93: Sandler Sales Training CEO Dave Mattson

Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrows with Make It Happen Monday. Hopefully, y'all had a fantastic week. I'm just getting back from Dubai, so that was a very interesting trip for me. Needless to say, I am super excited for our guest today because Dave Matson has been doing this for quite a long time in the training world with Sandler. We have a lot of things to talk about here. Dave, do you want to introduce yourself to the audience here? Give a little bit of background on yourself and what you're doing these days. All right, John. Thanks. I've been with Sandler for 30 years. I actually started as a client. Believe it or not, I was one of those guys that was sent to a training program who was a hostage.

I didn't want to be there. I was introverted by nature, still am. I just thought you had to work three times harder and you would be three times more successful, which, of course, I found out was not true. I was in Sandler, became number one sales guy for the person that I worked for. Then I ended up working for Sandler, came down to work for Dave Sandler in the late 80s. I'm dating myself here. I thought I was going to be there for maybe six months to a year. I've been here ever since. I've had lots of different jobs within Sandler. Now, fast forward, Sandler's in 31 countries. We've got about 265 offices. As you know, we've won tons of awards for best training program and management training program.

For us, it's just, we've got so many people, John. We do about 31,000 people a year go through our system. We've just expanded and expanded over the years as far as what we do and who we do it with. It's exciting times, Road. That's fantastic. How long have you been the actual CEO of Sandler now? Since 2007. I bought the rest of the stock in 2012. Awesome. Tons of experience, tons of stuff to talk about. I actually think people might find it a little eye that I'm having you on here. If you look at it in the bigger picture perspective, we are competitors. We've been to each other, that type of thing. I wanted to start off on this note on collaboration and a little bit of authenticity. I just wrote a blog post this week that went out that is getting a lot of positive feedback.

It was based off of, I had done a sales loft, their Rainmaker Conference. I stood up there and I did a bunch of, I did a keynote and I did a few other things. It's funny because a lot of the times I get feedback and I'm sure you do. The goal is to get the feedback on the content. The content. People walk away going, oh, great. Thank you. I can execute on that. What was odd to me this time was the majority of the feedback was based on my authenticity. People were coming up to me afterwards being like, thank you so much. That was so real. I actually felt uncomfortable with that. It got me starting to think of why is authenticity such a big deal these days? Why is everybody trying to put on this facade?

They know everything and they have the right answer and solution for everything that they do. I think I want to translate that to our conversation and ask you to start with, how do you look at competition? When you're out there, there's a million different sales training providers out there. You and your franchisees, they obviously hunking through it all the time. What's your philosophy on competition, working with them, competing against them, and selling against the competition or to the client? There's a lot there. Let's just do selling against competition for a second. To me, we never go down the road of, hey, they're terrible. I just think that's the wrong thing to do. We had talked and I'm a huge believer in telling people what you're good at and telling people what you're not good at.

The fact of the matter is no one's good at everything. If you want to be treated differently than a typical salesperson who is the back slapper and they're great at everything, you're just honest with them. You say, hey, look, this is our home run. This is our swing zone right here. We're awesome in this space. Here, we're okay. There, we would rather bring you a partner. When you say that you're a true consultant, they start asking you everything. When you just level set, because that's true in their business as well. If you think about it, everyone knows what they're good at. The minute you go outside your boundaries, what tends to happen if you just fast forward, even if you got that business, you're going to fall flat on your face.

To me, that transactional sale is not worth it. Why wouldn't we then say, look, this group over here is good at this. This is good. Now, we're great at this. Then collectively, if you bring that service offering, if you have an agreement with your competitors that you're not going to swim in each other's lanes, it's really simple. I've done it a ton of times with organizations that we would overlap. We all have our specialties, but there's areas that we overlap. Early on, John, that's where we would always have these knife fights on the overlap thing. We're trying to figure out how to win that extra 25% of what they're asking us for, when in reality, they just want it the best. They don't care where it's coming from.

If you can go behind the scenes and get that done, it's easy. Now, let's do the competition stuff. For me, I think if you're asking good questions and really figuring out what they're looking for, then it tends to sort it out. In the training world, it's just proof of concept. I'll put our stuff against anyone's stuff and let it happen. To me, proof's in the pudding. If I'm against a competitor and there aren't that many in our space, let's just say that they were one at XYZ organization, I say, hey, look, here's the thing. Why don't you just put two groups in a room and let us have it and see who wins? Wins means that people are comfortable with it. The process fits them. You have credibility because you and I both know without credibility in what we do, it's not going to fly.

I think that's true with whoever's watching. Credibility is important. When you have that confidence and conviction in yourself, you don't have to worry about doing all the other stuff that we've all heard about and we've grown up with. How do you balance that though? I think you and I, and I always say this about training providers, the benefit that you and I have is that we're the CEOs of our company. We don't, quote unquote, need the business. We want the business. We can have that very authentic conversation. As that trickles down to frontline sales professionals who are now being monthly quotas, being forced to do this, is it just an experience thing where at a certain point in your career, you get to the confidence level of knowing really where you're good at and knowing where you're not?

How do we expedite that with younger sales professionals to really get them to focus on what they're great at and admit what they're not without, but also still hit our targets, right? With that, with that number over our head. How, how do you balance that? Yeah, no, you're right. So we have that philosophical thing because we own the business. Let's go back down to now. I can't really bring that to the, to the sales leader, right? Hey, listen, I had this big picture conversation with the buyer. Let this one go. Like what? I'm going to let you go. Right. Yeah, exactly. I mean, come on, man. So what would we do there? To me, a couple of different things. First, I really do think you need to know what that particular buyer wants and what's happening.

And I think you also have to make sure that you're loving the client. You know, I take nothing for granted. So if I'm not touching that client in a way, every couple of days, whether it's content or touch or this or that, then I expect that my competition is doing it. So, you know, make sure that you have a drip campaign, whether it's by voice or by thing. I mean, that would be certainly one of them. Make sure that you know what you're great at and you know what they're not great at. And that doesn't mean that you have to say, hey, they're great at this. What that does mean though, is if it's super important for them to have one, two, and three, and that's what you're good at, then you better have them become aware of that.

Because here's the thing. We know the differences between our products and services a lot better than the clients do and the buyers. The buyers can't really tell us apart sometimes because we all sound the same, right? If you go into an organization, they'll say, hey, John, what are the top three reasons why I should buy from you? Now, it wouldn't be you, but let's assume, you know, I'm a brand new seller. Oh, service, reputation, you know, blah, blah, blah. Well, 10 minutes later, here comes your competitor. Hey, what are you guys good at? Service, you know, product, this. And, you know, and so when we tend to throw up the product stuff, we sound the same. But if you can really get to that pain and they feel that you understand their issues and that you truly can then understand and you can translate that into a solution, you're going to be far better off.

I mean, we all know that great salespeople will win deals even when their product isn't the best. I mean, there's a ton of products out there that shouldn't be around, but they have great salespeople, right? I mean, not just how it works. So I think you have to plan. You can't wing it. You got to know your talk tracks. You got to go deep and wide within the organization to make sure that you've got, you know, supporters along the way. And each time, I mean, just to me, I, here's what I think. You should know where you are in the sales process every single time, and you should know exactly what it's going to take to proceed to the next step. And what happens when we're new, we're out there in knife fights, you know, we're in the moment, right?

So we get emotionally involved. We're in the moment, but we haven't really sat back and said, all right, hey, what am I going in here today for? What are my top four or five questions? What do I want to ask for? What do I want to walk away with? How am I going to get that done? Who do I know that could support my position based on what they're asking for? I mean, this is, if you just look at it nicely as a war, if you just think about it, there's a lot of things that you could do that we tend not to do. And when we don't do them, we play victim, right? Oh, it was pricing. Oh, my product is, oh, that's, listen, I think there's no bad prospects. I just think there's bad salespeople. I tend to agree.

You know, and it's funny because I think that, you know, I don't know if you're following Gong these days, but their blog is one of my favorite blogs of all time. And they had this one about selling to the C-suite, which it's really got my head thinking right now. And it's like kind of a four-step process on how to sell to the C-suite. And one of them is, what's your nexus? Like, what is that polarizing statement that gets people either bought in or off your bus, right? That you and I, so for instance, one of my nexuses could be, I believe methodologies are dead. Sales methodologies, if you look at it in the traditional sense, I think they're dead because if you're not in agile selling these days, you're going to get passed up too fast.

If you buy into any one soup to nuts methodology, you're going to be in trouble because there's bits and pieces of methodologies out there that are evolving that are better, right? Now, there's some people who fundamentally believe in sales methodologies, right? Like in the traditional sense. And if that's the case, you and I are not going, no matter what I try to do, we're not going to, the likelihood of me closing you on a deal is not high because we fundamentally do not agree with where things are going, right? And then it's like, then you do this statistic and all this other stuff. But I come back down to why I think it's so important to know that ideal customer profile, not just in the sense of demographics, what they look like, but what stage of their business and what is that true pain?

Yeah. I'll give you an example. You know, I sell, you know, I sold a podcast of sell to the 20%, which is my fundamental belief that pick any product or service that you own. We only, you only use about 10 to 20% of the functionality, whatever that product or service is. So because of that, I think that's how people buy, right? They only buy 10 to 20% of the functionality. Now, when I'm talking to a client, as an example, I know where I'm great at and I know where I'm okay at. Discovery is an area where I'm, I'm good at. I'm not great at. Prospecting is where we crush it. Discovery, that initial kind of 15 to 30 minute qualification call to really dig through that pain and quantify and all that other stuff.

I have some stuff that's relevant there, but I almost always, when I'm asking questions and seeking to understand from a client, the prospect standpoint is, if they say discovery is our number one priority, I almost always back off and say, actually, you know what? You should call up Sandler right now because that's where they sing the whole upfront contract pain funnel and, and, and, you know, reverse questioning that is tailor-made for deep dive discovery at the beginning. And, and so maybe you could do prospecting on my end, but then dovetail that with Sandler content there. So, so getting reps to really understand that 20% and seek for it. I mean, my opinion here, Sandler is the, the preeminent experts in discovery.

Can we talk a little bit about pain funnel right now and how you do that upfront without being cheesy? Because one of the things that I've always had a challenge with, with training in general is conceptually, it makes sense, but how it's delivered sometimes is a little off. Perfect example here. I'll give you a quick one with Sandler specific, the upfront contract. Okay. When I first took Sandler a while back, the way it was delivered to me just didn't sit right. It just, because it sounded so candid manufactured, the way that the trainer was delivering it to me. So I, I kind of discounted it. I was like, that's not me. I'll never do this. And this, we're going to get into other getting out of your comfort zone stuff.

Now follow through gong. Cause that actually got me to re relook at the upfront contract. Cause they said, you know, top sales reps. And then I started listening to how others were doing it. Now I'm bought way into it. Right. So, so let's talk about, um, how that discovery phase is so critical and understanding how to qualify in and qualify out. Could you talk us through, you know, and give us maybe some tips on the teams and tips on that? Well, sure. And let's go to the upfront contract thing. I think when you learn anything, um, it's very black and white, right? And maybe it's a little robotic. I mean, and gong actually did a, did a thing about, Hey, the people that use upfront contracts are far more productive, right?

I mean, they're, they're Sandler guys. And so to me, uh, I think you have to, first of all, learn it and then say it a billion times. So it's becomes you. And then realize that when you're in front of John, who thinks one way, you can't use the same speech, the same talk track that you use over here, but philosophically, we're going to head in the same direction. Right. And I think that's what happens when you first learn anything. So to me, I think a good pain step starts with the good upfront contract. And so just because of time, but here are the things that you want to make sure that you do when you first, you know, let's just say it's our first face-to-face meeting. Um, we want to make sure that we're all on the same page as far as why we're here today.

And that seems super simple. The fact of the matter is, especially when you have multiple buyers, how many times have you had stuff on your calendar and you honestly don't even know why you're there, right? Somebody else invited you there or you're like, what the hell? You know, or you talked to me four months ago and I said, yeah, absolutely. I'll see you. And then, you know, you, you've planned for me and I don't even remember your name, right? It's one of those things. So you had a level set where we are. You certainly want to validate how much time we have for today. And people always fight that. What are you talking about? We set 45 minutes. Okay. You set 45 minutes, but let's just again, step back and let's be respectful and let's just be realistic.

How many times have fires popped up and, you know, and they may sit there for 45 minutes, but they'd left mentally 20 minutes ago because they got to do stuff or you've run your mouth as an amateur salesperson for the first 20 minutes. You haven't asked any good questions, right? Cause you're just establishing credibility. Hey, we started in 1912 and you have 78 PowerPoints and here we go. And they said, this sounds awesome. Would you be nice enough to put this into writing and send me a proposal on the deck? And we're going to, we're going to circulate that internally. What you've said so far, though, is just awesome. And all you've done is just dump. So we want to do the time because here's the other thing that doesn't allow the buyer to do, but they say, you know, we set aside 45.

Is that still good? Yeah, absolutely. It's harder for them, you know, half an hour into it to say, Hey, things are tough today. I got to go. You know, you know, that blind date deal, right? Where a friend calls on the first blind date and say, Hey, is everything going? You know, it's the, you have an emergency at home phone call. And if it's going well, you know, they put, they put it up, you know, the deal. So then we want to do it. Hey, agendas. So like, what, what are the questions you want to make sure that I cover or the topics you should always ask the buyer that why? Because sales should be a conversation. And if I just start with what I want to talk about, which is what happens 90% of the time, and you've seen this a million times, then it's just a, here I go.

Psychologically, the buyer is trying to figure out, Hey, where are you headed? Because I really, you know, I don't know where this is going. So they're trying to figure out where, what you're doing. The second thing is they're trying to figure out when you're going to take a breath so they can actually ask a question. But if you say, Hey, look, John, in order to use the time effectively, maybe two or three things you want to make sure that we cover today. I don't want to waste a lot of your time. You say, Hey, I want to know this, this, and this. Great. Cover that. And that tells me again, which or where I may want to answer that and how I'm going to answer that. I also don't want to be surprised.

So it's good for me. Then I say, Hey, there's some of the things that I'd like to know. And I put that on the table, right? Now what's going on? Here's what I have found a million times. You now know what I'm going to talk about. So you can process. You're not, you're not shocked. But when I'm in a meeting with a group of people, and let's just say that I say, and here's what I'd like to talk about. I've had people right there say, well, I'm not prepared to do that. Hey, we can't talk about that. That's not in our purview. Well, we couldn't make that decision. Wouldn't you want to know that before the darn thing started versus 48 minutes into it when they say, this has been awesome, but we can't actually agree to that thing.

And then the big one, of course, is, Hey, at the end, let's try to make a decision on something. Maybe it's, maybe it's not a fit, or maybe we should take the next step, which may look like this and paint the picture. Why do you do that? Because when you do that close, you know, 53 minutes into the hour, uh, immediately, if they don't know it's coming, but of course we know it's coming. They would say, John, man, this sounds really interesting, but let me think it over, you know, and whatever variation that is. And so if you tell them upfront there, so now I've kind of set the stage, but here's now I transitioned to the pain stuff because I'm not a big guy that says, Hey, yeah, what's keeping you up at night?

That's just not my thing. I answered that one, by the way, if anybody ever asked me that answer is my daughter. Next question. Yeah. Talking to people like you, right. That's what's keeping me up at night. Um, I like a, what I'm going to call a 30 second commercial to start it off. If we haven't done anything yet together and I, you know, and I say, Hey, listen, you know, we work with a lot of executives, you know, like yourself and we haven't worked together. Would it help you if I gave you a 30,000 foot view of who we are and what we do? And I have, they always say, yeah. And when you do it now, I'm starting with what I'm going to call pain indicators. And so what I'm doing is I'm going into my toolkit and say, okay, here's my persona.

I'm talking to a sales manager. They've got this. I'm going into my history bank. And I know based on what my product is or what I sell, these are going to be typically issues that they have that would tell me as a salesperson, that's a prospect for me. Right? So in my world, it could be, Hey, we're not closing enough business. They were negotiating margin, whatever the case is, but I'm going in and picking the top three that I would hear that says, boom, they're a prospect for Sandler. And so I put them out and say, Hey, you know, we work with managers like yourself who are probably super frustrated that there's just not enough in the funnel, you know? And so you, what you do is you put it out there, you say what it is, and then you do a little 15 to 20 second.

And here's what it looks like, right? The headline doesn't work on its own. You can't say, Oh, I work with people like yourself who really aren't happy with it. Hey, they're not, they're negotiating margin. They don't have enough deals and they just rattle them off thinking that's going to do it. That's not going to do it. You say, Hey, not enough people in the funnel. I mean, for instance, you do it for instance, you just tell a little story because what they're doing is they're inserting themselves into the story or they're not. So you do your top three and then you'll say, and again, we have all this down, but I'm just cutting to the chase. And we say, Hey, look, I mean, obviously everyone's different.

I don't know if any of those things even sound remotely familiar to you. I don't suppose so. And then to that little negative question and we'll let them go. And they say, Hey, no, I say, that's why I brought it up. So when it comes to, then I do another one. But if they say, well, yeah, I said, well, which one? Well, we're having a real problem with, you know, not filling the funnel. I say, well, all right, it's unusual. So tell me more about that. What's that look like? And now I have them tell me. And so what I've done is I've set the stage. I've gone to a 30 second commercial, which is my top three pain indicators with the what and how, what does it look like? And that gets them into it.

And those are also the things that are in my swing zone. We talked about earlier, right? I'm not going to talk about stuff that I stink at. I'm going to talk about things that, Hey, this is my swing zone. This is what I know you're a good prospect. And once they say, yeah, to that, then I'm going to have them start talking because you know what I don't want to do when somebody says, yeah, absolutely. We're having a problem with service service. Well, we're great at service. We're sweet. We got a 52 point system on service. We're the, I mean, uh, no, just say, Hey, let me tell me more about it. You know, Hey, like an example. And you, you act like a doctor. See, to me, the pain funnel is being a doctor of sales.

Cause if I walked into a doctor and I said, Hey doc, you know, listen, I got a back pain. They don't do what salespeople do. What back pain. Wait, hold on. First of all, you should see my diplomas. Do you see all this? Look how great I am. That's what salespeople do. Or we don't say, Hey, don't say another word, John. I listen, I've, I've heard this a million times. Take this. Don't drive. You'll be good. It's called malpractice, man. But if they'll ask you the questions and what questions would they, what would they naturally ask you? Well, where does it hurt? How long has it been hurting? Well, what have you done? Have you taken heat? Are you on aspirin? You're doing cold? You exercising? What are you doing?

Right? What's your pain threshold? They always ask you that. Right? And so why wouldn't we just do what we love the doctors doing? And by the way, they're super smart. They probably know the answer before they start this whole thing. Right? But they want to make sure, A, we're into it. And B, they want to make sure because your experience doesn't dictate what's going on in this situation. And then that's how it'll start. So we take them right down that pain funnel question. And the next, the thing though is summarize, right? Validate it. And say, well, you talked about a couple others. You want to talk, does any of those make sense? Yes or no. And then you just do it again. And to me, it should be super conversational.

If it sounds scripty, then you're in trouble. And I think here's what people make the mistake in the Sandler pain funnel. They ask it robotically. Like, how long has that been a problem? What have you done to fix it? Who else knows about it? To me, there's a million questions that should happen. It's a natural conversation between those. All you have to know is in the car, do you truly have an issue that is affecting that individual, is affecting the business? There is some sort of impact that's measurable. And they want to change it, that they want to fix it. And however you got there, it's OK. I mean, people freak out when they first go into Sandler. Say, well, I asked about budget. And then, oh my gosh, I did decision before budget.

OK. Who cares? As long as you can answer the questions in the car, you're OK. Don't freak out. It'll come. So I don't know if that helps you or not. Oh, absolutely. So let's, because I think one of the challenges I see, and I think that the upfront contract helps a lot with this, is getting to the next step. OK. So let me paint a scenario for you, because 90% of sales reps face. You know, ideally, we're talking at this C-suite level, and we're having very thoughtful, long-term conversations and all this other stuff. And they have all the insights that we need as far as the true impact that not doing or doing something's going to happen. Reality says that we're dealing with non-decision makers, at least in that initial stage.

I've been trying to really think through, you know, there's a lead versus follow component of sales, where if I can tell, for instance, that you're a sophisticated buyer, I'm going to ask you a few quick questions. I mean, if we take the corporate executive board, by the time somebody comes to us, 54% of the way through, blah, blah, blah, whatever. If you can show, if through a few questions, you can articulate to me what you've done to this date, what you're looking for, and what you need to move forward with my solution, I'll follow. I'll give you what you're looking for. I'll, you know, I'll validate, but I'll, I'll say, okay, you've done this before. Let me share with you what we do and why we're great.

Easy, easy decision. The other, the unsophisticated buyer, the buyer that's just looking, right? That initial stage of the sales process. And we know that we need to get to power. How do you, how do you do an upfront contract with somebody that is below power that doesn't offend them with where they are? And, but, but, but says to them, look, the next step here is for both of our benefit is if, if we agree that this addresses your situation, the next step is to do this. Do you agree to do that? Like, how do you do that in a smooth way? Because I think that's one of the biggest challenges that I see sales reps have is that is, is getting the power, right? And doing it without pissing off the person that you're engaged with.

And I really do think the upfront contract is a huge answer to that. So could you maybe give your talk track around, say you and I right now, I'm non-power, Megan's my COO. She's the decision maker on all this stuff. And I'm just looking into a solution for training or whatever it might be. How would you walk me through that upfront contract to get to Megan at the end of this conversation? Okay. So we're going to, we're going to condense this because an upfront contract could take some time, but let's just, so let's say, Hey, John, appreciate it. I did purpose, right? Let me say, John, we have a, an hour. You'll say yes to that. Um, I said, John, I worked with a lot of sales, me and sales leaders like yourself.

And what I have found is that at a preliminary meeting like this, there's a ton of questions that you may ask because at that point you're trying to decide, does it make sense to bring Dave into a larger group? Because nine out of 10 times there's a larger group, right? So I'd like to get an understanding of what, what you're trying to get it from me in order for you to make that decision. Does it make sense for us to go to the next step? And I certainly would love to ask you a ton of questions as well. And I would go through that. And so at the end, I would say, so John, a couple of things will happen, uh, in my world, at least when we, when we get to this end of the meeting, based on the questions that you've asked, based on the information that we've shared, I think a couple of things may happen.

One, you may decide, Hey, based on what Dave said, I don't think it makes any sense for me to continue. And it certainly doesn't make sense for me to, to share it with the group. On the other hand, you may say, okay, makes some sense. That's good questions. Um, let's take it to the next step. Now, what I have found over the last 30 years, nine out of 10 times, if you're, if you're on your end, if you're serious about fixing the issues, then it's, let's go. And we'll have a meeting with X, Y, and Z, in which case then we'll try to get the agenda to make sure that, you know, we hit the mark for you, but that tends to be the next step for where we are today. So are you comfortable with that? And that's how I would do it.

And that, and actually just very tactically, I think that even just that phrase at the end there, which you said, which is, are you comfortable with that? You know, I, I, cause phrase, how you phrase things matters a lot in sales that I found, like how you ask the question matters based on, you know, in their response. For instance, when you ask questions, you don't say, do you have any questions? Like you say, what questions do you have? We're inviting way to get people asked, but are you comfortable with that? And, and I think that's the part that reps are uncomfortable with. This is why closing quote unquote is such a hard thing because reps get all the way to the finish line and they're scared shitless of asking the question.

Are you going to sign the fucking contract because they're afraid of what the answer is? That, well, there you go. They don't want to hear the answer. You know what they said? Oh, I used the great technique, but you didn't. The technique was to validate it. Like, and you even heard my voice go down, right? Are you comfortable with that? That's non-threatening. If you were to ask those questions, if you exhale, lower your voice. When you say those things, it comes across as a non-threatening statement versus you okay with that, John? I mean, are you okay? And eight out of 10 people wouldn't even ask that. They'd say, and then you'll decide if you want to take me to the next person. Check. Talk about that.

Thank God that took a lot of guts, man. But you didn't do anything because you didn't say yes or no or anything. And if you said no, what's the best time for you and I to figure out what the steps are? Is it before I run my mouth for an hour? I think it is because I think sales, we have the most, I use the word leverage in a nice way, before the whole meeting starts, before you dump all your product knowledge. I think this is what we're trying to negotiate. You know, what is a good outcome and what is acceptable to you and what's acceptable to me? I mean, time is the most precious commodity that we have. We got to use it, man. So, so comfort zone, right? Cause I think that's a huge problem. And my analogy is always, you know, goes back to golf in the sense that the first time, right?

The first time you put, I mean, I suck at golf. I, you know, I've, I've kind of given it up over the past few years, but I didn't really get into golf until I was in my late twenties, early thirties. And inevitably every time the first time somebody puts a golf club in your hand, if you've never played golf before, right, what do you do? You hold it like a baseball bat, right? Cause that's how we, we've all, there's those kids. We've all at least grabbed a baseball bat, but, and then they tell you, put interlock your fingers, put your thumb down, like straighten your elbow, straighten your back, put your ass out, bend your legs and then swing like this. And you literally feel like an idiot. I mean, I, the first time I ever played golf, they think you're setting it up, right?

I honestly thought they were going to like putting this on camera and, and, but okay. But then after a while, you know, you start practicing, practicing, practicing. And now when somebody puts a golf club in my hand, even though I haven't played in three years, I immediately lock my fingers and my thumbs go down and my arm go straight. Right. And there's, it's natural now. So how do you suggest that reps, you know, me, uh, 15 years ago when I first took Sandler, it was, that was uncomfortable with the weight. So I, I went back to my old, my old habits, right? What, what's, what are some things that you encourage reps to, to get out of their comfort zone without jeopardizing, you know what I mean?

Like, like totally like looking like an idiot or something like that, or any things that you can get up to help reps get around that. Cause I always say, if you're not getting uncomfortable in sales, you're not getting any better. Right. But how do you get them to do it? Well, a couple of things. I think you have to one, have the mindset, mindset that, you know, I can't lose anything I didn't have. So no matter what you think you're doing, um, it's not necessarily going to turn the tide of the sail. Now I'm making a broad statement, but I also think you can have 10 minutes of courage four times a day, right? You don't have to be a stud all the time. Just, you know, take a deep breath and act as if for a couple seconds.

But I think here's the other thing in my world, behavior controls attitude, right? So for me to talk myself into, I'm going to do it. I'm the guy. This is it. All this positive, you know, self-talk and I do positive self-talk on the golf course. Don't hit the water. Don't hit the water. Don't hit the water. I'm going to hit the water, man. I mean, every single time. So, you know, but if you behave and what I, you know, and I would say that don't try to do everything at once. Why don't you pick one little thing, right? One little thing and say, I'm going to try just in the upfront contract thing we just did. I'm going to just do time. Hey, how much time do we have for today? That's it. I'm not going to do all of it.

It's way too much. I'm going to freak out. I'm just going to do time. So I take a little step. I put that elephant out just a little bit. What happens? Hey, I get a victory because I said it right. It actually worked. I'm building confidence. I'm building conviction. And then I'm going to try something else. I think what happens is people do all or nothing, right? It's this all or nothing thing. And I also think people get confused with role and identity, right? Because they take role failure as a hit on this, on the self-esteem side. Hey, look to me, if you, again, just take little steps and get, and get your talk track down, you know, and if I go back to the upfront contract, since we did it, I just believe if you would say things six times out loud, you'll get your talk tracks down.

You'll get your scripts down. It becomes you. And the first couple of times, John, it's horrific. I can't tell you how many times I've said, I've done it 30 years and I'll show up and I'll do a, you know, a pain step or I'll do an upfront contract for a client. They're like, how long have you worked here? But it sucked. It was sucked the first couple of times. I say, my God, thank God you own this place. You should be fired. But it gets better. It gets better. It gets better. And just like our, when we're public, you know, we do public speaking, it gets better. It gets better. And your confidence is up, your conviction's up. And there's still things that I, that I don't want to do, that I don't like to do, but I still do the same thing.

I do a little bit, a little bit. And then I look back and I'm like, you know what? Oh my God. I'm like 55 steps further than I was when I looked at this big mountain that I had to go through because it's overwhelming. So, I mean, there's a ton of stuff that I'm trying to get it down condensed. No, I love it. I mean, because I have the same philosophy. I live by the rule of 1%, which is just try to do 1% better every single day, right? Because 50 days later, you're 50% better, give or take, right? So, but one of the things that's really struck me in sales is I don't think we practice enough. Okay. I think we learn by doing, and it's kind of like a kid, right? A kid, you know, touches the stove, burns their hand on the stove, doesn't touch the stove anymore.

A sales rep asks a dumb question to a CEO and the CEO says, that's a dumb question. They say, okay, I guess I won't ask that anymore. If there's one, if there's a couple of things I'd go back and tell my earlier self, you know, in sales is to take business acumen a lot more proactively, right? And be a lot more conscious of practicing and trying things. But what does practice mean to you? Because there's one thing about role play, which, you know, I'm a little, I'm a little in between on role playing, especially from a training standpoint, because I think a lot of times the trainer manufactures such a fake environment that it's just not real. I love, I love role playing, like right before a meeting.

So for instance, if you were my boss and I was about to go into a meeting, hey boss, here's the scenario. Can we map this out just so I can get stretched out a little bit? But, and then there's like practicing in a training scenario, but then what's your thoughts on practicing and being conscious with live shit? You know what I mean? Without putting yourself in jeopardy of, of, of really like laying an egg there. Like reps think of practicing consciously. I think I agree with you. I think that we're the only profession that practices on the job. Thank God surgeons don't do that. In fairness. I mean, what professional sports team does what we do, which is practice the very first time up there.

I'm a big practicer. I'm a huge believer in it. You know, maybe it's because I'm introverted. Maybe because I don't want to look like a jackass. You know, there's a bunch of reasons for this, but here's what I would say. First, you should get that talk track down. In my world, there's probably about 60 different things that should be in your playbook. Don't wait for management to create a playbook for you. Here's how you can do it. Just take some, you know, jot some stuff down. What are the top 15 objections that I hear? What are the top things that I'm asked? Just come up with things that you absolutely should know in order to become a machine in what you do. Even here's my value prop, whatever the case is.

And then to me, I'm always refining that. I think if you just take it, here's the, here's the part that I'm a huge believer in role play first, but I, I'm a, I'm not a big believer in how they do it. I think running a 30 minute role play is complete and utter waste of time. You should be role playing things that are like three to five minutes because the rest of it is just fantasy anyways. We'll play it for your ears to hear what your mouth has to say. And it, and even to, even to Tay. So I'm doing a keynote next week. I've got 3000 people in the room. I've probably, I've done the topic many times, I'm sure. But even to this day, I have a 45 minute drive to work. I will say, here's my slide number one.

And I will say that six to 10 times, six to 10 times. And then I'll go to slide two, six to 10 times. I will have that darn thing out loud 50 some odd times before I go next week. I've been doing it 30 years. And why is that? Because when you're in front of your prospect, if you don't have your talk track down there, then what are you doing here? First of all, I'm doing self-talk, right? I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to say. I think you should practice, practice, practice, and then let it happen. Stop freaking out. Just, you know, buy, react off the buyer. But if you don't know your part before you show up, and you're in big trouble. To me, how many, how many people do you know that actually do pre-call planners?

I'm telling you, it's not that many people. I mean, it's sick. It's sick. But let's go to the talk track, you know, practice part. I do believe it should say stuff out loud six times. I do believe you should keep it to three to four minutes. I mean, not, not much more, because it doesn't act, it never happens that way. And I, I role play with myself and you can call that practice, but I'm saying, Hey, you know, they're going to ask me this. How are you going to respond? Bum, bum, bum, bum. And every time I do it, it gets a little better. And I jot stuff down. I'm like, that was a flipping genius attack. That is a genius attack. And I think I'm going to remember it, but you and I, you know, maybe it's my age.

I don't remember. What's a genius attack real quick. The genius attack is when you hear something said, or you say something, you're like, awesome. Okay. That flu. I'm going to remember that man. That is an utter genius attack. You probably say that to our family all day long and then they roll their eyes, but you know, that's how it works. So it's funny to bring it up because so this, I was just out in, I was talking about being out in Dubai, right? I was the keynote and look, I've done plenty of keynotes before, but this one was a little, this one was a little different for me because it was in a different country and so cultural and all this other stuff. And it was a big keynote for me. Right.

And so I was, I was pretty nervous on this one. And so I stood up and I gave my presentation and I, I role play with myself. I do it right in the mirror. I kind of talk myself through it. I walk around, see what I look like and what my hand postures is, all that stuff. And even with that practice though, um, my wife, my wife was actually in the crowd and she validated this. I got up there and I, I started off with my main point of what I was trying to do. And I'm not kidding. I, within about two minutes, I was through what I had thought was going to be the first 10 minutes of my presentation. And all of a sudden I'm starting to freak out, but the good news was, I mean, I definitely miss some stuff.

And so I had a rough start, but, but because I had practiced so much, the anecdotes and the other things like throughout the presentation, I was, I was pulling them back in. So what I missed in the beginning, I was pulling them back in throughout the presentation and then kind of hit that groove. And it was like, as soon as I don't know about you, but as soon as I can get that first kind of chuckle from the crowd, I mean, that's where things tend to just kick into gear for me. It was like, I got it. You know, I need, I need that first, like, ha, you know, like even as a sales rep, I mean, think about what you said and how they would use it as a sales rep. How many, and this is the point, I think you should get your first five to 10 minutes of a sales call down pat.

I mean, get it down, whatever you're going to do, get it down. Because once that happens, right to your point, we've got momentum. We're feeling good about that. I probably in the talks, I do the first 10 minutes a million times, the rest of it, by the time I get there, I mean, I'm flying. I know it, it's good, but what starts well ends well. Right. And if it doesn't start, well, here it comes, you know, freak out. Oh my God, you suck. What happened? It sucks. You know, the whole thing. And it's kind of like, you know, the way I look at presentations and sales is too, is it's the beginning and the end that matter the most, right? The middle part really doesn't, because if you set the stage right and all of a sudden you get people bought in, you can kind of fumble through the middle, if you will, and then you end strong.

So my benefit on this presentation was I, I, I definitely, I didn't start strong at all, but I built and I ended really strong. And that's what, that's what they remember people left with was, that was awesome. They didn't remember that I started, that I struggled when I started. And that's the feeling that you have to leave people with. And that's why summarizing that entire conversation and ensuring that what you heard from them and your active listening and all that other stuff, but then really setting that to say, yes, okay, now that's that next step. If you don't nail the beginning and the end. Primacy and recency, right? That's just, that's how people remember stuff. They don't remember anything in the middle.

Yeah. And unfortunately that's where most people spend a lot of their time though. Well, because it's, they ask a few questions up front and, and then, then the middle is their presentation. That's where they felt, you know what I mean? Like that's where they focus most of their effort because that's my time to shine. That that's absolutely not your time to shine. Your time to shine is when you ask the right questions, because what I strive for, and I'm, and I know you do too, I strive for somebody genuinely saying, that's a good question. And, and, and not just saying that as a filler to, before they answer it, but, but getting them to pause and stop. And then you can see, you see them leave.

They're thinking, or you're going into the past, bringing it into the future, or they're doing the, what if I mean that, and then you, to your point, you know, you did a good job right there. Yeah. And cause I, I believe my fundamental belief right now it is, it is, I'm kind of on the same page with Gong right now, as far as their, cause their nexus is your product and service, the features and functions don't matter. Literally the only way you're going to be able to differentiate yourself these days is the way you sell. And I, and I believe that it's our job. It is not like Google took the feature function thing away from us, right? Cause now anything's a Google search away. Sure. But what our job is, is to get people to think and, and to get you to realize that if you're comfortable with where you are today, I don't like, I'm worried for you because there's going to be an app that comes out tomorrow.

There's going to be a shift in the industry. There's going to be something that happens that's going to fundamentally disrupt you, whether you like it or not. And if you're not at least paying attention to that. Yeah. And, and so how do you get people to move? Because everybody's number one competitor, different competitor is no decision period. Right. So how do you get people upfront to move and realize that I have to make a change? Cause I think that's our first goal, right? I got to get you to believe that, that status quo is not okay. Do you, do you have anything around that, that, that you teach people or that you do specifically? Because before I can sell you anything about what my stuff does, if I can't get you to commit that what you're doing today needs to change, none of that stuff matters.

Cause that's where no, that's where 60% of pipeline sits and no decision. Right. So do you do anything? I mean, obviously pain funnel and those types. Yeah. Impact of pain. But I think the, I mean, the short answer is, I think the best way to get to test people, whether they're going to change is to suggest that they don't, you know, you know, when people say, well, you know, Hey, we've got about a 30% close rate. I said, well, that sounds pretty good. Oh, what do you mean? That's not so good. But if you say 30%, that sucks. Then they defend. Right. So to me, look, you know, when you push people, resist, if you pull away, then they tend to come. So when I, when I'm trying to validate whether they're willing and able, let's just do the able part and they want to write.

Um, I suggest that they don't, even when they say, Hey, my problems cost me like $10 million. Right. Oh, that doesn't seem like that much. What, what, you know, but if you do the opposite, then I think, and all this does so, John is to say, yes, that's important to them because I was in front of Microsoft and they say, Hey, we've got a $50 million. Thanks. That doesn't seem like that much money. No, that's not even worth talking about. I was like, damn. Okay. Write that off. Write that off then, you know, but I, if I hadn't asked, you know, I would have gone down a big road wasting a lot of time. You know what I mean? Well, cause to you, I mean, to you and I, 50 million sounds like a lot to Microsoft.

That's a rounding error. They don't even have to admit they made that mistake. Right. I mean, it's just nothing, but I think, you know, it, the other thing is to, to, to take where you are and kind of accelerate that next step. And we talked a little bit about free consulting beforehand, but I love this move. Uh, let's pretend what happens next. Love that move, you know, and it helps you determine whether you should be investing time, but also helps you determine what their next steps are. So even in, when you said, Hey, that non-decision maker, another way he could have done it is, Hey, let's pretend that if somebody says, Hey, Dave, we'd like a proposal. I always agree. Absolutely. I'm happy, happy to do it.

Makes a lot of sense, obviously. Um, let me ask you a question. Let's pretend, you know, I'm going to go back and we're going to get the team together. We're going to put a proposal together to solve all the issues that we've talked about within the parameters that you guys have. What happens next? I might as well find out right now. I've had, I've had people say, well, then we've got to take it out to three RFPs. Oh, then I've got to take it to my boss. Guess what? Didn't know that two seconds ago. Okay. You know, to me, my belief system is you should do nothing in sales unless you know, what's going to happen as a result of your work or actions. Otherwise you're in the hope and pray method, right?

Never ask a question. You don't know the answer to it. Exactly. So if they, if your people could just do, Hey, let's pretend I do that. Uh, what happens next? And if they would get clarity on that, um, and cause you can negotiate that, right? Maybe I don't like that answer. I said, well, it doesn't even, I've saved myself a ton of time on doing a lot of worthless stuff. Back to your point. A non-decision is your biggest competitor. It's not the guy down the road. It's them doing nothing and dragging you through the mud. So how did it get stopped? One of the ways is that let's pretend move. I love that move. I like that. And I, I love the, uh, I also love the question. Like, Hey, what happened?

Just help me understand what happens if you don't make this decision, right? No, like what, just walk me through what happens. And if the, and if you either there's two, there's two answers, right? A very concrete, if we don't do this, whatever. And then there's, well, and if you get the, well, why are we talking then? Because if there's not a significant impact of you making this decision or not, why are we even having this conversation? Yeah. I love that one off there and say, Hey, John, let me ask you a question. There's a lot of stuff on your plate. I'm sure. Is this like a top three or four that you want to solve this quarter? Cause if not, honestly, let's push it off until it is. Well, and actually again, small nuance that move, what you said right there, again, nuance matters, not solve top three things that you want to solve one top two or three things you want to solve this quarter.

Right. Right. Because, because if you don't put a timeline, I can answer that. Oh yeah, no, I definitely, this is something I definitely have to do on my bucket list, right? Bucket list. Exactly. So, you know, and that kind of goes to the creating urgency. I think there's, you know, that's the number one challenge that a lot of reps come to me with, John, how do you, how do you create urgency? And to me, you can't create urgency unless you truly understand the business drivers and what the priorities are of that business, but also that person. And that's where the pain funnel comes into play, right? It's that they always come to us with, well, we're missing our numbers. Okay. What does that mean for the business?

Right. Oh, if the business, okay, well then what does that mean for you personally? And if you don't do that, that's where, if I can really buy into that, if I can get you bought into that, then I can create urgency because, you know, I did a post on LinkedIn at the end of Q1 there. And I said, look, all y'all are trying to figure out how to close deals before the end of the quarter. I'm going to tell you right now. And, and, and I get a lot of questions. I'm sure you do too, which is John, how, how hard can I push? Right. And I said, how hard you can push is directly related to how much it's about you versus them. The more it's about them, the more you can push, the more it's about you, the more you're an asshole.

Right. So if you're closing the end of the quarter, you're closing on them up because you got to hit your number and those types of things. You're just a jackass sales rep. If you've identified that if they don't do this by the end of the quarter, they're going to miss out on this number. They're going to get beat by their competition. They're going to lose funding for this or whatever it is. Then you should push. It's it's your obligation to push, but it's based on what they told you. Right. What do you think about this? Somebody comes to you and says, let's assume you had a product now, or even a service doesn't much matter. And you're at the end of the quarter and they say, Hey, John, just got some, some news based on availability.

We're not going to be able to do much more. So we're based and we're not going to be able to fulfill it. Probably got a short amount of window here for, for that based on our conversations may make sense. And we just push you because I don't think you're ready to make that decision. So why don't we push it forward? And that way it may be easier. I've had people do that. And of course, which is the takeaway move, right? And I'll tell you what happens. I'll either say, absolutely. Or I say, well, wait a minute now, what does that actually mean? I say, well, listen, I don't want to say yes, and then not be able to deliver. So that's high on our high on our list of ethics. And we want to make sure we have long-term customers.

So we know based on capacity, based on people that we have that are going to support it, we can only do four more this quarter. And, and I'm just making the assumption based on how we are interacting and your urgency, let's move that out. And that way there's no artificial pressure. Holder. I love it. No. And I think to, you know, kind of get back to qualification, I try to qualify you up more than I'm trying to qualify you in. I try to, I try to ask all the questions up front to uncover why you shouldn't do business with me, because guess what? Throughout the sales process, they're going to come up and I'd rather address them before than, than have you think of them and either not tell me otherwise.

Right. So I'm going to keep asking like, what's this budget timeline, those types of things? Like, why shouldn't you do business with me? And, and I think if the sales reps have that better mentality around qualifying out compared to qualifying in, then it's, it's going to be a lot better for all of us. Cause again, it's like, I mean, Stanley plays a lot in the psychology with the neuro-linguistic programming and, you know, reversing and everything like that. But to your point, that walkaway close is one of the most powerful closes on the planet because it's, it's like, hey, no, actually you're not a good fit. And then the psychology around that is, whoa, wait a minute. Wait a minute now. Hey, that's my call.

You don't kick me out. I kick me out. It's one of those things. Right. Have you seen, have you ever seen the key and did you watch key and peel by any chance? Yeah. Have you seen the, yeah. Have you seen the, uh, the timeshare version of that? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely brilliant. You know, like never know. Wait a minute. I'd love that. But you know, to your point about disqualifying, which I'm a huge believer in, I think you should be disqualifying all the time. It's easier for all of you. The problem that I think most reps have is that the culture of their company does not allow that. That's dead. And that's the ultimate fuck you out of all this, right? Is that the sales reps kind of understand it.

They believe it, but then they got some manager who's cramming it down their throat. I mean, you know, what happened recently, and we're going to write a post on this next week, you know, I got an email from a rep saying, Hey John, that, that we, you know, it's an existing account too. So they should know us. And this guy like flat out offered deep discount on an upgrade out of nowhere. And it immediately cheapened them as a, as a, as an offering, as a solution, as a, as a partner. And guess what that did? Cause I got that email out of nowhere. Hey John, we're having heavy discounts off of this and that type of thing. And we got this special offer that what that does now is when I do need something for, from that vendor, there is no way I am ever paying full rate, even remotely close to full rate card because they've automatically cheapened them as a business, as a, as a, as an offering, because now I know that your whole thing is what you've said is, Hey, I was taking you to the cleaners before, but now we're getting to the truth.

Your credibility is shit. In my opinion, where everything that you said is now suspect, everything. And, and, and I think you've discredited everything about you and your, I mean, quick story on this one, I'm not going to name the company, but this is like, Oh, I was doing this. So I was doing our fake make it happen Mondays, but I was doing them on Facebook live. And at first it was really just for me to, to engage with my audience. But then, you know, I wanted to evolve it, but this was when I could only do it on my phone, like Facebook live sessions on my phone. So rep actually was following me, crushed it literally couldn't have done a better job. Like was following me on social, watch one of my make it.

And he reaches out to me. He goes, John, have you ever wanted some, uh, to do, um, you know, interviews and actually bring other people into your Facebook live session? I'm like, well, yeah, but I don't know how to do that on my phone. He's like, well, our solution actually allows you to do that. And I was like, no shit. Right. So I, no joke. I was like, can you show that to me right now? Right. Right after I got off the live thing. Right. He's like, yeah. So he lit it up. He lights the thing up and he shows me, I go done. Send me a contract. Right. I mean, it hit the Holy grail, social selling followed new. Exactly. Showed me it. Didn't try to drag me through the whole demo. Just showed me what I want.

I said, send it over to me. Done. And he goes like this. He goes, John, you know, all because we love you so much over here. He's like, I'm going to give you a 20% discount because, and I was like, oh no, no, no, no, no. I'm like, what are you doing? I'm like, you just fucked the whole thing up. Really? I go, I didn't ask for the discount. You just fucked it all up. And he goes, what? But oh, okay. Well, we won't give you a discount. I go, no, no, no, no. Now you're going to give me the discount, but you've just cheapened your entire offering by doing that. And I wish. Why, why, why? Out of that world. I wish managers didn't force it. I wish we were at least on quarterly targets as opposed to monthly targets to, to prevent that stuffing down somebody's throat scenario that cheapens everything that we do.

So anyway, I think we could go off on rants for all sorts of shit. Talk for days about this type of stuff, but I really appreciate the conversation. I think I got a lot out of it. And I think I'm hoping my audience did too, especially some of the tactics we talked about, but they've tell us, you know, what are some of the things you're working on right now with Sandler? Like, how are you evolving the content and how, and how should people, engage or, or, or, you know, what do you have to offer basically for, for people who are trying to get better at sales? Well, well, they certainly can go to Sandler.com. I mean, there's a couple of different things. We've got a great platform where there's just, you know, 1500 hours of content and any type, you know, because in today's world, you know, you've got either micro learning stuff, you've got anything that you want in any different modality.

So, so that's certainly there, but I think the best thing to do is maybe what you and I did a long time ago. It just, Hey, go and, you know, reach out to a Sandler guy and just say, you've listened to John and Dave and I want to crash a class and just sit in a class. My guest just sit in and just absorb. I don't care if I never see you again, just get as much as you can, because if we can educate you, then you're going to do a better job. Go raise the tide of the, of the brand, you know, meaning salespeople. So, I mean, that's super important for us. We've got a brand new program out for entrepreneurs, which is really how to hockey stick your company, which is great. You know, I just wrote a book with the two guys at Splunk and you know, they, those guys went from 30 million to 1.2 billion in five years and then they crushed it.

So, we're excited about that partnership as well. So, there's a ton of stuff going on. Very cool. I love that. I mean, I think that's the whole thing is this constant evolution, right? If you're not getting better, somebody else is. You're dead, right? You're dead, right? Micro learning, 1%, all that stuff. The content's out there, right? Go to your point. Go to a, go to a free course. I mean, that was one of the things I will say early on in my career, Sandler probably had the biggest difference for me early on as far as all the other training, right? It's the stuff that stuck with me the most. And so, if you, if you have a local Sandler provider, which I almost guarantee you do if you're listening to this, you know, go, go see if you can sit on, on one of those courses and then go to the site and, you know, consume some of that content and try some of this shit out, right?

Try it out on your own. Yeah. It's not going to kill you to go to a free class. I mean, you're welcome as my guest. No one's going to say no to me, right? I mean, just, just show up, just say, hey, I saw John and I saw Dave and here I am. I want to see this on closing or whatever you want to go see, go see it. Love it. Awesome, Dave. Well, I really appreciate that your time here. I love what you're doing. I'm looking forward to working with you guys moving forward too. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Problem. All right, everybody go out there, make somebody smile today. There's too much negativity in this world. Try to make somebody happy if you do nothing else. All right. Have a great week and let's make it happen.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.