169: Dr. Howard Dover On Sales Education Programs

What's poppin' y'all, it's your man James Say What Sales Buckley. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Make It Happen Mondays with your host, John Barrows. This episode as always is brought to you by our incredible sponsors, Sales Loft, Gong, Vanilla Soft, Vidyard, Proposify, Zoom Info, and Loom Cube. We have a very special guest today, Dr. Howard Dover of the University of Texas in Dallas. This man is one of few professors leading the charge in creating sales education programs for students all over the place. He's speaking with John today on why sales is historically the least educated profession, why it's disrespected and not appreciated by many professional circles in today's business world, and how the processes in sales are ever evolving, and that's how it's taught in the best programs.

Dr. Dover looks to aid people in learning what sales is really about. Thanks for that, Dr. D. Are you a frontline sales rep looking to step up your game? Well, visit us at ondemand.jbarrows.com today and develop your processes and routines by learning how to fill your funnel, drive to close, build a personal brand, and leverage LinkedIn. Let's change the game and make you the sales powerhouse you've always wanted to be. We'll see you at ondemand.jbarrows.com. Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrows. Make it happen Mondays. Hopefully, you all had a fantastic weekend. I am super excited about this conversation because it is one that I've been frustrated with for a long time, and I have somebody here with us who is going to enlighten us with why the issue is what it is and where we are going in the profession of sales.

Dr. Howard Dover, the director over at the Center for Professional Sales and Sales Coaching over at the University of Texas at Dallas. Howard, how are you, my friend? I'm doing well. Doing well. It's a crazy environment, but I think we're all adapting, right? Yeah, we were just talking about that right beforehand. We're all, hey, you got to adapt. I always say agility right now, that is the competitive advantage. Like, if you can be more agile, you will win. So, all right, my friend. We've talked for a while. I mean, we've known each other for a couple of years at this point, right? At least. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the things that, you know, I've always been frustrated with now in this profession is looking back, and I actually still even start my trainings with this.

I'm like, hey, how many of y'all have a degree in sales? And still to this day, maybe one or two hands go up, but still to this day, not very many people at all have their degree in sales. And I always find it absolutely fascinating that it's the number one profession in the world. I mean, whether your sales title or sales is in your role in some way, shape, or form, we all sell to a certain degree. And it is by far the least educated profession on the planet. And so, I want to start this conversation off with your thoughts on why. And then I would love to talk about what you're doing at University of Texas at Dallas with your program. And then let's talk about where we're going with this, all right?

So, why do you think, or why do you know, because you know better than I do, that sales is not a formally educated profession in the university setting? So, the Salesforce actually put out a documentary called The Story of Sales, and they dedicated a whole chapter on this. So, they did a chapter, they interviewed a lot of people on this. And so, there's a lot of reasons. I think part of it is because it's a combination of a lot of different thoughts, right? You have business, you have psychology, but it's not theoretical. So, it's really practitioner. I mean, you have to execute. You know, I always tell my students all the time, I could probably teach you everything you need to know from a vocabulary standpoint in maybe six weeks.

And then I could test you on it. But then, I put you on a sales call. Let me see if you can execute. Right? So, well, just like Sandler has that book, you can't teach a kid how to ride a bike in a train or something like that, whatever. It's kind of that similar concept. Like you can't, you can read about it, but until you do it, you're not going to know what it really is like, right? Yeah. So, that's the challenge. And so, you know, so that's, that's one of the challenges. And then when you take the academic realm, right? Academic realms compensate for research, not teaching. They're, they're, they compensate their faculty around, you know, getting in the best journals. And so, once again, this, this journal and theoretical component doesn't necessarily go down to the street.

So, you know, somebody down at the street is going to maybe go, golly, I don't even know what that professor is talking about. Really, really good friend of mine introduced me at his, is at his event as one of his keynote speakers. And he really didn't know how to introduce me. He's like, so I know Howard teaches sales and I know we all hire those kind of people. So, I thought we should figure out what he's doing over there. And I, I just, I was so depressed. I mean, I got up and I'm like, dude, that, you just, you made my life worse. I just said, I don't even know what he's teaching. And I guess it's, maybe we should listen so we can correct whatever he's talking about. Now we're so much better friends and now he knows what we teach.

In fact, then he just didn't know. And so, so that actually leads to the part of the problem, right? If there's a perception that academia doesn't know what it's doing, academia doesn't respond very nicely to those kinds of words. Yeah. And so I think one of the problems we have is that deans of business schools and marketing department chairs consider sales to be not academic enough, not professional enough. And so programs are really tough to establish around the country. Don't get me wrong. There's more and more programs every day. And I think that table is turning, but in the decade I've been doing this, it's kind of interesting. I, I left one institution because of the Dean. I came to this institution because of the Dean.

Um, so why do you think, but I mean, is it because there's a lack of respect? I don't, I, I fundamentally don't get it because I'm not a smart kid, right? But you know, I've been around enough businesses to realize that most businesses don't fail because it's not a good idea. It's not a good product. The market fits not there. Almost every business I've seen that fails is because they can't sell it. And because in sales drives every other aspect of every business, hiring growth strategy. So you'd think that the academics would be able to make the connection here that all this shit that we're teaching our kids to go do as far as business is concerned or whatever their careers are going to be.

If they can't figure out how to sell it, they're going to fail. So like, is it just, is it just a, a lack of understanding, a lack of respect, or is it really to your point, there's this such disconnect of, there's almost like this disdain for on both sides, right? Like the sales profession kind of disdains formal education. Cause I'll tell you right now, you know what I hate? And I, I'm no problem. I'm going to piss off a lot of people that are listening to me right now, which is instructional design. I personally, like every time I have my train, the reason I came into Basho, right. Was because Basho was developed by sales reps like Jeff Hoffman. He was a salesman and he created this program based on how I believe sales reps work, right?

Which is learn, apply, learn, apply, learn, tweak, apply. Right. Yeah. And so, but, and so there's like this, and every time instructional design comes in, I'd had one person come in and say, okay, apparently I should go instructional design because that's what you have to do when you grow up. Right. And you create a company around this stuff. And they came in and they put their instructional design around it. And I was like, this is such dog shit. I like, I just gave it back to him. I go, keep your money. I want nothing to do with this. I'm not going to use, like I get this $2,500 for them to, you know, instructional design my presentation. I was like, this, this is horrendous. I'm like, nope, keep your money.

I'm sorry. This is like when you get a drink at a bar and it sucks and you feel bad and you're like, okay, nevermind. You know, I'll pay for it, but I'm not going to drink this thing. So the disdain on both sides, like why is it historically not respected? Well, I think when you look at it, let's, let's talk about the field for a second. Right. So you and I know, cause we, we talked to a lot of people that if you had to, you know, segment the market, a majority of sales organizations across the board, I'm not talking about a specific sector, um, are of the belief that I don't really need you to have experience to teach your sales. Right. So, so what are we saying? Right. What are we saying? Hey, I can take anybody off the street and after six weeks, two weeks, one day you watch me and, uh, you know, you can be in sales.

And so do we value people who develop an educational perspective in sales? So I get, I get two to 300 calls a year for people who want to hire my students. And I, I tell my students, I said, you know, here's what they want is they want to bring the truck and, and put it up and load the cattle into the truck because they're going to go slaughter 50 to 60% of them. And then they're going to bring the truck back and say, Hey, I need, I need another truck load. Need more. Yeah. And so my students are smart enough to actually go, uh, yeah, what did, what did you do with the last truck load? And then they say, well, you know, we have a 50 or 60% or even 30%, you know, turnover ratio. And they're going, Oh, so you don't know what you're doing.

And so I think that's part of the problem. Right. Yeah. Now we have a few companies and you and I know that this is changing where they say, wait a minute, this is a profession. I need to actually, you know, I need to train people. I need to get people who can think analytically, think on their toes, but really deepen their, their knowledge base and, and become agile in different spaces, be situationally aware of what's happening. And that kind of, I'd like to propose it would help, could help if that person is educationally focused on developing those skills and the business acumen. And, and so when you, when the field values that education, then the market will move to it. And so, uh, so it's kind of a chicken egg problem, right?

We, we don't value it on the street. Um, and, and yet, you know, everybody at call, it's like 90% of the calls, John, it's like, so I need 300 people. Yeah. So let's talk that you probably have a bigger problem than hiring. I was going to say, if you need 300 people and that quick, you get a, either a, you have a massive opportunity or you have a really big problem. Maybe, right. But, but most ramps as I've watched a ramp. And once again, we're not in Silicon slopes. We're not, we're not up there in Boston. We're not, you know, we're not there in the, in the San Francisco Silicon Valley space. So, you know, we get a company calls us up and says, hey, we're ramping. And I, my first question is why, why are you ramping?

What, what's the purpose? Is there a new product? Are you expanding? Did you do an acquisition? No, we just felt that it would be a good idea because we're a little bit underrepresented in our market space. Okay. And, um, so you, you don't, you're a mature market, you're expanding and, and usually it just blows up in their faces. Right. And so it's so tough to watch. So we look for those companies that say, hey, I, I need key people to just knock it out of the park. And, and when those people come, you know what, they invest in what we're doing and they actually help us co-develop where we're headed. So we don't, you know, we are more iterative in our design. Um, we definitely teach students something, let them fail and then let them do it again, let them do it again, uh, realizing they're not going to pick it up on the first touch.

Um, and so it, you know, I think that's part of the problem. It's a combination of the Ivy towerism and that the market, I mean, until we get leaders who say, you know what, I need professionals and I'm going to invest in human capital and developing amazing professionals. And when that happens, the demand comes. When I, when I came to UT Dallas, I was in a meeting with the Dean and I had a little bit of an Ivy towerism moment where, uh, he said, what do you need? And I said, well, I probably need three faculty if I'm going to do the national model. And, and my, my colleague and friend, uh, said, no, no, no. We, we brought one of him in. We're not bringing any more up over. And the Dean looked at him and he said, you haven't been in my shoes for 17 years.

I've had people tell me what an idiot I am because I don't teach sales at this institution. So we got a guy that we trained. I got my PhD at UT Dallas and they brought me back to do this. Um, they said, we train this guy. He's not going to, he's not going to make us look bad and you leave him alone because, because I got one, I got one and he's going to do this and he's not going to do it in a way that embarrasses us. So, but that's the whole thing right there. You got the Dean, you got the chair, you got the, you know, the Ivy towerism and, and then the market response has been phenomenal. When we provide this elite group of students, the elite companies around the, around the country come to UT Dallas and, and, and heart.

Yeah. And I think that, that you hit on something that business acumen piece I I've see in, in, in the current sales environment, right? The uneducated, excuse me, the uneducated sales environment, the business acumen piece is sorely lacking, right? Because they, they, oh, it's like they, I mean, you'll, you'll appreciate this. You know, I still, to this day, I'll do trainings, right? And I'll, I'll talk to sales, sales reps who sell technical solutions to technical people, right? And like, I'm talking senior reps and they usually sit in front of 30, 40 of them or whatever. And I'll say, okay, y'all think you're smart, right? Business acumen, good. Who in here knows the difference between a CTO and a CIO?

Crickets, like cricket, like maybe one or two hands, like you can see them kind of hesitant, like raise it. Well, I think, and it's like, look, you're selling technical solutions to technical people and you don't know the difference. And look, I get it in mid-market and SMB CTOs and CIOs are pretty similar. But once you get to the enterprise, they are very different roles. And if you speak that language, if you speak the wrong language, the wrong ones, you're not, you're going to lose all your credibility. And, and you don't have to be a genius here. You don't have to be a MBA to know everything about finance, everything about technology, but you need to know enough to be able to ask substantial questions and layer deep in that type of stuff, as opposed to just saying dumb stuff, like tell me about your priorities or whatever.

Right? So how, how are you, I want to get into kind of how you structure your sales education and how do you combine the, the sales knowledge, tactics, structure, tips, whatever, business acumen and execution. So talk to me about a little bit about UT Dallas and how you've structured this program to get, to really prepare these kids to be successful. And then I want to talk about how they ramp coming out. So, uh, I listened to people like John Barris and I modeled. I wish that was true, my friend. No, no, seriously. I mean, so the first time we met, uh, was at Dreamforce and, and I'm, I'm one of the, I'm one of the few professors that has gone to Dreamforce and goes to AISP events. And, and, um, you know, at three or four years ago, my friend from the university of Houston at the time, Joe Laban, who's now at John Hopkins, he and I had gone to Salesforce and we were sitting on a street corner in San Francisco and some guy was playing the saxophone off in the distance.

I mean, it was like this, we both remember this moment and we looked at each other and said, we'd gone to the sales some of that day. And I think you were on a panel with Trish Bartuzzi that time. And, and I, and we looked at each other and go, dude, are you teaching any of this stuff? And I said, I'm not. And they said, are you? And he said, no, I'm not. I said, the language they use and the language we teach there, there's such a big gulp. And we were both really embarrassed at that moment. We really were. And we, we kind of, we kind of challenged each other because he was in the, in one of the largest and oldest sales programs in the country. And I, I was at one of the newest and fastest rising ones in the country.

And we both looked at each other and go, so, and we literally said, you know, if we were doctors, we'd probably be sued for malpractice because we're that, we're that far off. And, and so we both said, you know what, we're going to have to change this. We're just going to have to change it. So it really has been an iterative cycle for me. And I really kind of looked and said, okay, what's the market doing? I, my advisory board's been phenomenal. So literally we, you know, at first we were all role play centric and you're getting the kids to do a role play, which by the way is, you know, it's great practice. Don't get me wrong. I mean, you gotta, gotta know how to do a meeting. Sure. Um, one of the few universes in the country that actually has a digital prospecting class.

It's not a prospecting class. It's not a CRM class. It's a digital prospecting class. And, um, they have COVID that's actually, I mean, you've come to an event where we've had the kids actually go out and make sure that there are people at the event that you spoke at and they're in quota to do it. Now we just don't, I mean, maybe they think I leave them blind, but I don't, but you know, it's, it's interesting because we teach them, but we do it in an iterative fashion. And I learned this from, um, Ashley Welsh and some other friends around the country that the best way to do this. And you pointed out earlier is teach them, let them try and then teach them and let them try be iterative, right?

Let them do it. And 10% will do what you said. 90% will do what's efficient and then they'll get the results. And then you bring them back in and you say, okay, let's try that again. Let's try that again. So our students get exposed to Salesforce as a platform in their intro class. They do role plays in a competitive environment in something we call rookie preview in their introductory class. They're, they're, they're doing, um, you know, trailheads in their introductory class. So then by the time we move on to advanced class, we assume they know how to use Salesforce. They already know the systems and kind of the opportunities, leads, contacts. And then we have two courses. One is the prospecting piece.

Cause right. The challenge in sales is you've got two challenges before you get the meeting. Number one, getting in contact with the person. Number two, delivering a message, not really getting them to receive the message. It's not delivering. We don't have, we have no delivery problem. We have a receiving problem. So we have a whole course on delivery and, and receipts and understanding how that's changing. That course changes every six months to a year. It's never taught the same. It moves with the market. Awesome. Um, and, and, and I honestly will go listen to people like you and, you know, we, we go to the same things and there's a lot of people coming up with some very interesting insights.

Yeah. It goes right in the classroom. So then we have a second course that literally is how to hold the meeting and how to, how to manage a complex sale through a piece of pipeline. And, um, that one, um, on quote again, for both pipeline creation and pipeline close, there's a dual quota and you cannot pass that class without having quota numbers. If you, if you like blanket, you, you will not pass the class. That's awesome. So, you know, and, and that to me, it's actually funny because what you're, what you just, from an evolution standpoint of teaching like role play and okay, cool to application and execution of it, that's actually where the light bulb went off for me when I was taking trainings, right?

Because I was taking all these, you know, very well known trainings early in my career and they were all very role play heavy, right? So I would go into a room and I would sit there and the whole time, and look, I don't get me wrong. I love practice. I'm personally more of a role play before I go execute guy instead of just a role play guy, just a role play. But what I found was most sales training organizations would role play and it was either the most ridiculous scenario you've ever faced in your life or the most perfect scenario you've ever seen. And the trainer was such an expert that when he or she would get up and do the role play, they would look like, oh my God, like that's how you do it.

Holy crap. But then when the kid would actually go to try to do that on the phone or with a client, they would get kicked right in the teeth, right? And so when I got to Basho, it was like, no, no, no. Like in the workshop, like it was a two day workshop, public workshop. And I went to it and the first day was prospecting. And the guy said, all right, he taught something. He goes, all right, everybody lift up your laptops. He's like, go find an account you want to get into. Like, go do some research, find this thing, write that email and send it. And I'm like, wait a minute, I'm doing my job right now. And he was like, yeah, yeah. I'm like, oh, all right. Cause that's, I mean, that's how I believe.

Do you, do you believe that sales, do you believe that sales reps specifically, there's a persona that there's, there's two trains of thought here, born sales professional, right? And you have those traits or everybody's in sales because everybody has that in them. I personally believe that everybody to a certain degrees in sales, but they don't necessarily have the skills to succeed in sales. So do you believe that there is a certain persona that when you train, when, when they come to your class, that they have certain attributes that are more apt to learning in that fashion of execution. And I'll give you a quick example here. Like I'm not, I don't like reading. I don't, I don't learn by reading.

Okay. I, I, I open up a book and within five pages, I fall dead asleep. And after I read something, you ask me if I learned what I learned, I'll have to read it three times in order to really tell you what I learned. This is how I learn. I learned by talking to people who are smarter than me, right. And asking questions and digging deep. So I learned different than some other people, right? Do you think sales reps are inherently more apt to learn in an execution oriented way than a book step test type of way? Well, I, I don't think you can learn sales from the book, right? I mean, you know, so, so let, let's put that on the table here for a second. I think coming back to the other ideas, you know, I think one of the challenges we face in the diversity of our, of our field is, is kind of some of the language that, that, that, that you threw around that a lot of people say.

Yeah. And that is that we, we think that people, that there's innate components. When you look at UT Dallas, I have what, whatever you want to call diversity, I've got it. Yeah. Whatever you want to call it, whether it's women, whether it's people of color, whether it's, you know, sexual orientation, what age, what experience, whatever you want to say, I've got it. And let me tell you, it's fascinating to watch. If I can teach the people principles that allow them to resonate with an individual and actually understand how to cater their execution, their followup, their learning capacity within their own personality set and culture set. I believe almost anybody can become pretty impressive and it's pretty amazing there.

And so what a great story from one of my partners, give you a great example. He, we had, we had a, a, a Korean fellow who came through one class. He didn't take the program. He came late and one of our partners picked him up. And so he goes out and he starts working at a store in, in Dallas before his training. And, and somebody from, you know, Korean speaking, uh, gentleman comes up and he goes, Hey, and he speaks to him in Korean. And he says, uh, so, so what, you know, finally they got one of us here. And he said, yeah, he said, and he said, so you're going to be a counter jerk. Right. And he said, no, I'm actually in the leadership development program. I'm eventually going to be a territory manager.

The guy hands his card to the kid and says, I do $3 million worth of business. When you become a territory manager, I'm going to switch. Now, hello. Now, kudos to that executive leader. When he heard the story, he said, guess what? You've now been promoted to territory. I was going to say, ding, you're promoted. And they found that the opportunity set was in the, in the multi millions and they had never seen it. Yeah. And they said, oh my gosh, because they, I don't want to say they kept hiring the same people, but they didn't see that. And so I think that what a great executive once told me something, and this guy, this guy is one of the most amazing people I've ever met. He said, Howard, if you could get them to do two things before you give them to me to number one, that they're coachable, coachable.

Which means when I teach them, they alter their behavior, right? Doesn't mean that you learn and don't change. It means you learn and you do, right? You change your behavior based on what I teach you. Second, follow up. You and I both know that people don't follow up. Listen, if you follow up, you win. It's amazing. Don't get me wrong. You follow up kind of stupid, you don't win. But if you follow up consistently. All right, everybody. Dr. Dover helps so many students grow and develop into the sales profession that actually love what they do. Send us your sales wins. I'd love to have your story. Please send it to me at james@jbarrows.com to be highlighted on the next episode of Make It Happen Monday.

Today, we are highlighting MJ Price of Sprout Social. MJ signed up for JB Sales On Demand last month and started using the tactics in driving to close to handle objections better. The preemptive strike has changed the way that she responds when objections come her way. As a result, she's built better credibility with her prospects and the technique has recently helped her to close a highly competitive deal. Her prospect even thanked her for being so collaborative through her process. They cited her objection handling as a driver for one of the decisions to buy. Way to go, MJ. Keep making it happen. I mean, it is it is so funny to me about like how sales is really about just doing some of the fundamental things consistently.

I mean, and look, I don't want to bring up, you know, everybody hates me for bringing up the Patriots and Bill Belichick and all that other stuff. But just do your job, like do the basics. There's this one example where this kid Gray, he was on the he was on the Patriots. He was a rookie, right? And he was a running back. And the Patriots are about a system, right? I mean, before outside of Brady, pretty much plug and play anybody into the system and just do your job, right? And this kid comes in and he scores five touchdowns in one game and running back. And he was on he was literally on the cover of Sports Illustrated the next day, right? He was because he got a little high on his horse. He got he I guess he you know, whatever the next day he forgot his alarm.

And so he was 15 minutes late to to practice with Belichick. Belichick benches him goes and gets a blunt from the Pittsburgh Steelers brings him in that next game blunt scores for touchdowns that game. And he just any basically is telling the kid, look, you're not special, just do your job. And if and I think a lot of people have this perception that sales is about this slick ass born sales rep knows exactly what to say when to say it. And what I find is the most successful sales reps are nowhere near that type of person. They are the ones who do the grind and the dirty work consistently, they do the prospecting consistently, they do the follow up consistently, they take notes, they summarize, they set agendas, they you know what I mean, like they do that stuff.

And it's just part of what they do. And if they do it, and then yeah, there's that flair of learning more and more and being able to be personal and all that other stuff. But it is about the basics. Yes, it's fundamental. You do the fundamentals. You know, it's funny, I sit down and talk to students as they're going through this process. And, you know, I'm going, all right, so you're telling me this is the client. So have you looked at LinkedIn insights on them? No, I haven't looked at it. Have you looked at the port? We use a company that gives us an AI dossier on any company we ask you to. And I said, so have you looked at that? And I said, so I'm looking at, I'm looking at the executives, and I go, okay, so what did you ask them?

Like, well, I asked them if they'd like to attend the event with John Barrows coming up. And I said, well, nobody wants to go to the event with John Barrows coming up, because that's not really interesting. No offense, John Barrows. No, it's not. No offense is interesting. I said, but if you looked at the fact that he's been stale for two years on his head count, and you looked at the fact that he's new to the role, he came from another country, and this is what's going on. And you look at the, you know, you look at this, and you look at that. And I said, so now we have context. Now, how could you have asked a different question here? Yeah. And they go, oh, and I said, you got to do the fundamentals, right?

If it's a big enough deal, you got to go do your homework, right? Listen, you and I know when you're cold calling, you can't do that all the time. No, absolutely not. Yeah. I mean, whales or mid whales or bigger fish, you have to take a little bit of time to get some context, right? I think you're the best person I can ask this question to because I've asked a few people and nobody has ever had a good answer. And I don't either. Well, no, but you do it, you do it. And I'm curious how you do it, because you and I both know that curiosity is one of the key factors of being successful in sales, right? Like genuine curiosity, like not like forget about my pitch, I'm really trying to understand. So how do you teach your students curiosity?

How? Because and do you believe that it's an inherent thing that you are a genuinely curious person? Or do you believe that you can teach somebody to be curious? So I have a lot of I have a lot of deep thoughts, most of which would probably not be appropriate to this group. But I think part of the part of the challenges when we're being honest in an org, that you are so under the gun for your number, that developing some of these long term attributes are just really, really tough to create, unless you have an amazing coach and manager, right? Yeah, right. So or culture. So so that that'd be the caveat. What I get is I get a one to two year cycle with a young person. And what I like to really help them understand is that listen, you can hoodwink people all day, and you can be really rich.

You know, you can go, no offense, you can stick a gun to somebody's head and actually make money. You know, it's, it's amazing card. Oh, you know, any of those guys like Wolf of Wall Street, bullshit, you can be a millionaire by being a douche. No question. No, no. Now I said, so that if you want to learn how to do that, get out of my class, because that's all for me to teach. I said, I fundamentally want to help solve the problems of the world every day. I fundamentally, that's, that's a, that's a core belief that I do. And I said, I'm not telling you, you have to do that. But I'm saying, you'll love your job a whole lot more if you're fundamentally worrying about solving the problem and, and, and, and creating a better world through selling the proper solutions.

And I, so I can say that, and then I can watch them iterate and then come, then they come back and they, and so we get to stop the quota machine, right? So we do a cycle and we say, okay, yeah, you really know that was, that was really bad. Okay. So, but then we don't have immediately that they have to make a hundred calls again tomorrow so we can stop, educate and start. So I think we have the potential to maybe incubate curiosity. Part of it for me right now is I've actually morphed the curriculum in, in this academic year where I'm trying to teach situational awareness, which requires curiosity, right? Um, for me to sit in because we turned on conversation intelligence last year and I realized they had no clue how to deal with different situations.

You know, I thought I knew what was going on, right? I saw the numbers. I'm like, yes, I am so freaking awesome. I'm doing my great job here. And then I turned on conversation intelligence. I went, Oh my God. And so I, and I realized I didn't teach them the situations they're going to run into. And I didn't teach them to be curious enough to figure out which one they're in. And so we morphed the curriculum this fall and said, all right, there, there's a bunch of different situations you're probably going to run into. The issue is not understanding spin or challenger or whatever it may be value. It's around, it's around assessing where, where the customer is assessing the business challenge and then determining what the appropriate discovery and or challenger moment, whatever the case may be, right?

Whatever your methodology is at that space. Um, and adapting to that situation that requires curiosity in the first place. So I'll, I think, ask me in six more months, whether what I'm doing is working. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, you know what? I think it's to your point, it's an iterative process, right? Of, of really, you know, and I tell kids all the time, like, look, I always, I know we're trying to get a job. Okay. Everybody needs it. You know, they come out of college and need a job. This is a bad environment in general. And so people are just, they'll take a job as a sales job because they want to be in sales and they almost don't care who the job is with. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Hold on a second.

Do yourself a favor. Align, you know, figure out what your core values are first, right? As an individual, then go look for companies that you can see aligning with that and products that you can see you believe in. Like what, what do you genuine? Cause I firmly believe that in order to be truly successful in sales, you have to genuinely believe that whatever you are selling is making to your point, a difference, right? It's solving a problem. It's helping. I tell people all the time, I don't sell you anything. I help you achieve your goals or solve your problems. And that's it. And if your goals aren't big enough and your problems aren't big enough, why are we having this conversation? Right?

Move on. It's got this, sales has got this dirty word because it is a dirty word because the perception of it, and I, and I put all these pieces together. The reason the perception of sales I think is so bad is because we come out of school on like with our, whatever degree, we then jump into sales because we didn't, couldn't make enough money doing that. We get no education. And I say like you take a normal kid who's a, you know, usually pretty honest, you know, straightforward, whatever you give them a quota and a commission schedule and very limited training and say, go. And, and they realize that if they don't hit their quota, they ain't eaten that day. And they're probably going to get fired in three months.

They will do some pretty unnatural things. They will cut corners. They will, they will say things that they probably shouldn't say or make promises they probably shouldn't make. And so therefore the perception is, oh, these kids are slime balls and whatever. And yes, some of them do become slime balls and rise to the ranks and whatever. But for the most part, it's, I think it's a lack of education and understanding. So if they understand that, like find something you love and then go sell it. Cause I do believe that sales is the transfer of enthusiasm. Is that if I believe, you know, if you fit the profile of somebody that I know that my solution could potentially help, it is an emotional thing backed up by facts.

It still is to this day, but you got to believe in what you're doing in order to be successful in it. And if you believe, then you become, become curious because you want to learn more and it kind of snowballs on itself. Right. So I was, I was interviewing a few of our alumni because we've been in this iterative model for about two years. And this was kind of precipitated. One of my alumni sent me a picture of her Salesforce, you know, report for her team. And so, you know, in the Salesforce report, you have a thousand, you know, a thousand. And I, I don't remember if it was a month or a quarter, I don't remember. And, and so, you know, there's everybody sitting there and then there's this big, long line.

It's just, just goes off into the distance and it's like a million. And it's a 10, she's 10 to one. She's 10 times, she's 10 times the average of her team. And I, and I said, can I, can I publish this? And she goes, no, you'll get me fired. Okay. But can I at least interview you and figure out what's going on? And then I realized that the number one person in Adobe or SDR from Adobe is, is our guy. And the number one guy from Qualtrics in SDR is our guy. And, and one of the top producers in IBM at like six to 700% of quota is, is one of our ladies. And, and I just got another one in from Gartner, you know, double, double presence club and in enterprise, she's a rookie in enterprise and she's hitting presence levels.

So we just got this exponential thing. And so I actually interviewed them all and I said, okay, what? I know it's not me. Don't get me wrong. Right. When you're, when you're students not get out of the park, you know, you're like, please tell me it's me, please. But you, you and I both know it's not us. It's that they took what we told them and they have a different drive and they have a different capacity. So what's the one thing they all said? And I didn't prompt this, John. They said, I don't ever do the same thing twice. I'm constantly improving on my method. And I, and so they all said, I iterate, I iterate. I have an A, I'm testing a B. I have an A, I'm testing a B. Every, every one of them that I interviewed that were the top producers, I said, I, I never satisfied because I know the market's moving.

Doesn't that sound like curiosity? They've developed curiosity to do through the iterative design. So I'm wondering, I think maybe the iterative design may build it. Yeah. So, um, anyway. So it was like Six Sigma, you know, scrums, like, I think there is something to it where there's this, you know, MVP product, like get it out there. Let's test it. Let's try it. Let's get feedback. Let's adjust. So I think there is something to, you know, almost teaching that in a lot of ways, because they teach it in others, they teach it in development, right? Why can't we teach it in sales? Well, we do. I mean, we teach, we teach the iterative design and I, and that's the one thing I tell my students, um, you know, listen, you know, your world, uh, part of your world is the SDR explosion.

And listen, the customer is sitting over there on the other side on the SDR explosion, and they are not just sitting there going, yes, please. The 1000% new SDRs that have come on the market in the last five years. I'm just sitting here waiting to receive your email, get your text and, and get your video presentation from LinkedIn because I have nothing to do. Right. And there's, there's 10 times more of you than there was five years ago. So I'm just so thrilled. I get more of this says no buyer on your list ever. And so the buyer is just being there moving. And so the question then becomes what you did today, even what you did last week, if everybody else is doing it, you've got to figure out how to stay relevant.

So in some ways, I think I question whether we can do best practices anymore. I really think that may be something that disappeared a while ago, maybe three, five years ago, but I do think we can have objectives and guardrails and skills. Right. Yep. Well, I think there's structure. I think there's a foundational structure and what I'm seeing in you and I have talked about this in the past about kind of the, the change of generational change about how people learn. Right. I mean, Gen Xer, right. I, and actually Morgan and I just did this keynote that we just had yesterday where we talk about the, the, you know, Gen Xers and millennials and how, you know, we were the Gen Xers with the last generation to kind of be figuring it out when we grew up.

Like when we, when you and I were bored, when we were in our house, you know, mom would kick us out and say, just go play. Like, I don't care what you do. Just be home by dinner. Right. So we'd break things, we blow things up, whatever, and we'd figure things out. But now kids, they, they go from school to this hour, to this hour, then they have soccer practice from this hour, to this hour, then they have their iPad for 30 minutes and they can play with their friends for an hour. And so literally every moment of these kids lives is structured and even worse, they're taught to the test in the most cases. Right. You have to like, forget about creativity. You have to learn how to pass that test so you can get your C set, your score for whatever reason.

Right. So you get those kids who are in that environment, come out into the real world and they have managers like me look at them and say, figure it out. And they look at you sideways. Like, what are you talking about? Figure it out. Like, tell me what to do. Right. And, and the result is lazy managers like me, if some kid doesn't know what to do, I'm going to tell you what to do. Here's a script. Here's a, here's a template. Right. And you get a kid who's taught to the test. You give them a script or a template. That's what they're going to do. They're going to do exactly that. Yeah. And so the answer is structure because guys like you and I, or at least in general, our generation, we like building structure.

We don't like being in structure. I don't know about you. Right. But if I put right. Yeah. If I put structure on you, you're going to be like, wait a minute, gross. There's a better way of doing this. Let me break this and I'll create it. Right. But these kids, they, they thrive within structure. And if they don't have it, they fall apart. But you, so that's, I think that connective tissue here is we've give them the guardrails to your point. We give them some structure, some foundational things, and then test within that. Cause they'll, they'll do better than you and I ever will within that structure. Yeah. Well, and Z's, Z's are completely different, new animal, which is a whole other podcast, man.

I was going to say, I wanted to get into that, but we definitely have to talk about that. Cause the Z generation learned from the millennial generation. And now I'm fascinated with what's happening with them. They have completely zigzagged. They're, they're orthogonal to the millennials. So they're, they're like our people. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's kind of weird, you know, anyway, that's like a, that's like, that is absolutely another, another session, man. Let's table that one. Cause I, cause I want to go deep on that one too, but let's talk about some of the, like, just to finish up here. Um, you guys have this, like this, what is it? The, the, the NCAA for sales that like, talk to me about this thing.

Cause I don't think anybody knows about this. So I think, so the first thing is that, um, I, we, we aren't the only ones, right? UT Dallas, not the only one. Um, of course, by the way, I'm sorry. How many colleges do actually offer a sales degree at this point? So two sources for, for the people that listen to your podcast. One of them is the University Sales Center Alliance, USCA. There's, there's about 65, 70 schools now that have a, an, a curriculum that's approved or recognized by that institution. We're one of them. Um, and so there's those schools. Those are kind of the elite group and trying to, trying to collaborate and kind of push the, the, the field forward. But then, uh, sales education foundation is another source that lists 250 to 300 schools that at least teach a course or in the incubating stages.

Um, and so we all get together and, uh, you know, we compete. And so, um, so twice a year, there's, there's in the spring, there's actually the, uh, NC double, it's up to the NCAA cause they're at that story, but it's the collegiate sales, um, competition and it's double elimination tournament style, two students from every university it's ranked. So your previous year rankings determine where you get seated. Um, it's brutal, man. I, I, what do they, what do they do? Do they pitch? Do they sell? Do they role play 20 minutes, um, different scenarios with, with a corporate buyer and corporate judges. And, and, uh, you know, it's, I mean, you get your score, you get your stack rank. And if you're below the top, if you're the top two, you go forward.

If you're, if you're below that you're, you're out. And then there's the world cup of sales that that's hosted by Florida state university. We kind of like the world cup of sales. Cause we're currently the world cup champions of the world. Um, for another month, we are currently the reigning world cup champions. Uh, I, I, I think I could say I own the team, but I didn't coach it. So my colleague Samira was the one who coached them victory. Um, that one has a case competition, a speed cell and, and it has, um, the role play competition. So there's like four or five elements that you're judged on and it's team based. And that happens every fall in Orlando, normally in a non COVID environment, 70 universities at that one.

And we compete head to head. Right. And we just, I love it because it calibrates us every year. You know, we, we think we've got it all figured out. And then our friends over at Kansas state with us, you know, and, uh, or friends at Florida state and some of the other places, the great programs around the country, Baylor and Houston. And, and so, and you know what, as coaches, we, we literally, we help each other out. One of the most winning coaches, when I first started, I lost every time went to the guy from Elon who now works for Salesforce. I don't, I'm not that good. I'm not that competitive, but I don't like taking my kids and you know, basically I don't like losing. Yeah. He's like, he's like, well, Hey, let me, let me give you some pointers.

And, and, you know, so we help each other out and kind of compete. So. Yeah. I missed that last part. So you said, you don't like that you went blank there, but what did he say? You said you don't like losing, but. Well, I don't like losing, but you know, at the same time, I don't, I don't want to take kids in environment and have them lose. So, you know, it's, it's, uh, so, so, you know, it's collaborative. We, we kind of teach each other and we say, Hey, you know, here's how we're doing it. And so next year, let's go ahead ahead and let's all be at the same level and let's push our people forward. It's awesome. So. Awesome, man. Well, look, I think again, you and I could have, I could ask thousands of questions right here about, you know, Gen Z and all the other things that you're doing.

But I just, first of all, I want to say thank you for, for what you are doing to help elevate the profession. Cause I, I genuinely believe that this is the greatest profession in the world when done right and the worst when done wrong. And I've always, once I, once I really truly found sales as my passion, I was always frustrated with the lack of education. And I'd always had a dream where once I became independently wealthy, which I'm still not there yet, that I could go and at least, you know, create some sort of sales curriculum to help kids out and elevate. And you got, you're doing it better than anybody else I know out there. So I want to say thank you for that. Well, John, you know, you have an open invitation to cameo at class anytime you're in Dallas.

Anyone of you, anytime you want to invite me, man, I'm, I'm, I'm open for it. Give me enough leeway. Cause I got to find some time in the schedule, but, uh, I will, uh, I will happily come and chat with, uh, some of those kids, tell them what the real world is really all about. Um, yeah, absolutely. So tell, tell, uh, the, uh, the people who are listening, like, what do you want them to know as far as where to go and, you know, what you want to like, how to connect and all that stuff. Well, I think, I think one of the things I would advise anybody, if you're kind of, you know, this kind of fired you up, um, find your local school that is in your neighbor, you know, in your area and go, go ask the professor there and say, Hey, how can I help?

How can I be part of what you're doing? Um, the way this grows is that the community goes to the business school and says, Hey, I want to see this at this business school. If it's not there, go ask the Dean for it. Say, Hey, why aren't you doing it here? And, um, if you want to connect with me, uh, Howard Dover, uh, LinkedIn is probably my best. If you want to follow what we do, hashtag UTD sales, we use aggressively and, um, you know, follow what we do, but, uh, more importantly, you know, get engaged with the academic community. They, we can't do those kind of events like the collegiate cup and, and, and the, the tournament without industry friends coming in and giving the feedback to the students.

And, and they think we know something, but they know, you know, something. Yeah. Well, what, what I know is a relative term, but yes, I think 25 years of experience, I might, I might know something, but it's usually again, the experience factor, right? I mean, I think that's hopefully what, what, you know, guys like you and I can bring to the table is all the losses and all the mistakes we've made over the years. So that hopefully, I mean, that's always been my goal as a train, as a trainer, if you will, is, you know, my hope is that, you know, I can share at least some of the stories and examples and my failures so that those kids can skip a few steps. They still got to go through the pain.

They still got to get their teeth kicked in, but hopefully not nearly as much as I did. So that's kind of the plan there. And I, so. All right. Awesome. Good to visit with you, John. Always learn something for time to talk to you. Yeah. Same thing here. I would appreciate it. So look, everybody, I hope you all learned as much as I did on this conversation, you know, go follow Howard, go to your universities, go try to do what you can to push the envelope here. So to really get sales to that profession, that level of respect and expertise as it deserves, because it is the greatest profession out there. All right. So look, as I always say at the end of all the podcasts here, even if you had a shitty day, go make your, go make somebody smile.

Cause if you made somebody smile today, you know, you had a good day and we need way more of that in this world right now. So Howard, thank you very much. Everybody have a great week and let's make it happen. What an impactful episode with John and Dr. Dover, the education behind sales can be a huge success factor for anybody that's entering the profession or for a veteran sales rep that's looking to further their depth of knowledge. Let's be honest. There's no silver bullets in the game of sales. But we pride ourselves on delivering sales practices and techniques that aid in helping you become the best sales professional possible. Do you need process? Do you need structure? Well, what about actionable takeaways that you can implement right away?

Visit us at on demand.jbarrows.com today and start the journey towards sales success with the JB sales team in your corner. We are always here and ready to help you make it happen. you