79: Secrets of the Top 1% of Sales Reps - Scott Ingram

all right i'm pretty sure we're live now good afternoon everybody this is john barrows make it happen mondays hopefully you all had a fantastic weekend mine was a little frustrating my patriots got the shit kicked out of them by the titans so maybe a little bit of a wake-up call i actually said this is probably one of the better things that could have happened to the patriots going into the bye week because now bill belichick can just kick the shit out of them for a solid two weeks and and get them you know get them back right on track but uh anyways with that i wanted to introduce our guest here scott ingrams scott say hello everybody may give a little bit of background on who you are what you're coming from so we can have this conversation because i think it's going to be a fun one yeah absolutely happy john thanks for having me uh hello everyone thanks for listening uh my name is scott ingram i am a quota carrying salesperson and about two years ago uh started a podcast called the sales success stories podcast where i only interview quota carrying individual contributors who are either number one in their organization or they work for some giant company like linkedin or adp or one of these guys in those cases i will settle for the top one percent and we recently uh all came together after the sales success summit that we hosted uh in may decided to collaborate on a book project so the result uh is a new book that came out just last month called sales success stories 60 stories from 20 top one percent sales professionals and so it's just it's been a really enlightening journey uh hearing from and really digging in deep with the best of the best and seeing the realities of what that is and what that isn't i love it man and and so and we'll post that book for anybody who's interested uh on the feed here and we'll tell you where to get it but you know the the four you said that after reading all these stories there were kind of four main categories that they all fell into one was mindset the other was relationships uh sales careers and then sales process right so they all you said they all kind of naturally fell into those buckets yeah so what i asked is we got the group together um everybody agreed to write two to three stories and and i think the range is two to four but on average everybody wrote about three stories and i said look what we want here is not more like preachy sales content tell real stories about your experience and and hopefully tie it to some of the most important lessons and the things that have helped you be the most successful and what's funny is as we were putting this all together um there was a lot of we tried really hard to think about what's the structure and what are all the different topics that we need to cover and finally it was like screw that just write the stories and and i'll take it upon myself to figure out how it all fits together and so as they came in these categories they were just there and and i think that the organic nature of that really sort of emphasizes how important these things are right so it starts with the mindset right without mindset you've got you've got nothing right and then going to just how much emphasis there was and in fact i think the biggest category was on the relationship so just how key relationships are and and the gamut in there right in terms of everything from managing uh just the inner office stuff and getting promoted but also how do you get to the c level how do you stay at the at the c level and build trust and those types of things and then the area that i'm was really most excited about because i don't i think it's a big gap in the marketplace around sales careers and and what does that mean and all of the pieces in terms of finding the right company and finding something that you believe in to sell and getting fired and getting promoted and um you know one of my favorite stories in that section is about running your career like a franchise right and really being more mindful and intentional about treating this i mean this is a profession this is a craft so how do you go about treating it in that way and then sales process ended up being a little bit of a catch-all right because you're talking about discovery and negotiating and all the elements of of a sales process and so that was kind of the the rest of the stuff love it so and i'd love to start with what you and i were talking about before we jumped on here which is kind of the the thing that the perception reality of of what it took to be in that one percent right and how there's this perception of you have to be this you know win at all costs like go go go best sales guy ever and really you know close for any reason at all so you can hit that top pinnacle right because there's you know there's a lot of people out there spouting that shit you know in order to fly the fucking jet and you know stacks of cash and that type of bullshit like you've got to be the ur like in your face wolf of wall street guy but what was something that you had said earlier what were some of the things that you noticed of the top one percent not just the top one percent every once in a while the ones who stayed consistent what was that insight that you got there yeah and that's really one of my criteria i really look for that consistency i'm less interested in people that hit the sales lottery like they just landed in the right territory at the right time and like walked into a massive deal i'm like no no no i want to see you repeat it right do it do it again be consistent over over that course and i think we all have these wrong misconceptions about what that person is and we buy into a lot of stereotypes to your point that come from some people that are are very loud i i think that's part of the problem right there's there's a lot of noise and that's what you tend to see and those that are at the top they don't talk about this like almost everybody in this book almost everybody that i've had in the podcast you've never heard of because they're not out there beating their chest they're out there selling and they're out there helping their clients and where this really struck me and i got it was when we were all together at the first sales success summit last may and just the level of humility and care and um this was these were not the people that i thought they would be when i sort of embarked on the beginning of this process and now i understand it right and it makes so much sense like of course the person who cares the most about their customer and their outcome and what's really going to make a difference and improve their lives and and the results that they're trying to drive towards wow they do the best of course because that's repeatable right those people are going to be able to make reference calls for you they're going to give you referrals they're going to buy from you again when they change roles or they get promoted and all of those things if you treat them like a transaction you only are ever going to get one deal and they're going to talk trash about you because you are trash and and you're never going to do another deal from with them and and so it's so great to see the reality of you know what i think of as like sales karma yeah it goes both ways i couldn't agree more i mean i live by what goes around comes around right and you know try to get reps to understand that you know your career is a long career and you might have to you might take some shortcuts now in the short term right but the long term it's going to come back and bite you in the ass like there's there's a couple of things going on right now in this world and i don't want to bring up any names because i don't want to give many publicity but you know there's some people who are doing some pretty like aggressive things and i actually talked to this kid recently and i was just like dude what are you doing he's like fuck this i'm i can win i'm gonna do this because i can and all this other stuff and i'm like can i just tell you from a 42 year old man's perspective here that whatever you are doing now you might quote unquote win in the short term here whatever that definition of winning is for you but i promise you long term man this ain't gonna pan out well for you i've just seen it too many times i've seen that person take that shortcut or screw over somebody or whatever it is and then might not be that week or that month or that year but eventually it comes back to bite him in the ass and and karma is a bitch right on both ends yeah totally well all the people in this in this book are b2b sellers except for one and that one guy sells cars out of the middle of nowhere and he he went into this had sort of a midlife crisis um and had been like a manufacturing manager i mean just very blue collar and he's like i'm tired of this i don't like my job i had this good experience this last car i bought um i want to see if i can go do that that guy in his first three years sold 1600 cars and he did it by giving people the experience they've always wanted to have he gave them the experience that he wants to have as a guy who loves buying new cars that you can't ever get as an experience and and that's that's kind of the worst of the worst that's why that role is so stereotypical and do you like it do you enjoy it no that's why we're all trying to buy our cars online now because i don't want to mess with that yep no i mean i bought a tesla last year and it was all online it was probably the best experience i ever had buying a car right and and the fact that i didn't have any options like at first you kind of go into it being like oh no i like the name of the game is negotiate right i should go in and you know be able to beat the shit out of some sales rep and have some fun with this but the anxiety around that and the the idea of going in like that's why i almost never even go into the showroom because i'm like i don't even want to be attacked by these perception-wise assholes when there's a there's some groups that do really really well in the middle of nowhere because they actually give a shit right so so let's like kind of let's translate the transition that into mindset you know what i mean or the kind of the first category of you know what's the mindset that you have to be to be great in sales and what were some of the things what were some of the uh the stories or or examples that you saw that were like whoa that that the audience here could maybe take something out of and say okay now how can i change my set mindset or how can i reflect on my mindset to see is it is it in the right shape to be successful yeah for sure so let me let me take paint some broad strokes and then we'll get into some specific some specifics so what i what i think came out is as you look across that section of the book you've got people talking about determination and persistence not taking it personally right um putting the customer first obviously that's that's going to be a theme being comfortable with with the uncomfortable and and a lot of goal setting stuff so maybe i'll maybe i'll start there so the the story that really resonates and most of these most of the ones that i'll talk about today i've shared as free samples on my podcast so if you go to the sales success stories podcast you can listen to kyle gutsler talk about the mindset of a champion and so kyle um wrote this linkedin post it's been a couple of years now but he's he was early on the show spoke at the spoke at the summit was has been a really good friend and he just talked about how it all started with his mindset and it all started about the way that he was thinking about things and taking ownership of things and and really deciding setting the goal that was massive right ignoring what other people had done or thought was possible but putting a really high bar and expectation on himself obviously doing the work to sort of work backwards and understand what is it going to take to actually get there right this this isn't the this isn't the secret like if i wish hard enough maybe this thing will occur for me like you actually have to then do the hard work and take the action well you don't just 10 extra goals got you don't just 10 it fucking happens sorry sorry right so but it really does start with that and it's having your head right and it's having the right inputs i just did an interview uh over this weekend that'll that'll go live here next week with a guy who did 800 of his number this year closed absolutely massive game-changing deal biggest biggest deal in the history of the company and he decided the beginning of this year to really become and he'd been very successful in sales before this right spent some time at linkedin he decided to truly become a student and treat sales as a craft and just dug into the the resources became a super fan of my podcast of other shows of other books just it was it starts with the decision yeah right it's a decision to be great it's setting the bar high and then figuring out how to get there surrounding yourself with great people and learning from the best that's really all it comes down to i mean it's none none of this stuff i mean there's nothing in this book that you haven't heard before there's there's no secret formula there's no magic bullet right it just comes down to doing those fundamental things and working your butt off yeah it's funny you know keep reps ask me all the time you know john what's the secret you know what's the secret to success and you know what is it i'm like working your ass off period i like i look i'm not the brightest kid out there you know i went to a state school drank my way through four years of college you know i'm not dumb but but i did i'm not a harvard mba grad by any stretch of the imagination but i'll work you period like there's and there's no real substitute for that now if you take that hard work and you know mentality and then you apply some smarts to it then and that's why i want to i got 12 personal guidelines to success and the first one is work hard and smart you know people say i'll just work smart no shut up that the people who are just looking to work smart they're looking for that that that easy you know what's the shortcut right and and so they forget about working their ass off and and if you work your ass off first and then you figure out how to work smart along the way you have a chance that's the name of the game and i i joke like i'm waiting to to find the person that i can interview that is is nailing it is number one consistently and they work 30 hours a week doesn't exist i mean if you know that person reach out i want to talk to them yeah tim ferris four-hour work week type of bullshit right right like okay good for you tim you figured it out but the rest of us there's i mean again unless you hit the lottery or unless you do something significant uh you know the likely it'll it'll kind of keep you there it's like that book good to great right it's like they had lee iacocca come on and yeah like chrysler was a very good company when lee iacocca was there but as soon as he left that company fell through the floor because they had no succession plan they had no you know structure around it whereas ge everybody knows jack welsh is the top you know ceo at ge but ge had a whole bunch of really good ceos before jack welsh and a few after him you know what i mean so they were consistently great whereas chrysler was see you later and i think that's holds true for when you said you know when we talked about that initial one as far as you know the the not the surprise but like the ones who's the one percenters who stay at the top are the ones who are consistently great because they give a shit versus the one who hits it one you know just blows it out of the water one quarter or one year even but then the next year you know and i'll use one more analogy that you'll probably hate but uh but the patriots right like the patriots look at the patriots analogy i know you do i know and bring it right but they work but here's an example last year every every year there's there's one team that's like catches fucking fire and and goes through it and and probably meets us in the super bowl and then wins or loses and they might win like the eagles last year yep and who did the cowboys beat on sunday right thank you very much and that's my point right like last year the eagles were a very good team once right exactly and yesterday three and five team beat them they're not they're not making the playoffs this year right you know what i mean whereas the patriots they might not win the super bowl every single year but they win the afc championship every single year and they're in the afc playoffs every single fucking year yeah and that's because they have a system and a process for greatness and they have that mentality of greatness there is no you know what i mean there is no oh you know we're just going to try and see what happens no no no we're going for it we have a plan to get there so i think that mentality and that mindset is critical for anybody in success how are you just out of curiosity like goal setting you talked about that like how are you on has has what were you like before from a goal setting standpoint and then after you read through some of these stories did that change um just for your own personal growth and success yeah for for sure so again the most consistent theme and there's specifically a story about this and i stuck this one in the sales process side which is about setting your goals at two to three x your quota and and he did i mean there's a chart that so that was trey simonton who it's funny i was going to mention mention trey as as you talked about that and the consistency is when i reached out to at the time he was working at bizarre voice so i used to work at bizarre voice had a lot of relationships there reached out to the head of sales and i'm like who's your number one guy i want to talk to him trey had never been number one number one but for four or five years was always number two or number three of of a pretty significant team right so it's that level of consistency and in my mind that's the true number one right it's that very consistent performer and what's great about the way that trey broke it down one i think it's just this is a mindset piece is is the shift of what would i have to do to get to 300 let's set the bar there and start the thinking there and then work backwards and he reached out to his sales ops team and really worked to understand not only his numbers but the team's numbers right so how many calls do we have to make to get a meeting how many meetings do we have to get to get an opportunity how many opportunities do we have to get you know to to close a piece of business i mean this is basic math right there's no rocket science here i mean an average sales guy like me can can do this level of math right we're all good with this and and that's really what it is so it's and for me i i think the biggest thing is i certainly i understand the math but i think it's that mindset and the next level of thinking that you have to get to to figure out what do i have to do because you're thinking on a different level when when you're at two or three hundred percent than when you're thinking about okay what do i have to do to make my quota like that's a recipe to miss yeah and that's why it's funny because you you know this is a crime i was just having this conversation with morgan so my guy that i brought on board last year you know i said next year morgan i need you to be we need to figure out how we're going to hit your you know quota as far as how many days of training that we need and i need you to look at the years worth of data that you've sent out how many calls how many like your stuff not from inbound leads but like your outbound activities so we can identify that as a channel of sales because the biggest metric anybody needs to understand is is how many meetings a month do they need to get to be able to drive the revenue right and so those meetings and then you can bring it up into channels okay you got cold calling you got networking events you got partnerships you got all these different things so how can you optimize each one of those channels so we literally just had that conversation and one of the things that struck me you know so salesforce you know one of my biggest clients when i first started working with salesforce benioff um brought up i went to a couple of their sales kickoffs and i and he asked like and he brought the top sales reps in the company um up there and he said okay and the question he asked him was what is the first thing you do when you get your quota at the beginning of the year and every single rep every single rep said that they at least double it if not triple it if not more i think there was one kid that took and did the and i hate to say it but 10x right but but because you know they might not so when you reach for that goal that that 3x that 4x goal and you miss it well okay bummer but you crushed your 1x goal and it's almost like any sport too like if you talk to so i'm trying to get back in shape and i'm going to a boxing you know class on a regular basis and one of the things they talk about when you punch you don't punch the bag or you punch through the bag yeah same thing with uh race you know people who run marathons and stuff like that you don't run to the finish line you run through the finish line right because if you run to the finish line you're inherently just as you're getting there just like winding down and then you you might just you know might just make it whereas if you see the finish line another 100 yards down the road you're plowing through that to get to it right exactly love it so let's let's talk about relationships now like so what's what what was you said champions right i mean i know everybody's dying to find that real champion that can sell them and i've i've really got religion around champions as far as like if you find a real champion um man your life becomes real easy but first of all i think people need to understand what a champion is um and because i think it's probably one of those uh overused phrase in sales right touching base and checking in are one and two they're the worst phrases in sales but but but champion i hear it all the time i got a champion i got a champion how do you know you have a champion just because somebody's willing to talk to you right so just for everybody before we get into this you know one of the things i would recommend everybody do sit down with their managers and their team and have a real conversation of what an actual champion means so when you use the words you know what it means in my world i got coaches fans and champions like fans are people that like us you know maybe end users that type of thing but have zero bearing on the decision coaches are people that can tell us who we need to talk to where we need to go but again when the door shuts they're not there when it comes time to make a decision you hear stuff from coaches like hey you didn't hear from me but right that type of thing it's like thanks for the intel but if i can't use it to me champion two things one is they can steal budget they don't have to be the budget holder but they can steal it and they agree to be your champion you actually have the conversation with them right so that's my definition people can define it other ways but my recommendation is make sure you define it but let's talk now scott about you know the the relationship side of the house and what were some of the big key stories or or or takeaways you brought from relationships of top tier reps and how they managed them yeah so i'll for this one i'll reference a story from tron nguyen and tron is personally for me i mean somebody that i have learned the most about what true enterprise sales is and and this guy's history is insane he was the number one global account manager at dell then he went to microsoft and and did you know deals that were tens of millions of dollars in industries where they hadn't done business before right so he went in and closed a health care deal where they had to get all sorts of regulatory stuff done that just to break through same thing for financial services he went and did the deal like that and in this story the title of the story is i'm six foot four and devilishly handsome tron's like i'm being really generous if i say tron's like five seven in reality but what what he did and and i think this is so brilliant is and again this is this is a very very large enterprise play so this is won't be wholly applicable to everyone but i think the the nuance and the insight is is useful he would start basically at the ground level and would understand and dissect like what's going on what do you how do you see the world where are the gaps where are the opportunities he would distill that and take that as a value-based conversation to the director level or the manager level and he and he would give so they get a give like hey here's here's what i'm hearing because when you're in those types of roles when you're leading there's so much that's filtered from you and especially if you're at the c level in a large large fortune 500 size organization you've probably got eight nine layers below you and when that goes through that many layers of filtering like a huge world ending problem looks like a unicorn like shitting rainbows okay like wait a minute i don't understand and so he would basically just keep working this and so here's the give for you help me understand what's going on now he'd elevate that and have that conversation at the vp level and along way he's also solving problems and helping them so the the basic gist of this story is he finally gets an intro to the global cio and she says to him tron i after all i heard about you i thought you were going to be six foot four and and devilishly handsome like you're a you're amazing right and and so here's the thing i think that what's even more important about that i've had a lot of people reach out to me from big brand name companies right the sales forces the linkedins they're like we can get a first meeting at the c level like that's not a problem we've got a brand we can ride but we can't get a second meeting and it's because they're asking all the same stupid questions they're like oh what keeps you up at night and on all of this stuff you know and and there's so much you know all about this right there's so much conversation in this space right now about you've got to be adding value but we're not talking enough about what does that actually mean how do i actually do that how do i add value and i think this is a really good example of that right where if you can be that filter and bring the raw truth truth to the executive level that global cio met with tron dozens of more times after that and became that champion because of the work that he did and the value that he brought yeah i mean i think there's a there's a big trend right now well big there's a trend right now going on in sales with design thinking right you know you know design thinking uh-huh so yeah effectively for those out there that don't it's it's you know apple doesn't just make a product and then stuff it down our throat saying here use it because we're the smart people apple watches the way you work right and they create products based on how people work and so design that's designs thinking from a product standpoint but design thinking from a from a sales standpoint is you literally go experience the brand so for instance if you're going to sell to you know cvs or walmart or something like that like you go to the stores you go through the experience you try to return something you know you sign up with the app you see those type of things and you collect that information about how their workflow goes and what the gaps are and then you build a story around how you can help support that and that's where you bring it upstream so it's it's the legwork you have to do which is harder but the bigger the payout for the bigger deals is way bigger i mean i used to do this with copier sales you know i mean copier sales like talk about selling a commodity right like you can't just you know go in there and sell a multi-million dollar copier deal right you have to go figure out i used to go in and literally watch where and how the the the employees worked did they have printers at their desks did they walk you know did they have a convoluted path how much time did they spend doing that how much were they spending on those analog versus digital devices and it took me a lot longer to you know i almost got fired because my boss was like what the fuck we brought you in here thinking you were going to crush it because of the way you interviewed and stuff and you haven't closed shit in six months and i was like dude back the fuck up like you you've you've destroyed this territory for the past five years i need to come back in and build some trust back into this and this is the way i'm doing it now obviously a lot of people don't have the the ability to push back on their boss like that but i just kind of looked at it and said i'm not going to be successful this other way so i'm like that was the way every other rep had treated that territory and about six months in nine months in after learning all the the businesses and everything like that i brought a book of of a plan for each one of my clients that optimized and gave them insights that they didn't even know about and it was like taking candy from a baby at that point it was huge deal after huge deal after huge deal but it's i let me ask you this on with that my concern right now is we're in a world of of short-term gratification right i mean a very scary thing that i heard a while back was and i'm not going to name who it was because i don't want to get political but they had interviewed uh no it was the discussion was around this there was an interview with 50 of the top ceos of the top 50 companies in the world and they were asked if you could make it if you had to make a decision today that would um there would be in everybody's best interest in five years the the economy that your company your people the environment all of it right but it meant one penny off of your stock price today would you make that decision 50 out of 50 ceos said no oh because they said look if i make that decision that costs us one penny off of our stock price that means i won't make it for five years i won't make it five so how do we combat that as sales reps who are being told hit the list 50 dials a day close your quarter i mean we are in a monthly almost daily pressure right now to produce results so how do you suggest or how is there any stories or any insights that you've gained from the conversation of how to balance the the go go go have to close and hit your quarter and hit your hit your month versus long-term relationships and doing things the right way yeah so let's use that as the transition into the career conversation yeah and actually a story that i wrote uh in the book uh was called getting it done and doing it right a recipe for a great sales culture and when i joined uh i worked for eloqua uh before they went public and and through the the oracle acquisition um the guy who i was interviewing with was based my hiring manager was in san francisco but the chief revenue officer was here in austin with me and so i spent more time with him and at one point in one of those conversations he pulls out a napkin or i mean it was a little scrap of paper and he sort of mapped out like look here's here's the vision this is this is the way we think about the sales organization he draws a four by four grid on the left hand side he writes getting it done and on the bottom he writes doing it right and he says okay look so here's how this works you've got four boxes top right is easy you're getting it done you're doing it right you're a star we're going to recognize that we're going to reward that that's what we want right bottom left hand quadrant you're not getting it done you're not doing it right this is sales you're probably fired so he draws an f in that box right but then here's where it all shifts and the mindset from from two angles here bottom right quadrant so this is you're not getting it done but you're doing it right he writes the letter c in that box and says we believe that good things happen to good people like we see that you're you're doing the right things you're just not seeing the results yet we're going to coach you we're going to work with you we want to move you up to that top right quadrant and we want you to be a star but what was really fascinating so so i'll say all of that to answer your question and say i think it's about finding the right organization i hit i am yet to talk to a number one salesperson who is at that level despite their boss you have to have somebody that is on your team you have to you have to be in the right organization and have the right product because if you don't believe in it it ain't ever going to happen right so that's the answer i think to that question is you have got to do your crazy due diligence on the organization and on the leadership that you're looking to work with and see can they make those hard decisions do they have that longer term view or are they super impatient and if you miss the quarter you're going to be out on your ass right so the last box though this is this is what was fascinating to me that that'll go back to the very first piece of the conversation we were having he writes the letters ff in that top left quadrant which is you're getting it done but you're not doing it right and he's like if if you're that person like you're crushing it but you're running over people to get there you're fired faster because that's what creates toxic sales cultures because what happens in most cultures is that person is way at the top and we reward them and recognize them and don't acknowledge what they're doing that's harming our customers and the rest of the organization so that that for me was eye-opening and told me and and now that chief revenue officer is the ceo of workfront his name's alex shootman an incredible incredible guy yeah i mean i think you hit on a couple of things there and for everybody listening you've heard me say this multiple times before like if you don't love what you do go find something else to do because this is first of all it's a brutal profession um it's a thousand times harder when you don't believe in what you sell um uh if you do believe i'm not saying it's easy but shit is it easier um and because you know i've heard me say this where i called somebody said early in my career and i believe this to this day that sales is the transfer of enthusiasm right it's like you believe that strongly in what you do that you know and that's why by the way founders the most engine the dorkiest of dorky engineers can be sale can be incredible sales reps you know why because they transfer their enthusiasm for what they what they sold or what they created you know they created this thing and then when they get up there and start talking about it their enthusiasm about it flows through because it's theirs and they're passionate about it and that's really what you need now you need to bottle that and figure out how to do it consistently but if you don't really genuinely believe in what you're selling and you're just in it for a paycheck or you're just in it for a commissions please please please go either get the hell out of this profession or go find something else to sell that you can actually believe in because then going back to career you know that's where your career will be an extraordinarily rewarding career in sales if you find something you can believe in because you will be successful long term doing it um i did want to jump on one thing before we get into this last one i know we're a little bit over here but the last one um as far as uh you know believing in what you do in your careers and stuff like that i i do think you know i think reps should kind of segment out their approach to quality and quantity so for instance i think we should all have like a a handful of accounts that we're not going to hit the list we're not going to put on some spam filter like we're going to do the due diligence and section out some of our time on a weekly basis to focus on them while they're you know the mass you know maybe those are the just the tier ones and maybe the tier twos are the ones we make the phone calls to send the emails out to and do the kind of singles and doubles where those big ones are going to be the grand slams so instead of just going all in and all i'm going to do is quality because unfortunately i fear that a large part of our population will get fired if they just focus on doing the right thing but don't close anything for three to six months they'll just get fired even though two years down it's going to be the best thing in the world for the company they'll get fired before that kind of like that one percent you know drop in the stock price so i think you can do both but i would i would section out a list of clients to say okay i'm not going to beat the shit out of these i'm not going to call them every week i'm not going to have them on a cadence i'm just going to be thoughtful with my outreach and try to build that groundswell so i can tell that story yeah i mean i get that question a lot right i a lot of younger reps will reach out to me and say look my boss wants me to do this it's not working um you know but i want to try this other stuff how do i do that and it's one of those again it goes back to hard work i'm like keep doing you've got to do what your boss expects of you keep doing that but now make that carve out do the extra work and do it your way and then just show the difference right if that actually works then you can you have real evidence and you have real results because you closed some deals you got some business and you can say hey actually i've been doing this like your way isn't really working for me this way is and and that's that's kind of what comes across and that's another of probably the biggest most important themes whether we get to the sales process piece here or not is it all comes down to being the best version of yourself right i'm yet to find somebody that is hook line and sinker i use xyz sales process that i got i got out of a box out of a book out of a whatever right they have become a student studied lots of these different things consumed lots of books and lots of podcasts and they've cherry picked the things that fit them and who they are and who their customers are and what their solution is and over time they're that and and that's where i think the leadership gap is in sales today is the the best leaders are those that encourage that and polish diamonds right the worst leaders are the ones who are like no just do it my way when that way doesn't connect with that person it's not who they are it's never going to work for them yeah and that's i mean that couldn't agree more i mean i always say to people you know one of my favorite things to tell everybody is split test everything you do right because then you'll figure out what works for you and i say look i'm you know when i train you for instance you know i'm john barrell from boston massachusetts i'm about as direct and in your face as it gets when it comes to sales right like i i have no problem asking the hard question i have no problem pushing you and i also have no problem losing the deal because i run my own business and i got a big fat pipeline so if you're not the right fit and you're trying to negotiate with me and i say sorry i don't really negotiate on price that type of thing and you say well then piss off okay i don't give a shit because i'm not having somebody over my shoulder right so i have a lot of the luxury of being as direct and in your face as i can be because i'm doing it for the right reasons and and whatever but if a lot of people out there who don't have my personality go ahead and try to say some of the shit that i say you know what i mean like it's just not part of their their you know who they are and so it'll come across now don't get me wrong i think we all have to be uncomfortable in sales because if you're not getting uncomfortable you're not getting any better but you also have to be to your point true to being you right because you're not you it comes through i mean you can you've i'm sure there's plenty of people you've seen that oh wow on facebook and you know on linkedin and twitter they're one person but then you meet them and you're like whoa you lose credibility immediately as soon as i figure out that you're not the same person that you're representing in in one format or the other right totally well and i think buyers have a sixth sense about that right like if they if if you don't believe in the solution if you don't believe in the process if you don't believe in the value like you set off their spidey senses in a bad way and they don't trust you and the trust comes from look this is who i am good bad and ugly and this is what i'm trying to help you get done and and if that's true and authentic you win and that's it's funny because i'm watching this and this will kind of be one of the last points here but i'm watching this happen with morgan right so morgan you know he was in the sales loft world of cadences and templates and we started off with that right because i wanted to get him messaging and that type of thing but then you know so he does two things he prospects obviously and then he goes and delivers training and the prospecting stuff he's like john i'm just not getting the results that i would expect from this messaging that we've crafted and all this other stuff and i go i'll tell you why i'm like yeah i'm not surprised he's like why not i'm like because you're you're going through the motions morgan like you're you're looking for the perfect template you're trying to script the perfect email i go your results aren't really going to change all that much until you start giving a shit and i mean that start literally giving a shit where when you go to somebody's website you start to look at them not as a potential lead so i can send you an email but as a client that we can actually help because you know what we've done like he's done enough trainings now to know the impact that this training has on people so transfer that enthusiasm go look for those type of clients and then you know same thing from a training and delivery standpoint it's an interesting thing to watch the transition of predict you know presenting a slide deck because it's john's slide deck and i have to go through this and it's and it's not him so it's kind of kludgy and not great and whatever it is and then you know you finally make it your own and you start really caring and and and owning like the stories around each section and that type of stuff and he's literally just now in the past couple of weeks clicked into that like i call it catching your sales groove right where it's just like all right i'm going to stop going through the motions and just trying to look for the perfect thing to say in the perfect template and that type of thing so i can hit my numbers and i'm going to start giving a shit about what i do and walking away from more opportunities that i find because it's not the right fit i don't want to cram something in there right and that's when you start to can get to that significant you know stay at that one percent right yeah so the the last interview i did on my show was with jeremy levier who works at lead iq this dude is 70 for 40 meetings a month the guy is a goon i mean it in the best way he's filming videos singing songs with a guitar that he doesn't know how to play right and it's hilarious right and he's wearing throwback jerseys because he's a big basketball fan like jeremy is jeremy and that resonates because there's there's no polish there there's no like oh this guy's so buttoned up i'm totally you're like what the heck is this this is awesome i have to meet with this guy and could i do that hell no that's that's just not it's not me i can't do that so you have to find that you have to find that thing and it's it's just a discovery process you know and and that's where the getting uncomfortable and a b testing and trying stuff is is like let me figure it out because we don't come out of the box knowing yeah love it man well i think we could keep digging into as many stories here as possible and but uh but let's let's cut it here because uh i think a half hour is a good time frame for everybody to you know pay attention to on the podcast but talk to everybody about where can they find out more information about what you're working on again name the book is it on audios you know where where can people find out more information about this type of stuff and follow what you're doing yeah totally it's it's all over the place but if you go to top1.fm forward slash book so top the number one.fm forward slash book that'll take that'll get you sort of to everywhere so it'll have links to the ebook the paperback book the audio book all of that stuff you'll also be on the podcast site at that point so you can get subscribed to the podcast go check that out and learn about the next sales success summit that we've got coming up in october of 2019 awesome yeah man very cool my friend well i appreciate you coming on board here and everybody go check out the stories because you know there's a lot of time you you know there's all sorts of training out there that you can go take but a lot of times i learn more from other people's failures and success than anything else so uh the stories are where it's at so go check out sales success stories and uh thank you so much for coming on scott i really appreciate it pleasure to be here thanks for having me john all right everybody make it a great week let's go make it happen and later so so so so so so so so so so so so so you , so , so , so , so , so so , so , so , so you you you you you