75: Sales Training with David Priemer

According to Gong.io's research and analysis of over 2 million sales calls using their artificial intelligence platform, they found out that by introducing competition early in the sales process, you increase the likelihood of you winning that deal by 49%. So be proactive about addressing your competition. Don't be afraid of it. Because if you introduce it middle or late in the sales process, you actually decrease your chances of winning that deal. Bringing it up early shows confidence, shows you're not afraid. So here's a way to get that information. So for instance, I do a give-get here when somebody says, well, John, what are your competitive differentiators? What makes you so special? Well, historically, what I would do is I would just regurgitate what my marketing department told me, what our competitive differentiators are.

But my competitive differentiators are different based on my competition. So I want to have some flow here in the conversation with the prospect. When they say, John, what makes you so special and what makes you different from all the other competitors? Happy to share that with you. Could you help me understand exactly who you're talking to? Well, we're talking to them, them, and them. Okay, well, here's something different from them. Here's something different from them. Here's something different from them. All right. And by the way, if they're not willing to give you that information, you're probably not talking to the right person. People above the power line have no problem telling you exactly what's going on because they know lying is a waste of time.

And what's the point? People below the power line think somehow that's some little thing that they're going to be able to hold to hold you at bay and not give you the insights, which really doesn't put them in a good position either ultimately, because it doesn't help clarify the message, which you might want to do when somebody is a little hesitant to ask, oh, you know, who, when you ask who's the competition and they're like, well, we're not really comfortable telling you that. Give them a reason why you're asking the question. So you say, Hey, the reason I'm asking that question about who the exact competitors are, because there's a lot of competition out there in this marketplace. And I just want to make sure that we're comparing apples to apples, because if you're talking to this type of vendor and this type of vendor and this type of vendor and me, it's going to really be hard to figure out what's the best solution for you.

Whereas if you're all talking to all the same types of competitors as the ones I know, then you're in a good position. That's why I need to know. I'm not going to change my, you know, pitch or change my solution or anything like that. I just want to help you make this decision more effectively and help you figure out what the real differences are. So make sure you bring up competition early. Don't be afraid of it. It shows confidence. And when you show confidence, your solution, the client's going to pick up on that. All right. So bring it up early. Make it happen. If you enjoyed this tip, check out more of Gong's research at gong.io slash John. All right. Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrows.

Make it happen Monday. Hopefully you all had a fantastic weekend. I had an incredible weekend, even though I'm a little bit tired because my Patriots actually beat the undefeated Kansas City. Chiefs and my Red Sox finally won a second game here at home. So Boston sports is loud and proud right now. But I'm actually really excited for today's Make it happen Monday podcast and webinar here because we have a return guest. David, Premier from Cerebral Selling. Say hi to everybody. Hey, everyone on make it happen Monday. Great to be back. Yeah, it's good to have you, man. So so we did our first one. We were just talking about this. We did our first one. And this is actually how I got introduced to you, which was I read a blog or blog that you wrote on objection handling.

And I remember, you know, I trained objection handling. And I remember reading it going, shit, man, like this is, you know, this is actually better than some of my training is for crying out loud on this stuff. So so we got to get you on here and talk about it. So why don't you give everybody again who didn't listen to episode whatever 47 it was, a little background on who you are, where you're coming from, and why you started Cerebral Selling. What are you doing these days with it? Yeah, for sure. So, you know, as most people in sales, I ended up in sales by accident, you know, no, no one ever says when they're going through school, you know, hey, you know what I want to be when I grow up. So I started, I started my career as a research scientist, and got into sales by accident at the turn of the dot com boom, ended up joining a startup, because you know, all these startups were hiring at the time, and ended up as a solution engineer.

So shout out to all your solution engineers out there, was a solution engineer for eight years, but fell in love with sales, because very much like science and engineering, there was kind of like a system and a reason why things happen. And I got really, really obsessed with, you know, why sales works the way it does. And also, kind of the whole mystique around sales, like why do people hate talking to salespeople so much and all that kind of stuff. So I got the startup bug, ended up working throughout the next 20 years across four startups, all in sales leadership roles. The first three startups were all acquired, the last one is still kicking. The third one was acquired by Salesforce. So after three and a half years of that business, I ended up joining Salesforce, coming over with the ship, spent five awesome, awesome years at Salesforce, seeing how the sales machines were built at scale culturally and operationally.

And then that's where I started to, as you've seen, write, I started to write a whole bunch of articles and content, just because it was my passion and what I loved. And so after all that time, I couldn't think of anything I'd rather do with the second half of my sales career than teach the art and science of modern selling. I love, love, love to learn. I love to teach. I love to figure stuff out. I feel like I am still figuring stuff out. And as you know, we're in this sales system that changes all the time. It's not like math where it kind of stays the same. It's changing all the time. So I, I just love kind of diving in and exploring the art and science of sales. Love it, man. And I think that's why, you know, what you write about resonated with me so much because I, you know, I talk all the time about the science, even though I come from more of the quote unquote artistic backgrounds, you know, my first major was art, like literally art.

And, but I've learned that, that without, without the science, man, you got to be a damn good artist. Right. Right. I always say this. I think there's probably like three to 5% of our population that are the pure artists that the ones that just are born into it. You know, they know exactly how to relate to people, exactly what questions to ask. And I don't mean from a sleazy sales rep standpoint. I just mean from a, they get it, you know, it just clicks for them. But the other 95% of our population is, yes, I think we're all sales professionals in one way, shape or form, but without that structure, without that process, it's, it's, it's pretty damn hard to get to a level of, of consistent success.

Let's put it that way. Right. For sure. Well, also I think about some of the young reps that are probably watching your show and, and thinking, oh, I love taking some tactics away that I can apply in my sales, my sales practice. Part of the challenge is that, and you've probably seen this a ton where young sales reps, they take a, they take a tactic like, oh, this looks, this looks easy. It's almost like they're watching a cooking show. They see like, oh, the chef made this thing. I can go make that. And it comes out like a, like a blob at the end. Right. And so you're totally right. There's this, there's a science and there's also an art. The way I often describe it is I call it the why. So sometimes you'll go and you'll use a tactic and maybe it'll work or maybe it won't.

And whether it works or it doesn't, it doesn't matter. You got to ask yourself why, why did it work? Why did it not work? Because the answer to that why is what's going to allow you to repeat the behaviors that you want to repeat and stop the things that are not working. I couldn't agree with you more. Like we, we go through the motions a lot. Reps do. I always tell them like, you're doing the activities anyways, learn from it, right? Like learn from it so that, so that you're not repeating the same mistakes. And, and, you know, you heard me say this before that, and anybody who's been listening, here's me where I talk about if there's one thing I could go back and tell my 22 year old self, what would it be?

And it's AB split test, AB split test, everything, right? If you're going to make a hundred dials, don't make just a hundred generic cold calls, pick a persona, come up with two different approaches to that persona, make 50 dials with this approach, make $50 with that approach, see which one yields a higher response rate, right? Don't fall in love. Don't fall in love. Please don't. So here's a perfect example. It's like the white paper email. My fucking, the one I hate the most, you know, the one where somebody goes on your website, downloads a white paper, and then it's the obligatory, hey, I saw you download the white paper. I'd like to talk to you about your 2018 priorities and help you achieve your goals.

Every single company I work with has that white paper email. And it's a default because, oh, that happens. Press play there. There's my white paper email. And I just beg them. I'm like, could you do me a favor? Could you go back and look at the analytics on that white paper email and tell me how many people have ever responded to that white paper email? And I know it feels good because it's easy and because somebody came up with it a long time ago when it was an answer to that specific thing. But could you just look at the data, please? And if it works, then shut my mouth. Tell me to shut the mouth up, John, whatever. But if it doesn't, maybe try something different, right? So, and I think that dovetails really well into our conversation today, which is about training, right?

So both you and I train, right? We help companies more successful through tactics and structure and whatever else, right? And so, you know, the impetus for this was, hey, let's, how do you evaluate training and how do you leverage training to, you know, to improve and reinforce and all that other stuff? I don't want this to be a pitch on us as far as, hey, buy our training and shit and how you should evaluate us. I want to really go tactical here and talk to reps about, say you're in an organization that either invests like Salesforce and Salesforce invests in shit mode in their reps as far as training and those type of things. Or you're working for a small business out there where you have no money, no budget, nothing, right?

How do you, how as a rep, should you look at all the content that's out there, right? Cause there's guys like you and me who are somewhat quote unquote professional, right? You know, we've been doing this for a while now. We're putting out decent content. Hopefully the people are getting value out of it, but then there's pretty much any Tom, Dick and Harry right now with a, with a video camera and an iPhone can put out content. It seems really, really good, but in actuality, it's kind of like, it doesn't work all that well. So let's talk about if you were a rep in a company and you were like, I I'm getting my ass kicked right now. I'm in sales. I get no resources. What, you know, I got YouTube.

I got Jay Barrows. I got cerebral selling. Like, how would you even start to look at this to say, where do I start consuming content that'll help me in the short term, but also help build my career. And then we'll talk about how to reinforce that stuff. Like, how would you even look at that? Yeah. I mean, the first thing I always think about is what, what's the problem we're trying to solve? Like what, what is the training that you're looking for? Because there's, like you said, there's a million different kinds of training and a million different personalities of trainers. Certainly, you know, you want to find someone that is consistent with your approach. And so like, what's the problem we're trying to solve?

And I feel like a lot of sales reps and even sales leaders, they're not sure. Like they like the idea of like, oh, I want to get this system or I want to do Sandler. I want to challenge or I want to do this, you know, but they're not really taking a step back and saying like, what is the problem? Like if I were to analyze my sales funnel and look at, is it like a top of the funnel? Is it messaging? You know, is it, I'm saying the wrong things? Is it, no, no, I'm saying all the right things, but man, I'm giving away 30% discounts every time. Like that's got to stop. So I would say like, take a look at your funnel and figure out what kind of training you're looking for. That would be, you know, my number one pick.

Do you find that, John? Absolutely. So I was going to ask you, how do you break that down? Right. Cause the way I look at it is, you know, I talk about know your equation, right? How many dials you get? How many meetings to get? How many proposals to get? How many pieces of closed business to, you know, that type of thing. So how, how, how minute would you break this down into like the way I tend to look at it is prospecting and getting people to even talk to me, right? The qualification call, right? Because that's the conversion, right? You go from, from, I got to make a hundred dials to get, you know, 10 people to talk, to even talk to me. So I could ask them some questions. Then there's kind of the demo slash presentation, right?

So it's, it's okay. We've gotten to that stage. Then it's, I guess, negotiation would be the other one and then closing. So those four, those five buckets, if you will, is kind of the way I would look at the conversion ratios between each one of those stages. Have a baseline metric. And I don't think you can, I don't think this has to be too hard. For instance, go back and look at your CRM or hopefully if you're tracking your activities, you can say in the past three months, how many outbound activities have I done, right? And then in the past three months, how many qualification calls have I had? How many proposals did I put out there? And how many pieces of closed business did I close, right?

If you understand, if you look at the past three months of your data and you kind of do one of those, all right, give or take, then you'll have a baseline for the metrics of conversion ratios between the stages. And then you start to identify based on that. Okay. Now where to your point, maybe I'm doing a great job getting through gatekeepers and having conversations. But man, I, you know, I just got an email the other day from a kid who was like, you know, I'm setting up 15 to 20 demos on a monthly basis, but literally none of them are converting. So I said to him, I said, look, he's like, what's the problem? I go, dude, that's a, over in-mail, that's a longer question that I can answer. But you have to, you're either not presenting to the right person, your presentation sucks because it's all features, functions, feeds, and feeds, and it's not engaging.

Or your product is way too much of a like to have, not a must to have, right? So, so right there, that's his problem. And then you can go and look for training, right? A hundred percent. Can I show you something? So this is, I, this is a work in progress. I'm teaching a course actually at a university here in Canada on sales leadership. And this is exactly what you, this is a slide I've broken down that describes it. So I don't break it down. Talk to it just for the people on the podcast too, who aren't watching it live. Okay. Absolutely. So is exactly what you said, John, you know, thinking about like, what is your supply chain from activity to revenue look like? And so, you know, I'm a scientist.

So I always thought of it as like a chemical equation. So you start out with kind of your reagents on the left-hand side. So the way I think of it is activity leads to pipeline, leads to revenue, and then the revenue, you know, a lot of sales systems stop there. I don't stop there. You got to get the renewal, right? Because a lot of organizations are focused on the churn. So activity to pipeline to revenue and then renewal. And at each stage, when we go to activity to pipeline, there's kind of like a, like a process that we go through. And then we go from pipeline to revenue, there's a process we go through. And at each point, you can kind of ask yourself, okay, well, if I'm, if I'm challenged to go from, you know, step one to step two, well, then that signifies something.

But if, you know, that's okay, and it's step three to step four, that's the problem. So I've, for those of you who are seeing this, I've kind of broken down a little bit of a, of a visual. And then the question is, what's actually happening at points, you know, A, B, and C? So I give some, it's funny, I've never presented this before. This is for, this is upcoming. But the idea is there are areas that we can dive into. Like, is it, yeah, like, are you just calling at the wrong time? Like, are you emotionally encumbered? And like, you just feel like you're bothering your customers? And so you just don't call, you know? Are you just getting your ass handed to you on the negotiation front? And then, you know, there's a bunch of discovery questions I have in terms of coaching that can help us dive in.

But that's exactly it. So I'm just, I'm going to stop and share that. But that's the idea is, like, you should, for whatever your business looks like, because maybe you're not a demo business. Maybe it's not all about the demo. Or maybe it's, you know, you're very call-centric. Or maybe it's not calls. Maybe it's, you know, social touch points, whatever it happens to be. The idea is that you want to flow chart that out and identify the pinch points so you know what kind of training you need. Yeah. Yeah, and I always say to people, you know, it's funny. Yeah, I had a bunch of reps when I had my first company. And they were, you know, and I would always push on them, like, hey, I need you guys to think more strategically.

Like, you're way too tactical right now. I need you to kind of level up here, think about the client. And their feedback to me was, John, I'm just not a strategic thinker, right? And I said, let me demystify strategic thinking for you for a second here. I'm not a brainiac. I did not go to be an engineer. I drank my way through four years of college, right? So, you know, and I've never said I'm the brightest cat out there, right? I'm definitely an opportunist, and I know how to make my way through the world, but I'm not like the brainiac Harvard kid, right? But strategic thinking, in my opinion, and I'd love to get your thoughts on this, is defining a process. Whatever the process is, I don't care what it is.

As long as you have one, it's better than not having one, right? So figure out what the stages are in that process, and then go find the weakest link, pull that piece down, strategize around that, and come up with solutions around that piece, and then plug it back in, and seeing how the process then works from there, right? And then find the next weakest link, and then the next weakest link. So you're taking bites out of this bigger sandwich, but you're not trying to eat the whole sandwich at the same time. Is that a good way for somebody to look at strategic thinking, if you will? Yeah. I mean, I think one of the reasons why people fail at anything is that they try to take on too much at once.

You know, you go see a personal trainer, and you're like, look, I want to run the Ironman, and he says, she says, no, no, no. It's not just you've got to do all these 10 things. Like, just start drinking eight glasses of water a day. How about that? You know? And if you can start building on those habits, then you're going to be in good shape. So I agree. I had a question for you. It's interesting. You know, I love the rigor as we kind of think about diagnosing a problem that we need to solve a training for. But I also find that, like, when it comes to the implementation of the solution, and I agree simple is good, you know, one of the things that we were kind of talking about before is that, you know, if it's too, if it's too, like, complicated, or if it, like, it sounds good, but it doesn't work, then it's not something that you should do.

And I find that that's a kind of a key thing. I'll give you, like, an example. This is unrelated to training, but my third startup, one of the things that we did was we helped people set goals at work. And we would have companies that would say, hey, you know what? This is great. You can set goals. So if I'm setting goals for John, I want to set seven goals for John, and I want this goal to be 10% of his time and this goal to be 15% of his time. And, like, human beings cannot moderate their time on, like, five percentages that, you know, we don't work that way. And so I find a lot of the training. So once you've identified the area you want to focus on, there's a lot of, like, nine boxes, and here's the 17 personas.

And I find that people just get – sellers can't moderate that kind of information or, you know, will it into command in the middle of a fight, you know, and I say fight in the interaction with a customer. I kind of think about, you know, selling is almost like martial arts in a way someone throws a kick, a punch, now you've got to figure out what to do. And when it's overly scripted, or let me just go check my nine box, that ain't no good. So I'm curious, kind of, how do you find, like, how do you match the rigor of the discovery and figuring out what we need with kind of, like, the simplicity of the kind of operationalization? Absolutely. So two things on that one, the way I look at it, is structure, not scripts.

You know, I have this – Morgan and I actually have this whole talk track around – we actually do a keynote on this one. And this is also – this is what connects the generations, right? So I'm a Gen Xer, Morgan's a millennial. Our generation has a very hard time relating to millennials because we were the last generation of figuring it out in the sense of when I was bored in my house and, you know, I was looking for something to do, my mom would just literally kick me out of the house and say, go figure it out. And so I would go burn shit down and, you know, break stuff and whatever. And as long as I was home by dinner, I'd be fine, right? But now every moment of every kid's life is structured, right?

So they go from school to this hour to this hour, they have soccer practice from this hour to this hour, they get to play with their iPad for 30 minutes and then they got homework for two hours, right? So they get out into the real world and then managers like me say, figure it out. And they look at you sideways like, what are you talking about? Figure it out. And so the default reaction is, here's a script because I can control that, right? But if you give a kid a script who doesn't have much experience, they're going to read the script. They're going to crank out the template emails because that's what they're told to do. And especially if we're measuring them on metrics, 50 dials, 100 emails, you know, that type of thing, they're going to do it.

And so script aren't the answer, structure is, because what I found is, especially kids, you know, coming into the workforce these days, they thrive within structure, right? But without it, they tend to fall apart, like they tend to kind of go all over the place. So I think it's inherent upon management and everybody else to provide structure. So that's why we talk about the training, the structure of a good contact strategy, the structure of what your schedule should look like, the structure of a good email, the structure of a good phone call. Now, what you put in that structure, that's the art. That's where you can start to play around with different things and try yourself out. But within that structure, you'll figure things out.

Split testing is a structure, right? And then the other thing I'll say to that is, look, you asked me to do something else on top of what I'm already doing right now. You got a better shot at seeing God than me doing it, okay? Because my schedule is bananas crazy. And if you say, oh, John, we have to add this, I'll tell you to go fuck yourself, right? Or I'll sit in a training and go, yep, uh-huh, sure. And then as soon as this training's over, I'm going to go back to right doing what I was doing anyways, because my personal routine is what's comfortable to me, right? Getting somebody into a routine is really hard to do, but getting them out of routine is even harder to do. I think there's some old Indian proverb that says you do something like 21 days in a row and it becomes habit, right?

Where it's like all of a sudden you have to kind of force through that, you know, working out, for instance, right? I hate working out. But if you work out 21 days in a row in a very specific way, after the 21st day, you just wake up and you go work out, right? I'm going to show you something. Hold on. Okay. So, no, this is my favorite book. I push it on everyone. It's called The One Thing, The Surprisingly Simple Truth. Right. The One No Results. And so they give this example. They say, yeah, it's not really 21, it's 66 days, but they talk about this concept of willpower. And one of the things they say is exactly what you said is they said, well, when you look at an Olympic athlete, Michael Phelps or someone who's really, you know, at the top of their game, and they're waking up every day, they're in the pool, they're on the court, they're taking a million shots, whether they're sick, whether the weather's bad.

And you ask them, you say, well, why do you, how do you work up the willpower to do that on the days that you're sick? And they're like, I don't know. It's like what I do. It's just normal, right? So developing that habit and trying to figure out what you describe, I call it learning how to learn, which is the, I wrote a blog post on this. I haven't published yet because I'm trying to figure out, but that's the thing I tell my kids. I'm like, learn how to learn because nothing will stay the same, whether it's, you know, in any discipline. You got to learn, you'll learn how to learn. Yeah, the critical thinking component, right, which is huge on what I'm trying to figure out how to teach my daughter, which is I don't care if you pass the math test.

I don't care if you, like, I care about how you figured out how to get there and what your decision process was to get there. So that once you become, once you bump into a problem, you know how to assess it and figure it out, as opposed to ultimately what the answer is, right? And I think we're going back to from a routine standpoint, and this is something I would recommend to everybody out there, is create that routine. We all have, so that's, again, going back to instead of adding to, replacing, okay? Like, I'll give you an example. Most of us have a morning routine, okay? Where we come in and some people, you know, check their fantasy leagues, get all pissed off about that type of shit or whatever.

Or, like, my dad to this day, still my dad wakes up in the morning, grabs his coffee and reads, physically reads the morning paper, right? Which is great. But the problem is, is like, for me in business, first of all, morning paper is completely irrelevant to shit I care about. My fantasy leagues, you know, no value to my life, right? That, you know, maybe I'll win a few, you know, hundred bucks at the end of the year, what do you fucking do, right? So, I've replaced my morning routines that used to be just, like, whatever I wanted to do with value-oriented stuff. So, for instance, instead of reading a morning paper, I set up Feedly, my RSS aggregator, and I go follow all the trends of stuff that I'm interested in.

Artificial intelligence, SaaS industry, sales training, sales blog, sales tips. And now, as I drink my coffee in the morning, I'm scanning through those articles, and I'm reading stuff that is benefiting me and learning from and allowing me to be, you know, build my brands, you know, share content, reach out to some prospects every once in a while with some information. So, that hour a day, as a replacement from what I was doing, I can fit it into my routine, right? So, those are the type of things that I encourage a lot of people out there listening to this do is that look for the shit that you're doing. And Gary Vee talks about this all the time. People say they don't have time. Well, did you binge watch the fifth season of Game of Thrones last, this weekend?

Well, maybe replace that with doing some shit that will help you make some money, right? It's true. Well, it's funny. It's hard to hold yourself accountable. And you know how they've done these experiments with theft in retail or, you know, retail stores, and people steal things and employees steal things. Yeah. But they found when they put a security guard there, people don't steal things anymore. But even when they take the security guard away and they replace it with a picture of a security guard standing there like this, people don't take things. And so, the question, how do you hack that accountability? I often think, you know, like if you ever go to your doctor and the doctor's like, oh, so have you been eating more donuts again, John?

And so, now you're at home and like no one's looking and you're like you have a donut in your hand. You're like, oh, if my doctor was here. No, my doctor would not be happy about this. It's almost like think about it like that. Like imagine you're doing what you're binge watching on YouTube and you're thinking to yourself, you know what? If my future self, the one that I aspire to be, was looking at me and saying, that's what you're doing now? Now, look, sometimes you need to do that because you need to have that release. But in other instances, you know, just having that a little self-accountability is important. Which goes back to what you were saying and I'd love to dig into this a little bit more of the goal setting.

How important, from what you've coached people on goal setting, how important is that in changing behavior, changing routines and getting yourself on the right track? Like where does goal setting fit for you as far as success is concerned in doing the things that you know you need to get done? Yeah. Well, goal setting is a double-edged sword. A lot of times we go through, especially in sales, you know, and I've been a VP of sales many times, we go through goal setting where like, okay, here are the metrics, here's the whatever. And like no one's committed to it, you know, and there's really no, there's no plan behind it. So the goal has to be simple enough and straightforward enough that you can achieve it.

There has to be like a very small number of them, right? And it's okay to have the goal for this week or the goal for this month. It doesn't have to be, you know, here's our 17 goals for the year. So I found that's kind of, you know, number one is to like have a small number of really important goals and be focused on them and have a plan. Like what am I going to do this week, this month to drive that accountability? Because, you know, I know where we kind of started this conversation talking about training. One of the biggest challenges and disappointments that I've found with training, and I've been a VP of sales for much longer than I've been a trainer. You've been a trainer for much longer than I have, is that not everyone wants to be good.

Not everyone wants to be good, right? And even people who want to be good or say they want to be good are not willing to do what it takes to be good, which is kind of frustrating. So in the context of goal setting, the thing I think about is how can I take someone? Let's assume there can be so many A players. If there's like this normal distribution, you've got your A players, your D players, and most people are kind of in the middle. So how can we take the people that are in the middle and shift them more up the curb? The people that are kind of sitting there with a donut, about to take the bite, you know, how do we kind of capture those people? And that's where I feel like the biggest impact that we can have is, you know, leaders and trainers, is setting goals and giving little micro strategies to those people to hold themselves accountable.

And accountability from a training perspective is really important because, as you know, what happens is you go in, John Barrows comes in, pumps up the crowd, and then people are like cheering. And then they go back to their desk and they do just what they were doing before, right? And so I think as goals, whether it's goal setting, training, driving accountability for the uptake and the implementation of the content in a very simple but powerful way, that's where like the biggest impact that we can have as leaders and trainers is. So you'll love this. I was doing a training recently for about, it was about 180 reps in the room and hand went up, rep calls and say, hey, John, you know what? You do training for all these tech SaaS companies.

You train them all on the same stuff effectively. How, you know, so how is it going to be like when I do this approach, how is it going to differentiate from, you know, the other 50 companies that you've trained that approach to who are approaching the same clients? And I said to him, I go this, I go 10, 60, 30. And he goes, excuse me, I go 10, 60, 30. 10% of you in here are A players are going to take everything I tell you to do and go execute the shit out of it and be super successful with it. 60% of you are going to do some of it a little bit differently and seeing a little bit of a difference. And 30% in you here aren't going to do shit different. So that's why I can still train this to thousands and thousands and thousands of sales reps, because really only 10% of them are going to take what you tell them to do and actually implement and execute on it.

Right. I mean, it's just the numbers pan out all over the place. So the question, I always change, challenge the team. Like, yes, I think you and my job is to help figure out that that 60% and how to really move them in that direction. But my challenge is to the other ones is take the 10, be the 10%, take the shit and go. What I used to do and going back to training, we didn't have any money. Like when my first startup, I had zero money. Like when a trainer would come in and talk to me about sales training and how it costs $10,000, I would legitimately laugh them out of my office. I'd be like, dude, I got $10 to spend on training this year. How do you fucking mind? So what I would do is I would bring them in and I was like, cool.

Like, hey, tell me about your methodology. Like, what's it all about? You know, that type of stuff. And they would explain it. The sales rep would explain it to me straight up. And I'd be like, okay, cool. That's very interesting. Yeah, why don't you send me some information? And I would just take what they told me, reverse engineer it, apply it, see if it worked, and then call the next sales rep in. And that was because there wasn't nearly as much online content. It was really like I couldn't get access to it other than poaching office sales reps. Now there's so much content out there. So I think let's come back to this because I know we're running up on time here. Like, how would you, let's go back to the sales rep trying to improve themselves.

Screw the company about what investments they're making in you. And if you're sitting out there, by the way, if you're sitting out there as a sales rep saying, my company doesn't invest in me in training, you shouldn't be in sales. There's too much free shit out there. I don't want to hear the violin, okay, about, oh, always me, my company doesn't invest. Go on YouTube, okay? But how would you start, David? Say you've identified, okay, this is where I go. Do you go to YouTube? Do you go to some trusted name advisors? Do you Google it? Like, where do you find content that you learn from based on where you are right now? Oh, that's a good question. You know, it's funny. You know, I want to give a really, really specific answer.

Like, oh, I find this and then I zero in and boom, that's what I do. And yet, I think about training and selling so much like cooking. I love to cook. And I often give this example. If you wanted to cook a lasagna, you wouldn't go in on the internet, say, oh, I do search for lasagna recipes and just make that. You would go and you would search for 10 recipes, see what ingredients you have, like what jives with your kind of style of cooking. You'd make the first lasagna, it would be shit, right? You would moderate it and kind of improve it as you go. And so, and this kind of catalyzed in my head because someone, a client was asking me, they said, David, you go into a lot of companies. What selling systems do you find are most prevalent nowadays?

And I said, to be honest, there's no loyalty. There's no loyalty. And so, there shouldn't be. There shouldn't be. There should not be loyalty to say that, look, it's important to have a common language. So, then when we say this or we say that, we know what we mean. But you're making the lasagna. You're teaching someone how to, like, fight on the UFC in the cage. And I can't just teach you how to do one thing because if I teach you how to do one thing, you're just going to go out with that thing. So, that's why selling, and I say this to all the young reps out there, don't be impatient. It's okay. Like, it takes time to develop these skills and to see all these situations. And sometimes, you could be like a yellow belt and you're looking at John Barrows comes in and gives you like a brown belt technique and it doesn't work for you because you're not there yet, right?

So, back to kind of, like, your question of, like, so how do you decide what it is that you, you know, where you need to go to? My whole thing is, like, don't, try not to be loyal, you know? Like, explore lots of systems, explore lots of tactics, you know, to the question of, like, you know, who's the best and who's not, you know, like, certainly there are some that are backed by data and this and that. But it's, at the end of the day, the most important thing is the experience that your customers have with you. And if you are able to deliver a great experience and add value and they buy what you're selling, mission accomplished. It's called, you know, I call that catching your sales group, right?

It's funny because Morgan and I are having this direct conversation right now. You know, he's a 25-year-old kid, he's the yellow belt, right? And I'm the 42-year-old vet that has a black belt six times over in this space but still has a lot to learn. But I've just experienced more than he has. And so when I listen to his calls on Gong or something like that, you know, he's still, like, currently working through his style with our content. Not just his style, he's got his style, like, if you put him on a stage and just let him riff, he goes. But when it comes to the structure and what we're delivering and who we're delivering to, he's still kind of going, I don't want to say going through the motions because he's better than most at that age and with that level of experience of the qualification calls and, you know, what he's presenting.

But he's still doing it like he's, you know, like he's told to do. Like, hey, ask these questions, make sure you do this, right? And he really hasn't kicked into that, just let's have a conversation, you know what I mean? And, ooh, I just heard what, like, out of all the shit that you just said there, ah, that's it. You know what I mean? I'm going to pull that in and I'm just going to needle in on that because there it is. You don't care about my whole slide deck. You only care about the couple of pieces here that are most relevant to you, right? So we're working through that to help him kind of smooth out what that is. But I told him, I go, Morgan, there's only so much I can teach you. I go, you know, one of his superpowers is he can read books like, you know, I think he read 250 books last year or something insane like that.

I've read two books in my life. You know what I mean? So his brain just processes information differently than mine does. So I said, turn your superpowers to your advantage. Go read every sales book there is out there and then take that piece of information that you find in there, apply it, and go. And I think this is the last thing I'll say and then we'd love to get your kind of parting thoughts here. The best thing I could probably recommend everybody, I would recommend doing this on a weekly basis, not necessarily daily basis, because daily I think you don't get enough numbers and there's too much other shit going on. But pick something. I used to do this with my team. Saturday mornings, and by the way, any manager out there should do this in a huge organization or any individual rep.

Think about what is the challenge you're trying to address, okay? Is it a certain objection that you're getting your asses handed to you on? Is it getting through gatekeepers? Is it presenting or asking questions in a qualification standpoint? Whatever it is, Monday morning, all agreed to, what is that problem? Now, go look for a solution. Literally Google how to get through gatekeepers or how to deal with the pricing objection. Go watch three or four videos, read a couple of blog posts, identify an approach that you think works with your team style or your style. Then grab a pen and paper, a notebook, and write down at the top the challenge, the approach, and then just do a plus minus. It worked, it didn't work, it worked, it didn't work.

Plus, minus, plus, minus, right? So now throughout the entire week, do whatever you want with all the other shit, right? But when that thing happens, use that specific approach and write down a plus or a minus. And then what I used to do, I had six reps on my team where, okay, everybody's had their notebook, and then I would collect those pieces of paper at the end, add them all up. And then on Monday morning, I'd be like, all right, everybody, we hit that objection 50 times this week. We had 26 positives and 24 negatives. That's actually a pretty good approach, in my opinion. Let's add it to the list. Now let's try something else this week. So if you have this kind of weekly, let's pick a topic, let's pick a thing that we want to improve, and let's all hyper-focus on it, you start to move.

And then you can pull resources from everywhere, YouTube, Feedly, blogs, whatever it is, and you become your own training organization, and you don't need idiots like you and me coming up and standing up with people for $8, right? It's like, hey, this weekend, we're all going to make lasagna, so I want you to go and make your lasagna, and I want everyone to come in and tell me what worked and went, oh, I added too much salt, mine was too cheesy, whatever it is. And then we're like, okay, between the 30 of us, we could probably, or the six of us, or whatever, we've now crowdsourced a pretty solid lasagna recipe I think we can all make, right? It's the exact same thing. So I love it. I think we've put a bow around a lot of things.

We started talking about experimentation. We started talking about no loyalty, using data, but not having structure, but not too rigorous. Sales is hard. That's why you make a shit ton of money for doing it really, really, really well. And it takes many, many years to master, but keep at it. As you know, as I know, it's the best profession in the world, one of the hardest, and one of the best for your brain and personal development, because you've got to figure shit out every day. Yeah, I mean, so that's where we're, and I'm going to do a little plug here, and then I'd love to get your feedback, where people can follow you and stuff. But we're actually starting a community, because my mantra is sales done right, because I genuinely believe when sales is done right, it's the greatest profession in the world.

When done wrong, it's the worst, and there's really no in-between. And so we're starting a community called salesdoneright.io. So if everybody goes to salesdoneright.io, it's going to be a Slack community where we're going to have different channels on different things about sales. And then the other thing you brought up earlier, that nobody ever says, I want to be in sales when I grow up. Well, guess what? Everybody's been asking me if I'm going to write a book. I've always hated, said no, absolutely not, because I don't read, so I feel like I'd be a hypocrite. And also, like, what the hell am I going to, you know, say that hasn't already been said? So, but I am writing a book, but it's a children's book, and it's called, I want to be in sales when I grow up.

Right, hon. It's the chance of sales earlier to change the perception. So with that, my little plugs are gone, David, you know, tell the audience again where they can find out more information about you. You know, I'm a huge fan of your blog. I'm a huge, even though we're quote-unquote competitors, to me, there's so many different approaches out there. There's so many different personalities, and it's just more about fit than it is competition, buy my shit over yours. So where can people find out more information about the value you bring to the table? Yeah, absolutely. I feel the same way as you, John. You can find all my information over at my website, cerebralselling.com. I also have a YouTube channel, which you can find on my website underneath the videos link.

So by all means, I'm like you. I give away all my stuff away for free because I believe that if we can all do it right, as you say, we can elevate the sales profession. You know, I'm sure as you have, if I'm in front of an audience, this is what it actually says on my website. On the first homepage of my website, it says, you ever wonder why you don't like talking to salespeople? And I can be in a room for 100 salespeople and say, who here likes talking to salespeople? No one raises their hand. Right. In a room of salespeople. Yeah. And that's what, you know, we're doing that. Imagine what our customers are doing. And that is a problem for the profession that has given us so much that we love.

And the secret, I believe, is just we teach it, we get people to do it right, and it will elevate everyone, as well as our customers. Yeah. Exactly. It's not just us. It's the engagement that we have with our customers. And that was, you know, the webinar I did recently with Trish Bertuzzi, Lori Richardson, and Casey. It was to remove the bro culture from sales, but that was really just said, we need to talk. And it wasn't about mail bashing. It was literally about how to elevate the entire profession, because the more inclusive we are as a society in general, but also as a profession, the better off we're all going to be. Getting different perspectives from different people, trying out different things, and opening up our eyes to a lot of different approaches and, you know, styles, and doing it right is what's going to elevate this profession.

So, finally, it will be educated, and people, you know, when they say, what do you do when you, you know, what do you do when you say sales? They don't roll their eyes and think, oh, gross, right? I almost want to actually start, like, I want to try to monitor the next time a sales movie comes out, like Wolf of Wall Street shit, and do a huge protest. Say, no, no, no, no, no. Please do not, because it's like when Glengarry Glen Ross came out, that was before my age, if you will. That kind of set the perception. Then it kind of died down. Then Boiler Room came out, and it was like, yep, there it is again. And then that kind of died off, and I was like, all right, people want to talk. And then fucking Wolf of Wall Street came out, and I was like, god damn it, right?

Maybe there's another shitty sales movie coming out there. Don't get me wrong. Those are all great movies, but they're shitty sales movies. My last recommendation, and I'll shut up here, is if you want to watch awesome sales movies, go watch Pursuit of Happiness. And then my favorite of all time, which is Tommy Boy. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I got sales done right. I got Tommy Boy clips in my – I got also – I got Tommy Boy. I got The Simpsons. There's a lot we can learn about sales from these other movies. But, no, I agree 100%. I love what you're doing, John. I love the message. And to everyone watching your podcast, listening out here, just double down on doing it right and learning your craft. The problem is we don't teach it enough, and we don't need – it's not like people become accountants by accident or doctors by accident, but we all become sales people by accident.

We don't teach it. And so, you know, you can do a lot for your profession, for your customers, for yourself by learning how to do it right and best. Love it. Awesome, David. I think you and I could continue to geek out on sales for a while here. But we do have to wrap it up. People like the half-hour format. It's just a nice and easy thing listening to work. So, thank you, everybody, for joining us. I hope you got some value out of this. Please keep in touch. Go visit David's website. He's got some great shit going on over there. And let's all make it a great day, all right? Thanks, dude. Thanks, man. All right. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Thank you.