122: The Difference Between Men & Women In Sales with Cynthia Barnes

Thank you to our sponsors, LeadIQ, Costello, SalesLoft, WorkRamp, and Dialpad for helping us produce this podcast. Head over to jbarrows.com slash blog for the highlights of this episode and explore resources you can use right away. Let's make it happen. Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrows with Make It Happen Mondays. Hopefully you all had a fantastic weekend. I'm actually going to stop commenting on what happened over my weekends because I'm timestamping too many of these. Usually I'll have like a, hey, the Patriots did great this weekend. But then if you're listening to this a year later, you're like, what? So needless to say, I won't, I'm not going to be doing that anymore. I'm super excited though today to have this conversation because it's a continuation of the conversation.

I think needs to continue to be held out loud and with different types of people coming from different perspectives. So to start with, though, I'd love to introduce you to Cynthia Barnes. Cynthia, would you like to introduce yourself to everybody and tell everybody where you're coming from? Hey, everybody. My name is Cynthia Barnes and I wear two hats, if you will. As a woman in sales influencer, I am the founder and CEO of the National Association of Women Sales Professionals. We serve approximately 14,000 women who sell B2B services in male-dominated industries by providing them with professional development to help them get to the top 1% and dance on the glass ceiling. My other hat is I am a consultant to Fortune 100 companies who wish to attract, hire, develop, and retain women in sales.

Love it. And you had a pretty interesting, well, can I actually, can we start with how, how did this come about, right? Because I mean, you know, I know your background, well, as far as your LinkedIn, right, you had Mary Kay, you know, you were senior executive in a lot of these other organizations. So how did you come about to be the head of this organization, specifically focused on women in sales? Well, in 2016, I was ready for my new challenge. And throughout my career, I had been at the top 1% of a multitude of verticals, everything from logistics and trucking to pharmaceuticals, the legal kind, and recruiting. And I said, okay, so for my next challenge, I could go out and take on another vertical and get to the top 1% again.

However, I was on Facebook one day and, you know, the ultimate philosopher, and it's, there was a meme that said, the true test of whether or not you are successful in life, and I'm going to butcher this, it was much more eloquent. The true test of whether or not you are successful in life is not based upon how well you do, it's based upon how well you help others do well. So I said, I wonder, in a world where traditional sales approaches are created by men for men at a time when men made up the sales force, I wonder how much faster and how much easier women could get to the top 1% if we had sales approaches and training that was created by women for women that amplified the innate strengths that we have, as well as address the unique challenges that we face.

So that was my mission. Love it. Now, how different is it? So, you know, I've talked a lot about, I mean, for those who have listened to this podcast and been following me, you know, I had that, we need to talk, you know, webinar, and that was based on the Grant Cardone and him being a, anyways, and really, you know, having the conversation out loud, right? And I always said, look, I always thought I was pretty empathetic as a male, like my mom, I think raised me right, right? And then I had my daughter and I was like, holy shit, apparently I'm not as empathetic as I, right? Because I just didn't even recognize how we were marketed to and that type of stuff. And then we actually had that webinar, right?

And, and when we did the survey and I don't, did you get a chance to look through some of those, those answers that people did? And when I, so we, again, for those of you who hadn't seen it, you know, we put out a question before we did the webinar, it was, hey, what questions do you have that you're, you're awkward? You don't feel like asking because you're uncomfortable asking. What scenarios are you currently faced with that, that you need some help with? And what are some positive examples of things that maybe, and I mean, I literally almost cried when I, when I saw the responses coming in as far as the questions that people had and also the situations, right? I'm like, shit, I thought we had come at least a little bit farther than we are and we're not.

So I understand the, the, so I'm having, I'm getting a better understanding, right? I still can't put myself in those shoes, obviously, but I guess my question is, is let's, let's talk about the learning component and how we're taught, right? Right. How different is it about how a man sells versus a woman sells from, from your experience? Like how do, is there a real difference on, on us and how we need to be educated so that we can become better? Or it, or, or, and what's the overlap, if you know what I mean? I think there are distinct differences in sales training, for example, relationships, right? Traditional sales approaches take a day and talk about how to develop relationships. Women develop relationships naturally.

So we don't need as much training on developing relationships because that is an innate strength that we already have. Okay. What we do need is help with things like negotiation. Okay. How to actually come up with win-win scenarios that are not detrimental to either party. And if you think about in a negotiation, for example, if a woman comes across assertive, traditional societal norms say that an assertive woman is an aggressive woman. A man could say the exact same thing in the exact same tone, come across decisive and confident. A woman says them in the exact same tone, in the exact same way, exact same verbiage, and she's aggressive. So how is it that women can come across decisive and confident without being perceived as aggressive because an aggressive person is a turnoff?

Yeah, exactly. Little things like that. So let's dive into that one specifically. How do you coach women on being decisive and without coming across as bossy or pushy, you know? I mean, it's funny. My wife, she's an environmental scientist, and she's actually more sales-oriented than I am. She has such a personality, and it attracted to me in the first place, was she's so driven and so passionate about what she does that with her, but for some reason, her aggression, if you will, is actually she's found a way to have it be appreciated for passion, right? So not necessarily aggression, it's passion. And sometimes, yes, and unfortunately, it gets couched as a little bit too passionate or, you know, she's emotional, you know, which is bullshit and all that other stuff.

But I'd rather be called passionate than aggressive, right? Yes. Anybody would. Yeah, exactly. So what are some tactics, I guess, that you train women on specifically on how to come across as direct and passionate as opposed to aggressive? Remember I talked about that skill that we have, that innate skill of relationships? If we go back to developing the relationship ahead of time, the words that come out of our mouths are better received, if you will. So if we go into a sales process and that relationship is not fully developed, and we may even have to go further to make sure that it is very, very well developed, that aggression is less likely to be perceived as aggression because I have a relationship and I like you.

And I'm not going to take offense to what you say as easily as if you were to come in and just start selling to me. Right, right. Yeah. Okay. Now, I think I see the challenge when it comes to enterprise selling, right? I think that's, okay, cool. We have a long time to go here to develop a really good relationship, you and I, right? So at the end, when it starts to get a little gnarly, we can pull from that relationship, right? But in some of these, like, I don't want to say more transactional sales or like phone sales, for instance, which, you know, my, I'm knee deep or neck deep in, you know, tech sales, right? Where it's SaaS and everything else and mostly is over the phone. It's a lot of SDRs and BDRs and people trying to, you know, lower ACVs, you know, $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, that type of stuff.

But a lot of these kids, when they're making cold calls, they got, like, seconds to make a relationship. So are there any ways that you can kind of hack the system, if you will, from a relationship standpoint on a woman when you're calling into a male-dominated world, right? A lot of them sell tech to tech, right? Sure. You know, sales is definitely, you know, more men than women, but tech is definitely more men than women. And so how, what are some of the hacks, if you will, of having that conversation, developing rapport and relationships early on so that it sets the stage for that? Who's to say that the only type of contact I have with you is via the phone? Right. Good point. There are other avenues in which I can touch you and I can reach out to you and I can develop a relationship.

Social selling is one of them. And who's to say that when I pick up the phone, I don't have to get straight to business. I can ask you how your weekend was. If I find out that you have kids, how was Johnny's baseball game? People love talking about their kids. You love talking about your daughter. So why not insert that into the conversation? We can get down to business, no problem, but at least try to find a personal element about them. Are you familiar with Harvey McKay and the McKay 66? No, I'm not. Oh my gosh. It is gold. Harvey McKay came up with this list of 66 things that you need to know about your prospect before your competition does. 66? 66. Damn. Okay. Exactly. So even if you were to take 10 of those, find out little things about your prospect.

It's the conversational things. I used to make 125 cold calls a day. I was in logistics asking people, can I haul your freight? Can I haul your freight? Can I haul your freight? I dropped that down to 12, a 90% reduction and got creative with my phone calls. And as a result of that, I increased my income, my revenue, 411% by getting to know my prospects. I knew things like Jessica was repaving her cobblestone driveway and she would send me pictures. And James loved Schlitz beer over craft beer. I mean, little things like that, but they never questioned my price on a truck. They just said, Cynthia, I trust you to get it done. That relationship. So I'm hearing the, because I'm a big, obviously I'm a huge advocate of personal brand building and social selling.

Because there's two sides, right? The one side of social selling is listening for those cues so you can make those connections. And then the other side is actually building your personal brand. So I'm guessing you're a huge advocate of specifically women building their brand, right? Yes. Yes. So from the competition. And how do you suggest they do that? So I, so let's, let's take the personal brand building piece of this. Like, I think the finding like research and doing that, like, okay, cool. Right. Like I found some stuff that I can make a connections to, but I think the, you know, there's some people out there who are, I think doing a fantastic there. There's not enough women out there doing a job, pushing themselves out there on social and sharing content in a way that's actually maybe text, right?

But, but visual wise, you, all you see, you know, my whole thread on LinkedIn is a dude after a dude, after a dude, you know? And then when the, it's funny because when a woman comes up and starts sharing something, it's actually, it catches my eye because it's different. Right. And it's like, Ooh, cool. Let's have this conversation. So how do you suggest they, they start? Like if there are women out there who are like, look, I get it. I've heard all this stuff about brand building. I, I, I understand how it could benefit me. How do they get started? And what do you suggest they do to kind of start on that, on that journey? If you will. I would start by getting granular and specific about their target audience and making sure that everything that they post on social answers, what is keeping their target market up at night.

So if you look at my LinkedIn profile, even though I have two separate target audiences, those fortune 500 fortune 100 and fortune 500 companies, and also the women in sales that I'm trying to attract to my organization, I'm always solving a problem with what I am posting. And I'm always answering that question for women in sales. How do I get to the top of the leaderboard? How do I increase my income? How do I ascend into sales leadership? So it's kind of like, so it's, it's your, it's your, who are you trying to reach? And then to, you know, do you have a very powerful why, right? Of why you're doing what you do. So do you think that everything that, so you have your target audience who you're going after, but then there's the message that you're, do you start with a, like a kind of that why of why I'm sharing out content, or do you start with the persona of who you're going after and then just share whatever you feel is relevant to, to that, to that audience?

I start with the audience and I find out what are the psychographics and demographics of that audience? Not necessarily the, who they are, the age, race, all that good stuff. I want to know what are their goals, values, what keeps them up at night? What's the role in the decision-making process? All of those psychographic things, the why they buy. And there's a formula in marketing that's M times M equals R. And anything in an algebraic equation set to zero means that the whole thing is zero. So your first M is your message. What is it that you say on social in order to get your target market to stop the scroll? Your second M is media. Where do you put that message? Is it in a group? Is it in your feed?

Is it in an article? Is it in a blog? And the R is the results. You can have the best video, but if your messaging does not make them stop the scroll, then the results are going to be zero. And that's why you have to get into the psyche of your target market. How do they think? Yeah, and how do they like to consume content too, right? I mean, obviously, I follow a lot of the Gary V model of you can take the same piece of content, but you have to cut it up in different ways for different formats, right? Because people go to LinkedIn for one reason versus Instagram for another reason versus Facebook for another reason versus Twitter for another reason, right? And you can't just post the exact same content in the exact same format, right?

Right. And, you know, a lot of people, and I'm right there with you, I think almost everything, forget about just brand building, I think everything from a sales standpoint starts with that ideal customer profile and really getting tight on it to say, okay, now exactly who am I going after? What are they like? And then where do they live? And when I say live, I mean, obviously not physically, right? But socially. Because people are like, well, John, should I build my brand on Twitter? It's like, well, I don't know. Is your audience on Twitter? Right? I mean, again, I'll go back to my wife. She sells to local governments, right? So Instagram for her is worthless. Worthless. Facebook, maybe. Twitter, oddly enough.

Twitter is actually where all the local governments post and share and comment on stuff. So the majority of her efforts are focused on Twitter and engaging that audience. Cool. So let's, you know, branding, I couldn't agree more. Actually, you know, I bring it up. Do you know a woman who I think is actually doing a fantastic job getting out there with a very bold approach, right? That, again, wouldn't be considered any different if it was a man. But again, she's got my attention. Have you looked at or seen Shea, I think it's Shea Rowbottom? Yes. Rowbottom? What do you think of what she's doing? Amazing. Okay. Amazing. As long as it converts her target audience to high-paying clients, go for it.

Well, actually, that's a question, right? So I think there's the short-term benefit, right, of brand building, of you're seen as an industry expert. You're putting out content that is absolutely influencing people. And I'll say for myself, you know, my personal brand building has absolutely helped me skip a whole bunch of steps throughout the sales process. You know what I mean? Like, once I get on with somebody and they've seen, and if they've been consuming my content and valuing my content, by the time I get to the quote-unquote sales call, it's not really a sales call. Exactly, yeah. So when do you all want to get started, right? Right. So I think the short-term is, yeah, like, but I think too many people, unfortunately, look at brand building as a short-term thing because they're like, oh, I posted something and I tweeted something and, you know, and great.

And I think we're right now, unfortunately, in a bit of a world where everybody's looking for such short-term satisfaction that they're discounting the value of a lifelong brand we'll bring to them. So I think as long as, to your point, if it's converting clients, but to the other side of it, what if it's not? What if what you're doing out there, posting and sharing, is getting engagement, right? But it's not actually converting from a sales standpoint. Should that concern you? Should you play the long game here and say, I'm doing this for a bigger purpose for myself and my career? Or should you start to think more specifically about what you can do to drive those short-term results? I would look at the long-term.

Not everything is going to happen when we want it to, but if we're doing the right thing and we're following a success formula, the dividends will pay off and they pay off big. When I started in 2016 as a woman in sales influencer, nobody knew who I was. And fast forward to 2019 with 14,000 members, contracts with companies like Toyota and Michelin, it pays dividends. But I wouldn't have gotten where I am today if I had just stopped with my first video. I think that's what, and you know what? I saw it recently. I guess Instagram is testing this where they're actually taking the likes out of Instagram. Yeah, which I couldn't be happier about, right? Because thankfully I'm not a teenager anymore, far from it.

But you know, I hear stories all the time of kids posting something on Instagram and just because it doesn't get 50 likes in the first five minutes, they have this bad self-image. Some of them are committing suicide because like they don't get the engagement that all their other friends are, right? So I think it's fantastic that the likes are taking off. Now, comments, right? You want to see comments because that's what you care about. You care about engagement at the end of the day. And I follow a lot of Gary V's, which is, you know, I'd rather have 10 people follow me on Twitter. And if I post something out, then all 10 people do something versus 10,000 people following me on Twitter and nobody doing anything, right?

Exactly. Yeah. And I, and I've, I've actually brought his name up a couple of times. I'd, I want to, I'd like to get your thoughts on somebody like Gary V. You follow him? I do. Okay. Gary V, in my opinion, uh, could be, and, and I know has by many people I know, um, perceived as part of the bro culture, right? He's very aggressive. He, he holds nothing back and, and he has been absolutely elevated to the highest level because of that. Yes. Now I personally think that Gary, you know, now compare him to Grant Cardone. Okay. Both very aggressive male, like in your face guy. But I think, you know, my perception here is that Grant Cardone is, is the bad side of that. Whereas Gary V is the positive side of that because he leads with empathy and he, I, if you really consume his content, you can tell he, in my opinion, you can tell he actually genuinely cares.

But for somebody like you and your position for what you're trying to do and how you're trying to dance on that, that ceiling. And, and as much as Gary V might be trying to help in whatever he ways he can, he still represents a certain component here. What is, what is your perception, I guess, of Gary, of somebody like a Gary V? I think I love the fact that he is authentic and true to himself. Yeah. And what I encourage our members and all women in sales to do is if you want to be assertive, if you want to be like Gary V, if you want to be like Grant Cardone, that's fine. Just make sure it's because you want to do it, not because someone has said, this is the way to do it. Gotcha. Well, being authentic and true to yourself will always pay dividends and will always bring out the best in you in that sales situation.

How do you train somebody to be authentic? All right. This, this conversation came up, this conversation, and there's two things that I think are very hard, uh, work ethic to teach work ethic and to teach authenticity in a world where results matter. I think that you can be authentic and the more authentic you are, the better results you'll get. I agree with that a hundred percent. But how do you teach that 22 year old kid right now who has a quota, who's being told that they got to make their 50 dials or whatever it is to be authentic. When a lot of times a 22 year old kid doesn't even know who they are. They know enough. Okay. They know enough. And sometimes as a sales leader, you've got to help them peel back the layers of the onion to find out where is their core, what are their core values, and then bring those core values to the sales process.

Have you always been like that? Have you always been straight authentic or did it take you a little while to figure out kind of really who you were in, in the business world, I guess. It took me a minute because I taught myself how to sell. I was back in the days of cassettes. I was listening to part A of Brian Tracy on the way to work, part B on the way home, and I was saying exactly what he was saying and it was fine. But then I realized that's not how I talk. So how can I tweak this so that it sounds like Cynthia Barnes? And what I learned was that I had to get back to what would Cynthia say in this scenario? It was like back when they had the what would Jesus do bracelets and that was the same thing.

What would Cynthia say in this situation? And so I was learning sales approaches and I was tweaking them for me. And I didn't want women to have to do that all the time. So what we teach is, take a script, take the end result. How would you get to the end result using who you are? And sometimes that script looks totally different. But that's okay. But do you think it's good to actually start with the script when you don't know who you are and then realize, because there's one thing about looking at it saying, okay, how can I make this mine? But then a lot of times the script is written for a very specific reason because it drives a certain outcome with a certain approach, right? And if you screw with it too much, right?

Now it's, and I appreciate like start with the outcome, right? Ultimately. But do you think there's something to be told for anybody, male, women, doesn't matter, to start with a script and then figure it out or look at the script and change it to you? I would like to start without the script because the script is through one person's lens. Yeah. And most likely that lens is of a person that doesn't look like me, sound like me, or has walked in my shoes. So what if sales training started with your personal why and who you are? And then we said, now we're going to talk about relationship building. We're going to talk about closing and all of those good things. How do you bring the who you are to this sales process rather than trying to say, okay, well, here's the sales process.

How would you change it? I'm already affected because I already have a view of what I think you want rather than the focus being of the foundation of who I am. Is that getting too deep? No, no, it's getting real. No, I love it because I say all the time, start. And thankfully, somewhere in my career, I don't know, I must have read a Brian treat, you know, something or had a cassette myself, right? Because early, early, early in my career, I defined my 12 personal guidelines to success, right? I sat down, I said, what is it? What is, and these were my values, right? And ultimately, I didn't look at them as my values. I just said, these are the things that I know I need, you know, work hard, work, you know, easy stuff like work hard and smart.

You know, people say work smart. No, you got to work your ass off, right? Like, you know, what goes around comes around, right? Like, you know, there was always ask for feedback, that type of stuff. And what I did was when I became a manager, what I told my reps coming on board was I wish I had had them to your, I wish I had had them go through their value exercise so that we could match them up a little bit. But what I had said to him, I said, look, here's my 12 personal guidelines to success. It does not mean that these need to be yours. I just want you to understand that when my, whenever you get feedback from me, this is where it's coming from, right? And then fast forward, I went to the Gary Vee session, 4D, sat at his office, went through that whole process, and we had the why exercise.

And it started with, and I ended up boiling it down to sales done right, which is, again, my belief when sales is done right, it's the greatest, when it's done wrong, it's the worst. And then from there, it's like, okay, now what are your core values that align with that, right? And so I took my 12 and boiled them down to like five. And now my whole company has rallied around those values. Like we do not invest in things. We do not bring on customers unless they fit those values, right? Absolutely. When you're my, my, my, my uncle's kid, right? Cause I'm like second, second cousin, I guess. I don't know, whatever. Um, actually, no, he's my direct cousin. Yeah. So, so he, um, he's just getting into school.

Like he's just getting out of school right now. Okay. Um, is that an exercise he should go through as far as the value exercise and how do you walk people through like really understanding their values as far as just, instead of just like the typical stuff, like I like making people happy and I like, you know, believe in a bigger cause. Like how, like, how do you get people to really identify their value? I would take a look at if you were to pass away tomorrow, heaven forbid, what would you want your friends to say about you? Okay. It's almost like, what would you, what would you have on your gravestone? Right? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. What would your friends say about you now? And what would you want them to say about you?

And do they match up? And if there's anything that you don't like about what you, I mean, this is, this is raw stuff here. Right. Right. What would they really say about you behind closed doors? If you don't like what you think that they would say about you behind closed doors and that you would never find out, how do you change that? Should you ask your friends that? No, because they, they love you and they won't tell you the truth. But how do you know that's what they think about you then? You know, you know, yeah. Well, I would say John is a loud mouth. I mean, whatever it is that they would say you have, our intention is, our intuitive thinking is pretty strong. I agree with that, like for, for a lot of us, I think obviously you, I think I've always been a pretty reflective person and understand where my gaps are.

I make, obviously I make plenty of mistakes along the way in my percent and I'm always open for feedback, but I do think there are some people out there that are very unselfaware. You know what I mean? Like they, they think they should be millionaires, but they go home at three 34 o'clock every day. Right. So like, so those people, the people that perceive themselves as something different than they are, are, is, is that where like disc profiles come into play and Myers-Briggs stuff's come into play to kind of give me a little bit of a mirror here? Or, or, or do I really have to kind of go deep on my, you know, into my psyche? And how do I do that? If I'm not one of those self-aware people? I think that we as sales leaders, when we set the bar, our subordinates will try to meet it.

So I think it's a, it's a matter of meeting the rep where they are and challenging them to dig deep, realizing that you're going to have to sell them on the idea of why this is beneficial. Because there are some, like you said, leave at three 30 and wonder, well, why am I not exceeding quota? Right. Well, would you like to know why? And do you want to know what it takes? Right. And if they don't know what it they, if they don't want to know what it takes in order to get to the top 1%, you as a sales leader need to say, is this person in the right seat? Because you want champions. You want people who are going to strive to get to the top 1% who are competitive. And who are going to work hard.

Right. So actually that brings up another interesting point, right? As far as let's, let's get back to that male, female thing, right? And in sales, I think a lot of sales organizations have been built around competition, around hiring, you know, ex sports players and those types of things. But from what I understand, you know, obviously there's a massive group of women that fit into that, into that mentality as well. But there's also a massive group of women that don't, that aren't the, hey, let's win. Let's, you know, like that didn't play in on, you know, in the varsity sports and all that other stuff. So I guess how competitive, and I know this is a depends answer, but how, how, and how should you leverage competition or how should you look at competition in a team environment and sales to make sure you're being inclusive as opposed to exclusive?

That's a tough one for me because on my strengths finder, competition is my number one strength. So I am, maybe it's because I'm a product of my environment. I am highly competitive. So when someone says to me, we're not going to have a competitive environment, I think, well, why not? I also have to look at, as a sales leader, you coach to your subordinates strengths. You always have to. Not everybody is going to want to be at the top of the leaderboard. You have to figure out what is their top 1%. Their top 1% could be, I want to pay off Sally Mae. You can't talk to a rep about earning $300,000 a year if they're coming in at $35,000 a year and they're eating ramen and tuna. So you've got to get in, just like you would create a persona around your customer, you've got to create a persona around each of your reps and find out what are their psychographics, what makes them tick, what keeps them up at night and coach to that.

That's where that empathy comes in. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think sales should be, so I think historically the mindset has always been that sales is a pretty individual sport in the sense that here's your quota, you've got your territory, go get after it. You know, yeah, you've got some support for management and whatever and some marketing stuff here. But at the end of the day, it's you, right? Your thoughts on what do you think sales should be and how it's evolving? Because I definitely have some opinions on this. I would love to get your thoughts on where you think it should be evolving to as it relates to the individualistic versus team. Not everybody wants to be part of a team. I know that in NAWSP, the women that come to our community want support.

Right. They believe that instead of competition, collaboration wins every single time. So when they bring a problem to our rooms, they expect other people, other women sales professionals to help them out in a spirit of collaboration. Knowing that when one of us, when we all win, one of us wins, we all win. I totally butchered that, but you get the point. Yeah, yeah, no, I get it. Yeah. So I can only speak to the community that we have in that spirit, whether it's women's sales pros with Lori Richardson, Lauren Bailey, and Colleen Stanley. I'm a member of them. And Lauren's got Girls Club. Lori has women's sales pros. And I have NAWSP. We are by no means in competition with one another because we know that when one of us wins, all women in sales win.

Cool. But that's a principle that women take on. Yeah. Well, it's interesting, right? Because yes, and so again, I'm going to put my male hat on here in ignorance and I'm going to apologize up front. I think my perception is yes to a point. And I think it's getting better. And I'll give you one example. And I wish I didn't have to use this person's name, but I do. Actually, I'll just use the show because I absolutely hate this person. But The Apprentice, the first few years, The Apprentice, I was in love with it. I thought it was fantastic, right? Because it was like business, holy shit, and whatever, whoever the idiot is who's running it, don't get me started. But one of the things, he did a male-female team, right?

And what happened was early on, the males shredded each other. It was all this chest bumping and they literally fought. For the first three or four episodes, they ripped each other apart, right? But then all of a sudden, after the chest bumping stopped, right, they started to team up. They started to work together, right? And the women at first were very like, oh, team, and let's beat the guys, and we were all here, right? But then what happened was they, as they elevated into the positions of, hey, now it's going to be winner-take-all type of scenario, the women started shredding each other and turning on each other while the men collected, right? So ultimately, it started 12 to 12, and the men got down to like 6, and it was 6 to 12, but then it went from 6 to 12 to 6 to 2 to 6 to 1.

And so I guess my question here is, and this is something that Casey Jones and I had a very interesting conversation with around generational stuff, right? So Gen Xers, the baby boomers, if you will, there was really not that much room at the top for women. There was one seat at the table. And so it was kind of like, you know what? I want to help you out, but I'm going for that seat, so it's mine, right? So a lot of Gen Xer women that I speak with are saying, look, I never really had too many mentors, women mentors in sales or in business, because that generation was a winner-take-all, sorry, I'd love to help, but there's only one seat, and I'm going to go get it. Whereas I now did millennials and Gen Zers, Gen Xers kind of saw that and are now kind of trying to help out in a different way.

Do you see that generational divide a little bit there, and do you see that, and I know it's very general statements here that I'm making here, but do you see that teamwork to a point, or are you seeing it get better based on how we're evolving here? Unfortunately, I don't see it getting much better. Okay. We're actually doing a webinar called Breakout of the Girls Club, and it's based upon the premise that only 11% of sales leaders are female. And the reality is that if we surround ourselves with female collaborators, mentors, and sponsors only, then we diminish our chances or decrease our chances of ascending into sales leadership. So with 89% of sales leaders being men, we have to collaborate, get them as mentors and sponsors in order to ascend into sales leadership.

That's just the reality. Yeah. And do you think that was kind of some of the issue? And I think we had talked about this before with the, well, I do. So the Me Too movement, right? Yeah. I was all for it. I still am, obviously. But what happened when it first came out, it felt, as a male, it felt very anti-male. Yes. In the sense that it was, no matter, even if the dudes who were trying to help were there and rallying on, it turned to all men are bad. And so a lot of well-intentioned males kind of were just like, all right, you know what? If, like, I don't want this mess, you know what I mean? Like, okay, go ahead. And I think it really hurt a large part, like the perception. Because now you had stupid dudes saying, I don't even know what to say to a woman anymore.

And I can't, I don't feel comfortable getting in an elevator with a woman. It's like, shut up, dipshit. Just be a normal person and I think you'll be okay, right? But how do you think that, how do we, how do we create that inclusion in a way that is, that is constructive? That's a good question because the Me Too movement did get ugly and it got ugly quick. And it gave excuses to those who did not want to participate in the first place. It gave them the excuse to say, you know what, I'm not doing this. However, John, you mentioned a good point. There are still good men out there who want to collaborate, that want to be sponsors, and that want to be mentors to hardworking women because they see the potential in them.

I think it's a matter of, and I'm going to put the responsibility on the women to say, this is what I want. Will you help me? And frame that conversation so that it is mutually beneficial and that there's a safe environment created so that the men can reach back and the women can reach up. I love that. And it's like, I wish there was a way to, I know, and again, I think this is asking, this is unfair in the sense of putting the burden on a group that has already been burdened, right? But it's like, what I wish was that, in general, as a society, we didn't automatically assume the worst out of everybody. Yeah. In the sense that if I make a comment, or if I make a joke, or if I make, you know what I mean?

Then I'm just going to put myself in the business setting as a male, right? If I got a team meeting or something like that, and I say something that, for whatever reason, because of my lens, I don't think is offensive, or it doesn't even register, right? Right. Because I'm just ignorant of it. Like, I think that the bad thing of where we are right now is everybody's looking to attack somebody for the littlest, stupidest thing that they say. And they're not giving them the benefit of the doubt that they're actually a good person that didn't necessarily mean it that way, right? I mean, you're watching on social right now, people's careers being ruined for something that they said 10 years ago when they were a kid.

Yeah. And you know what I mean? And it's like, people can't change. People are in their feelings. Right? People are in their feelings, and they're looking for, it's almost like an ambulance chaser. Yeah. They're going behind the ambulance, and they're saying, you know what? Somebody's got to be hurt inside, and doggone it, I'm going to take advantage of it. It's the same thing with people walking around, and I'm not saying everybody. No, of course not. But I have to, and it's a level of maturity for me to look at what you said and say, number one, how did he intend for it to come out? Because the story that I'm telling myself about what he said may not be the story that he meant. And that's some Brene Brown stuff right there, but that's the reality.

I have to take a step back with maturity and say, with his lens, how did John mean that? And if we have to sit down and talk about it, okay. But I'm not going to jump in your stuff based upon what you said without seeking first to understand what you meant. Yeah. I kind of have like a, in general, I have a three strikes and you're out conversation. Like I have a kind of a, in general, three strikes and you're out rule where you screw up once, whatever, everybody screws up once. Right. You screw up twice. You're on notice. Like, cause we have to have a conversation about this screw up three times. Okay. Now there's an issue that we have to address. And, and I, and I really encourage people to just lead with empathy.

Right. And let's, let's talk very tactically of like the person that goes to, right. Like you make a cold call to somebody, you have a good conversation, you send them off some follow-up information and they say, send, yeah, follow me next week. And they don't, and then you follow up two, three, four times and they don't, they ghost you. Right. Well, my younger self would get pissed at that. Right. It'd be like, dude, what the hell you told me? Rah, rah, rah, rah, rah. And unfortunately, sometimes we got to get woken up by reality. Right. There's been at least a handful of times in my career where I've been so self-centered about my situation and not even thought about that person's situation.

Come to realize that they were in the hospital for three weeks or their kid was sick or whatever. Right. And I'm like, oh my, like, holy shit, who am I? You know, I'm actually personally trying to do that. Like I don't drive anymore. So I got rid of my car. I'm Uber all the time. Right. Oh, good for you. Okay. Right. My wife's got, you know, we got one car. It's a, it's a Tesla. Right. So we try to, the whole thing. Right. And, and I love it, but every, I got to, I still got to drive every once in a while. And I used to get so aggressive and like, I hate driving. I hate traffic. One of my least favorite things. It's such a waste of time. Right. And so I automatically get tense when I'm, when I'm in traffic and I used to lash out at people, give them the finger.

I mean, I'm from Boston. Right. So I've get, you know, the finger is just pretty much part of the driving vernacular. And now what I'm doing is like, anytime somebody gets mad at me, I'm thinking to myself, maybe they're late for a meeting. Maybe they're late to go pick up their kid. Maybe they'd just been having a real bad day and they're trying to, and you know what? And every, and my wife told me this, like the best thing to do when somebody gets pissed off at you like that is just wave with a smile. Yeah. Just wave with a smile and see what happens. And you watch people. Because they need it more than you. Right. They could have just taken their cat to be euthanized. Right. You don't know.

Everybody is fighting a battle you have no idea about. And it's, I wish more people would think of that. Right. Yeah. And, and do you teach that? Do you teach lead with empathy? Like, or, or how, I guess, how do you? Yes. Seek first to understand, then be understood. Stephen Covey principle. Yeah. Yeah. And get outside of yourself. It's not about you. See, that's the tricky part. I think we're, we're moving into such a, such an individualistic. It's, it is about me. You know what I mean? World. And it's, and I fear it's getting worse that, that so many people are so concerned with themselves that it, that I'm figuring out what we can do at a macro level to, to, to, to give people just the check.

You know what I mean? Where it's like, Hey, before you react, do this. It's a selfie culture. Yeah, it is. And it's killing me. It's killing me. Um, yeah. So, all right. Well, look, I think we could kind of, like you said, go, go pretty deep on a lot of this stuff. We could, we could. But I think, uh, it does. I agree. You know, I think this conversation, like I said, are you following what's happening with, um, Uncrushed and Tim over there? I am not. So definitely follow, because here's another side of the conversation, which is, um, mental, mental health, right? So not only the, you know, inclusion, right. And, and really being a, uh, sales in general, but business, um, a good friend of mine, Tim over at Salesforce, he, uh, he started uncrushed.org.

And it's about the mental, uh, like depression and those types of things about how, I mean, you go into work and everybody looks like they got their shit together. But then you go and you realize behind the curtain, some people are hiding some scary, scary stuff. And we have to have that conversation out loud too. Yes, we do. Right. Cause I, cause I think that's one thing where the, the level of stress that people put on themselves to succeed in this hyper, you know, sensitive world is, is you, you couple that with trying to, you know, you got a dangerous mix here. So we devote 30 days, 31 days in December to managing stress at, in, in the NAWSP community. You do. We do. Oh, that's fantastic.

So, so the whole month is just about 31 days. It's tips, tricks, tactics on managing stress, work-life balance, taking care of yourself. Yeah. We devote a whole month to it every December. Just to finish on that. What's, what's like one of your favorites, like what's one of your favorite tips or like very tactical things that people could say manage stress wise. If you just did this once a day, if you just did this once a day or whatever it is, what would that be? Celebrate everything. So at the end of the day, you write down, these are the top three things that I accomplished today. And it could be that I managed to eat lunch in the cafeteria, not at my desk. That's a win. And when we show gratitude for the things that we have done well, it's, it shifts our mindset.

And I'm a firm believer that if you can express gratitude for even the smallest things, the universe responds in kind and gives you more things to be grateful for. I love that. Yeah. I've started to do that actually with my wife and daughters every night to say, what are we grateful for today? Yeah. And again, let's, let's, let's agree that family is a constant. Okay. We're grateful for our family. Let's, let's pick those small things and, and I'll leave everybody with this. It's like, you know, on that note, those people that are in that down negative spiral, right. And then in the stress spiral, if you will, and things are going bad to your point, you have to shift that mindset and you have to start moving in a more positive direction.

And a great exercise I've had, I had a friend of mine, I've had a bunch of friends of mine do is I said, Hey, take a notebook. And I want you to write down throughout the day, what's going like all any little tiny positive thing that happens to you. And I mean that, I mean, if somebody opened the door for you on the way into work, write it down. If you hit a green light on your way into work, write it down. Right. And, and this one woman I was talking to did that. And she at first, she was like, what, John, nothing's going well right now. I go, open up your lens. Just do me a favor and carry around this book. She came back to me with three pages of positive things. And she's like, John, I can't tell you, like, like once I start and she's like, Oh, it was such a great day.

And I was like, why did you think it was a great day? She goes, because so many positive things happened to me today. I go, is that, was that different than yesterday? She's like, yes. I go, was it reality different or was it your lens that was different? Ah, yeah. And she says it was, she sat there and thought and she was like, Oh shit, it was my lens. Yeah. And I said, all you were doing when you were in that negative spiral, you were just looking for the negative. And trust me, I've been there. Right. But when you start proactively looking for the positive, be amazed at where this thing can go. Right. Exactly. Sometimes it's just a matter of taking a 30 second blessing check. Yeah. 30 seconds, list your blessings.

I like that. Yeah. 30 seconds. Or like as Tony Robbins was like, change your state, right? Like, like change your mindset into that, into a positive mindset and, and be grateful for what you do have. I mean, that's why I always used to, I don't, again, I don't watch the news anymore because it's just way too depressing. But before this whole shit show that we're in, I used to watch the news for one very specific reason. And it was to remind myself that literally no matter how bad my day went, I could have legitimately the worst day of my life. Yes. And I watched the news. I'm like, it ain't that bad. You know what I mean? It's not that bad. Yeah. I'm not worrying about drones over my head, you know, sleeping at night.

I'm not worrying about where my meal's coming from. Right. You know? And so I think that perspective, and let's end on that note, right? You said you almost cried when I sent you that video of privilege. Yes. It was a powerful one, right? Very. And I forwarded it. Yeah. I forwarded it. I put it on Facebook. I put it on LinkedIn with a message that said, how are you using your privilege? Because everyone has privilege. I have it. You have it. Regardless of skin color, regardless of race, of gender, we all have privilege. How are you using it to make the world a better place? I love that. And for those of you who don't know what that is, just literally Google privilege $100 race. Google that and you'll find it.

And for those of you that don't think that you have privilege, start on the finish line and answer every question that that person said and see how far you get in front of everybody else. Absolutely. Awesome, Cynthia. Well, it's been a great conversation. I really appreciate you coming on board here. How can people find out more about what you're working on and where do you want people to go as far as anybody who's listening who wants to learn more about what you're doing? We've got a ton of events coming up. We run $120 a year at NAWSP.org. Whether it's a webinar, that would be the best way, NAWSP.org. Okay, perfect. So go check her out. And you're on LinkedIn as far as just your name, right?

Yep, Cynthia Barnes. Cynthia Barnes. Perfect. So check her out on LinkedIn. Connect with NAWSP. And cool. Again, thank you very much for coming on, Cynthia. I appreciate it. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. No problem. And everybody out there, like I say all the time, no matter how bad your day goes, go make somebody smile, right? Because you could have the worst day, but if you make somebody smile and change somebody's perspective, you had a great day, all right? So have a great week, everybody. Go make it happen, and let's make this world a better place. Thanks, Cynthia.