right? Like right now I'm actually struggling with it with my daughter because I want to give her all the drive and the passion that I have and that my wife has, but obviously you can't instill your drive and passion on somebody else. And so I keep asking my parents like, Hey, what, what did you do when I was a kid to give me this extra motor here that seemingly a lot of people don't have?

My parents, like, they didn't have any really good answers for me because I'm trying to figure out how I can translate that to my daughter. But where do you think yours came from? Was it because of your parents? Was it because of your upper, like, help me understand. I'd love to dig a little bit deeper into why you have that drive that you don't have to have other people tell you to go fucking get it. And you just do. Yeah. It's like, I could just chalk it up to a crappy childhood. I mean, I'm, I'm one of those stories, right? That there was a lot of abuse and alcohol and whatever else. And some absent parents, they were running a company of their own, running a small business in our small town in the Midwest and they weren't around a ton.

They were super busy in their own world. And unfortunately there was, there was a lot of turmoil in my household. And I'm also the youngest of four order has a big thing to do with it, but there wasn't a lot of baby me. And there's actually a 16 year, I think spread between the four of us. And I was not okay with not being able to do the things that my older siblings could do. And so that natural competition was born. My brother and I, gosh, very close together at age. I don't know how many months, but, but just over a year apart. And that I believe I was always trying to be better than him. And I couldn't stand anyone else getting the attention. And I really had to fight for the recognition in my family.

And so there, there were, there was a product of my raising absolutely that caused me to be overly competitive, to have to prove myself all the time. And if I wanted something, I had to get it myself. If I wanted cereal in the morning, there was no parent around. So I had to learn how to climb the shelves. I had to learn how to carry and handle a gallon milk jug, right? To make it happen. And that was my whole upbringing, my whole life. Nothing was ever handed to me. At 14, my parents lost their business. They had to run away. They faced bankruptcy and lawsuit and everything else. And we ran halfway across the country to Boulder, Colorado. And I'm 14 years old. And they say, Oh, by the way, we can't support you and your brother anymore.

Like we've lost everything. I'm like, cool. Cause legally, I can't work till I'm 15, but I just have a few months and I started working when I was 15 and supporting myself. It's just, some people have different walks and different paths. I'll tell you from that. I fought for survival in my high school years and I had to steal food in order to eat. I'll admit it. Like I worked at the grocery store and I, I would kick a bag and groceries. I'd knock things that people just paid for off the conveyor belt onto the ground and I'd hide it in my sock or under my pant leg so that I could go and eat for the day. So there's this thought of survival. So when you get into the professional working world, like I didn't have any other speed.

Everyone always told me, I talk too fast. I have way too high of urgency. I steamroll people to get done. I'm like, I don't know. This is just how I'm wired. Everyone else. Yeah. I love it. I absolutely love it. So let's talk about how, how a, we can identify that in other people. Uh, and B, um, how, how we can create an environment that fosters and, and, and, and creates at least an environment where people want to do that as opposed to feel like they have to do that. Um, so when it, when it comes to hiring, okay. I remember vividly, um, when I was at my, when I did my first startup, um, that we got to about 50 people. Right. And when I, I was like the fourth person and we were friends. So, you know, we were all driven.

Right. I mean, again, 16, 17 hours a day, seven days a week type of stuff. We got to 15 people, 20 people, everybody's still fired up. And when we got to around 50 people is when it started to break for us in the sense that the culture started to, like, I started to get frustrated as a, as a young, inexperienced executive. You know, I always was like, why, you know, why can't you be as passionate about this business as I am? And I had a really hard time wrapping my head around B players. I've now come to understand that B players are a necessity for company success. You can, if you have all eight players, your company's going to rip itself apart. And I remember Jack Welsh, uh, who actually I ended up working for, for a couple months, uh, to get his online MBA program off the ground.

But when he was back at, um, back in my early days, he came to Boston and he did a work, he did a seminar and typical Jack, he doesn't do a presentation. He just sits there and straight Q and a, the guy gets paid $250,000 for two hours to sit there and do straight Q and a, like no presentation, no prep. Right. So good for him. So I remember asking him, I was like, you know, Jack, you talk a lot about passion, right. And all this other stuff and, and being successful. And I said, how do you instill? And I walked through the 50 people that 50 per first person just isn't, doesn't have it. Right. So how, and I asked the ignorant question, which was, how do you instill your passion on somebody else?

And he's saying, he looked at me in front of 800 people and said, basically I was a moron. And he goes like that, that that's not the way to look at it. He's like, you can't instill your passion on somebody else. What you do, you need to hire passion, right? Because you can teach skill, you can teach technique, you can teach process, you can teach all those things. You cannot teach drive. And so that immediately flipped my hiring profile. Like I immediately, instead of looking for experience and all that other stuff, my whole focus was on, was on figuring out how driven you were as a person. So how have you been able to work with organizations or been able to uncover it yourselves in the hiring process to understand somebody's motor and where that gear is?

Because I think once you find that it's your job as a leader to then direct that towards your stuff. I mean, they're never going to be as passionate about your business as you are. Let's just, let's, let's give that up right out of the gate, but you can mold their passion to get, at least be directed towards your stuff. So what do you do or what do you work with organizations to get, to figure that out as far as a hiring profile is? Sure. Let me ask you real quick. Have you heard of the 175 rule? No. You're a hundred. I'm a hundred. We run companies. All the hundreds are the executives. They run the companies. When you're hiring, expect 75% of what you are on their best day. If you go in knowing that this person on their best day is going to be at 75%, your expectations are more in line with what most people can do.

Knowing that their natural style may only be at around a 50%, but it's you as the leader, like you said, and you inspire passion. What environment are you creating? And it's your goal to get this person to be performing to the top of their 75%. Now, people over time, they learn skills, they advance in their careers and they themselves, if they have that willingness and that drive and that BQ to be a hundred, then over time, that person can be a hundred. But when they're a hundred, they don't want to work for you anymore. They're out and they're doing their own thing. So if you have that perspective and you're talking about hiring, you said something about flipping the profile of what you're looking for.

I love screening for potential. I want somebody who has a chip on their shoulder. I want somebody that has overcome some very challenging situations. I look for excuses. I listen for excuses when I'm hiring. So when somebody is looking to leave a job and they're going to tell me the 20 things that were wrong with everything, and they don't have any self-admittance or ownership of anything, like that's not my person. I need somebody that can acknowledge and admit things go wrong in this world, go wrong in this life, in your careers. Your territory does get cut in half. Your company does lose its funding. These things have, there is change in management all the time. Territories, if I didn't already say that, shrink comp plans, change.

All these things happen. Your product set might lose its competitiveness in the market. And you've got a new competitor that's crushing you. These things are all real and they all happen. But I want to listen to the way the candidate explains the situation. And I'm looking for how much ownership they'll take on it. And then ultimately, what do they do about it? Or what are they going to do about it? And if I can hear a high urgency story-based solution thinker of talking it through and really already putting themselves on the other side of it, that's what I'm looking for. I do look for consistent performance. I want to find people that perform above quota. I can't stand when people set quota as like, here's my goal for the year.

Quota is not your goal. Quota keeps your job. Set a goal for something that you can be proud of and something that you can turn back at. Like, what's your inner why? Why are you doing this? And that's another big question. Why sales? This is one of the hardest careers out there. Why are you doing this? And when I look at a resume, if somebody's been changing a sales job every year, like it might be time to find a new profession. You should know that every time you have to redo your first sales year, that's brutal. And why you're electing to do that, or maybe they're not being forthcoming. Maybe they've been let go from those positions and not able to hit their number. A sales is not for everyone.

There is a crazy commitment that you have to make every single day to execute on everything that's required. So I want to find people that have that pattern, whether it's personal life or professional life, something in the background. So recently we recruited a candidate for one of our clients and I just heard her stories. Every role that she talked about, I'm sitting there. I was captivated. She brought me into her world and she was so articulate. And this lady, this woman has not had it easy. And when I listened to how she tackled every obstacle, she was very methodical and she had all that grit. I heard the, I, I, at the end of the interview, I was beside myself. I'm like, I have to hire you.

If my client doesn't hire you, I will find a place for you somewhere. You are remarkable. She's a week and a half into her onboarding. You should see how she's taken her onboarding. It's relentless. The ownership that she has over learning a new industry and new technology, the she's, it's crazy, her dedication and what she's pouring into it. But you know what, what she's doing right now is exactly what she's done in the past. So I'm seeing those people treat themselves. So that's what we're looking for. I love it. Yeah. And I learned a long time ago, you know, when it comes to interviewing, you know, never ask hypothetical questions, never ask leading questions, right? Because if I was in an interview with you and you were to asking me and you gave me a hypothetical question, I could come off sounding like the best employee on the planet because I know what you're asking.

I know what you're looking for, right? And what you want to do is you want to ask situational based questions, right? So instead of saying stuff like, Hey John, uh, what would you do if you're, you got in an argument with your manager? Right? I mean, that's a hypothetical. I can, well, I really think through why I was, why, why I was upset with my manager. And I, I'd come up with, you know, solutions. Cause I'm not just an excuse guy. I'm a solution guy. And I would ask my manager to sit down off to off time because I wouldn't want to take time away from selling. And I would really want to make sure, you know, and you'd be like, Holy shit, this person is a fucking perfect employee. Right? But if you ask John, give me an example of last time you got in an argument with your manager and what happens now, I have to go back to your point and, and, and tell you a story.

I have to give you an example and not only what the example was, but what was the result and what did I learn from it? And, and to your point, there's nothing I hate more than people who come up with excuses. Look, we get it. Shit happens. Territories, like you said, territories get realigned. Quotas go up. That's the fucking name of the game here when it comes to sales. Okay. If you didn't buy it, if you didn't understand that walking into this profession, then you should probably get out. Cause it's just not like, that's just the way it works. And so anytime I hear excuse, I almost, I literally almost tune out. I mean, unless it, unless it's a blatant, like, and when I say excuse, I mean like if somebody was blatantly like disregarded or not supportive or abusive in a real, you know what I mean?

Like, okay, fine. That, that everybody gets a couple of mulligans there. Right. But when it comes to actually not hitting your number or, or, or that type of stuff, that's where I just have zero patience for it. We had a bad product. We had a bad territory. We got, nah, I know plenty of companies and plenty of reps that don't have the best product out there, but still absolutely crush it. Right. I mean, I always said that I don't think it, you know, and I'm, I'm on the gong post with this where it's like, I don't think it matters at all what you sell. I think it matters absolutely how you sell. Yes. Right. And that's how you differentiate yourself. So the passion and enthusiasm and your conviction will sell it.

If the words that come out of your mouth with all of those other things directly align to the prospect's problem that you're solving and uncover the problem, I mean, this is, you all know this uncover the problem, figure out what problem you're solving, put some ROI around it, figure out how much it's costing them, what they've done in the past to try to address or fix it. Like what's really happening in this environment? Why now? What's the timeline? Well, it's going to have a say in this. Let's get all that covered. Deals are won or lost in discovery. It's a great discovery. But when you come back, when that conversation turns back around based on what you shared with me, that's a pivot statement.

I learned from Dale Carnegie based on what you shared with me, which aligns it. Cause they're like, Oh good. She's tying this back to what I said. It's the passion, enthusiasm, and conviction. It's your ability to articulate and speak only in the prospect's words, but that's what will sell it. If I, if I'm like, well, you know, John, yeah, I think that we've got a business and I'll go ahead and prepare a quote for you. And it's like, no, sell the dang thing. So somebody told me that I always say this and I, and I say this almost every training. Somebody, I wish I would remember who told me this cause I want to give them credit. Um, so wherever you are, if you're listening, you know, you hit me up and remind me that you told me this.

Uh, they said that sales is the transfer of enthusiasm. Yes. And I firmly believe that they, they, you know, I believe that strongly in what I do. And I, and by the way, and, and I'm guessing you agree with me on this. I think the number one thing that you have to be successful in sales is a belief in what you do. Cause if you do not fundamentally believe in what you do, you'll be, don't get me wrong. You'll be successful. You could be a snake oil sales rep and probably hit your quota being a douche, but you'll never be truly successful. At least in my eyes, as far as somebody who has aspired to make a real difference and, and, you know, and rise to the heights of somebody who's, who's actually gives a shit.

Right. So if you don't, so for those reps who are out there listening right now, if you don't believe in what you sell, I implore you to go talk to customers, talk to some of the founders, understand the real difference that your product and service makes so that you can understand and you can transfer that enthusiasm because that's where people get bought in. And that's why, you know, one of my favorite interview questions after that little Jack Welsh, uh, wake up call was I actually straight up would ask people. So what are you passionate about? Right. I would just ask them like, what are you passionate about? And by the way, I can give a shit what you're passionate about. It's how you describe to me what you're passionate about that matters.

Right. Like, cause if you're just to your point, like if you're like, well, I really enjoy the customer experience and making sure the customer really gets the best product out of our, you know, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If that's what you're passionate about, like what, but if you're like, Holy shit, Tom fucking Brady, are you out of your mind right now? He's going, he's going to be 42 years old coming into the season. He just won a fucking super bowl. The guy's an app. He's like Benjamin fucking button over here. The guy's like, you know, and you like literally light up like a Christmas tree. Ah, there it is. You know what I mean? And now my job, even though that had nothing to do with this interview, right?

That now my job is to take that passion and now gear it towards at least 75%, at least 50% towards what we're doing here and get you bought into that. Right. So with that, how do you create that culture? How do you create that environment? You do a lot of work on like, I, I do training, right. And I try to do my part with the reps to get them fired up, to go out there and execute and whatever. Um, but you work with a lot of organizations to actually to help correct me if I'm wrong, help really create that culture that drives that, um, and supports that. So what are some of the things that leadership can do or reps can do in an environment that might not be as driven? And I want to put a caveat to this that isn't like the, and cause I've been doing a lot of talking on this, that isn't kind of the bro culture version.

You know what I mean? Like the fraternity hit the fucking gong, let's go fucking get it. You know, the, the male dominated, right. Cause I can easily do that. If I had a bunch of dudes on my team, I could, you know, hit the gong, I could throw, you know, beers on Fridays and whatever. And I could, I could appeal to the, you know, to that side of the psyche, I guess. But I, I think that is a, uh, not exactly the best way, um, because it alienates quite a few people. Um, you know, women obviously included, but also different, you know, types of people than that bro culture piece. So how do you create an environment? Um, and what are some of the things that you can do to, to, to help foster that, that drive?

Okay. Well, let me first lay some groundwork here. I believe two of the strongest components of a high performing sales culture are these two concepts. Number one, expectations versus agreements. Have you ever had an expectation of someone and they didn't do it? Yes. Oh, plenty of times. Did you communicate the expectation to them? I'd like to think I did. I'd like to think we did. Sometimes we don't, right? That happens. And then if you communicated it, did you get agreement from the other person? One hear back from them. They can articulate, regurgitate, and tell you exactly what you said. You are in alignment and agreement. And if you got an agreement, do you also have a repercussion of what the conversation is going to look like?

If this isn't done, setting a culture of expectations versus agreements is hands down. One of the first things that you need to implement in the culture. So often we have expectations of people, like we may have said in our sales kickoff in January, here are the expectations for this year. And then three months later, this guy's not meeting the expectations. Okay. Communicating at one time in a group setting and that, what have you done to foster the environment where you've gained agreement, you've got a culture of accountability and people understand what's expected of them. It can also happen in our conversations. So I've had the privilege of listening to a lot of sales manager coaching conversations with their reps.

And I'm not hearing any communication of expectations, gaining agreement and repercussions. It's completely lacking from the candid conversations that they're having. They're not coaching them. They're telling them how to get it done. They're jumping in and doing it for them. Coaching is asking questions. It's getting the rep to come to the answer. It's guiding them. It's self-discovery so that they have ownership and they buy into it. Okay. That's one thing. Expectations versus agreements is huge. So let me pause there for a second. Cause it's funny. I always like tying this to like sales, you know, stuff, right? Um, what you just outlined, first of all, I actually have this whole talk track around, I believe life is about expectation setting.

I really do. I mean, cause if you think about, think about the last time you were pissed off about anything, anything, pick it. I almost guarantee it's because your expectations were missed set. Right? Like I use the example of you driving to the office in the morning and you know, eight o'clock, seven o'clock, whatever number you pick, uh, you hit traffic, whatever. Nobody likes traffic, but you expect traffic. I leave, uh, I leave Tuesday night to go to New York. Uh, I train all day in New York and I come home, uh, on the flight at nine o'clock. So I land in Boston at probably 11 o'clock at night, right? On Wednesday. I live 10 miles North of the city of Boston. If I hit traffic at midnight coming out of the city of Boston, I'm rip roaring pissed off, right?

Cause I was not expecting traffic. And so I think, first of all, that's a huge part of setting very clear expectations. And then you almost use the, it sounded like you almost use the sailor upfront contract as to say what would happen as far as the repercussions of that. So it's like, Hey, here are the expectations. And by the way, if we don't meet those expectations, this is the conversation we're going to have to have here in three months, which ultimately actually makes that conversation way easier. Cause I think the reason that you hit on there is the reason those like the three months later when they're not hitting that reason that that conversation doesn't happen is because the leader feels awkward about having the conversation because it wasn't very clear what, you know, the repercussions were.

And so now they've got to come with a heavy hand and they kind of feel like a jackass, even though it's totally deserved because the expect, you know, so I think you hit on a couple of really important points there as far as being crystal clear with expectations. And I think this is with customers. I think this is with reps. I think this is with leadership. You name it, right? Just with your kids, your spouse, your best friend. Yeah, absolutely. So, so I think, and I, well, like a small, like just nugget here, what I recommend for clients and for employees internally is every single person, every time you have a meeting with anybody, okay. Okay. Have an agenda and all that shit. But after the meeting document the conversation and send it to everybody and say, look, these are the key takeaways.

This is what you said you were going to do. This is what I said I was going to do. Could you please email me back and confirm this? And I mean this with internal shit. There should always be a scribe internally with all meetings about what we talked about and what the, what the next steps were and who was responsible for what. And that email should go out to everybody and everybody should be, everybody should be obligated to respond and say, yes, I agree with that. Right. 100%. Yes. All right. So, so we talk about expectation setting. Now what? I want to teach you about a Korean box, like a box where you are in the country. It's pronounced differently. I'm from the Midwest crayons. Crayons. Crayons.

Yes. A box of crayons. If you think of yourself as a box of crayons, as a leader, if I have a blue crayon and blue for me is this driver passion that we're talking about, right? A big missing key component of a high-performing sales individual. If I have a blue crayon, I expect the person that I'm leading to also have a blue crayon. So I want them to show up every day and color with their blue crayon. Unfortunately, not every rep that you coach or manage is going to have a blue crayon. And think about this with any characteristic or attribute. Somebody cannot give what they don't have. And they can't use a crayon that they don't have in their crayon box. So one of the single most important aspects of being a leader, what you said is you have to inspire that out of them.

So if they're not naturally coming to the job, to the day, to the career, to the role, to the team, to their territory with that blue crayon, and you have an expectation of them using their blue crayon, there's a big disconnect here. And they can't give what they don't already have. And the way for you to give that to them is through modeling, modeling and mentoring and coaching. So if you, the leader who everyone is looking up to, if you yourself are not modeling it and mentoring it and coaching it, because you have the blue crayon, the only way they're going to have a blue crayon because they don't naturally have it is you're going to have to give them part of your blue crayon to the extent that they're ready to use it and color with it.

So I feel like there's a lot of frustration that happens in the dynamic of sales teams, especially with leaders and their people. So if you're a salesperson listening to this, think about your manager might be missing the red crayon, right? Which is being a great communicator or whatever, right? And you've got the red crayon. So you're a great communicator and you're constantly frustrated and let down. So you've got to manage up and you've got to coach up to your manager. So I think the best high-performing sales teams, they have empathy and grace for each other. Every human being is unique. We're all built differently. And if we just lower our expectations, and I say that in an appropriate way, if we align our expectations with the fact that not everyone has the same filter as us and they're built the same way that we are, and having some grace in that conversation, as soon as we can identify, this person is missing a crayon I'm asking for them to color with, guess what?

You own it. It's on you. Then it's your responsibility. Because if your expectation is that they color with this crayon with you, help them. Yeah. Like you hit on like the lead by example, right? I mean, I, the best leaders, the best managers I know are the ones who are in the shit with the reps, right? Like I remember vividly, like after I sold my first company to Staples and I joined Basia, right? I was no longer an executive. Okay. So I was, I went from sitting at the table and negotiating a deal for a huge company to buy us to now I'm a little old trainer, right? And I vividly remember we did a call blitz every Friday afternoon. We did a call blitz and, and I, and I didn't look, I hadn't made cold calls in a long, I had been coaching cold calls and stuff like that.

And I'd been kind of jumping in on some call blitzes, but I had never, I hadn't done like hardcore cold calling in probably four or five years. Okay. And so we had to do the call blitzes. And I remember Friday afternoons, I just straight up didn't want to do them. Like I didn't like them. Right. So I remember shooting the shit with one of the other reps, like in the cube next to me and just kind of trying to waste time. Right. Cause I, I got my deals in different ways, like through networking and a bunch of other stuff, but like cold calling for that particular thing, wasn't something I was overly interested in doing at that point in my career. And I remember my VP of sales walked in and he came in from a meeting and I didn't, him and I did not get along.

And mind you, I'm a jackass. This is why I work for myself. I'm a pain in the ass to work. And I remember him saying, cause I, he saw me talking and he goes, Hey John, he's like, how many cold calls you make today? And I remember I vividly turned to him and I said, I don't know how many cold calls have you made today? Now, mind you, that was a fireable offense. He should have fired me because I called him out in front of the entire sales team. And he was a chicken shit. He backed into his office and was like, he's like, I, you know, I brought in a million dollars last year. I was like, that wasn't my question. My question was, when was the last time you made a cold call? Right. And, and because my point was, I had never seen him make a fucking cold call.

So don't bark at me to make cold calls when I've literally never seen you make one. Now the next week. So my cube was here. His office was there. His door was open. His headset was on and he was hammering the phones. And when I tell you he was one of the best cold callers I'd ever heard in my life, I was like, Holy shit. And so as soon as I heard him and saw him making those calls, my headset went on, my phone thing came up and I started crushing the phones. Cause I'm like, yup. Okay. He, yeah. All right. And that, so instead of him yelling at me to do it, all he had to do was open up his doors and make some cold calls and got me bought in a thousand percent to make those cold calls. And I just implore any manager out there that is worried, that is concerned that their team isn't hitting the results.

Ask yourself, when was the last time you were on the floor with them? When was the last time you did this? Right. Cause if you can't tell me that you've done it in the past three to six months here with your team, then I got a, I got a strong understanding why they're not following what you're telling them to do. It's a brilliant story. I'm so glad that you shared that because it goes right along with this modeling. The best leaders can model it. You will earn so much more respect from your team when you're willing to get in the trenches with them. And it's okay to make mistakes. It's okay to be human. I feel like some sales leaders are so panicked about pick up in the sales meeting or do that cold calling because they feel like they have a lot of pressure on them.

Well, what if I don't do it right? Or if I totally tanker bomb, I'll lose respect. No, actually you're going to gain a ton of respect, but even showing up and doing it. And hopefully you really do possess the skillset because you are in a leadership position. Even if you've got to get the like spider webs out or whatever, and just work through it and make it happen. You'll earn so much more respect. And then something amazing might also happen in that scenario. You might figure out something that you're teaching to them isn't working anymore. Hey, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Hey, I'm teaching the same stuff that we've been teaching as a company for the last year, but our buyers changed. And so through that moment of survival, because that's what I feel like cold calling is on an episode of Survivor, trying to figure out how to get to that great outcome.

Whatever you can in that moment and you're thinking on the fly and it's super high urgency, but you'll realize, wait a second, we might need to change the way that we're doing things to get better results. And so something really magical can come out of that moment. But a huge recommendation for sales leaders, don't be afraid, get in there. You will earn so much street cred with your people. That fact of modeling. So when we look at BQ, BQ can be negatively impacted by lack of infrastructure, clunky internal systems processes, like way over demanding duplicate data entry in the CRM and Excel spreadsheet, like get that noise out of your salespeople's way so that it makes sense. But then it can also lower BQ when they don't feel inspired, when their natural motivation isn't being fed.

And we encourage people to identify as intrinsic or extrinsically motivated. And intrinsic is your self-competition. That's your ability to compete. You care about recognition. You want to be number one. You can't wait for the stats and the rankings to be posted every week or every day. Like when you talk about what of that bro culture or gong banging and beer slamming or whatever culture, there's really, when you boil it down, take out, take out those variables. What is it? It's competition. Contrary to popular belief and forgive me, my statistic will be close, but it may not be a hundred percent spot on, but I believe it's of top performers. Only 13% are extrinsically motivated. 87% are intrinsically motivated.

And that's why you get these environments where you have the ginormous whiteboards and Hey, every time you book an appointment, like go hit that, ring the bell, do all this because it's competition. And it's also recognition because that person has a moment where all the peers can look at and be like, Holy smokes, you're amazing. And it also breeds more of that, but there's a way to do it in a way that's classy and in certain environments, but you will have a portion of your sales team that is extrinsically motivated. You will, I get this question all the time. Can you be both? Yes, you can be both, but you'll, you'll typically have one that's dominating. Isn't it with the extrinsic, when you do communicate about territory realignment of comp plan changes, anything that could negatively impact the seller's earnings?

No, that their BQ will be slammed. If you don't communicate it in a way that's protecting of their motivational factor. And so if you know, you have a rep who is extrinsically motivated, you, the leader have to change the way that you communicate to that rep. When you're delivering that information, all you need to do is do the math for them. Don't put them in a moment of panic. So when you go into the conversation, look at the new numbers and say, Hey, I'm going to have a conversation with you about territory realignment or a new comp plan that's coming your way. But before you panic or freak out, please know, I already did the math for you. So I can let you know where are you going to, where it's all going to shake out.

And if you come to them with the end of mind and you start with that, you avoid the trigger and the panic attack. If you don't articulate it in their language, you can send this person into complete overwhelm and disappointment and their BQ is going to be crushed. It could take that person weeks to rebound. You may even crush their BQ so hard. They don't want to be there anymore. And they're not hitting that performance factor. So that's just a big awareness step is you've got to look at what helps, what hinders that BQ, the motivation and really focusing on intrinsic and extrinsic. I love it. I love it. So I think we could, I want to talk about this for, for days with you. Um, but I do, I do want to wrap it up.

I do have one question. Cause I'm, I'm always curious on this for people that have that high drive. Do you, uh, enjoy winning more or, or hate losing more? Great. So this is one of those great sales evaluation questions. And I, I've read different sides of this, of what the right answer is supposed to be. There's no right answer. Yeah. I don't want to be, I don't want to be put in a box. Um, I hate losing so much that I always assume that I'm winning and I'm disgusted when I lose because I will immediately take ownership. Like you've got to freaking be kidding me. What did I do wrong? And I will go back and I replay the tapes and I look through it and I say, I cannot repeat whatever I did in this instance to not win.

And so that for me, I always assume the sale. I always assume the accomplishment. I will, I will never be okay. I'm like the queen of the happy dance. Every time I book an appointment, I win a sale. I'm jumping up winning too. So it's just one of those, but no, I will absolutely refuse to lose. I'm the same way for some reason. Like I, I almost, I don't want to say assume winning. Um, but I, I assume that I'm going to be there in the end. Right. And I fucking hate losing though. I literally hate losing. So, um, it's almost, you know, it, that, that's definitely drives me more than winning. Um, so needless to say, uh, let's, so look, um, talk to me, uh, talk to the audience. Where can they find out?

Like what, what, what, what do you guys focus on, um, from a sales BQ? So like, who's the audience that you work best with from a training standpoint, from a working with customers, and then where can people find out more? The sales teams that we have the best success with are between three and 20, maybe 25 salespeople. We love environments where there isn't a VP of sales. So there's gaping hole in the sales teams reporting to the CEO. We take that sales department off their plate for 12 months. We rebuild it. We turn people into high performing. Sellers. We create an amazing culture, build all the infrastructure. It's, it's an amazing program. When we have VP, we work alongside them. We're their ally.

We're not their replacement. We get to focus on all the work they don't have time to do, or it's just not their natural skillset. And in tandem, we bring them proven practices again, over a six to 12 month period where we will help them side by side, rebuild their team and turn it into quota crusher killing machines. Right. And as far as sales training concerned, similar to you, John, I'm, I get booked for keynote engagements. I love doing sales kickoffs. If you can tell, I'm super high energy and I will tell you exactly how it needs to be in order for you to be successful. But I love being on the stage, love those opportunities. And of course, people can learn more at salesbq.com, but ultimately connect with me on LinkedIn.

It's a great platform and love being social with you. Exactly. And it's, it's Mary. And it's, uh, again, how do you pronounce your last name? Dorothy, G-R-O-P-E-G. So look her up on LinkedIn, uh, look up salesbq. They're doing some awesome work. And Mary, thank you so much for joining me. Uh, it's been a great conversation and, uh, hopefully we can continue this conversation, uh, as we kind of develop our relationship over here. Cause I love what you're doing over there. Uh, and I, and I just love the passion. I love being around people, um, that, that give a shit and, and, and really want to be successful. And want others to be successful as well. So I appreciate everything you do. Thank you for having me.

All right, everybody. Hopefully y'all got as much value out of this conversation as I did. Um, and like I say, every time, you know, no matter how bad your day goes, if you can make somebody happy or make somebody smile, you know, you've had a great day. So, you know, just make that a goal for today. There's too much negativity out there. So try to spend some goodwill. All right. Thank you all very much, everybody. Have a great week and let's make it happen. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye.