83: Steve Richard - Founder of Execvision

good morning everybody this is john barrows make it happen monday hopefully everybody's doing all right today i am fired up for today's podcast because i'm here with actually a good friend of mine steve richard steve how are you my friend hey john how you doing i'm doing great so steve uh to give everybody a little context here steve and i go back quite how many years have we been uh uh doing battle here steve for i think we were competitors you know for about 15 years right i think so right so because i because i was at basho for a while and then split off and did kensei and uh and then j barrows but you um when did you start voresight so we started voresight as an outsourced appointment setting business in 2005 and then quickly thereafter we started having people say teach us all the best practices of outbound sales prospecting especially enterprise outbound sales prospecting and then i didn't know who you were from adam but all of a sudden i started hearing about you in the marketplace that that was the origin yeah and then it's like at first we were like oh shit we kept going head to head and then eventually we just started hanging out and seeing each other and we're like oh shit we're cool right so uh and then and then you went off and you split off um and you started executives you want to just because i think this leads to our conversation we're going to be talking about training because we're both deeply engaged in this in this industry but talk to me a little bit about you know exec vision itself and why you decided to to split from voresight and start exec vision with what you're doing right now yeah actually interestingly voresight uh and exec vision are still one in the same um company yeah but what happened with the with this with the sales training is is i was out there i mean i i think you and i are on pretty similar paths i was out there just absolutely killing myself delivering sales prospecting training sometimes i'd win and sometimes you win right the other half of the time you were out there maybe more 70 but what happened is it wouldn't stick and we see this so often because of something called the forgetting curve and i had an opportunity to learn a little bit about the neuroscience of how adults learn and and our brains are actually wired to purge information so later on i'd say about a third of the time it would stick when they had strong management teams and they really reinforced it and they adopted it and i'd go in there a year later and you'd hear all the lingo all the language being used uh these terms like three by three research common challenges shared truths overtime questions verbal judo all these all this language that was the program and then two-thirds of the time nobody did a damn thing different and and you'd ask a simple question like well what's your common challenge and they go huh and it's like well why did i even bother so so what i did at that point is is went off and like you know like the genius that i was i bought a tech company that's been a fun adventure uh but we did just get some a big round of funding and and we've got a lot of happy we've got about a a lot of happy clients out there customers out there so it's going well but anyway you and i diverged you know because i i looked at the problem and said there's really no way you can solve this without the actual recording of what's happening day in and day out so exec vision is a conversation intelligence platform created for human behavior change i went in on that because i saw it working in our business and then at the same time you went in on the bite-sized just-in-time learning movement and you know actually you tell me about that because i'm curious to hear when we kind of when our paths diverged why you went that direction yeah and i i kind of saw the same thing right i mean one of the things that grad would that that why i gravitated towards this training when i took it in the first place was because it was it wasn't this huge process because i had i remember when i was at my first startup you know and we i we were saying this before we got on here like you know we had no money right so so i was looking and i was 25 so i had no idea what i was doing so i was taking every training i was sailor miller hyman taz all that stuff and it was funny because at that age and and being as uneducated as it was and in experiences i was i i kind of i thought that one of those methodologies was the answer right like well miller hyman they built a business out of this so they they must know that you know let me follow their process and i remember following their full process same thing with sailor and just being like okay some of this stuff's cool but a lot of this stuff is not relevant or doesn't work for me or whatever it was and so i started taking pieces of the different trainings and to to compile my own and then when i came across basho the reason i loved it so much is because it was so tactical and it and to your point it was the only training that stuck for me because i was because it was easy to do i could do it immediately it drove immediate results and and i i saw myself actually using it not just 30 days after the training but literally years after the training and so as i've evolved this training and notice just in general where we're going as a society i mean our attention spans are getting you know absolutely destroyed the iphone has pretty much killed everybody's uh focus and all that stuff is everything is bite-sized stuff and and and i just look at my own behavior you know if something is you know we joke about you know two or three scrolls on an iphone type of scenario if i'm reading an article and i scroll down one or two times i i tap the screen and i look halfway i'm like where is the bars i'm like am i already halfway through this because if i'm not i'm moving on to something else and so this and and also when it leads to our conversation is you notice that you do a training and i do want to get into that neuroscience that you said the forgetful curve would you would you call it yeah the forgetting curve yeah keep going yeah because because that's what happens right training is typically an event where you come in somebody like you or me comes in gets everybody all fucking fired up right and and you see and there's that and there's there's a there is a lot of value to that i will say of just giving the team a kick in the ass right but then you come back two or three months later and i i wrote a post at the end of the year called 10 60 30 right which and i kind of freak some people out because i was doing this big sales kickoff this was midway through last year and some kid raised their hand and they said hey john you know it's like 200 people he's like hey john you know you saw all the logos of all the tech companies he's like you you train all these tech companies man on on the same shit and you've been doing it for years how do we differentiate like if everybody knows the same stuff how do we differentiate and how is your stuff not been pretty much overused and i said 10 60 30 and he goes well what do you mean by that i go look 10 of you in this room are going to take what i say apply it and execute and and run with it and and crush it 60 of you are going to do some things different because it's easy to implement and you'll you know it's going to be you know it's not going to make a difference and 30 of you i ain't going to do shit different so the reason i can train every tech company out there and still not get oversaturated is because literally only 10 of the people in every room that i train is going to execute what i tell them to do and so and everybody kind of sat there like oh holy shit and i was like so just be the 10 because i'm i was effectively telling you know 180 people in the room that you're average and you're gonna be averaging you know it there's 20 there's 20 literally 20 people in this room that are going to excel and you all know it and i'm just calling it out and so so john no no go ahead finish the thought yeah no because so i because because that 10 and then that leads to that forgetfulness curve because people and i'm really interested what you said there about the our brains are wired to forget information right so so talk to me a little bit about that because i mean do you agree that that 10 60 30 or something similar to that is effectively the the the scenario yes a hundred a hundred percent now now and that let me that 10 60 30 remember how i described like if you think about all the 200 companies i trained over the years it wasn't as many as you of those a third of them actually the whole sales organization got better because the managers pushed them through and pushed more people into that 10 60 30 and then i'd say about two-thirds that fell into that 10 60 30 pattern to at but let's talk about why that 10 60 30 pattern holds and it really goes back to what you said before oh i i did taz i did miller hyman i did blank blank blank and none of it none of it ultimately solved my problem the sales people are trying to make more money it's pretty simple the sales people sales people want to make more money and they want to get promoted into bigger and better jobs that's it if you're any good of a salesperson those are the reasons fundamentally you're doing it you probably really enjoy the thrill of the of the victory you know or you hate losing one or the other the reason that you grabbed on to you know uh the old basho stuff is because you you just you made a decision that you were gonna that you were gonna this is it for me you know this is my shangri-la this is my nirvana i am going to i'm gonna make myself a master at this and when you made that decision for yourself unconsciously what's happening in your brain is you're shutting off your own forgetting curve so so in terms of the science our brains are wired to purge information it works just like a computer you've got in the computer you've got ram you've got short-term memory you've got your hard drive you've got your long-term memory our brains are effectively the same and what happens is the the process in terms of how this actually plays out is when you're sleeping unconsciously you don't even get a choice your brain is either writing information in your brain for in your long-term memory usually a small percentage and it's it's making decisions based on what's going to keep me alive essentially on what you're going to do and what you're not going to do and this is the reason why if you go to and i'll ask you the question can you remember a deal that you lost back in the day when you were selling or heck maybe even recently that are really stung it was a real real hard one you worked your ass off and you lost it and you got and you remember that oh i remember plenty of them yes yep i've got about five in my career and each one of them teaches me a different lesson um actually one i'll give you a funny one at one point i lost a rosanna stone one of our old sales training clients to um uh uh what's the guy's name costigan i'm north carolina and and and i busted my ass for this john like i worked my ass off for this thing and when it was all said and done one of the managers called me on the phone and said do you know that that the new chief revenue officer is in the same country club with john costigan and their best friends and i was like what i had no there was no way i was ever going to win that and then i went on a linkedin and i looked up and i looked up uh how i was connected and guess who it was john costigan i go what did i do how come i didn't go on linkedin and see this in advance i wasted all these calories so anyway going back to the point so the reason in terms of like a brain science neurobiology the reason that you did that is you made that decision your brain decided i'm going to stay alive if i'm master bashos and oh by the way you built the whole business off of it but the vast majority of reps don't make that decision and the vast majority of organizations don't overcome the forgetting curves through the repetition it's the consistency and execution and the repetition over a period of time that's the key so every time i talk to sales leaders i should just talk to a a brand new minted chief commercial officer at a you know big company with lots of reps on the phone and i i what's your biggest challenge what's your biggest challenge it always comes back to consistency we've got some people who are doing some things well and other people who are not doing things well and why because of the forgetting curve because your brain purges that information so we have to if you're going to fundamentally change rep behavior and i'm not talking about you know oh we we tried a couple of the of the methods you know from that j barrows teaches and and they're working and we've adopted those and all the rest of it sort of went away but if you're fundamentally going to change the right behavior so you can actually improve conversion rates and close more sales and get more revenue you gotta you gotta have repetition over time there's no way to do it without it so so a couple of things yeah and how many kids you have these days four ages three five seven and nine yeah you're a glutton for but i love it uh but so obviously because what you bring up there is it um you you you must have seen inside out right the movie oh yeah right you know when you know the long-term memory when they when um bobo or whatever the clown is it goes down and gets forgotten right that's the visual that i have when you're uh because when you're purging the information right because you only have so much room for those core memories and those big losses that you just talked about so all i could think about was you're talking about is inside out and those little balls going in and out of the brain but um it's a it's a it's actually it's actually a really freaking good visual that goes along with it beautifully you know and and that's but but but but this is the thing how many sales leaders that you work with know this all of them all of them i mean they well they all know that that they need to do it they but they don't do it and that's that's what i'm that's what i'm trying to figure out is why well let's talk about reps and managers okay so so what is the driver so you said yeah for me i i immediately connected with the basho stuff and i said i'm going to use this and i'm going to run with it that 10 if you will why do if the driver is when you said it's pretty simple right we're trying to make money as sales reps um why don't why isn't there that commitment why isn't why don't more than 10 percent of reps click and and say i'm i'm whether it's my stuff your stuff anybody's stuff but why don't they they click into that gear of i'm taking this and i'm running with this is there i mean and they keep that forgetful curve in there because is it they just don't really give a shit or they're just going through the motions or there's something different about that 10 percent than everybody else like have you found anything that is like help me understand that because that's what i try yeah i i i'll quote al pacino and son of a woman i think it's because they think it's just too hard i think everyone has well intentions and everyone nods at the end of the training program and says i'm going to do this i'm going to pull out that binder i'm going to revisit this material i'm going to go online to j barrow's content i'm going to i'm going to make this part of my game and if if there's not an organizational effort with leadership behind it those well intentions fall by the wayside it's it's it's really the same question of like okay so i run every morning i run six to seven mornings a week and if i don't run i feel kind of weird at this point it's just strange this is what i do i don't run far i don't run fast i run seven and a half miles but not seven i'm sorry i run three and a half miles at about a seven and a half or eight minute clip not very fast so anyway i go out on the on the running trail you know it's new year's now and people might be listening to this afterwards but it's the beginning of january when we're talking i see all these freaking people out there and i laugh because right now it's a pain in the ass it's like the trail is crowded my same little three and a half mile loop i do almost every day and it will be completely abandoned so if you and so so to answer the question of of why they don't do it because most people don't have the the stick-to-itiveness maybe they're not boneheaded enough you know to fight through all of this um what i found that seems to be working and and this is something that you know again i know a lot of the people listening this are individual contributors or reps and you might be saying well oh shit now that i know my own neuroscience my own neurobiology how do i overcome the forgetting curve well one thing you can do is what they did at crossfit or there's another fitness thing called orange theory so what they're doing there is they're creating a a club i i almost think of it as being a tribe or a cult on some level it's almost a cult around because they tell you they're in crossfit right so yeah yeah yeah yeah and but but this is the thing there's a secret language there's like a language of crossfit there's a language of orange theory and they all do it together and when someone thinks that they're going to drop out when someone thinks that something is too hard they all rally around each other and they pull for each other and of course you have the leadership of the you know of the person who's running that that group you know they're probably the gym owner yeah you see what i mean so it's really hard as human beings to to fight through the forgetting curve and then master something new unless we're either a just really really driven personally and we can handle it ourselves or b we're surrounded by a support system and leadership that we're all going to do this together we're in the canoe rowing the boat at the same time in the same direction you see what i mean i totally see it you know i was saying earlier uh another conversation i was having recently like everybody sees sales as an individual sport but it's totally a team sport in every way if you really want to win right um i mean yeah you have to hit your numbers but if you're not leveraging the people around you your team your resources and all that other stuff you're only going to get so far and and go ahead well i was going to say this is this is the reason why i'll say something kind of controversial there are a lot of companies out there right now that are going after um i'll call them script prompters uh sort of you know real time reminders of reps of of what they should or should not be doing and and i i think it's an interesting field i think it's something that we should all look at i think it's something we everybody needs to test what i've seen is any time you know i don't know about you john but in your career if you've had someone on on a sales call with you and they tap you on the shoulder to say something to you or they write something on the whiteboard when you're in the middle of the call how easy is it for you to absorb that information and internalize it it fucks me all up like i as soon as somebody does that i'm like uh because now i've lost my train of thought and i'm trying to think about how to do that like it's never it never works i i and we've i've had an opportunity to go to you know i know this is a sales podcast but i've had an opportunity to go and spend some time with our cousins and call centers um and it's kind of a dirty word in sales right but at the same time if you look at call centers they've tried that whole script prompter thing for the most part they've rejected it because it makes just makes people sound like weird parrots and robots it's bizarre right um but what they what they've done a really good job of and i think it's something that we can all borrow from is they've done a good job of defining the behaviors associated with the good performance and separating because let's face it a lot of sales people who are like you know quota crushers or whatever if you actually saw what they did a lot of them get a lot of really really good inbound leads and don't get me wrong they're they're fine but there's nothing that they're doing behavior wise that's just so great they're in some cases order taker sales people i mean just realistically that's what happens and they and they're in the right place at the right time they're super hot tech company at the right time and wham you know like lots of inbound demand and they get they get a big check but fundamentally the people who are going to be the longest term most successful are the ones that really take their craft seriously so if you if you boil down and distill like all of the of the stuff that we should be doing in our sales calls our various sales calls really what what i find with most businesses and this is what i saw in the call center world is it comes down to like seven to ten key behaviors and if if if the reps can consistently execute those seven to ten key behaviors and oh by the way you should always start this exercise so here's a concrete takeaway if you're listening with does the rep blank right and and it should be something that's objective it should be something that's um you know very clear you know uh uh does the rep lead the call with a why you why now right there you go and like that right yeah yeah with a reason for the call you know in parentheses why you why now and it's really easy like like that's so objective that's so black and white that is so like i can i can have someone in the philippines or india or anywhere around the world who basically doesn't know your business and has a tiny tutorial on what that means and and then all of a sudden boom like i can hear if it's happening or not it did that behavior did or did not happen in the call it's simple and if we know that if the behavior happens in the call that our probability dictates that when that behavior is present in the call that we convert more of those maybe it's two times more three times more five times more whatever we win right we're optimized we're trying to find a point of sales optimization and the only way to do that is by understanding what are those behaviors that are relevant once we know the behaviors then we have to come up with a way of beating the forgetting curve so i'm i'm just kind of curious as you're hearing this because i don't think you've ever heard this kind of new diatribe i've got here like i i'd love to hear how you see the how you see the bite-sized learning play into this because i think it plays a critical role yeah i think it's it's it's the right time at the right place right because i think the the forgetful curve is is is real right i mean what's the stat that you know 30 days after like 84 is lost or something like that i don't know what it is but yeah right yeah more or less yeah it's it's always between 75 and 90 but yeah yeah yeah and so the idea there is you have to that's why blended learning is the key right like the on-site just an on-site session is is just you know that's an event and unless you're a kick-ass manager and can take that stuff and run with it and reinforce and do all that other stuff it is going to be what it is um so that's why the okay do a little bit of on-site do a little bit of online but then give these snippets and and and and help people to your point try things i think i think what too few companies do is they don't conscious or too few reps and too few companies don't consciously try new things on a regular basis so one of the things again here's something that i recommend every manager do i used to do this with my team is we would pick something once a week right because we again we didn't have any money so we we became our own training organization and i would say all right guys you know monday morning sales team meeting guys what's the um uh what's the challenge we're trying to address this week or what's something everybody's getting their ass kicked on and they'd be like you know what john we're getting we're getting killed on the pricing objection okay cool let's all light up google type in best way to handle pricing objection read a couple of blogs whatever it is pick an approach that we thought was cool role play it a little bit to see how it rolled out and then i would say all right everybody no matter what you're doing this week right do whatever you want to do but no matter what you're doing when that thing comes up when the pricing objection comes up i want you all to use this of this approach and then i want you to do a everybody kept a a notepad next to their desk and they would just do a plus minus right it worked it didn't work it worked it didn't work and then i would collect those pieces of paper at the end of the week add up all the numbers and then the next team meeting i would say all right everybody we hit that pricing objection you know 50 times last week we got 30 pluses and 20 minuses with the approach good job what do we want to work on this week and that bite size like let's just try this one thing but that's all collectively work on it together so that we can see whether it's working or not and give you these snippets and nuggets of of easy things to implement that whether they work or not actually wasn't the point it was we wanted to figure out whether they worked or not because i don't think people know to your point of what does great look like until they figure out until they test different approaches to because what great looks like for you steve versus me john my personality is different than yours you know i'm boston kid in your face fuck off that type of scenario right where you're just not you're way nicer i was a little more of a kinder and gentler kid from the northwest corner in connecticut yes but yeah no you're you're exactly right but here's why that worked here's why that worked for you when you were you know when you were managing sales teams you focused on one thing and i love this notion of of the running of the of tests and experimentation it's a lesson from ken kroeg uh you know the original founder of inside sales.com a great friend and mentor of mine and and he really instilled the value of running tests you know if you look at marketing they run tests if you look at call centers like i mentioned before they're running tests all the time we're running i think sales is doing a better job running tests within email you know because of different uh sales and sales engagement platforms that are out there right now but i don't think i think we do a shitty job at running tests and what we say because what happens is a tape recorder goes off in your head so this is this is what happens with the average rep the average rep starts at a new job they go through the company onboarding you know drink the kool-aid stuff which generally lasts one week to one month depending on the company right and and they get certified yeah and at that they're doing all the things the right way and then they get released into the wild and then when they get the release into the wild they end up sitting next to somebody or if they're you know a work from home person they end up kind of getting paired with someone or they just meet someone and that someone or those those someones have their own way of doing things and generally it's pretty different than what they learn in the classroom through their onboarding and they adopt many of those habits now in the the in the habit formation period that follows when for the most part most reps just happen to adopt the habits of the people that they're they're near you know in terms of proximity once those habits have been formed after you know three four months it's really freaking hard to break them yeah well so that's that's what's screwed up well so i mean it's like that process of habit formation is where we need to we need to intercept we need to change the cue on the habit loop and then and we need to get people to you know run experiments to find what is actually optimized as opposed to i just do this because the guy that i sit next to taught me that so you bring up a great point that i'm trying to figure out how to address which is like they go through boot camp right so you know let's talk about the pitch like the slide deck pitch look i fundamentally believe that that in boot camp you should have to go through the slide deck pitch and and i want to make sure like like morgan right now right like when when morgan first started with with me he i i gave him my slide deck and i wanted to see i need you to deliver the slide deck exactly the way i want you to deliver it because i need to know that you can have the timing and all that other stuff right but then i told him i go but morgan okay you're quote unquote certified to deliver because i feel comfortable but if i come back to you three months later and you're still delivering it exactly this way and you haven't made it your own i'm going to be pissed at you because you're you're delivering my slide deck with my approach and my stories three months out you have to have your stories you have to have you have to put your flavor to this okay so it's the same thing with the slide deck uh or the the presentation deck for reps right they go get certified they go through their boot camp they get their fucking badge yay but then they they go out into the wild as you say and they just deliver it the exact same way because and i think there's something about the neuroscience of this they got their badge and i'm i'm i actually really am frustrated with the whole badge thing about this because it gives us this little and also those sales enablement tools that you talk about or those sales efficiency tools where it showed that they opened up the email or whatever it is because it gives this little endorphin rush of something like hey i got i got a i got a badge for that or oh somebody opened up my email so that that feels good and it's a short-term win here so that's what i'm searching for and so that's why reps go through these pitches and they're searching for the badge at the end of their pitch to the customer but the customer isn't going to give them a fucking badge the customer is looking right but the rep is searching for that badge and so how do we how do we as leadership how do we as trainers get reps to get certified on the pitch but then figure out their own style in a in and catch that groove if you will in the short term is it like how do we do that i this is where i've got that very very very strong point of view all right and it's a two-part answer part number one let's separate the science and the art of sales once and for all because we don't want people reading scripts and at the same time you have to have some guidelines uh you know mike brooks uh he he talks about you don't see hollywood actors going out there and winging it but some of the best moments in in hollywood history are when hollywood actors you know just did a little extra something like mark walberg and uh boogie nights when he was just sort of looking at the camera right will ferrell pretty much every time he does something dumb right exactly exactly so so so now so really what it comes down to for the science is define the seven to ten key behaviors this is these are non-debatable you know what i mean like like closing the call with concrete mutual action plan that both parties agree to and i don't know how do you how do you teach that with at barrows at jay barrows what what do you guys get the fucking next step like that one bothers the shit out of me because i'm like if you get off the phone and don't have a defined next step you've failed as a fucking sales professional so like i hold on though hold on though hang on john hang on hang on because i i listen to a lot of game tape from a lot of companies yeah i would say that 70 of the time this is me spitballing here there aren't there aren't any oh i know um yeah right okay so now so like once what going back to the answer once you have those seven to ten key behaviors like we don't deviate from those and if if we want to revisit those at any point in time and say like does anyone have any argument on changing the fundamental science of what we're doing here speak now or forever hold your peace we will consider anything that's fine we can have the software help us identify and surface what some of those scientific things are and the role of ai and all that that's great that's fine but fundamentally we all have to agree as an organization that these are the best practices for the science then you have the art which is what you're trying to get morgan to do so that's part one know what the science is know what the key behaviors are does the rep blank and then know what the art is that's step one now step two step two is is actually probably the more interesting part of it which is the process of human behavior change and we told that story before about the um uh you know we we focus on one thing for the week i do love the week we find that the that a month works better for really getting the thing to stick everyone's different everyone learns different some of the reps will learn it faster but if we keep it to maybe every two weeks or every month it's more likely that it's really going to stick and we're going to master that you know price objection like you said before so what you need to do there is you need to have a i call it a coaching plan for lack of better you know better terminology right now our friends in ambition call it they call it uh coaching i think they call them coaching programs um but everyone's got a different term for it but there has to be a series or a sequence of events that happen over a defined period of time with defined participants to actually change the rep behavior on that thing and i'll give you a real concrete example i'm working with a company in atlanta big telecom company and they're using the exact vision software platform everything and it's become very clear to everyone that these people are fundamentally selling on features and barely even benefits i mean really they're just like feature selling and they're almost like retail sales people where it's like people are coming to them looking for features and they sort of describe what the features are that they have and they see if there's an alignment and then they go for the close it's pretty straightforward sort of thing but everyone agrees like we can't survive out there in a pretty commoditized market of telecom of you know cloud voip unless we evolve and unless we're able to have a conversation about the prospects business so fundamentally how does the prospect with their business try to create value with their customers you know i mean like so how are they going to communicate with their customers and all that kind of stuff and it's simple i mean we're not even talking about identifying challenges or pain or anything like that we're talking about like fundamentally just simply saying like so john um i did a little research on your business it seems like you you communicate with your customers in these ways is that right yeah i guess what are some ways you're thinking about building more value creating more value with your customers so you make more money through business communication what about things like texting what about things like online meetings what about things like blank that conversation's not happening right now so that's i mean that's fine how do we get the rep from point a to point b where they're not having a conversation about the prospects business and getting them so they are having a conversation about their prospects business that's what takes time you know it'll probably take for most of those reps 30 days some of them maybe more and there has to be a consistent like every every maybe two or three days an intervention that happens along the way and then you need you need the reps to go from a state of unconscious incompetence where i love this there's this matrix i can share a blog that you guys can center on your community but unconscious incompetence the rep doesn't know why they suck i don't know why i suck then you go to conscious incompetence i know why i'm bad and then finally you go to conscious competence i know why i'm good and unfortunately you got a lot of people who are who are unconsciously competent they don't know why they're good we kind of forget about them because there's not a lot i can do if you don't know why you're good and you can't really articulate it like your quota those are the pure artists those are the pure artists yeah that are just like they you know i i actually contested maybe five percent of our population in sales are the natural born sales professionals and i mean that in the ones that just know how to relate to people know how to ask questions you know that type of thing nowhere to take the conversation and i'm not one of them you know i gotta work my ass off in sales but you know i contend that jeff hoffman my mentor he's one of them you know what i mean he's that guy where you watch him and you're like holy shit man like but this is the deal but this is the deal celebrate those people let them do their thing but if you're trying to build a business by replicating those people you're barking up the wrong tree yeah you'll fail you'll fail like can can i ask you this can you teach genuine curiosity no okay i would say no how do you get people close to it because because i think the the thing that i've been struggling with is i'm a i'm a genuinely curious this is why i've i've never used scripts i never go step by step as far as what questions i ask during a sales process or anything like that because i'm i'm just and you know for instance with pam this is why i love the podcast right because the reason i i do the podcast is because this is the way i learn is by bringing people like you on who i respect and who know more than me and asking you questions and this is how i learn right because i genuinely am curious about your answers and and i do the same thing with customers how do you get a rep to at least become curious you hire for it as much as i hate to say it it's actually our number one hiring criteria both for our voresight business and our execution business is uh intellectual curiosity um it's also one of our core values if you came into our office in arlington virginia you'll see painted on the wall be curious i know by the way that wasn't me i did not come up with that core value our people came up with that core value on their own and i i'll tell you what i'll tell you a quick story here i walked through our our own you know break room slash ping pong room slash lunch room and in my own business yesterday and i saw someone reading what appeared to be a trashy romance novel and i walked around the corner and i saw a huge bookcase i'm talking floor to ceiling seven foot wide bookcase filled with the best business and sales books on the planet and i'm i'm scratching my head i'm scratching my head not not only that but also business periodicals i mean all the stuff we have that you could use to improve yourself why the fuck would you read a trashy romance novel in front of all of your peers on your break that's ridiculous yeah i don't get it but but but that's a bad hire i mean like i i could have a conversation with that person to say hey you know what do you want out of your career oh i want to be a vp of sales great how is reading this book going to get you there i could have that conversation it's going to go i've had it it's going to go in one ear or not the other it's a bad hire if you don't you know if you're if you're not in our environment in our in our company here if you're if you don't want to go and grab one of those books we screwed up that's our fault as leaders like we shouldn't hire that person yeah and i think that's and i bring this to kids too right like i one of the things i always struggle with with my daughter is like how do you how do you you know instill drive how do you instill curiosity right like and i and i it's hard right because the nature nurture thing how far is that and and i think by the time you get into the working world if you haven't had those things instilled in you as a kid and you aren't genuinely curious or like to me so your number one criteria is curiosity mine is drive like like i remember my number two but yeah right and so because i remember a long time ago um when i was at thrive my first company we got to about 50 people and uh and it was i was just getting frustrated because that 51st person that we hired just didn't have the drive and the passion that we did when we started the company right and i remember jack welsh came to boston and did one of his seminars and you know jack just does a straight up q a right so there was about 800 people in this uh uh stadium and and i stood up and i asked hey jack you know you talk about drive and passion and all this other stuff and all you know how important it is you know i'm having a hard time here because as a business owner you know that when we were 10 people 20 people everybody was just fucking fired and driven and all that other stuff and then all of a sudden we got to like 50 people and that 51st person we hired just doesn't have so i so i asked him like how do you instill your drive and passion on somebody else and he straight up looked at me and he gave me the same answer you did which was you're looking at it all wrong he's like you can't teach drive you can't teach passion you have to hire for it and so i think for those people looking out you know out there listening to this you know if you're middle of the pack and you're looking to improve you either got to figure out how to get yourself off that horse and like on that horse and get some drive or you're there's something missing there right you're you either don't give a shit because you really are not at a company that that you care about or selling a product or service that you care about or something's missing that that you need to go find out because you'll never be in my opinion here you will never be truly successful unless you figure out how to be like truly driven and also how to be genuinely curious in sales i i just i can't i can't think of anybody i know that is truly successful in business or in sales that don't have those two pieces uh yeah now you're in my head about my kids because i'm i'm sitting here and going yeah and i really want to make sure they have that and actually i don't think it's your socioeconomic background because you know my head went for a minute because like i know i knew your background growing up in boston and i you know mine i grew up you know you know fairly low low middle class in the northwest corner of connecticut a little factory town and i i think we're both guys that have chips on our shoulder but i tell you what i've seen a lot of people come and go and our number one sdr of all time and she knows who she is she grew up with a silver spoon i mean she grew up in a pretty pretty wealthy family but she still had that drive and she still had that chip on her shoulder and she still had so i'll tell you i'll give you a real quick story that maybe especially for your reps out there you know if you're if you're listening to this it will help when i first started in my career i was at the corporate executive board i was failing in uh in sales there were about a hundred of us that we now would call sales development reps back then they called them marketing associates not kidding a lot of people get hired and they go when do we start doing graphic design you're like no no you got to pick up the phone and cold call cios like huh what and and uh and then and then there were a hundred field people and our job you know of course is to get them in the door i i all of the all the things i did naturally none of it worked i was about to go on a performance improvement plan and if i lost that job i had 60 000 in school loans and um my backup plan was to work for my uncle jim's septic tank business in the northwest corner of connecticut um i shit you not you can look it up richard septic systems it is a company that my grandfather started um and i didn't want to i didn't want to work for my uncle jim in the septic tank business so i found the best people um it was easy at the time they actually had a leaderboard on the wall good old-fashioned analog no ambition or anything like that and um the top five people were my new best friends i said that and i sat with them and i just simply sat with them with an open mind with a blank notebook i had a you know like a physically i wrote in a notebook and i just sat with them and i observed and i suspended all my judgment and what i've seen with people with sales reps especially when they go and they do shadowing is they they critique right the point of shadowing is not to be simon cowell and judge what the person's doing especially if they're one of the top five percent you shouldn't be judging anything you should just simply be observing spending your judgment and writing down what the hell they do and then go and try it and guess what when i tried it i went to number one so i was number one out of a hundred when i was probably about i think i was probably like 85 when i was at my worst out of 100 and they had it on the board you couldn't hide from it it was right there yeah right so so just and then from there that's how i you know got promoted in the sales and that's how i started the company and everything like that but it's it's just have some on some level the the humility and the curiosity to understand why certain things work and suspend your judgment because i'll tell you what i work with a lot of companies and i and i and i still do this process and i observe and when you look at what some sales people do they're successful you really scratch your head but then you go you know what don't question it just freaking do it and you'll all make more money and everyone will be happier just try it and i think that that leads just my let's you know that kind of leads to my last question here before we wrap up which is you know we started this with the idea of do you really even need training right these days because there's so much content out there and how much value does it bring let's talk about if you you know as an individual as an organization with limited resources right now and you can't hire you me whoever to come in and quote unquote train you right what would your approach to training be right now if you were starting a company if you were starting if you had a leader of a sales team right now with five or six reps and you didn't have a pot to piss in no funding and anything like that how would you or an individual sales rep who's just looking to improve themselves how would you approach training yourself right now i would do i would do exactly what you did and then i would write down the key behaviors that i described before what does the rep and i would turn that into a laminated card so everyone walked around with it all day long and they effectively scored calls that they heard or their own calls afterwards i would adopt the um the navy fighter pilot to have the brief debrief model um with the book flawless execution i recommend you read i've heard of where you know yep you brief and then you do your sales call and then you debrief and when you debrief everyone objectively scores the call using something called the likert scale which is just simply one to five one is the behavior was not present five is it was excellent three it was average four it was good two and you know it was there but not great and um and then what i would do is exactly like you talked about before i would experiment with different you know methodologies sales training concepts tactics tips whatever you want to call it and identify what's working um and then once you've identified that what's working modify your definition of what good is and get really really consistent create a culture create a coaching culture where everyone feels empowered to um you know help people get better start leading with something positive focus on one thing at a time have the rep self-assess first and once that once that culture is established and you have people that are basically peer coaching at that point they're helping each other get better and change their behavior your job as a leader just got a hell of a lot easier and you probably don't have to even hire a sales enablement person the only time you really want to hire someone like you to come in or morgan or anybody like that actually two reasons one is when you have no freaking idea what the best practices are and you need to hire in the language and then number two it's because you guys are really freaking interesting compelling you know cracker jacks that when you come in there you just get everyone all fired up and you need that so you totally still need that role but like you said if you don't have a pot to piss and you can totally do it without it you just have to have some stick-to-it-ness and be consistent yeah i think that that peer coaching thing because i think a lot of leaders try to take it all on themselves of oh i got to coach my team and i got to do this and you know it's my responsibility and if and if that's the case it's not going to happen because as a leader you almost you know the number one the number one thing a sales leader should be doing on a regular basis is coaching right because that's the thing that's going to uptick the team the most but that's the time that's the thing they spend the least amount of time doing because they have all these other things that they're trying to accomplish right so um that are being pushed down to them create the system sorry to interrupt create the system you know what i mean once the system's there it becomes evergreen it becomes a self-perpetuating machine yeah and then you have coaches and mentors internally and spawn you know all that stuff so i love it awesome man well steve i think you and i could i know you and i could talk for hours on this shit because uh i love i've always admired what you've been doing in your drive uh and even even early on when we saw each other as competitors i always respected you i will tell you this quick story before we get off the phone man i you you used to do something in trainings that i was in awe of that you even had the balls to do which is you like even in like in an open forum not even with a customer specific like you would say you know 30 people in a room from all 30 different backgrounds and 30 different companies you'd be like all right i'm gonna make a cold call who who has a customer that they want to get into and you would fucking light up the the speaker phone right there in like a public workshop and do a cold call and i was just i'm like holy shit that dude has balls that i don't because i i never had like look i'll sit down and do coaching calls with reps but man you put it out there and and that's why you know your success is is is evident and uh and continued and i wish you all the luck moving forward here and i'm looking forward to working with you so i'm john i appreciate a little little secret quick secret for that one nobody remembers a cold call anyway yeah cold calls are unremarkable no one remembers it so that's why my pulse doesn't even go up a little bit i'm like whatever they won't remember yeah exactly like what's the what's the worst thing that i always tell reps look what's the absolute worst thing that could happen when something you make a cold call they hang up on you right like oh no right just get over it so awesome how can uh how can people find out more about what you're doing over at exec vision and follow you and all that stuff tell people where to go yeah yeah well we run this ongoing webinar series called call camp if you're listening you should again this is free yeah um and like we had morgan on i think i think i'm going to be able to pin you down sooner or later so what we do is we listen to real sales calls it's gluten quarterback camp for sales we break them down for what works what doesn't we have themes or topics our next topic i think is uh ensuring uh all the meetings you schedule stick and then after that we're going to do things like connecting phrases and you know anyway it's awesome it's free you get people like barrows on there basically giving you free sales training there's a huge library of these things like maybe 30 of them like you're crazy if you're not tapping into this so call camp exec vision call camp's the way to go for content and my cell phone number is right on my linkedin you know how many people call me selling me something i bet very few almost none you know how many people call me to buy something five times as many and it's on my public linkedin profile so it's unbelievable so yeah hit me up with a text it's right there love it steve well thanks again for coming on board man and uh i wish you all the luck in the new year here and uh let's let's do some cool shit this year together because i think we're both moving in a similar direction trying to up level sales uh sales as a profession in general here and uh and you're killing it doing it so i appreciate everything you do man thank you amen all right everybody you make it a great day hey everybody go out there and make somebody happy there's too much negative shit going on in the world right now so make somebody smile today all right and go make it happen thank you all very much have a great day so so so so so so so so so so you you you you you you you you