85: Charles Muhlbauer - Discovery Calls

What kind of questions are you asking on your sales calls? February 20th at 12 o'clock East Coast and 9 o'clock Pacific, I'm joining the founders of Costello, Frank and Rod, for a webinar about high-impact sales questions. Join us. All right, here we go. Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrows with Make It Happen Monday. Hopefully, you all had a fantastic weekend. Pretty excited. This is a pretty opportune podcast here, connected with somebody I've worked with in the past, Charles Mulbar, right? That's right. Did I pronounce that right? All right, good. Just making sure. From Sales Share. Charles, do you want to say hello to the audience and give a little background of where you're coming from, what you're up to these days?

Yeah, sure. Hi, everybody. Thanks for having me on, John. I actually was a CPA for like 10 years, then saw the light, decided to move into tech sales for about six years. And then about three months ago, I decided to open up my own shop called Sales Share, which is focused on one-on-one coaching for the discovery call, and then evolving over into other conversations just to have more effective phone conversations. So that's where I'm at today. Love it. And it's funny because I've been talking with my team about this quite a bit, that there's a, there's a, I think there's a significant gap in the sales training world and it's, and it's discovery, right? Because, you know, our specialty is really prospecting and getting that initial meeting.

And then what we do is, you know, our driving a close program kind of takes up when you have a legitimate, like sit down, 30 minute hour long meeting where you prepare for that meeting. But that 15 minute call call, you know, that discovery call, as everybody knows, sets the stage for the rest of the conversation, right? But there's very few organizations that actually focus on that. So good for you for finding that niche because I think it's an incredibly important niche. And, you know, and we'll start doing more business together because I typically say like Sandler, right? Like that's a little bit, you know, they got the pain funnel, they got the reverse questioning and they got the strip lining and those types of things.

And so I always position it as Sandler's actually kind of the better, you know, if you just want to pick a piece of the discovery, they're probably one of the better ones. But let's talk about discovery because it literally sets the stage for everything else in the sales process, the close, the, you know, deal velocity, everything like that. So first of all, I'd like to hear your just bigger picture philosophy on what the discovery calls should be. And then let's talk about some of the mistakes reps make and some tactics that we can help reps make, you know, have better discovery calls. So talk to me about your thought process on why, first of all, why did you get into, why do you identify this?

And then what do you really try to coach people on to make sure that they maximize that part of the sales process? Sure. I identified it because over time, you know, when I first started in sales, my VP of sales at the time, Sam Jacobs, was focused. Yeah. By the way, you still connect with him? Very, very, very connective to him. Yeah. Tell him this to die. So, you know, he was talking about, you know, discovery makes the sale, discovery makes the sale. And everyone on the team was like, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? How can it make the sale before they see the product? It doesn't make any sense. But over time, I got more, once I got more confident with myself, having my own voice on the call, and once I began reading about how to actually be more curious, which we'll talk about, I began to really focus on really, it sounds funny, but actually not just listening to what the prospect has to say, but actually caring about what they're saying.

I know it's funny. It is funny because it's hard. It's hard to do that. And once I started doing that, I realized that my demo calls after that were so much easier because it was just an extension of that first conversation. And what was interesting is it was much more fun for me. Like I was having more fun and I was more comfortable. So it's ironic, you know, I actually, as a side point, I sing professionally outside of sales. And I find that a lot of things in life, professionally, personally, the natural way of doing things, you know, of approaching things is really, is the least effective way. And things are like, you find that when you approach things in a counterintuitive mindset, you know, I'm not comfortable asking questions, but really asking questions is the right thing to do.

Or I'm so focused on showing the product. That's like the natural thing, but I got to hold myself back. And it works in reverse, kind of like doing the opposite. That was more effective. So I found that the more I was working on it, the better my sales were. And again, it took me time to realize and to trust that discovery was that important because I didn't really believe it myself until I started working on it. And what I find when I'm coaching account executives one-on-one, I find there's like a fear almost of doing discovery in the right way. When I say the right way, I mean like really like digging deep. I feel like the fear, there's a fear of upsetting the other person on the phone or annoying them or coming across as unlikable, which I understand.

I get that. But if you do it in the right way, I find that people are pleasantly surprised to see how much more the prospect opens up to you when you're coming across as not just thoughtful, but like almost like I'm taking this very seriously and we take our clients and our customers very seriously. And that's the umbrella as to where I'm coming from. So that's kind of how I thought about it. Yeah, so let me ask you on that, right? Because I agree with you. Like it's funny. So Morgan, you know, I hired Morgan Ingram about a year and a half ago at this point. 25-year-old kid, SDR, SDR manager. And he was prospecting, right? That's what he does. And he got in here and he was doing everything I was telling him to do.

And at a certain point, he came to me and he's like, John, my results just aren't where I expect them to be. You know what I mean? Like they're just, I'm not getting responses. I'm not getting the traction. And I said to him, I said, Morgan, they're not going to change all that much until you start giving a shit. And he was like, what? I was like, I understand you give a shit about your job. I understand you care about your profession and that type of thing. But until you genuinely start giving a shit about the person that's on the other end of that phone, the person that's on the other end of that email, your results are going to be average at best, right? When you start, and I talk a lot about this and everybody who's listening to this podcast has heard me talk about this point where I call it catching your sales groove, right?

Where one day you wake up and you just, it's a little bit easier, right? And you don't know exactly what happened, but it's when you stop pitching your solutions and you start having conversations about your solutions. So it's when you start caring more about what the client needs than you do about your commission checks, right? Nodly enough, that's when your commission checks are going through the roof. And you know what? It's like one of my favorite books is actually question-based selling. One of the main reasons why it's my favorite, multiple reasons why it's my favorite book, but one of the main reasons why it's my favorite book is the introduction to that book is so powerful where he talks about, I'm going to like generalize, but he talks about how he was working so hard in sales and then there was a point in his life where his wife became deathly ill and got, you know, got cancer and his mind frame just as a person going to work, he cared a lot less about making mistakes.

He cared a lot less about failing and he just became more real with people when he spoke to them just because of what he was going through. And it just so happened to be that that moment in his life changed the way he sold and the way he cared when speaking with people. And it was just an amazing, amazing story. My story is in no way comparable, but I remember when I first started out in sales for the first six months, I really had trouble selling. And then I went home one night and, you know, as corny as this sounds, I said to myself, you know what? I realized what I'm doing wrong. I'm being like everybody else. I'm trying to ask questions like just like the way my buddy is sitting next to me.

You know what? I realized at this point I have nothing else to lose. I can't get any worse. I'm going to go to work. If I want to make a joke on the phone that I think is funny, I'm going to make a joke. If I want to talk about me, what I do outside of work, how great my day is going, I'm going to talk about it. And I became myself and I got comfortable enough being myself, right, then listened to what somebody else had to say. And that takes time. It also takes effort. Once you become more confident in yourself and comfortable in your own skin. So how do we, so let's talk about how do we expedite that, right? Because I, because that's what I try to do is like with my training, I'm like, you know, I'm 43 years old at this point.

I've been there, done that. I've made a shitload of mistakes. And the way I look at it as, you know, if I can teach a kid something that where they can skip a couple of steps, then I've done my job, right? Like, I think, I still believe you have to get your teeth kicked in so you learn, but hopefully they can learn from some of my mistakes and go from there. But, so how do you, how would you approach, say you're, say you haven't hit that, fuck it, like I got nothing to lose, so I'm just going to be me. And you have a, and you're a 25 year old kid and you're being told you got to do this disco call and you're screaming to get to a demo because that's the easy part because you can press play, but you know that the, that the qualification is important so you can tailor that demo.

What are some of the, how do you approach, how do you suggest people approach discovery calls from a preparation standpoint? Like how much research, what questions do you ask? What's the structure of a good discovery call? And, and how do you guide the conversation without being, without having 20, 30 years experience like you and I do, knowing that it's a conversation, it's not a pitch, right? So what are some tactical things that we can talk about of how to prep for these and how to get the most out of a disco call for a kid that hasn't caught that groove yet? That's a very, that's a great question. It's definitely a lot. I actually wrote an article on LinkedIn called the 10 step discovery call framework.

Okay. Where I outline for accounting executives kind of where, like, it's almost like a roadmap. Yeah. Where there should go. And a lot of accounting executives find it helpful specifically because it's very easy to get lost in a call. Yeah. I'm listening to someone speak and I'm, and it's very interesting. But then I'm like, oh shit, what do I do now? Well, and also, by the way, I got to check off my Bant boxes. You know what I mean? Because my, where's Medic? Like, I forgot to ask those fucking questions. You know what I mean? So it's like, so how do you control that? Yeah. So it's funny. It's reminding me of a quick story. One accounting executive said to me, you know, Charles, I read in Harvard Business Review where I saw on Gong Data, that the magic kind of range of questions is, you know, between 11 and 14 or 11 and 15 questions on a discovery call.

He said, he asked me, how should I approach that? Like, should I have a list of those questions and, and, and make sure that it's 11 to 14 and that's the magic? Like, well, how am I supposed to think about that? And I told him as, as much as, as much as you read about it, as much as people talk about it, I said, if you turn on your curious switch, your curiosity switch, and before you get on the call, you say, John, I'm actually really interested in what this guy has to say I'm going to ask you and if he says something that I'm not really sure I fully understand, I'm going to ask him and if he says something that I want to know why it works that way or why haven't they changed something, I'm going to ask it and find an opportunity to ask because I actually am just really curious to learn about them.

People love speaking about themselves and curiosity is very difficult because, you know, I had a coaching session with someone who had an issue with, you know, this curiosity kind of mind frame. So I said to him, well, you know, what's your hobby? He said, oh, I'm actually a professional yo-yo player. Yeah, it was amazing. Amazing. I'm a yo-yo contestant and I saw videos of him and I said, wow, that's wild. I said, so if I came in here and I said, hey, and I said, and I was the number one yo-yo champion in the world, what would you ask me? He just gave me the questions like, oh, I'd ask you this, I'd want to know about that. I said, that comes naturally to you. This just doesn't because it's not, it's not your love, it's not your passion.

Obviously, you want to try and sell something that you're passionate about, obviously, but you have to give it extra effort and if you do that, you'll get to those 11 to 14 questions just naturally and you'll get off the phone saying, oh, wow, I really asked everything that I wanted to ask but in terms of to get there, you mentioned preparation for me personally to get myself comfortable speaking with someone, I start talking about something that I saw on their website or on the news and I just start talking about, oh, by the way, before we start talking about me, I saw this in the news recently, congratulations, one of the best places to work or you launched this new product, how's that going?

And we're talking, talking, to get to a place with someone on the phone and just talk about something that you saw because it's interesting and you're curious and you're curious to learn more, that makes you as an accountant just way more comfortable doing the rest. Right. So I guess, how much prep do you suggest a rep does before a disco call to do that homework, right? Because you got their website, you got their LinkedIn profile and some people go down the rabbit hole of research and try to, you know, learn as much as they can. Others learn enough. So like if you're walking into a disco call with somebody, do you come up with like two or three specific questions based on what you read or is it one and then you kind of see where the conversation goes and then where, and then my other question is, is how do you fit in the band stuff that you need to ask, right?

In a way, it's not like, like, hey, cool conversation about your cool shit that I saw on your website and by the way, do you have budget, do you have authority, do you have time, you know what I mean? Like there's a disconnect there that I don't think reps, because they're being told to go get that shit, right? And, you know, I'd like to have a cool conversation but if I don't get this qualification information, my boss is going to ding me or my AE isn't going to, isn't going to accept this lead pass over to me. Right. So, my answer to that is I find that as long as someone's dangerous enough, that's okay. There's no need to go down a rabbit hole on a discovery call because if you display that you're dangerous enough to start the conversation, I believe that they'll trust you immediately to want to talk to you more based on the follow-up questions that you have.

So, I'll pick something that, let's say, happened to them in the news lately or something, you know, depends what kind of prospective client it is. I'll ask them about it or I'll congratulate them about it and then I'll follow up with a question like, oh, out of curiosity, how did that happen or how long did that take or, you know, where did that, how long was that a priority for you guys just out of curiosity? So, it's more like I found something, want to talk about it and a follow-up question is, you know, was that a priority? How long did it take, et cetera? And then they like talking about it and sometimes they'll say, oh, where did you see that by the way? And it's natural. I feel when I, you know, when an accounting executive feels more comfortable on the phone, they're just going to feel more comfortable diving deeper.

So, that's how I would say to start it off. One question that I was wondering for you and because you mentioned Bant. Yeah. Now, I can't speak to this because in my experience as an accounting executive and in my experience listening to AE's calls, I'm not sure if this is funny or if this is sad or both. I don't really ever hear someone asking, do you have the budget because, yeah, because they just are trying to like drive enough urgency for them to say, hey, I want to talk more and then they'll show them, let's say, the demo on another call and then on that demo, then they'll find out the budget. But I feel like most people want to find out that piece of the conversation much, much later. I'm not sure.

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I've never believed in Bant, Medic. I don't believe in it. Yeah, make sure I'm on the same page there. Yeah. The only thing I give a shit about during, and I'd love your perspective on this, the only thing I give a shit about in Discovery is need in the sense that, you know, and I always say, look, my goal is to figure out if I can make a legitimate difference for your business compared to where you are now. If I can make it, if I'm just a little bit better, let's stop this conversation because the cost of transitioning is not going to be worth it no matter what. Right. But if I can make this big of a difference, like that's what I'm looking for. And if I can figure out whether, if my solution can help you get either, and I said this, I did a post on LinkedIn, my kind of final post of the year just to say, hey, think about this, which was, I fundamentally believe that sales professionals have to stop thinking about selling anybody anything.

Like stop thinking about you're selling people anything. Fuck that. You're, you're doing one of two things. You're either helping people solve a problem or you're helping people achieve a goal. Those are the two things you're doing. And if, and if the delta of the, of the problem that you're solving, if that's not painful and if that problem isn't big enough, get off the fucking phone. If their goals aren't, you know, if, if what you're going to do is help them get a little bit closer to their goals, get off the fucking phone. Your job is to find out how big of a pain is that? And can I really solve it? Or where are your growth projections and your goals? And can I really help you get there?

And so that's, that's what I, I personally angle my conversations around because if you find the true need, if you genuinely, there's a need there and you know, you can make a difference, I can find budget for this shit. I can get to power if I need to. I can expedite a timeline if I'm, you know what I mean? All that stuff. So I wasn't sure how you thought about that because then you mentioned it all the time. I wasn't sure. No, I think it's bullshit. You know, it's just another fucking acronym for somebody to, you know, to be like, oh, you know, and it's a, I think it's a lazy way of managers holding their reps accountable for some stuff that forces them into this robotic, what's your budget?

What's your timeline? What's your, you know what I mean? And it's like, you know, and I think a lot of those, those acronyms and I guess you call them methodologies, they prevent the conversation. You know what I mean? Yeah. Because they're checkboxes. Oh, do I have power? Do I, you know, have a decision process? Do I have the timeline? It's like, it gets the reps focused on this, this, I have to check off those boxes and I can't have a conversation with you because I have to check off those boxes. You're a hundred percent right. And I'm actually glad that, that you mentioned that. And yeah, you clarify that for me. I wasn't sure. Sometimes you hear people talk about different things. You're not really sure where they stand on it.

One thing that you're reminding me of is, this is a fascinating piece of discovery that I want to share. Before I, let's say I go into a client or what have you, I'll ask them, by the way, you know, do you guys have a list of the problems that you solve and implications, maybe three implications of each problem that you solve? Do you have any chance to have that written out? Now, one of two things happens. One is now. We don't have that written out, which is like, okay, I mean, that's something that you really should do. Most people don't do that. I understand why they don't do that. Sometimes I didn't do that. There are many different types of environments where people don't do that, whatever.

But the other huge thing is, oh no, we have those written out and now, you know, they'll send it to me. I'll say, wow, this is great. What's not happening is they're not using them. It's, it's, it's interesting. I get a kick out of it. I understand why they're not using them. There are many, many reasons why. But when they realize how they can actually use them, like you asked me earlier, you know, how would I structure a call? So sometimes people ask, you know, they'll say, oh, so tell me about your company. Sure. So you can tell you about, you can tell you about, you can share about, share a little bit about your company. Oh, this is where we, this is what we did. This is where we found it.

That's fine. That's fine. But I find what's really cool and effective is to say, sure, let me tell you a little bit about us. People actually come to us for one of three reasons. These are the three reasons, A, B, and C. Out of curiosity, which one of these resonate with you? So, pause there. Now, meanwhile, I haven't said a word about my company at all. All I said was, sure, I'll tell you a bit about us. These are the three reasons why people chat to us, A, B, and C. Which one of these resonate with you? Oh, of course one does. Cool. By the way, just to share some insight, I speak with a lot of guys in your seat and they've told me that because of problem A, X, Y, and Z happen and I'll list them out.

You know, they lost money in the past or they had problems with turnaround or morale. I'm just curious, you know, I know a little bit about you, certainly not a whole lot. I'm just curious, you know, what resonates with you there? And we're just talking. Yeah. It's a fascinating thing and I think accounting executives don't realize that they don't really have to say that much about their company in the beginning at all. If they want to talk about it later, the prospect will say, oh, can you tell me a little bit more? Sure. Like, you know what I mean? It's, I don't know, it's fascinating. I'm like, why do you think, like, what do you think is the, why do you think that is? Like, there's people, you know, there are not many students of sales, you know, there are a lot of salespeople that just come to work, they do their job, they want to go home and relax, which I understand.

But what do you think the hesitations are in all these gaps? Because you talk about the gaps, you talk about the problems, but there still seems to be, hey, John Bauer saw this great, I heard this great podcast and they go to work and just like, they're still doing the same thing. I think most people are going through the motions in life in general. I hate to say this, but I genuinely believe that 80% of our population are fucking sheep and they just go along and do what they're, you know, what they're told to do or what they're supposed to do. And I believe that is true in sales. I'm told to have a discovery call. I'm told to have a bank questions. I'm told to qualify it this way. I'm told to get my, because get, well, and this is the, this is the disconnect, right?

It's, it's like, we go like the slide deck, the presentation, okay? We get on board, like we get hired on a new company, we go through the onboarding and we have to now present the slide deck, like, right? So we get our fucking badge and, and we get our gold star to, hey, yay, I got through bootcamp, right? And, and if we, and if we fuck up one slide during that presentation, we get hit for it, right? So the management, like VP is like, no, you failed that, you didn't present that the right way. Like, I want you to present it this way. And look, I totally understand that when you're first, like you need to learn how to present the slide deck, the whole slide deck, right? But what happens is that gets rammed down our throat and we get badged for it and we get rewarded for it.

So there's that endorphin like, yay, look at me. And then all of a sudden I'm looking for that satisfaction again. So when I present to a client, what I'm looking for is, you know, I want that endorphin rush. I want you to tell me, wow, what a great presentation. Hey, good conversation, John. That's not as cool as, wow, that was an awesome presentation, right? So that's why I'm, I'm constantly hunting for that where, you know, and this is where you have to catch that sales groove. And it's like, yes, like cram it down their throat, learn how to present. But then very soon thereafter, I wrote a blog post a little while ago called sell to the 20%, which is my fundamental belief. I've read that.

It's very, that any pick a product or service, right? You only use 10 to 20% of the functionality. Therefore, that's the way people buy. Yeah. So my job is to hunt for that 10 to 20% and sell the fuck out of that. Right. And like, cause you don't care about the whole slide deck. I used to be atrocious at, you know, cause early on in my career, I was told two ears, one mouth, make sure the client speaks more than you, blah, blah, blah. Right. So during like a 30 minute, I'm sorry, during a full hour face-to-face meeting with a client, I would ask, I would legitimately ask 35 minutes worth of questions to make sure that you spoke more than me. And, and I'm not even kidding at the 35 minute mark, I would stop the conversation.

And it, by the way, it didn't matter what the fuck you said. As long, as long as you had computers, you were getting my pitch. And I, so then I'd be like, well, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. And so anyways, so we were founded in June of 2000 with three founders, one finance, one strategy, and one technical guy, which really puts us in a unique position as an IT services firm because, and I would go fucking all the way through my entire deck. Right. And, and pitch. And I remember, and people have heard me say this before, you know, I used to be so proud of this, but I realized how bad it was, which is when I would get to the end of a presentation. I, and I was like, I crushed it.

Right. I, I crossed every T and done it every I on that presentation. And I would hear from people. Wow, John, that was really impressive. And again, this word, if you ever hear this word, you know, you've done a miserable job. It's the word digest. You know what, John, I'm going to need a little time to digest what you just told me right there. Why don't you circle back in a week or two and we'll take it from there. Does that sound fair? And, and early on in my career, I was like high five and coming out of those meetings. Like, Holy shit, blah, blah, blah. And I remember vividly saying to one of my buddies one time, like engineer who came with me on a meeting. One time I walked out of a meeting.

So hyped that I crushed that meeting. These words legit came out of my mouth. I was like, dude, I crushed that meeting. I'm like, that dude didn't even know what to do with the information I put in front of him. Like legit those words. And the engineer, non-sales guy, like the look that he gave me was like, what the fuck are you? What? And, and that image is legit burned in my retinas. Like, I'm like, wait a minute. What, what did I just say? He didn't even know what to do with the information. Oh fuck. So now if like literally, if I ever hear the word digest, I stopped the conversation. I, and I literally go, Oh God damn it. And the client's like, what is everything? Okay. I'm like, no, I'm like, I'm sorry I wasted your time.

You know, you just said the kiss of death word digest, you know, whatever. And they're like, no, no, no, seriously. Yep. We're going to go back. We're going to think this through and we'll get back. I go, yeah, yeah. I'm going to follow me in a couple of weeks and you're going to avoid me. And I'm going to touch base and check in 15 times from here. And you're going to, and you're going to slowly let this die because you don't want to tell me. No, I get it. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Good luck. So the whole point is like getting to that point where you can get that. There it is. Like that's, and then going deep on that one thing to your point, here's the three reasons that people tend to work with us.

Which one are you? Okay. Let's go down that path. And by the way, if those three things aren't something that you then let's get off the phone right now, because like whatever you're going to talk about, I could be, I could be okay at that stuff, but these are the three areas that I rock. Right. And going back to like, I want to improve your results this much, not this much. If they're not one of those three things, it's not going to be this big of a Delta. It's going to be a small Delta and you're, I'm going to send you a proposal and you're going to say thanks, but no thanks. And we're going to drag this through for the next three months and waste a shitload of time. I'm curious, John, how often do you have conversations with managers about, cause, cause the reason why I asked for some context is, you know, we spoke about it a little bit.

There, there could be a gap, you know, AEs want to do one thing, management's telling us to do another, or doesn't necessarily realize the importance of everything that you're saying. And I was just curious what your experience is with, with, with that in that realm. Yeah. So the thing that sucks, you know, I go, I usually go direct to the end, you know, to the reps, right. Because I think most managers suck and it's not their fault. You know, as you talked about the sales education, right? Like there's, there's finally, there's some universities, I think it's about 70 now in the U S that you can actually get your degree in sales. And that's recent. So as sales professionals, we get limited education on it.

It's a trial by fire. We figure it out. And then managers get way less educated. I mean, usually it's the best rep that gets promoted to be the manager. And that's usually the worst thing that you can do. And because they're, because they don't know how to manage. Like coach, let's put it this way. Coaching is the number one thing that you should do as a manager, right? It's the number one thing to drive better results. And training and training you and I know this training lives and dies with how frontline managers reinforce the training. If the frontline manager is not in the training session and isn't like, doesn't know how to coach towards the training and that type of stuff, you might as well not even invest in the training because two months later, it's like the training's never going to happen.

So the reason that managers suck is because they're, they're being told to chase deals and that's what they know how to do. And that's what they liked doing. The coaching shit is hard. The coaching shit takes time. I'm having a hard time with coaching like Morgan, like we use Gong, right? So we use Gong and I listened to all his calls and I, well, he records all his calls and, but it's a 30 minute call call. And so for me, I have on any given day, if I'm not training full day training on any given day, I have at least nine to 15 meetings every day. And they're usually back to back to back to back to back. Right. And they're usually with clients and prospects. So in order for me to take a half an hour out of my day to listen to one, of his like call calls and give him coaching on that.

That's an hour out of my day that I then have, that I can't have a meeting with a client. I can't drive revenue for my business. I can't, you know, coordinate with a customer, those types of things. So it's unfortunately it ends up being kind of like the, Oh shit, I'll get to that later. It's not as important, even though it's the, one of the most important things you can do as a manager. I know the fact that Morgan and I don't sit next to each other on a day to day basis. And I don't work with him on a day to day basis. If I did, that could, that kid would be fucking light years ahead of where he is right now. If I could sit down with him for six months and do coaching on a day to day basis with him, but I just don't have that kind of time.

So the reason the managers suck is because we get, we're, we're, we get the managers get treated just like the reps do as far as where's your quota, especially frontline managers, right? VP is different story, but frontline managers, you missed your quota this month. What are you doing? But, you know, like, why didn't you close that deal? Not all you need better education. You need better tools to coach your team. We need to actually train you on how to coach. Like none of that happens. Yeah. You know, as a previous account executive, I found John that, you know, one of the companies I used to work at, we had a funny phrase and that was collaboration is the greatest form of education. Yeah. And actually my, my old buddy, Jeff stone.

I don't know if he made that. That phrase up, I think. I like it. And the, the quote that I actually love that I, I had two quotes hanging on my desk. One was Albert Einstein, which was, I have no special talent. I'm just passionately curious, which I actually would say on the phone to prospects and say, by the way, I, I, you know, I'm just asking these questions because you know what Albert Einstein says, right? And be like, no, I say, well, he says, I have no special time. I'm just passionately curious. I'm like, wow, that's interesting. And the other quote I had hanging on my desk is from Tony Robbins. Nice. Which is, I love this quote, which is where focus goes, energy flows, which means if you focus on what you messed up on, what's not working, that you're not selling, your energy goes there and it gets worse.

If you focus on the positivity, like, Oh, I can do better. I know what I'm going to do better next time. I know how this is going to work better for me and collaborating with my team. Your energy goes there and things, and that's just not professionally or not just professionally, but also on a personal level. And those two things combined with a collaborative environment on a sales team where, Hey, do you mind listening to my call for like 10 minutes? Right. Or can I shadow, shadow your call? And the entire team gets better. The entire team gets better. And, you know, I, I find that, you know, Sam Jacobs as an example was someone that encouraged that type of environment where, that's like, Hey, I'm going to, I'm going to help you guys.

But if you guys are, you know, students of the game, you should be always helping one another out. And the team got tighter. And then, you know, that's just kind of, yeah. I mean, too many people look at sales as an individual sport. It's, you know, if you don't look at it as a team sport, you're going to lose period. Actually, Julian Lumpkin, who runs success kit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That's right. So he, so he just, he just wrote a quick article about that on a blog on how sports is exactly like sales or vice versa. And it was like spot on. Yeah. So that's right. I forgot you guys know each other. Yeah. Quick one more question to tie this thing up. Cause I, this is the question I get the most, which is creating urgency.

How do you create urgency? Well, I think I know what your answer is going to be on this one, but, but what are your, what are your thoughts on during the disco call? What can you do to create urgency when it's seemingly not there? And, and, and usually the, you know, the inbound, so I'm talking inbound outbound, right? Inbound leads, people have identified a problem. They're looking for a solution. And so I think you dig a little bit deeper on that and you can make, they've created the urgency because they reached out to you saying, I have a problem. Right. But when you're co-calling and you get somebody on the hook and they might not know enough about your solution, whatever it is, what's your thoughts on, on ways to uncover or create urgency without discounting?

The number one way to create urgency is the problems and implications of those problems conversation. Part of that, part of that is sharing insight with your prospect and asking if it resonates with them. So for example, you know, by the way, Bob, as you can imagine, and I touched upon a little bit, a little bit about this earlier, you know, I speak with, all I do as a salesperson is speak to people like you all day. Right. And so, um, the benefit that that, that accounting executive has is that he, the prospect doesn't speak to his competitors all day. The accounting executive doesn't. Accounting executives don't realize that they have that insight that they can share. And because, you know, because I sit in that seat, what we're finding is that they're having problems with a, B and C.

I'm curious if that surprises you. So in that moment, I'm teaching you something. I'm giving you insight of what I've learned. I'm asking if it resonates with you and maybe you'll embellish on it. And that gives me the chance to say, I'm also learning about what they, how they have suffered in the past or where they think they could suffer in the future from those problems. What do you think about that? Yeah, that's true. And then sometimes John, they'll say, you know what, Charles, you're actually, you actually missed one more thing. Like you missed another effect that it could have. And now what that happens is they taught me something new, which is like amazing for me. And they're opening up more and that creates urgency.

And then once you talk about those things to ask them, you know, we talked about a lot, you talked about these problems, talk about, you know, potential implications of these problems. You know, if, if we can help you with that, you know, I guess, to what extent do you think there would be reason to talk more? Yeah. And tell me, and then they tell you, tell you the reason why and say, well, what, why do you think that is like, why, why we're on the phone, which is great. And I appreciate you speaking with me. I'm just curious why you haven't looked to solve for it in the past couple of years. And so that, that creates urgency. And also I find like part of that, this is all part of like disqualification.

Right. There's qualifying, like art, are they fit, you know, are they a part of the ICP, et cetera. But then there's disqualifying. Like I'm asking all these questions. Why do you want to talk more? Or why we, why are we still on the call? Why are you still interested in speaking with us? What about us? Do you like us most? What about us? Do you like us least? Is there any reason why you think we wouldn't work together? Is there anything that I missed? I apologize if there's something that I missed. You know, I do my best to listen to everything that you're telling me. I'm taking notes. Did I get anything wrong? And that may have been a bit kind of like long winded, but those things are really create urgency when you, when you kind of, you want, I think they, they open up to you when they see you're really opening up to them.

Yeah. And I think you're, I think the, the, the point on disqualifying, you know, I try to, I, I actually try more to disqualify people than I try to qualify them. A thousand percent. I could, that was like the best, a hundred percent, you know, because, because at the end of the day, I don't want to waste. I mean, you know, somebody told me this one early in my career and I live by it to this day, that the worst sin in sales is not to lose a deal. The worst sin in sales is to take a long time to lose a deal. So, and the ones that take a long time are the ones that do shitty qualification. You haven't identified that true difference that you can make. And it seems like it makes sense to do business, but there's really not that compelling event.

There's really not that urgency. So it gets kicked down the, the can gets kicked down the road for a while. Right. And then ultimately they say, yeah, nevermind. Why did we even start this conversation? So early on, I'm trying to say, look, you know, you're going to do this or not. And look, and I tell people, look, we're not a good fit in these areas. If that's what you're looking for, go talk to these people. This is where we hit a home run. If you want to have a conversation about that stuff, then fucking a man, let's go. But otherwise, good luck. Here's three other people to talk to. I got 10 other people to talk to today. See if I'm a better fit for them. 20%. The 20%. Exactly. Yeah. Disqualification is a great way to think about it.

Awesome. Well, Charles, Hey, could you do me a favor? Send me that LinkedIn post that you did, the 10 steps to, right? Cause I'll, I'll share that out there and I'll put that in the videos for YouTube and the Facebook thing here. For those of you who are listening to this on the podcast, you know, go check out Charles. And the last name is M-U-H-L-B-A-U-E-R. Right. Yes. Well there. And so Charles, how can they find out more about what you're doing? You know, where, where do you want people to go just to check out what you're up to these days? Sure. You can check out my website, salesshare.net. There's also a blog on there that kind of gets you inside my head a little bit, you know, quick snippets.

Cause most accounting executives have ADD. My God. Yep. My God. They want to quickly learn something and get to it. And there's a description on how it all works and how the coaching works and stuff like that. Check it out. Perfect. All right, Charles. Well, thank you very much for this, man. I think, you know, a lot of good tips and nuggets and ideas out there. And, and to your point, you know, and to Sam's point, qualification makes the sale, right? It makes or breaks the sale and it, and it gets you in and out opportunities a lot faster. So if you aren't a student of the game, become a student of the fucking game, stop going through the motions, everybody, and start paying attention. Right.

And last thing I'll say is like you brought up, start giving a shit, start giving a shit. If you don't give a shit, then you're not going to get very far. Right. Find another career. Please do. John, thank you very, very much for having me. I really appreciate it. No, it was a good conversation, Charles. I appreciate it. We'll talk soon. All right. All right, everybody. Have a great week and make it happen as usual. Later. Later. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.