226: Hang Black on Diversity and Intentionality in Sales

What's poppin' y'all, it's your man James, Say What Sales Buckley, and this is your episode of Make It Happen Mondays with your host, John Barrows. Huge shout out to all of our partners, Sales Loft, Proposify, Gong, Vidyard, Chili Piper, and Demo Desk. These are amazing products to work with and positive team members that you can trust. And as always, to be a JBSales sponsor, you must be a great team and product to work with and have amazing value for our audience full of salespeople. So check these folks out, they're great to work with and they will change your sales game forever. At JBSales, we work exclusively with sales teams that actively invest in their own professional development. That's who we created JBSales for in the first place, the folks that care enough to win deals.

And if that sounds like you, you can gain access to all our training tips and takeaways at ondemand.jbarrows.com today to become a member of the JBSales squad. Today, we welcome Hang Black, author of Embrace Your Edge. Hang was put on a traditional path at a very young age, but became much more than her parents had ever imagined. As an accomplished author and VP of revenue enablement at Juniper Networks, Hang has hit some serious goals in her career path and growth. So let's get started with some background and get to know Hang Black in this incredible conversation around topics like messaging, the buyer's journey, and much, much more. Take it away, JB. Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrels.

Make it up on Monday. Hopefully, you had a fantastic weekend. I know I'm not supposed to timestamp these, but this weekend was Father's Day, which was a very special weekend for myself and my daughter spending some time together, which was delightful. And the weather's good here in Boston. And we have a fantastic guest to talk about some really, really cool stuff on a lot of different levels. So Hang Black over at Juniper Networks. You are the VP of Global Revenue Enablement, if I'm not correct, right? That is right. Thank you for mentioning that. Absolutely. Hang and author of an awesome new book, Embrace Your Edge. It is about paving your own path as an immigrant woman in the workplace. The path is a little bit more circuitous and a little bit more difficult, but it is doable.

I love it. So hang, let's talk about your path because you've had a very interesting path from a career standpoint. I mean, you've gone from engineering to sales to marketing, but talk us a little bit about where you're coming from so we can put some context because just for everybody listening here, we're going to talk about really sales reps and being adaptable this day and age and really meeting the client on their journey and how things are changing right now. So Hang, talk us through kind of where you're coming from here. Sure. Thanks for mentioning that. So my degree is in chemical engineering, actually, and I actually was a semiconductor manufacturer for nearly a decade. I have three patents in that domain, but I always really loved sales and marketing.

And John, can we be real? I know you like being real on your show, but midway through university, I asked my parents if I could switch over to business. And they said, you're Asian, doctor, lawyer, engineer, pick one. So I stuck with engineering. So your parents even pushed that on you. It wasn't just society. And so your parents put you in those buckets? Absolutely. I was actually very happy that they allowed me to pick from those three because as a girl, you know, you're often told maybe be an accountant or a pharmacist, let the boys be the doctors and engineers. But in any case, I digress. In any case, I always say that I went into engineering because I love solving complex problems and I love numbers and I went into sales because I love numbers with dollar signs in front of them a lot more.

Yeah, much better. But with that background, nearly a decade in engineering, nearly a decade in marketing at this point, nearly a decade in sales, it really gives me a lens to kind of look at the end-to-end process, what each audience really looks for, what they gravitate to, and at the end of the day, what we want out of it. So for me, I'm always looking at the stakeholder. And right now for sales, when we look at customer centricity, it really, to me, is seller centricity. If I want to make it easy for my customers to buy, I got to make it easy for my salespeople to sell. I think that's, and I think a lot of companies are struggling with that right now. You know, we're, I think we're in this weird transition phase where people understand the new, like where the new world is going, but they're still stuck in a little bit of the old world.

And you had said something that was really caught my attention when we were prepping for this, as far as, you know, the, the, the sequences, like when you came in and you started looking at the sequences and how, you know, the team was using them and how traditionally a lot of people have been. You want to talk through that a little bit? Cause I think that's, that's worth a lot of people paying attention to right now. Absolutely. So when I'm looking at sales right now, I'm not just looking at the buyer's journey. We're looking at the customer life cycle. And what that means is a customer can enter and exit at any point in pre-sales from marketing nurture to actually in the sales, uh, in the, in the sales, um, sequence, and then from post-sales into customer services.

So one of the things that we did, we looked at how much can we automate and take the mundane out of the seller's life. And a lot of people use tools like outreach and sales off, but the question is, how do you use it? You still have to have a bit of humanity in there, right? So when we first looked at the sequences, how our pre-sales people were using and how our post-sales were using it were very different. And in fact, they were still using very traditional methodology. The first seven days, all voicemail phone call and email. And I don't know about you, John, but I absolutely will put on social media, do not call me. Right. And it's remarkable to me that people aren't looking at that and they still call me three, four times a day.

If I pick up the phone, it's to yell at them. You clearly are not meeting me where I'm asking you to meet me. Right. So one of the things we did was we completely flipped the sequences where it used to be, like I mentioned, voicemail, phone call, voicemail, email with maybe some LinkedIn at the end of the 20th part of the sequence that people never get to. We flipped it quite a bit. And the first sequence is not even a LinkedIn connect request. It's go look at your prospects, see what they're writing, see what they're engaging in, make comments. By the time they engage with you, by the time you do ask them for a connect request, they kind of know who you are. They see that you've been stalking.

They see that you're paying attention. So I'm actually looking at less is more. I'd rather have less activity and less contact with much, much more personalization and a much higher next step rate versus, you know, let me just, let me just make a shotgun approach. See, and that's what I want. I almost want every company to do their own internal split test, right? AB split test to say, you know what, let's take those sequences and let's take a group of reps and have them run their traditional sequences to a broader audience, right? To a group of, you know, thousands or however many. But then let's take this other group and say you have 10 customers, right? Or 20 customers for the month. And you got to social, you know, do all this groundwork and whatever, and then try to get meetings and see what happens at the end of the month.

Obviously, the activity level is going to be a lot different. But the results level, as far as the quality of meetings, the conversion ratio of those meetings and everything else, I would bet on the quality side over the quantity side all day long. But with that, you know, and again, I think that's why I said we're in this transition phase of people understand quality is the answer, but they're still doing the quantity game. Why? Why are so many companies still forcing their reps to send out just mass sequences, mass cadences, without giving them the time to care? Well, it's the company, but it's also the individuals, because some people, it's easy to just blindly go in and follow. Like, again, let's just be real, right?

The most creative types are the ones that focus on, like you mentioned, the A-B test, and they'll do it for themselves. They'll test the sequences, what's more successful, and they'll actually feed back into the system, because how do you know if things aren't working if it's not reported back? So my most successful reps are the ones that look at conversion, but also like how, what's the probability along those 20 different points in the sequences? How far am I getting? Oops, what's the stop point? And actually, does the sequence need to be primarily the same, but then a little bit different towards the end based on personas? So for instance, if I'm selling to a technical persona based on their reaction towards the end of the sequence, I might send them something through Sendoso or Alice.

How are we connecting all of these different tools in the tool stack in order to very much personalize an interaction and an engagement, right? So I think we really have to allow reps to input back into the system and encourage that and reward that as well. Yeah, that creativity. I mean, nothing's going to change unless something does, right? So I think that almost giving them a challenge in a lot of ways as a manager to say, hey, go play within this framework, whatever. You can't do anything crazy, but it's like Google says, you know, 20% of your time has to be worked on off work stuff or whatever that might be. It's almost like I want sales teams to say, look, 20% of your week has to be something completely out of the box.

Try something randomly new so that we can learn the nuances here. And that's where I think a lot of companies miss is that I think marketing does a great job with marketing Intel and kind of seeing buyer intent and where they are. But sales does a horrible job on that. And I think sales has a huge opportunity to be able to gather insights from direct engagement with people about what those trends are for their audience. So how do you facilitate a team to do that? Is this, you know, if you're working with a huge, I mean, you've worked with some obviously some huge teams in your career. But do you have to kind of start at a smaller scale to prove something out so that it can be more widely adopted?

Or are there some things that you can do from a macro standpoint to get the team moving in a more creative way while still paying attention to the numbers that we have to hit for Wall Street or whatever we need to do? Yeah. Well, I don't know if you're familiar, John, but I believe that every leader should have their own leadership mantra. My personal one is earn it, own it, evolve it. So at the beginning, you have to make sure you earn your seat at the table because I remember listening to Sir Isaac Walterson who said, you know, you can't think out of the box until you know what's in the box. So let's learn. Let's learn. Let's earn. But learn not only from books, but your own experiences and experiments.

Then earn it, right? Then own it. Make sure that you have accountability about what you do. And then you can't go all whack and doodle and creative if you're not even making your number. Right. And then evolve it. So your question about do you test? I almost always start with a pilot group. Now, mind you, I always have almost five or six initiatives going on at one time. And as those things create, as those, as we're testing them out, then we continue to evolve it. Okay. Is it time to scale? And is it time to pull the plug there? I definitely leave room to pull the plug. You and I have talked a little bit about privilege. One of the most privileged phrases that I completely have an allergy to is don't be afraid to fail.

Because here's the thing, being able to fail means that you have the privilege of a safety net, right? So what I prefer is make, take judicious risks. When I'm creating pilots, I don't like to fail. I don't want to throw out something at scale that's going to cost me millions of dollars that I'm never going to be able to get back. So I almost always experiment in order to evolve. And then you get the feedback from within the system. We're all salespeople. We all have big egos. Let's, again, let's just be honest. We all have big egos. And we, you know, if something's successful for us, once we give ourselves a pat on the back and we kind of don't listen to other people. However, if we build a community of collaboration, of mutual learning, especially on the younger talent side, on the SDR side, we really have to encourage learning.

That 20% that you mentioned about, when I start with earn it, when you're in that young space, you have, I would say almost 100% of that 20% use it learning. When you are mid-career, use more of that 20% owning, right? And that's when you can start getting creative. You still have to follow some of the rules, but then once you're at a senior level, then you need to evolve it. I feel like those are where the responsibilities are. Does that make any sense? That makes total sense. And I think, and it kind of falls in line with what I said. You know, look, I always say, you know, yeah, sales is a number game, but it's quality quantity. But at first you have to do what I tell you to do, right? I remember when I was at Thrive Networks, my first company, my equation when I started as a VP of sales as the only sales rep was $400 a week, got me eight meetings a month, got me four proposals, got me two pieces of closed business and average deal size of $3,500.

So when somebody came on board, I just said, hey, make $400 a week. I almost don't care what you say because for me as a manager, I got to figure out how I can coach you, right? And there's two big levers that I can look at. One is quality and one is quantity. The easier for one for me to check off the box to say that you can do is the quantity one. So can you just physically make those $400? Are you going to earn it and just do the job, right? And then after you earn it, after you hit those numbers and the conversion ratios aren't where they need to be, you're not hitting the metrics that we thought, whatever. Now I know it's not a quantity issue. So now I know it's a quality issue. So now I'm going to take a step back and I'm going to coach you and take you from 400 down to 200, but those 200 are going to be focused on this and we're going to start to try that.

But if you don't hit those 400, I don't know whether it's a quality or a quantity thing. So I don't know how to work with you, right? So I do completely agree with you that at first, and that's why I feel like we're getting away from that a little bit. And I don't know, maybe this is me sounding like my dad. It's like, I feel like the earn it factor has, we've lost a little bit of that. And everybody's trying to skip that step. They're trying to like, let's use SDRs as an example. They all want to get through being an SDR so they can become an AE. It's like, whoa, like, you know how much skill it takes to become an incredible SDR. And you know what that skill is going to do for you for the rest of your career?

Like, don't be so fast to go through that stage of your process here. Because the be all end all isn't an enterprise AE anymore, right? Yeah. You know, I had a fascinating conversation with Dr. Dover, who you know very well, and we were talking about the differences between the generations and every generation has friction with the generation behind. So, you know, I'm a Gen X person and we were looking at our processes and consulting with Dr. Dover. And he was saying a lot of your process is so good, but they're tailored more to the millennial audience. And your SDR young talent right now are in the Gen Z, so it's time to pivot. And the interesting thing is, you know, we talk about millennials in their, everyone gets a, everyone gets a participation trophy culture, right?

However, millennials were more vocal about we need to be heard just because we're young doesn't mean we shouldn't be heard, which I completely agree with. The Gen Z mentality is more of, I want to earn it. I don't, you know, I don't necessarily need the, the small pats on the back, but I want to, I want to earn the ability to own it, right? I want to build up those skills and competencies. So I think it's really interesting how we look at them. I think it's more of the leadership needs to understand the generational tendencies in order to adapt to them. But also the younger generation needs to understand that. Again, I go back to, if everybody wants to be Albert Einstein, Albert Einstein knew what was in the box before he started thinking out of it.

So really respect, not only the people who've done it before you, but also your peers. It is an incredible opportunity to learn. I look at, you know, when people talk about mentorship and sponsorship, I have mentors all around, above, below, and around me. Some of my best, some of the things I learned the most from are from my young talent and people who work for me, my children, for example. That being said, you know, we all have to have mutual respect and the ability to collaborate, listen, and learn. And I think that is what's a little bit missing in the overall culture end to end. Yeah. I think the, to your point, the willingness to learn and, and be wrong. You know, I think the, the failure thing, you, you, you hit on a really good point as far as the, there is privilege to, oh, just, you know, fail.

And it's like, well, yeah, if you're in a position to fail, then go ahead. But if you're not, it's like Sheryl Sandberg. I remember when she wrote lean in, you know, after a while she came back and almost apologized for lean in. Cause she was like, look, I had a super supportive husband. I had a family that was really supportive. So if, you know, worst case, if I got fired, oh, well, I'm super, still super rich. And my husband, you know what I mean? And then her husband passed and she was like, holy shit. Uh, this is way harder than I thought. So I almost apologize for all those women out there who weren't in a position to lean in because they didn't have the support structure that I did. I thought that was a fascinating kind of, um, reflection on her part.

Absolutely. And I, and again, it is so refreshing to see when people have the vulnerability to admit some humility. And, you know, she did, I remember I loved lean in for the messaging and some of the topics that shook, she took on. However, I was like, holy shit, if I lean any further, I'm going to fall over. Like, you know what I mean? But when she wrote plan B, it resonated a lot more with me because when plan A is not an option, I write in my book, look, here's the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good is you're tenacious, the bad, the formulas out there that were written for success are not meant for you because they were not written for you by people who resemble your human experience.

The ugly life is really unfair. And I ended with, you know, I'm, I, I'm unable to end things on a bad notes. I'm like, but I'm going to get in on a positive note again. The really good is if you are aware that it's just harder for you, you can actually suck it up and do it and you can do it better. Yeah. Well, in any, in a lot of ways, it gives you that chip on your shoulder. It's like, it's like, you know what? I'm, I want to earn it. I do have to work harder, but then it's going to be that much more rewarding at the end of the day. And I, and as we talked to you, even, you know, before we started recording here, you know, it's on the flip side. I think it's for those that do have it quote unquote easier for whatever reason, recognizing that it's easier and, and, and leaning in on that, but also, you know, helping other people along the way that might not have it as easy.

Right. That's right. I had, um, I was on clubhouse for a little bit and had the opportunity to, um, to interact with, with, um, some big names. And I remember having a conversation with Shatree Citadong who owns one, which is the equivalent, the Asian equivalent of UFC. And he said, you know, I only hire PhDs, poor, hungry, and driven. And I will remember that all the time. My old boss used to say that. Yeah. Yes. When you come from that, it's easy to remember, you know, when, when I look at, there's a huge war for talent right now, especially for sales and especially on the SDR virtual sales side, because, you know, a lot of sales will continue to remain virtual. When I look at that, I look at who are we, you know, how are we recruiting?

Is it representative? And are we looking at, you know, when we say, I don't look for diversity, I look for best talent. Okay. Define for me what best talent is. Let's, let's reimagine that definition. And you'll open the doors to much more, um, to, uh, to much more, to a much larger talent pool. And also, where are you looking, right? Are you just posting it on LinkedIn where 99% of the people look exactly the same way? You know what I mean? That type of thing, you're going to get the same thing. So I think, and that actually leads to my next, uh, you know, point here, which is, you know, you talk a lot about intentionality, right? Like being intentional with your career, with your approach to customers, with your hiring process processes, you know, like for instance, if you're being intentional with your hiring for diversity, you shouldn't just post your job on LinkedIn.

You should go to all the different places that are untraditional to look for untraditional candidates. That's being intentional, looking for places to add diversity to your culture. Talk a little bit about intentionality though, as it relates to kind of the, going back to the buyer's journey, right? And, and as a sales rep, how do I, you know, besides just going through the motions of sending out emails and you know, that type of thing, how does it play with your approach in sales? Well, I would say it comes down to two words. Do homework, homework, homework, homework. And the reason I say that is I get probably a couple hundred, um, outreaches to sell to me a week very easily. The ones that catch my eye are, is a title that says something like embrace your edge or, or mention something that I had recently reacted to on social.

I've put it out there. You do have to do the work of reading, right? So when they recapture some of my own phrases, or I learned again, I learned from, um, um, from one of the top SDRs at Adobe recently. And he said, um, he said, he looks at the company's career site where they funding, you know, when I'm talking with Gartner, we've all seen that the buying committee has changed quite a bit. I would also say, I'm sorry, the, the buying committee has changed quite a bit. I would also say that the selling committee has changed quite a bit. And here's what I mean. When I'm, when I'm buying from someone, I'm not just looking up on LinkedIn about my seller, about my AE, I'm looking at their CEO, their CFO, their COO.

What do they stand for? So when analysts talk about 44% of millennials do not want to interact with their seller at all, I would actually say, let's, let's again, reimagine that conversation. I think that they do interact with them just asynchronously and stealthily so that when you do earn the right to be in front of them, you've done your homework. You've looked at their financials. You've looked at where their corporate, their corporate social viewpoint and product viewpoint is. You looked at their roadmap. You can have a very intelligent conversation with them because look, if I have an allergy, John, am I going to buy Claritin or am I going to buy a leg rep? And each medical rep is going to tell me they treat allergies.

But if a rep can say, I also noticed that you have these three or four other medical conditions and in that case, these medications will counteract or contradict, right? Then it becomes a very easy confirmation conversation for me to commit because the rep is helping me make sure that I feel like I'm making the right decision because they've helped me do my homework. Yeah, and I think that kind of goes all the way to the beginning, but there's stats that I've heard where clients at the beginning of their journey, they want basically nothing to do with sales reps. They want to do all their education on themselves. They want to look at all the stuff, but the further they get, the actual more they want to talk to a sales rep because after they do their own due diligence, now they actually want to have a conversation with a live person.

And what they don't, but what they don't want is to be dragged through the selling process of, let me ask you my bank questions. Let me show you my piece of crap demo. And then we bring in an engineer who's going to requalify you and give you some free consulting and hopefully I'll give you a discount that you'll close. Like that's what they don't want. Some great insights here. Telling people how you like to be connected with is huge. Less is more, but with a higher level of personalization really stood out to me at the beginning of this conversation. And it's true that some leaders are just not great followers and some leaders are. This plays an enormous role in success and failures when you're looking at it through a sales lens.

Share your sales stories with me. I want to hear them. Send them to me directly at james at jbarrows.com to be highlighted on next week's episode. This week, we welcome Interface Security Systems to the JB Sales family. Interface and I got to do an incredible Q&A session where I talked about everything from cold calling to calls to action, all the way up to email structure and social selling. These reps really give a damn about what they're doing and how they're positioning themselves to sellers. Congratulations, Interface Security Systems, on being humans with us. We appreciate you and welcome to the fold. At JB Sales, we know that content and training is great, but access wins the day. And the problems that you're dealing with are the ones that matter most to you.

So we want to deliver what matters. JB Sales memberships now include weekly Ask Me Anything sessions that are live with us and quarterly one-on-one coaching that is 100% focused on you, the seller. So join us today at ondemand.jbarrows.com. And let's throw it back to Hang Black and JB to get more insights. Make it happen, y'all. Let me ask you, as it relates to that, how does that rule? I think that's the inbound, right? When Gartner talks or when corporate executive board talks about by the time somebody comes to us, they're already 60 to 70% of the sales process. I think those rules apply. But that's an inbound. When you're trying to create demand, and this is what we're dealing with right now with Leslie on my team, is she doesn't have a brand.

She's not John Barrow. She's not Morgan Ingram, right? And she's only been doing this for six months. And so when she's trying to cold call a prospect into an account, unless there's a defined need where they're looking, it's kind of like, okay, cool. And urgency is the thing that everybody always talks about. So how do you intentionally set the stage for somebody to get them to start thinking down that path so when they're ready, you're the one they call? So if at all possible, use warm introductions, if at all possible. And the best way to find that, obviously, through LinkedIn Sales Navigator. If that's not possible, again, if you're researching your prospect, understand, hi, I've seen you've been at this company for two and a half years, I see that before you joined this company, it looked like this, that the problem statement may look like that.

I see that with your tenure now, the problem statement may look like this. Am I correct? Or am I in the right ballpark? Create a conversation. And for me, those are the ones that are more interesting to answer, because believe it or not, I do read every single one of them. I glance through them, but it has to really captivate my attention. No matter how young you are, you can still develop your brand. I always say you can self-advocate without self-accolating. And writing that line is very, very specific. And then when you do that, when you're self-advocating, again, what does it mean to the customer? Or what does it mean to the stakeholder? Not just, hey, I'm an awesome person, right? So that's kind of the difference between the two.

But it is important to start as young as you can on developing that. Yeah, and the hack that I always tell reps is, look, you don't have to be the content creator. You just have to be the content curator. Go follow what other smart people in the space are saying. Consume that content. Learn it. Actually consume it and digest it and think about it. And then share it. But share it with your context, right? Say, hey, really interesting article here by so-and-so. My key takeaways were X, Y, Z. You know, what are your thoughts? That type of thing. That way, and you know, the thing I always say is, like, you get all the credit and somebody else did all the work. You know, like, if I write a blog post, it takes me an hour to sit down, think about what the hell I'm going to write.

And then I send it to my team. They SEO it. They optimize it. They put it on HubSpot. And if you read, so we're like two to three hours into one blog post. And if you read it and you like it and you share it with some context and somebody else reads my article because you shared it, they don't say thanks, John, for writing that article. They say thanks, Hank, for sharing that article. So you get all the credit. I did all the work. And that way you can start to build some credibility while learning along the way in a very authentic way. Absolutely. And, you know, I love saying that content is king and context is queen. And, you know, like, as you mentioned, and again, you know, here's some hacks.

When you share a comment in social, don't say thanks. Awesome. That gives no value to the reader, right? And when you reshare, it is important. Like you said, John, if there's a five-minute article, boil it down to three bullet points and say, this is what's valuable to me. What do you think? And again, it's all about inviting a conversation. What do you think about, because everybody always talks about add value throughout the sales process and all this other stuff. And even with prospecting, and I say it too, right? You know, just make sure, you know, I always say when you're reaching out to somebody, two things got to be in play. I don't care if it's an inbound, an outbound, an existing account or a new one.

You got to be, you know, you got to have a reason why you're reaching out. So you can't be just touching base and checking in. You got to be adding value in some way, shape or form. But what are your thoughts on, I don't know you, Hang, like I'm prospecting into you, right? And I want to share valuable content with you. I think in some cases it comes across as a little disingenuous when I get these e-books from kids and these white papers that are just, you know, I'm a CEO of a small business. So I thought you might be interested in this. Like, what's the line of adding value to somebody you don't know and haven't engaged with yet? Well, we all put our personalities out there. And I don't know if you've seen, there's a lot of, there's a lot of AI out there.

In fact, Alice, that's kind of one of its differentiators, right? It trolls the internet to look at, not only am I going to send you a gift, I'm going to send you a gift based on what you like. I happen to know that you like food, wine, and travel. So I'm going to send you a bottle of wine, or I'm going to send you a map of a region in France, right? There's a lot of information out there. So you may not know me, John, but you can figure out a hell of a lot about me. There was a company called XIQ. And when they prospect me, they told me exactly, if you want to sell to Hang, be direct, be curt, give her three options, recommend one. And I was like, holy hell, how did they know that? There's a way to figure things out.

And I would say you have to, again, if you're doing your homework, you can craft your content to be relevant. You probably have 30 different options of white papers and webinars that you can send me or invite me to. But what is the one or two that's really going to hit home for me based on the conversations I've been having very recently? If you send me something that I took care of that two years ago, not interesting, disingenuous, as you mentioned, right? But if you send me something like, hey, John is going to be at this conference, he's going to keynote specifically about young sales talent and outreach or sales off sales motions. I might be interested in that because I recently talked about that.

So it's all about developing that relationship through relevance and intentionality. Absolutely. And that's kind of where it really isn't that hard, right? I mean, look, yes. And we are. I am conscious of, look, if they're not on LinkedIn, if they're not sharing social stuff, it's a lot harder. It's there's still ways to figure it out, but it's a lot harder. But if they are active, you know, what I've done, especially earlier in my career is I'd follow people that I want to engage with and I see what they post and I comment on that or I'll ask them a question about it. Right. Show engagement. And then if I find another piece of content that is relevant to that, somebody even that somebody else posted, I'll tag the person that I commented previously on.

And so if like yesterday you posted something about diversity and on your thing, I'll be like, oh, I totally agree. And here's my thoughts on this. Or what are your thoughts on that? And then two or three days later, if somebody else posts something, I'll be like, hey, great point here. You know what? Hang actually just commented on this three days ago. And here's her post on this. And hang, I'm curious what you think about that. And that way, like, first of all, I'm adding huge value to you, hang, because I'm commenting on your post and I'm engaging. And for what people don't know out there is what the way that LinkedIn algorithm works, to your point, likes and awesome or great posts like that does almost nothing to promote somebody's post.

It's time on post. So it's the amount of time somebody spends on the post. So if you ask me a question and you and I go back and forth on the LinkedIn thread, that significantly boosts my post for everybody else to see. So by doing something like that, you're actually helping the person, you're giving them exposure and you're giving yourself an exposure. And all you're really doing is connecting the dots. That's right. So when you're saying thanks or awesome, how much time are you dwelling on that post? Zero. But if I'm going to spend some time to write even a two-sentence response, because I'm aware of my branding, I'm probably going to spend four minutes, right? Actually thinking about it and crafting a well-written post, a comment.

I might even go back an hour later and be like, oh, crap, I missed an and or a comma, and I'm going to go back and edit it. And I'm dwelling on that post a little bit. So when dwell time goes up, that's where the branding is. Now, it is true there are a lot of people who are not active, but they are linked to other people who are active. And, hey, what if you engage with the people who are connected to them who are not active and say, I see that your friend who works here is interested in this, and this seems like it might be kind of topical. Now you're adding value to the friend. The friend is going to poke the other friend that says, hey, did you see this post? Someone actually commented to me about something you might be interested in.

You've gotten their attention in a roundabout way, but you've gotten their attention. And that's where going back to being mini marketers, I do genuinely believe that we are in a kind of an impression world right now where every, you know, they see us, they hear us and, you know, send something in the mail, make a comment here. And so all these impressions, as long as they're positive, lead to this either familiarity. So when I do call you or send you an email, it's like, there's something familiar about this person, or maybe something I've done sparks that interest in you to have you say, you know what, I do need that. That is something I should be looking into. And now I'm going to call Hang because of it, because I've seen her out there posting on these things, and she seems to be the person I should talk to about this.

Yeah, and I do think, I made up a word a couple weeks ago, I do think that we are going to reenter into a hyper-hybrid world. And what that means is we will still have belly-to-belly selling eventually, but in the interim between, we're still going to have to be able to engage in a hyper-hybrid world. So I don't know if you watched The Voice during the pandemic, but when they first came back, it was all video screens that took the place of audience members. But as we are coming back to the real world, those video screens are not going away. You now will have real humans in seat, and then you'll also have the screens on top. So that's what I mean by hyper-hybrid. And the lovely thing about digitizing sales is, yes, we want to bring in automation to take out the mundane work of selling, but we also want to add in automation to give us the time and space to become micro-marketers in that hyper-hybrid world, right?

Because now I can have that extra time and space I should be using to do my homework, to engage in conversations, to not depend on my marketing engine, but for myself to become a micro-marketer to my individual prospect by personalization. I love it. Let's shift gears a little bit on, before we finish things up, talk to me about Embrace Your Edge. Like, what are some of the key learnings from Embrace Your Edge that you want to get out there right now? Well, throughout the book, I have a mindset sequence that I go through, which is reflect, recalibrate, reset. And what that means is, when you are making any decision, big or small, you have to reflect on where you are today. What got you there?

And then you have to recalibrate. What are the lessons from the past that I can take with me? And what are the lessons that do not apply anymore or that are now holding me back? So now you're recalibrating. Once you've recalibrated, then you have to reset and be ready to take action, right? So when we talk about, a lot of the book is about how it is more difficult for some populations to succeed and the why behind it. And trust me, there is no privilege shaming. There is no victim blaming in it. But it's meant for everyone just to be very objective about what do we need to do to move forward? And that's individually as a human and then collectively as a human species, as far as reflecting, recalibrating, resetting.

But at the end of the book, the gift I leave everyone with is defining a clear path. C for clarity. Make sure if you're not clear to get clear. L for learning from experiments and experiences. E for literally embracing your edge. That which is uniquely you. A for access. Just because you're not born with it doesn't mean you can't create it. And with the advent of the internet, we have the democratization of access right now, which we should take advantage of. And then R, finally, for responsibility. There is nothing wrong with privilege. And I know that's a little bit provocative, but I'm going to say it again. There's nothing wrong with privilege. It's what we do with that privilege once we get there.

Do we use it? Do we use it? Do we share it? And that R is responsibility to make sure you pave it forward. You pay it forward and make it easier for everyone else behind you. I love it. I want to just hone in on the one that's the name of the book, Embrace Your Edge. If you're younger, how do you know what your edge is? Because I think as I've evolved through work, as I've learned, you know, it's kind of like when people say, follow your passion. I'm like, that's a terrible advice. I think follow your passion is just horrible advice, because if you said follow my passion when I was a kid, I'd be smoking weed and painting on the sidewalk. You know what I mean? Like, that would be my passion, right?

I say find your passion and then follow it. But I don't think you really find your true passion, at least from a work standpoint, until you're kind of 30s-ish, something like that, after trying a bunch of things. So, how would you think about understanding what your edge is, what's special about you that you can lean in on if you're, you know, not 20 years experience in business? I think passions may change and evolve, but values in general stay the same. And what I mean by that is I give people three practical tips. First of all, spend 50 bucks, go on gallop.com and take Strength Finders. And Strength Finders has 34 different strengths, and what it tells you to do is focus on your top five strengths.

Okay? And don't focus on the stuff you're not great at. Focus on the stuff you're really great at. So, for instance, surprisingly, I'm a very low empathy person. However, I'm a very high relater. So, I use my relater skills in order to be relatable to other people and be able to relate to other people where I lack empathy, if that makes sense. So, go on Gallop, look at your strengths. And then another exercise I do is go to your top 10 friends, family, confidants, people you really, really trust. Ask them for three adjectives that describe you. And then create themes and define those. And then from all of those themes, create the three that is going to be your brand. And take a look at how that brand matches up with what you're doing.

I like it. So, there you've got your strengths, then you've got your brand. And then I would say, the final thing is, you do need to leave room for evolution. So, don't be married to what your 20-year-old self believes is the perfect vision of life. Let yourself, give yourself the grace and the space to evolve over time. Yeah, and that's why I wish people would, like, I don't know why it ever turned into changing your mind is a bad thing. I think changing your mind is a great thing. You know, I mean, like, I just saw something I was, you know, unfortunately, you know, flipped on the news. I hate watching the news. But, you know, Fauci was doing a couple of podcasts and interviews and everybody's, like, ripping him apart.

Oh, he said, wear masks at first. He said, don't wear masks at first and wear masks second. You know, and he's like, I was just following the data. He's like, I was just evolving. He's like, literally, if you're yelling against that, then you're yelling against science. Because science is literally about evolution. It's about looking at data, making decisions with the data that you have at the time. And then evolving your decisions based on what the data is telling you over time. But you don't just change your mind just to change your mind. But even if you do change your mind, like, what's, like, that's the thing I fear a lot of times when people kind of all of a sudden realize they were wrong.

Right? And it's like, instead of embracing them for that realization and encouraging that, we chastise them for it. It's like, oh, yeah, but you said, you know. And I just really wish that we loosened up a little bit on that these days to give people a chance of saying, you know what? For 30 years of my life, I thought this one way. And guess what? I was completely wrong. And now I realize that. And I'm trying to be a better person. If we should embrace that way more than we chastise it. Absolutely. And when I was talking to Microsoft, you know, one of Satya Nadella's phrases is move from know it all to learn it all. Because we don't have all the information, and again, I go back to the diversity and inclusion conversation.

We are always capable of learning more if we don't shut down the systems of intake for that data. Because, as you know, with data, junk in, junk out. Oh, God. And the more data we get, it gives us that ability to evolve our thinking, doesn't it? Yeah. And that, you know, we could go into another rabbit hole about the sources of data we decide to choose from, right? And if you're drinking from one fire hose, guess what? Your opinion is going to be that from that one fire hose versus drinking from a bunch of different hoses to see, you know. Because there's, you know, there's three sides to every story, right? The one side, the other side, and then the real side. And you've got to help figure that out.

But, you know, I don't know. The Internet's been a beautiful thing in so many ways to help educate and diversify education. But it's also been so brutal because it's that echo chamber that just tells us what we want to hear. And, yeah, there's, you know, I'm hoping that we evolve to start to change those algorithms a little bit so that they're not always telling us what we want to hear or telling us that the positive things that reinforce our own feelings and maybe just maybe give us an alternative view that we could actually respect and appreciate and be open to. Like, I completely agree with you. And that's why it's really, really important to have those diverse sources of opinions. I can tell you something funny.

I created my own recruiting video. And I kind of mentioned, I had all of my team record three lines. My name's Hank Black. I live in the Bay Area. I'm a Vietnamese immigrant. And I speak French and Vietnamese. So everyone just recorded those three sentences. And then we put them all together. I actually had to remove, I had too many women. I had too many French speakers. I had too many Vietnamese speakers. I had too many Portuguese speakers. Wow. Because diversity begets diversity. And for me, I actually have to be very intentional to make sure that I'm always balanced with middle-aged white men. Because I have so much diverse talent pool coming in that I don't want to lose that voice either.

Yeah. Well, and I think there's also just the point of, again, embracing the knowledge that everybody does come to the equation and not ostracizing anybody for any real reason, right? I mean, whether it's people of color, whether it's underprivileged people or privileged people. To your point, privilege isn't a bad thing. It's how you use it. And that's where I think a lot of the movements, if you will, unfortunately, sometimes there, it's not for a cause. It's against another. Right? That's right. Like, if you're going to be like, I'm all for it, be for something and be for fixing it. But don't be against the other. Because when you're against it, you cause conflict and then nothing gets addressed.

Nothing. Nobody's open to anything. Everybody shuts down when there's conflict. Right. You and I have talked a little bit about the zero-sum game. And I saw something recently, a headline that says, for black does not mean anti-white. For women does not mean anti-men. So when we talk about the zero-sum game, I would invite people to think about it in two ways. When we start our career, white men are 35% of the population. By the time we get to C-suite, they're 66% of the population. Okay? That comes at a cost of women of color and men of color reducing by one-third. Women of color reduce by five-six. Okay? So in order to gain equity, yes, we are going to take some percentage points away from the white men that nearly doubled from 35% to 66%.

So in that case, yes, we will be taking away parts of the pie. However, what I would invite people to think is when we recognize people for being individually unique and collectively complete, why don't we allow everyone to have their fair share of the pie and we just all make the pie larger? Yeah. So in that case, it is not a zero-sum game. So, you know, we just got to reimagine what's mine is mine and what's yours is ours. It's just not true. We all make the pie bigger and then we can all have, you know, our, the share that we deserve. Yeah. And I just, I hope people hear that as far as, you know, life is not a zero-sum game. Just because somebody else gets something doesn't mean you have to lose something.

You can both get something if you approach it the right way. So, hang, thank you so much for this conversation. Where do you want people to learn more about your book, about you, about what you're doing? How can people connect? Talk to the audience a little bit here. So, um, I'm fairly active on LinkedIn, which means I post once a week and that's kind of amazing that you can only post once a week and still be a thought leader on the platform. So, that gives you an idea of opportunity. So, you can find me, LinkedIn, Hang With Hang. My website is hangwithhang.com and, uh, you can find my book on Amazon. Yeah. Embrace your edge. Go check it out on Amazon and definitely go check out what Hang is doing on social.

Uh, and if you, uh, if you do want to reach out to her, make sure you take that time. Maybe do your homework and maybe even reference something that you heard on this podcast here. So, awesome, Hank. Well, thank you so much for coming. I really appreciate you joining us here. Well, I appreciate you very much and all the things you're doing in the sales space, John. Thanks, Hank. I appreciate that. And look, everybody, hopefully you had this conversation. Hopefully it got you to think of something a little different. You can go and do your homework and brace your edge, whatever it might be. Realize that the world is not a zero-sum game and try to pay it forward. But at the very least, if you could go out there and do me a favor and just make somebody smile today, no matter how bad of a day you have, if you make somebody smile, you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that these days.

So, thank you all very much for listening. I'll see you on the other side. Let's make it happen. All right, y'all. That's a wrap. Relevance, timeliness, authenticity, knowing where the line is. There's so much value in this conversation. Be sure to pick up your copy of Embrace Your Edge by Hang Black. It's a great book from a great leader that understands what has to happen in order to achieve growth and development. For those of you out there that want to invest in yourself, this is your chance. A JB sales membership not only grants you access to 100% of our training courses, tips, and takeaways, but it also gets you access to us directly. All of our tangible takeaways are there as well, like the executive priority report, the messaging matrix, and the scorecard.

To learn more, go to ondemand.jbarrows.com to sign up and earn that top performer spot on your leaderboard. Make it happen. Follow us on Instagram. We are putting out constant value there for you to take advantage of at JB Sales Training, all one word, for daily tips, techniques, and strategies. And feel free to join us at any one of our weekly webinars. They are available at jbarrows.com in the blog and events section. We'll see you next week when we bring you another guest to help you sell better. Talk to you soon, everybody. Thank you.