29: Just In Time Learning and Kickstarter announcement

all right everybody welcome aboard it's monday morning hope you had a great weekend this is john barrows with make it happen mondays and i am here super excited with ryan levitt over at learn core ryan how's it going man it's going great thanks for having me john happy monday yeah happy monday it's always a good one um so today what we're going to be talking about is a couple of different things one is the evolution of learning right because i guess things are changing rapidly in the learning space in general and i want to talk about from a sales rep standpoint from a coaching standpoint where things are going and from your perspective because you've been in this field for a while but also i'm overly excited to announce our partnership um for those of you who don't know this is kind of a preface to our official announcement coming up on monday where i am taking all of my content so i have my filling the funnel program and now my driving to close program and i'm taking them off of what i used to have on wordpress and putting them onto the learn core platform and that's how i'm going to be distributing uh all the content moving forward so we're going to be getting in pretty tight here with each other here ryan um i'm really excited about that because i get out of the technology space and i'll let you guys do your what you're good at and you do what i'm good at all right so with that first of all everybody be on the lookout for next week uh we're going to be launching that but with this conversation ryan um you know i wanted to dig in a little bit about learn core about learning in general and why you started learn core and where it came from and now what are you seeing in the marketplace as far as where how learning is is developing and evolving and then what can sales reps do regardless of whether they invest with you know my content or your platform what can sales reps do to stay on top of what's happening right now with all the different noise there is right because you know the other kind of preface to this is you know there's so many people spewing content out there like how do you know which one's good and which one's bad and and how does a rep distill all of that so you kind of give me just the background of learn core of of why you came up with it where it came from and what are you seeing now in the marketplace i think that'd be real helpful for our audience here yeah great question and i uh i love this story obviously um we started uh we actually started like seven or eight years ago in the professional education world so if anybody here who's listening has ever taken a higher education exam so you studied for the cpa or the bar exam or the gmats or whatever it might be the way that you did that was that you would probably buy books um from kaplan or pearson you'd go to class you'd sit through a lecture take notes go home study maybe make some flashcards take some practice s go back to class do it all again twice a week for three months and in in 2010 that that process is still the way that people would study and to this day that's still with a lot of exams the way people do it um what we did is we worked with kaplan and pearson who are the two biggest educational publishers and they were they were they were reaching a ton of students to change the way that people studied and people learn right so again you think about this is an academic world these are professional certifications that people needed to if you wanted to be an accountant you needed to learn all the material the 40 000 pages of content that go into the cpa you needed to get proficient at it you need to remember it and then you need to be able to actually do it you need to actually apply what you've learned to pass the certification and then you can become an accountant um so that's what we did we built these mobile platforms to bring in all that content and then kaplan and pearson they would sell them to their students um and it was it was a great business there in the in the higher educational publishing world um in about 2012 we started to take that to the corporate space and so we started working with um corporate learning leaders at very large organizations and really trying to understand what their challenges and problems were and from our background we we've been selling for years right and and all of us had been in some sort of sales role previously or surrounded by sales people and so we saw some of the challenges that sales folks were having and in talking to these larger companies we realized that the same challenges that that kaplan and pearson were solving in professional education those existed in the corporate world as well and so when you think about sales people specifically if you have a new product or a new partner right something really really simple you need to learn all about it and that's great but you also need to be able to apply it and then you need to have that information reinforced to you at the right point in time and so we really took that methodology into the corporate space to solve that problem of how do we how do we make sure that one reps are always up to speed and two they could tell the same story and they could communicate consistently and they could actually apply what they've learned and so again the roots of that are really just uh no different than what um these educational publishers have been doing for for decades i got a question so i got a question for you um i've always my position has always been with learning right so historical learning spot on right you go to school i hated it i was never good at reading a book and taking a test um i was more live application guy like i want to learn from doing stuff and it's funny because i got into this training world almost by accident right i took this training i liked it and then after i sold my company i joined this company basho and then took it over but you know the learning when i bumped in with a lot of uh you know when i sell to enablement departments a lot of times the historical learner if you will they start asking about instructional design and all this other bullshit right and i've always been like wait a minute like instructional design i i was like okay what is instructional design so i looked into it i actually had my content you know scrubbed up for instructional design and when it was when the output was done i hated it i'm like this is gross this feels like what you know back in college and my con my contention has always been that sales reps learn a little bit differently yes there are fundamentals but but sales reps themselves learn differently am i wrong with that or help give me what are your thoughts on how sales reps learn compared to how additional stuff is yeah i think you're you're spot on um so instructional design is it's important and for some aspects of learning and training i think for um sales enablement specifically it's more about impact right it's more about the content and this is what we we we talk to people about all the time like you don't need fancy content you don't need i was talking to chris on your team about it this week actually fancy content is great but you need high impact content and by the time you need it you need to get it out today and nobody cares if it's a a beautiful you know interactive video or if it's the vp of sales that just recorded themselves in front of a whiteboard and sent it out immediately because the problem is today and it's going to be yeah and that's it i mean that it's about how do you get the right content to the right to the to the teams quickly and how do you make sure that it's not you don't over engineer it so that it's it's relevant when it's when it's happening love it yeah and that's what i found it's funny when i again when i took this training um this used to be like i got phil in the funnel driving to close i used to be five days of content right and there was so much fluff and and so i've cut it down to two um and it's always frustrated me i've actually been in conversations with sales trainers of traditional sales training companies and they legitimately talk about how they can take a half an hour's worth of content and stretch it into a day so they can charge their day rate and my whole philosophy is look i'll pay the same rate if you give me in a half an hour as if you i'll actually pay more if you give it to me in a half an hour because you just saved me eight and a half hours worth of shit and so you know i that's where i think the difference of sales reps and this is also why i'm super excited about our partnership here because you know this kind of dovetails into the conversation of what's to come right and where where things are going which is you know i i believe that this whole just in time learning trend is is just going to get uh more robust if you will um you know i think the face-to-face selling is all face-to-face training is always going to be there because there's just the connection the motivational piece of it whatever but from a reinforcement standpoint and from an adoption standpoint i think it's going to be and this is one of the other reasons i chose you guys over everybody else is you know i'm going to be at a certain stage of the sales process in sales force i'm going to move from stage two to three and then i'm about to make a phone call to a cfo to talk about pricing and instead of trying to remember what john barrows said two months ago oh yeah i should probably use the reverse close or i should probably you know prepare for this objection a little video is going to pop up right before i make that phone call and say hey hey ryan before you make that phone call make sure you do xyz and then oh yeah all right cool and apply it right so are you seeing that trend and and how are you seeing that impacting sales as opposed to the traditional learn it and then try to remember it so back to and taking a step back and i'll get to the just in time learning in a second you started talking about the way that sales people learn and sitting through an eight and a half hour you know day you don't retain anything so we talk about this learning pyramid and so through live sessions or videos or or powerpoints or written written format you might return you might retain 20 or 30 of it you don't actually get the 70 80 90 retention unless you can you can actually apply it you can practice it communicate it and teach others so that goes into the feedback and the coaching element as well so crossing that entire spectrum is the way sales people learn right it's not just sitting through a lecture and watching videos and saying yep now i can go sell it you can learn all the content in the world then you can actually retain 100 of it but if you can't apply it right if you can't demonstrate that you've done it and you can you can actually answer that question or talk about pricing or give a demo or whatever it is then you can't sell it and so that's the first part that's the first area of application and and almost certification right certifying the skills um to your point yes we we see just in time learning is something that people are talking about all the time now because think about your example right you go through john barrow's training you watch the videos you go to the live sessions you practice it you get coaching you get feedback and at that point in time you're 100 certified on it you crushed it you crushed that negotiation conversation in practice right and four months later you're in salesforce and you update an opportunity and it's got all the right qualifiers but you got trained on it four months ago you need to be refreshed right then and there and so that's that's really the the ability to use data and technology to reinforce things where you need it um and make sure that everybody is continuously up to speed and i think that that that is the next evolution in in training and coaching and and you brought up something interesting there is the third pillar there which is teach it actually i didn't i didn't really think of that which i and i and it's it's pretty obvious that when you can teach somebody else how to do it now you become the master at whatever that is right so you learn it you apply it then you teach it um so talk to me about how how you've seen how so how does our sales rep get to that i mean there's the obvious piece i think from a coaching standpoint so i'm a manager and i'm going to coach my team how to do it but i think that is a really important thing for reps to think about which is after they learn it after they apply it have they mastered it enough so they could then articulate it to somebody else so so how how can a sales rep do that uh in in practice if you will so think about we call them just peer reviews and just collaboration in general right so yes the coaching aspect from your manager that's huge you practice something you want to get feedback you want to you want to your manager to give you coaching and make sure that you're you're doing things the right way and and you're up to speed and on par with everybody else but before that right there's informal conversations that are happening all the time if people if it's an inside sales team people are sitting together go into a conference room go practice go role play together right if you're virtual do a do a web conference like this and honestly and you and i we talk about this all the time it's it's on the reps right they need to they need to actually practice like you think about a sports team they don't just show up and and play football once a week they're practicing all week they're thinking about it's important to them to make sure that they have the skills they have the reps that they're all on the same page and it's not just the coach driving them right the best the best athletes the best teams it's the players that are driving each other and practicing with each other or shooting the extra you know free throws after practice or whatever it might be and that's the same thing that the best reps can be doing to to make sure their skills are you know continuously sharp it's not just relying on their manager yeah it's funny bring that you know it's like uh you know i'm gonna bring up a patriots reference here so sorry because i'm a homer but but it's you know the patriots by the way good win the other night on the bears um but uh that was that was impressive uh but uh but with the with the patriots like julian edelman who's like you know a mini tom brady or wannabe at least he calls up brady during the offseason he's like hey can we just go go to the field and just throw me as many balls as you possibly can and belichick didn't tell him to go do that you know um and and it's funny i was saying this earlier before we jumped on here which is you know max over at sales hacker i was watching this video that he posted on um or somebody posted about him uh talking at a conference and it was talking about all these sales technologies right and he was saying look the best sales reps don't wait for your managers or your companies to invest in these technologies like if you find a technology that you think can make a difference spend the 50 bucks a month on it and see what you know see how it works and then drive the results and then have your manager come to you and say hey why what's working so well why are you crushing it compared to everybody else and you can say well well i invested in sales loft and i spent 50 bucks out of my own pocket because it's just making me super efficient i can get way more done and i think it's the same thing with learning in the sense that so many reps wait for the company to invest in them when there are so many free resources out there to learn from i mean i mean forget about what you and i are doing here there's udemy for 50 bucks a month you get a massive access to come there's linkedin learning for crying out loud there's free shit on youtube the you know the challenge is is okay what's real you know what's good content and what's not but at the end of the day i look at it as as long as it's not an unethical piece of content that somebody's putting out there to say do this and it's it's a sneaky sleazy shitty thing to do try it out i don't know you know it could work for you compared to me you know my approach isn't exactly you know being from boston massachusetts i'm obviously correcting in your face some people just don't have that person like oh you know you guys out there in the midwest like you're the nicest people on the planet out there in the midwest right my home my mom's whole family you just don't know us that well john yeah i know well chicago like outside of chicago there you go so so like my mom's whole family's from like western illinois right nicest people on the planet if they were to take my approach or do something that i did it might just not jive with their personality that doesn't mean that mine's better it's it's just trying different things and so i think the continuous education piece of a sales rep the best sales reps i know and correct me if i'm wrong on your end but the best ones i know don't wait they they try to get that one percent better every day they try to learn something new every day and apply it and figure out how to work it right it's also um the whole learning landscape the universe has changed and i think the mentalities that people have has changed as well right so like you said they used to sit and wait for training to be pushed at them and a lot of time a lot of times that training was not high impact stuff it wasn't these bite-sized videos it wasn't you know created by the the business leaders it was created by someone that doesn't even know their business and doesn't even know how to sell or doesn't have anything it's not even about sales but any any functional area and i think now what you're seeing is that people are asking for training they're asking for feedback they're asking for coaching and that's that's half the battle right even if you don't know where to go yeah you could throw it on google and search for content or you could just ask your leader ask your vp ask your manager go to lunch with someone it doesn't matter what it is just go ask questions and learn and that is that's as effective as anything and it's one-to-one it's very scalable i don't care what anybody says if you're if you're an individual you can do that all you know all day every day you can just go and learn and ask people questions um as a team that's where you need to think about scale but it's it's the appetite that people have i think you're right and the one thing that you know is evident to me as far as again the the amount of information that's out there and and the not waiting um i have always had this mindset of i can learn something new every day you know what i mean and and there's something even if i try and fail it i learn way more from my failures than i do from my successes and so and and there's just so much opportunity the problem is is i never well up until recently i never was conscious of it and this is actually a takeaway for people listening today just from my experience and i'd love to hear your kind of take on this and if it same thing happened to you younger you know i'm 41 now um when i was early in my career i just did things i just i just worked i i put my head down and i i learned through osmosis it's almost like you know you know you got a kid i got a kid right it's like you know do you do you tell the kid not to touch the oven or do you touch the oven and then they'll figure it out a lot faster right i was the kid who touched the oven i was like oh shit okay i shouldn't do that okay let me but i never was very conscious about learning early in my career i just did because i was so activity driven that's and that's actually one of the things i love about training specifically face-to-face training is it's like a forcing function if nothing else to have a stop and say look what am i like pick my head up for a minute here and and take a look at what i'm doing and is it working right i don't think too many people have that yeah the mentality of i am now consciously going to be practicing so practical things to do here i tear up my accounts tier ones tier twos and tier threes great average and crap i used to throw away my crap ones i'd be like you're shitty customers for anyways i don't want to have a conversation with you because you know i don't but now i actually i like them because anytime i'm trying something new i run a list of my tier threes and i throw up all over myself and who gives a shit you know what i mean as long as i'm not offensive you know i'm going to push it like if i don't want to discount anymore for instance i'm going to get a bunch of tier threes in my pipeline and say hey look the price is x and we don't discount i just want to let you know that up front and see what happens and you know what if they say piss off okay well i gotta figure out a better way of delivering that message but it at least will build my confidence when did you or did you shift from passive learning to saying okay i'm just kind of learning because i'm doing to actively saying i i need to i need to get better at this so my first job out of college i was i was working at golden sacks i was a financial analyst right you go to you go to business school and all this is you know 12 years ago and the only things that you could do are finance marketing and uh and consulting now it's changed a little bit there's entrepreneurship programs things like that and but so i was in finance i i did not want to be in finance the world was ending this is 2006 seven and eight um and what i realized then and also at that time your first job out of college like you you would stick it out your two three years and and and deal with it um so really early on i realized hey i don't want to be in finance i don't want to do what my bosses do but i i want to i'm going to learn as much as i possibly can here and so i was able to make that shift really early by switching my mentality of what my purpose was every day um and something that i learned actually very very quickly is that every single job in the entire world this is kind of bringing a full circle of sales right so whether you're in finance whether you're an accountant whether you're a lawyer whatever it is you need to have sales skills and i was able to look across the floor and see the people that i knew how to sell right they weren't being taught the skills but they figured out and they learned and those that didn't and so i i surrounded myself with those folks and and did whatever i can i remember i could to learn from them and and pick their brain on different things so i i was i guess fortunate and unfortunate but i i was i made this shift um just because i i wanted to i wanted to make the most out of my uh my three years there yeah and i think that is it's an interesting shift right because i think it's weird like it when you come in from a a background where you had to learn a bunch of stuff i think it's a little bit more oh i have to learn how to sell so let me go educate myself but i think a lot of sales reps just kind of evolve into sales like for me i got my marketing degree right like i didn't really have to do shit in school to learn about you know i read a few books and kind of cut my way through um so i but i think the the benefit i had was i've always been genuinely curious and that curiosity albeit i never looked at it as proactively learning that curiosity drove my constant thirst for hey how's that work what about that what about that and i learned because i was curious not necessarily because i was consciously saying i want to learn so i think you can take two two approaches to it right like you can say i'm purposely going to learn how to go do this and now i do a lot more of that but i think at a very bare minimum the more curious you are about stuff and the more you know you ask good questions not just stupid questions you know just you know how'd you do you know how'd you get to where you are in your career dumb shit like that but like instead of asking how'd you close that sale hey could you walk me through that last sale and what happened in and and what did they say and how did this happen and where did you hit that objection and being curious about the whole process you know that's where i learned the most right and you know makes sense right the the best salespeople is something that i look for every time we hire a salesperson are are they genuinely curious right are they asking questions because they care are they asking because that's what they think they're supposed to ask during the interview and when you find people that that do have that that genuine desire to learn and and ask they care about they're asking about that's that's that's gold for a salesperson it's like they go together totally that and that's actually funny because you know when i was trained at basho the the training um you know they have this the module and i still train on it's called the perfect meeting right where it's like you start instead of asking your immediate doctor checkup questions like what do you do for this and what do you do for that what do you do for this you elevate the questions and you start talking about the industry and where things are going and just in time learning and artificial intelligence because ryan you're like i want to get your temperature level up right um because i want to get you talking about something that you feel passionate about because if i can get you to talk then you're going to open up the whole you know i'll be able to guide that conversation and i remember being trained on this and i was like okay so i came up with like what i thought was a really interesting industry level question and i remember asking a vp or a ceo something about the direction of outsourced it because i thankfully i had been in this industry before so i kind of knew but uh i remember being like so where does where's outsourcing these days and is it a good thing or a bad thing are people looking at it as offshore stuff or as they really understand and he he started answering the question and midway through he stopped and he goes wait a minute why the hell do you need to know that and i remember being just like like deer in headlights being like holy shit um i i didn't have a reason because i was going for what i was trained to do you know what i mean figured on the path right i wasn't i wasn't being genuinely curious i was asking a question because i was supposed to ask a question to get their temperature level up and so now i mean thankfully i was able to adjust because you know again i knew the industry but the now i i every question i ask and this is a recommendation for people listening here pretend like the person you were asking that question is going to immediately flip it back on you and say why the hell do you need to know that and if you don't have a good answer to that do not ask that question right so or or if it's something you can easily find out what drives me batshit crazy is when and i don't know if this happens to you but i get a lot of reps calling me up and saying hey john i'd love to pick your brain about sales and kind of how you got to where you are in your career and and look i'll have a conversation with anybody i love i love sharing insights i love sharing my experiences i mean that's why i train right yeah and but man those conversations last either five minutes or the full 30 and the five minutes ones last one reps are like so john let me give a little background on how you got to where you are in your career today it's like yeah i have a little product called linkedin yeah google it like i put my entire work history on the fucking so we can skip this bullshit part of the conversation and actually get to some stuff that matters right and it's the same way it's funny you know i can tell we've trained our clients sales reps have trained their clients to ask these so tell me about or say this the so tell me about your business bullshit right because tell me if this happens to you when when you start a meeting with a client they immediately dive into well let me give you a little background on us you know we were founded here and we've grown our business and it's like i i feel awkward but i interrupt them i'm like i i know all that yeah i did it i was on your website i did the prep i know you were founded here i know your target audience i you know i have some kind of contextual questions here that that about your history and your background but i you don't you don't need to give me the overview here i got it right does that do you find that too we we find that and the other thing is that people you i think it's unnatural for salespeople right out of the gates to start asking very direct questions but the more direct and pointed questions you ask the better the conversation is going to be right you're gonna you're gonna get more information than you ever could have imagined but you don't want to hear about their business like right you you google it you got the business i want to hear about your pain points i want to hear about what why are we talking yes that's what i think the i think the most insulting you can thing you can say to anybody in today's world is tell me about your business because companies spend thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars on their website on their marketing on the seo on everything to tell the world about their business and you walk in the door and that's the first thing you say i out done so anyways we got a couple minutes left here ryan um i love the conversation as always um talk to me about what's coming up i mean we'll talk about again the launch here but but talk to me about what's coming up for learn core like where where are you guys headed so we've we've touched on a little bit a little bit of it already today i mean there's this whole idea of of leveraging data and analytics to make sure that the right content is always being delivered to the right to the right folks when they need it right based on the situations that they're in in a sales cycle based on who they're talking to based on the uh you know any data that that lives in salesforce or elsewhere the other thing too is how do you make um how do you get managers more and more involved in the enablement and training process right because it's been great over the last few years because it started top down and it's really there's been a big push at organizations to make to improve productivity right and and yeah it has to be started somewhere and driven somewhere but now it's getting more and more managers to say hey i want this for my team i need this for my team i don't care what the rest of the organization's doing i i got this team of eight sales reps and i need to make sure that they can all you know differentiate our product or i need to make sure they can all give a demo or make a cold call whatever it is and they don't have to wait for other folks to to push it on them and it's no different than the salesperson you know going out of their way to practice and improve the managers need to do that too and as soon as as soon as we can start to connect those dots better meaning you can get managers doing their own thing without enablement without sales leadership and all of a sudden you've got this this full cycle sales training and enablement organization where everybody's up to speed on what we call the formal learning so driven top down and then also the informal things that are just at an individual level or team level and that's really the big shift i think the only way to really get there is through data through analytics through automation and potentially some some ai machine learning as well love it i love it man yeah and i think the just one of the reasons just to let everybody else out there know the why i decided to go with learn core over everybody else two two main reasons the technology is what it is you know and i think it it works and it's great but it's it's the the vision that you guys have and and how you're positioned i think better than most from an evolution standpoint and also you know we've talked about this to people uh i think the biggest way that anybody can to differentiate these days out of all the other i'm a big believer that most of our products and services are being commoditized in the mind of the consumer um so the way you manage the sales process and the ethics you have behind your business um make all the difference in the world and so that those two reasons the the your platform and the and where i see the vision of where you guys are going but also your team and and how you approach things um you know we just had a client that we were working on together that i'm good friends with that you know she shared with me that you guys literally walked away from what could have been an incredible opportunity um because it just wasn't a perfect fit for you probably could have shoehorned your product into it um i'm guessing but your one of your reps took uh i saw the email it was incredible it's like hey look you know what you're trying to do it's just not the right fit you know i'd recommend going with xyz and and that type of credibility is huge in my opinion so um i appreciate that about you guys i'm psyched about our partnership moving forward here and um and one more thing um before before i leave i do want to just do a quick little plug i got this uh make it happen thing i did a kickstarter today i don't know if you saw it but uh i got this book which goes along the lines of what we're talking about continuous education and making sure that things stick uh so go check out kickstarter uh make it happen manuals i'm trying to raise some cash so we can get this out to the masses but any last words here right now thanks for having me john we are we are super pumped about the partnership as well and we've already you know we've been working together for about a year now and i think that but where we're going to take it in the next you know few months and in the years is really exciting and to evolve together will be a lot of fun so you know let's make it happen yes that i love it and so uh just everybody look out for on monday next week is when we are officially launching it that's when you can get all the j barrows content on the learn core platform um and yeah let's drive it and driving to close which is all my closing stuff i'm launching next week so that you know coming to the end of the year here we're going to try to hit it out the park with negotiation objection and on closing so we can close out that year but then fill in the funnel to keep next year uh on point so we're not starting from zero at uh day one on january 1st all right awesome well ryan thank you again very much and uh actually i'll see you in two weeks right at the learn core event when is that uh it is uh 10 25 here in chicago in 25 so if you're in chicago go to the learn core what's it called what's the learn core core connect it is uh spots are are filling up but if you're in chicago shoot me an email ryan at learn core and i'll see if we can uh we can squeeze you in awesome we'd love to see everybody there me and doug lanus are going to be on stage for the first first time at learn core so it's gonna be a blast all right a lot of fun thanks john bye bye you you you you you you you you you Thank you.