Bob Marsh: Embracing Simplicity to Stand Out in Sales

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Today's conversation is with Bob Marsh. Bob is a sales keynote speaker just like me, an active CRO, and has over 20 years experience. And he's been a sales leader and a couple of CEOs to category-creating companies, raised millions in venture capital, and sold two companies as one and grown business from some of the top brands in the world. So he's done it all. And this was all about simplifying sales. But he actually even has a whole program called Selling with Simplicity that we dove into. We talked about building authentic connections, carrying yourself with confidence, and creating an engaging experience to enable faster decision-making and deeply rooted long-term customer relationships.

So this one was all sales all the time. And Bob and I actually have a couple of very similar stories of how we started our careers at Xerox. And actually, our very first sales experience is similar. You're going to want to hear these. So I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Let's make it happen. Let's make it happen. Bob Marsh, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How are you doing today? Hey, great, John. Good to see you again. Yeah, thanks for coming on board. I think this is going to be an all-sales-all-the-time conversation. Always is. What's that? Always is. Always is. Always should be, at least in my opinion. That actually is funny.

Everybody says, like, oh, I'm not in sales. And I always say, yes, you are. I don't care what your job is. I don't care what you do. I promise you, you're in sales. Whether you think about it as a career or not is a different story. But you're selling yourself every fucking day. Yeah. So, yes, it should always be about sales. But, Bob, let's get, we're going to talk, you know, tactically about how to simplify a rather complex world right now in the sales world because it just is getting mind-numbingly complex in so many ways with AI and everything else. But before we do that, walk us back. Give us the origin story, man. Where are you coming from? Where did you grow up? Parents, all that fun stuff.

Because I always love to see where people's kind of entrepreneurial spirit comes from, from where their sales spirit comes from. So, give us a little context there, and then we'll dive into it. Yeah, for sure. Love that you always start your show out that way. Kind of interesting to learn about people. So, yeah, my background. So, first of all, I grew up, I'm born, I live now in metropolitan Detroit. I actually grew up in Buffalo, outside of Buffalo, New York, a small town called Orchard Park. Loved it there. So, that's really, I spend my grade school, high school years there. I, you know, it's fun when I think about, you know, getting into sales. Like, you know, I was always the one who was winning the, like, candy competitions and the Easter thing.

Like, you know, and I never really knew why. But, like, when that time came, I'm like, all right, let's go. We're going to go crack, call the neighbors and knock on their doors, and this sounds fun. So, anyway, that's kind of interesting. So, you know, I was a big golfer growing up. I played golf competitively in high school and college. I never got, like, great or anything. But, like, that kind of leads into some of the stuff that kind of entered me into the world of sales. Like, I just, I sold retail equipment, a sporting goods store, golf equipment in college. Did really, really well at it. Didn't even realize why. And then I ultimately figured it out, which I'm sure we'll talk about. But, you know, I would tell you that, you know, throughout my career, um, it's, to me, selling has always been about just making an authentic connection with people and just trying to help them.

And, you know, if I were to break it down, like, that's kind of it. And, you know, we'll get into so much of that, because that's kind of my whole thing behind the whole selling with simplicity approach, because probably because I simply look at it just like that. But, you know, I love building things. I've, I've started and sold two different companies. Um, you know, I've now been building my own personal brand and more personal, professional speaking. And, like, that's kind of building something. I just love getting my hands on it and figuring it out and working through the challenges the customers have to bring them value. Love it. Yeah. It's funny. You bring up the, you know, making an authentic connection.

I always tell people, you know, it is pretty simple in sales. It's, if you're trying to convince somebody in sales, I think you're doing it wrong. Right. Because it's about either helping people solve problems or achieve goals. That's it. And if, and if your goals aren't big enough and your problems aren't big enough, why are we having this conversation? Right. And so that's where I think we got to break down a lot of that perception of sales as being that sleazy, you know, push it down your throat, convince you and really understand what it's truly all about. It's actually more like customer service than anything else at the end of the day. Right. Yeah. No doubt. No. You know, people like often ask me, like, if you could just wave a magic wand over the business world, like, what would you do?

And I would be like total reset on what the word sales even means. Thank you. You know, because like, think about it. I mean, we, we face this every day as is your audience, like where we literally spend so much time just trying to overcome the perception of what it means of what we're doing. And like, think of how much time is wasted by us, but also how much time is wasted by customers just trying to like, just trying to work through and overcome that hesitancy. And like, you know, and the reality is, and we'll talk about it and, you know, you post about it all the time. Most sellers are the ones who are making it worse. Oh, you know, so, so which is, which is frustrating as heck, but also creates a immense opportunity to stand out pretty easily.

So that's the opportunity. I think that's exactly right. Right. Because, and look, I don't really blame. So it's, we're almost a victim of circumstance in the sense that, at least my take, and I love your opinion on this, you know, yes, most sales reps are, you know, take the shortcuts. They, they just try to get the commission check. They don't really give a shit. They're selling stuff they don't care about. They're trying to get money. Right. So, okay. But if you look at it, you know, sales is, and finally you can start getting your degree in sales here at, in universities and stuff. But historically it's been the default profession. So you take a kid in college, who's a relatively good kid with relatively good morals and all that other stuff.

Right. And then you put them into the, into a sales scenario that where they don't really get a ton of training. Right. And they're just given basically a territory and say, good luck. And then, and they say, here's your commission plan. And if you, by the way, if you don't hit your numbers, uh, you're, you're, you're not going to get paid and you'll probably get fired in three to six months. You take a relatively normal ethical kid and you put them in that scenario, they're going to take shortcuts. They're going to do some unethical things. And so I, I think it's one of those things where it's like this perpetuating, like, because it's not an educated profession that they get out and they are educated, unfortunately, in, in, in whoever gets ahold of them.

And then they go down the dark path as opposed to doing it the right way, which is why I think you and I are both trying to like get that, help them get right out of the gate with it to say, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, well, let's, let's break this perception here for a second and let's go find something you love and then let's work on it together. But I think it's, it's this real macro issue that we have as far as the cycle we're in. Well, I think a lot of times companies are just training the wrong things. You know, like I think about my, so my very first sales job, like B2B sales, I told you I sold retail and couch, but like my first B2B sales job post-college, I walk into my very first sales call, like alone.

Like I didn't have a mentor with me. I'm by myself. I walk in that and that it was a school district. I walk in there. The guy gives me one look like kind of up and down and he just starts laughing at me. And because I was too young and he said, you're too green. And I'm like, what is that? I don't even know what that means. Even worse. So, and he's like, I don't have no interest in working with your company. I hate your company. Your predecessor was a crook. Like, I don't have any interest in working with you. Leave your business card. That's all I need. Like, whoa, that's a rough start. Now going backwards six weeks prior to that, I had just started this job. I was at Xerox. At the time, no one is like the top sales organization in the world, world-class training organization.

I just went through six weeks, deep, deep, deep sales training, how to overcome objections, how to qualify a deal, how to get to the decision maker, how to like yada, yada, yada. And all about the product and the features and the marketplace and the competitors and pricing and what makes us, but then you walk into that and it's like, none of that means squat because this guy doesn't care about any of that. And it makes me realize that like so often is companies are focused on teaching people how to sell as opposed to understanding how customers buy. And that to me is a much more powerful thing to train people. I often wonder like, what if we stopped training on all of that and just made sure that sellers in particular, especially earlier in their career, learned basic things, how to be a good listener, how to speak with confidence, how to be succinct, how to prepare for a meeting, how to take notes, how to follow up, make sure you show up on time, make sure you're dressed like a professional, put your shoulders back.

Like imagine if we could just do those things right. It would overcome so much other of the BS that we're trying to kind of try to finagle and manipulate to, you know, try to convince them to do something. And that's not really what it's about. Hey, I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JV sales membership. It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, filling the funnel and driving to close. It also includes monthly workshops that I'll be running on specific skills and different tech like Chachi BT and how to leverage it in the sales process. And it gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done.

You get all of this for $420 a year as an individual or $5,000 for teams. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to www.jbarrows.com and click on the individual or team membership and use code podcast, you'll get 20% off. Let's make this happen together. I think that's funny that you and I have extremely similar backgrounds because I sold for Xerox. It was my second job out of college. I remember now that you say that. Yeah. And I actually sold to the government. So it was even worse. Okay. And literally, I mean, almost the same story, man. I had been put into territory because usually you do the eight week sales. When did you actually, when did you go start at Xerox? Well, that would have been in 96.

Okay. So I was 99, right? Go down to Leesburg? No. So this was the first time where they actually took it from there and made it local, right? So I was part of the first class. Yeah, that's why I was at the end of that. I remember now you say that. So Boston going in there to eight week sales training program. And usually the way it worked is your eight week sales training, then you got an apprenticeship, then you got into territory, right? Well, for whatever reason, the way I hired, they just threw me right into territory while I was doing the training. And so I just kind of poo-pooed the training, whatever. But I remember where a lot of my other private sector reps would go in and flip copiers almost immediately and get up, you know, those type of things.

I walked into a territory that had five reps in three years. And these were some like multi-million dollars, secretary of state, treasury, like, you know, your checks get printed out, like multi-million dollar copiers. And I would walk in and, hey, how's it going? They'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. What? They'd be like, yeah, John, you're the fifth rep in six months or whatever. Whatever. Leave your, same thing. Leave your business card. We'll call you if we need you. Xerox sucks. We have to have you. You're a necessary evil for us, but we're not a huge fan. Shit. And I remember being there. And inherently, I was pushed to, I was forced to understand more design thinking and bottom upselling than top down selling, because the only thing I could do was talk to the users, talk to the people that, you know, in government, everybody wants to waste your time.

So, you know, I would, I would go in and I would have these conversations and be walking the floors, understanding click throughs, understanding workflows, areas, and gathering as much insight as I could. And I almost got fired, like literally six months in, my boss was like, we thought you were some guru, whatever it is. We hired you to put you in this territory and you haven't sold shit. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, back off. Like, this is a dumpster fire. I got to fix this. I got to rebuild these relations. And it took me nine months. I was this close to getting fired. But I remember nine months in, I walked into every one of my accounts with a plan. And I had said, and because I hadn't sold them on shit and I was just being off, I was connecting with people, making real, like trying to solve real problems.

When I came to them with plans, they were open to listening to those plans. And then when I showed them how we could rearrange things with digital and everything else, they were like, shit, that makes sense. Let's do that. And so I remember walking to my boss's office, dropped like three massive contracts on his desk. And I was like, see? And he was like, shit, okay. But it was like, it forced me to do it as opposed to all this stuff that they were trying to teach me. Now, don't get me wrong. That teaching was good. There's a lot of core fundamentals that I have from that. But getting punched right in the mouth and being forced to adjust out of a sales mindset was actually a blessing. No doubt.

It's for, first of all, 100% carbon copy to what I went through. So what's interesting to say about that? Like, so first of all, that was so long ago, right? Like, there's so many things that are still true today about that experience. And it's not just about you and me. It's because everybody goes to some degree. Because I remember what I learned about that so fast from, again, getting punched in the mouth, just like you said, is I've got to bring value here. I've got to rebuild trust. And I got to rebuild value somehow. And talking to them about the latest, like, color copier is not going to do anything. So, you know, this kind of goes the entrepreneurial side of me. Like, I went back and I started researching as much as I could about schools.

What's important at schools? And what are they thinking about document management? Like, that was, like, the different thing. I made up my own logo. Like, you know, don't tell anyone in corporate. Like, I made this, like, put Xerox with a little apple next to it. Like, to say, like, hey, I'm the education guru. And, like, I found a bit of research that said the average school district, for every student in your district, there's seven pieces of paper that fly through that school every single month. So, I go ahead and give them a personalized report based on the number of students. This is how much is going through. Do you know where all those are? Like, and it was this whole, like, value-driven thing that took, like, it took a year.

You did it faster than nine months. It took a year to, like, just be like, okay, I think I can trust this person. And I'm willing to take that meeting. And then you go, anyway, the point is, all that stuff is still true today. You've got to bring value. It is. And I'm a little nervous about it, though, because I think we are in such a hyper, and quite frankly, as bad as it hurt me from a business standpoint, I am actually quite happy that the tech industry fell apart in Q1 of this year. Because the grow at all costs, you know, money's free, go, go, go, go, go, forced a lot, like, create a lot of bad habits for a lot of people and took away. I think we way over-engineered the sales process, and we have with the predictable revenue model and everything else.

And now it's all coming to roost because the model doesn't work anymore. The client doesn't get any value out of going through a dipshit, you know, questions and, you know, drone through demos and those type of things. They tolerated it back in the day when it didn't map, like, when I say back in the day, you know, 2010 to 2022, give or take, in the SaaS world is the golden age of sales. And so now sales skills matter, and you're seeing a lot of reps fall apart. And to your point, I think it's getting back to the basics. So can you shed some light from your perspective on how we've evolved and how complex things are right now with all, you know, now what is a challenger customer says there, you know, 5.4 people involved in every decision and everything has to go to the CFO and you have to get consensus and all this other stuff.

But really, when it comes down to it, it's about making connections. So how can you slow down and simplify an ever increasingly complex world of sales and then adding AI into it just blows it through the roof? So how do you do that? Yeah. So first of all, like, part of what you're talking about is the complexity of the sales process. But then if we zoom out even further, just the world in general, like, we are dealing with human beings and this is the world is more complex for everybody. You've got you've got more information coming at us from ever before, like the number of emails we get, social media messages, how much we're looking at our phones, like on and on and on. Like there's the thing the average human being takes in something like 74 gigabytes of information every single day.

Like that's 14 full length movies. Like it's insane. And you go back 500 or a couple thousand years. That's like how many people took in a lifetime. Like it just and it's not slowing down. We all know that it's only going to get worse. But the thing is, like our brains are wired to learn how to focus in on what really matters. It's called selective attention. So you just you we will adapt. But the point is, if you're aware of all this noise that people are are facing and realize like I've got to be succinct and clear in my message, that's the only way I'm going to stand out from all this noise. Combine it with radically shrinking attention spans. I mean, we all feel like we suffer and struggle through this.

But if you understand that the customer is just another human being, just like me, who struggles with to keep their keep attention like now, you realize like, OK, I've got to have a very clear and crisp message. I've got to make sure I'm talking to someone that I can really actually help versus just blasting away to everybody and hoping someone will listen. That if you understand that as the background, I believe it changes the way that you think and you communicate. So this whole idea of, you know, that I that I've kind of coined called selling with simplicity is to get back to the roots or the fundamentals of understanding how customers make decisions and then changing our posture and changing the way we approach it, because really we're in the business of helping other people make decisions and ideally make those decisions faster.

So I've got kind of four different key parts of this that we can kind of kind of tap into. But yeah, that's kind of the that's the summary of it. Love it. And I think that's, you know, and let's get into those. But let me ask you on. A lot of times I talk about stuff like this, and it makes sense when we're having the conversation, but then it's reality hits, right? And and, you know, if it was up to me, we'd have a half an hour to an hour to prep for every single call to, you know, before you made every day. But reality says, you know, management and my belief, quite frankly, is if you just stopped with the volume and just did hyper quality to a very specific audience that you knew you added value to, you would actually 10x your results ultimately.

But the patience, the factor is just not there because it takes a long time to do that, right? Year for you, nine months. You know what I mean? Like that type of thing that took a while. And that's not great for these high growth. You're rubbing it again, nine months, 12 months. It was circumstance. So my guy didn't say we hate you. My guy said that you're the you're the fifth one. So I had a smaller hill to climb. But but, you know, from an organizational standpoint, without being forced to hit that wall and realize I have to change because this isn't working. And so I'm going to burn this sucker to the ground and restart. How do you make that shift as an organization, like as a leader right now to say, we got to put the venture at bay here for a second, get our house in order, simplify things, take a lot more methodical, very direct approach to the people.

How do you how do you slow this train down with how fast, you know, the FOMO of everybody else growing and everything? How do you do that as an organization? Yeah. So I think the first thing is from the very, very top is being clear that our focus is on the customer. Yeah. And and I say that it sounds like cliche, but like is making sure that we really understand, like, what is the mind of today's customer? And let's really understand how customers make decisions, why they buy from us, why they don't buy from us, you know, who is really that kind of right customer. Let's focus our attention there. And I say that because like we at the company that I just left, we just went through this like big exercise and we really kind of zoned in like where, you know, what kind of customers buy, what kind of customers don't buy, when when do they, when don't they, what's really unique and kind of on and on and on.

And the idea is that we're kind of re we were re-centering the tent, the attention on who is the right customer that we can talk to because then we have the right stories to tell. So so generally what I would tell you is, is the more that everybody understands, let's focus on the customer in the way that they think, the better that are armed we are. Now, the the way to do this kind of getting into the steps a little bit is, is understanding that the way that we approach a customer, like is kind of the first thing I call it noise canceling confidence is, is the first thing. So the way we, if we carry ourselves and communicate like we're salespeople, um, then we're going to be perceived that way.

And so, so by removing things like, you know, a high level of attention on activity and, you know, the numbers and the whole thing, like, Hey, and all those things are important to kind of keep an eye on, but the more a company values the metrics and the activities, then the less focus you're putting on the customer and the way that they're thinking. And so, so when, when, when, as an organization, you understand that, you know, the customer, you know, what are the voices and stories we're hearing from customers really matters. Then the way that we carry ourselves, you know, is going to, is going to be what makes a difference. Quick break here to highlight another one of the podcasts on the HubSpot podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals.

Now this one is success story hosted by Scott Clary success story features Q and a sessions with successful business leaders, keynote presentations, and conversations on sales, marketing, business, startups, and entrepreneurship. And I just got introduced to this podcast recently. And one of the ones that really caught my attention was the one with Ryan player. Ryan's the founder of after call a platform that offers science-based healing modalities, such as meditation and breath work to awaken humanity to the next level of consciousness. He also created the Blair foundation, a nonprofit that supports entrepreneurship education for single mothers and at-risk youth. Now you all know, I've been on this journey to learn a lot more about myself and spirituality and all the different things that are more important than the day-to-day lives.

And this is really getting into it. And you also know that I'm a huge proponent of helping at-risk youth and single mothers and women in sales and everything else. So this really struck home. So listen to success story, wherever you get your podcasts and let's make it happen. So that's, so really, again, and I think this is breaking down a lot of the perceptions of sales, right? Is it, how do you, how do you carry yourself? Right? So, you know, cause there's a, there's a fine line between confidence and ego, my friend, and you know it as well as I do. And arrogance. When you come across that ego sales rep, you want to throw up. When you come across that confidence sales rep, you're like, Ooh, I'm gravitated towards.

So how do you build that confidence in an organization on how they carry themselves? Specifically when you have such a diverse crew of sales reps with different experiences and everything else. Yeah. So, so there's a, um, I'll tell you, I'll, I'll kind of share a funny story. So there was a, I remember, uh, in my, I don't know, it was probably my early thirties, late twenties, early thirties. I'm starting to have some success. I worked for a digital marketing firm and we had a great offering really unique in the marketplace. Customers loved it, the whole thing, but we were struggling to grow. And I, in particular, was like starting to have some success, but trying to break through. And we had this new VP of sales and I'm standing at trade show and we're just working the booth.

And, you know, all of a sudden one, at one moment, he looks over and he goes, Hey, how are your commission checks looking? And I'm, I go, uh, yeah, actually pretty good. They're, they're definitely getting better. He goes, go get a new wardrobe. Ouch. What a setup. This guy, he would drive the, drop these zingers all the time. It was hilarious. And he was off and right. Um, and so like, it really kind of instigated his whole kind of thing. That was one example was, is that we've got to carry ourselves with more swagger because we've, we've earned it. And we're in this really unique business. The marketplace needs us. There's a shift in the way the mark marketing world is working and we're bringing something of value.

Now you can't walk in there like an arrogant jerk, like you just kind of talked about, but when a customer, you got to look like you belong in that room. And, and I think that that often, particularly through COVID, I think we got a lot more loose on this. And, and like, I just talked to a client yesterday that, you know, for a, for a speaking opportunity and they're like, we just had this big enterprise deal that we lost because the salesperson showed up like a frigging slop. And, and like, he's literally like the bad, he understands his industry inside and out. Like the customers like generally love him, but like, you know, what do you expect? And so I know it seems like really simple, but the way that we carry ourselves and the way that we look and the whole thing, it absolutely affects the way that a customer makes a decision because they're making judgments every day.

And this kind of what I talked about in the beginning of the way you communicate, being able to articulate your message very clearly and succinctly planning at a time, it makes a difference. And so, you know, there's all kinds of research on this. I'm sure you've seen some of it. I mean, people are willing to say, yes, we just have a tendency to listen to the voice in our head and we hold back and we don't say what we should. We don't speak up about when we think we should. And if we just believe that we were experts and how do we become experts? We teach each other, our enterprises teach us about successful customers, find those common characteristics, and then feel good about it and carry yourself in there with a little bit of confidence.

Then suddenly you get over that hurdle of like, I don't trust this person. And suddenly they start believing because you believe. I think that's the unfortunate thing is we judge quite a bit on looks, right? I mean, I wish we didn't, but we do. And it's just an inherent human nature. And the thing though is I want to make sure that young sales professionals who are listening to this potentially, it's not about just how, you know, showing up the same and being dressed well and confident every time. It's you actually in a lot of ways have to mirror your audience. And the story on that one is I, you know, we used, I used to sell IT services and I was, you know, I was 23 years old. So I was a VP of sales and marketing, which is obviously why titles are a joke.

Um, but, um, you know, and I would dress the role. Right. And, and so, but then I got to a point, I was like, I don't think I know what I'm talking about. And I actually suggested to our company that we hire an SVP, right? So I could learn from them. And I, the first thing this guy did walked in the door and he's like, suits, we're all wearing suits. And I'm like, what? He's like, suits every day, all day. And I'm like, dude, we sell to like plumbers and venture capitalists. Like we are across the board with what we sell. I'm not going to wear a suit to a plumbing office. Sure as shit. It's a hard line, right? Sure as shit. And, and he, we all got tablets at the time, right? To take notes on.

So they looked all slick. Right. And it would, and I remember vividly, I brought him to a plumber, uh, where we were going in to manage their infrastructure and we're sitting there in our, in suits and our, you know, thing. And the, the main CEO comes in and his, you know, polo shirt, uh, um, uh, steel toe boots and jeans. And the first words out of his mouth go, well, you guys look expensive. And I, at that moment I looked over at him. I'm like, see, jackass, you know, like I got no problem wearing a suit in front of a venture capital and finance. Right. But when you fit the role, so like the, the mirroring and the, but that comes with the confidence is knowing that there's these little nuanced things that matter that when you engage with people, they matter.

And whether you like it or not, it's true. It's true that, you know, there was an article in the wall street journal just this morning about how, like how, what, how you look, you know, actually affects your interview, your, your ability to get hired. Like, Hey, there's all kinds of guidelines as there should be around, you know, around kind of, you know, things like, you know, like gender and ethnicity and like, we've got a lot of like, no doubt about it. But like, there's still judgments happening, um, you know, the way that you look and the way you dress and the way you carry yourself, people are making decisions off of it. And, you know, that just kind of the way it is. So the other thing, you know, when you step back on like this whole confidence topic is that, again, you get down to the core, you know, the simple idea is that people buy from people they like and people they trust, trust you.

And we all want to be likable. We try to be likable. We have our good days. We have our bad days, but likability matters. But where does trust come from? Trust is, I believe you're an expert, but trust comes from like, do I trust you? Like as a human, when I look at you and I interact with you, do I trust you? And where does those little inches of lack of trust, voice inflection? Sounding like you're trying to sell somebody something, you know, looking like a slob or looking like you're trying really hard to look like a professional, like wearing a student in plumber's office. Like, so all these little things, they get to the heart and the simple heart of what customers want is I just want to trust somebody and that stuff matters.

So, so one, step one of your, your four steps to simplify, right? First of all, confidence and making sure that you, you belong there. You feel like you belong there, if nothing else. Right. And doing the work to make sure you do belong there. What's the, what's the, what's the next one? So, so there's, so we don't have time to go through all of them, but like the second one I call, you know, because I have to kind of go, I guess what, pick your favorite. Yeah. Right. So a couple others I would touch on. Another next, another one I call is, uh, is I call lead the journey. And so what this is, is all about, you know, to stop selling, like thinking about it as something where you do to somebody and more that the, that the mindset is how I'm helping somebody buy.

Now, you know, I'll give you a kind of a, I'll get to tell you a story, like as an example is so many years ago, I moved out to California for a job and I thought, you know, I'm going to take up running. Uh, I'm living in, I'm living, I moved from Michigan to California. I can be outside all the time. I'm going to take up running. I walked in the store called Roadrunner Sports. It's the Roadrunner Sports is the number one, uh, seller of running shoes and walking shoes in the world. They've been around for like 40 years. Uh, so I walk in and I walk and I see this giant wall of like 80 different pairs of shoes. Like, how is this possible? Like, are there really that many running shoes? So guy walks up to me and says, Hey, you look a little overwhelmed.

Can I help you out? I said, yeah, that's right. Like, I can't believe how many shoes I just want to get a pair of running shoes. They said, he said, all right, well, let's talk about it and figure out and let's, let's figure this out. And I love that comment. Like, let's figure out what's right for you. I'm not going to sell you something. Let's figure it out. And so he said, all right, well, you said you're new to running, right? Yeah. Okay. So you probably don't want to spend a lot of money, but you want to get the right shoe. It sounds like, right? Yeah. Okay, cool. Kind of narrowed in the budget. Then he said, all right, well, so, um, do you plan on running inside or outside? So outside, I want to be in, I want to be in the gray weather.

And I'm thinking to myself, like, I see how that will affect what kind of tread is on the shoe. He said, okay, do you plan on running on a track, on a trail, on the street? Like, really kind of walking me through this process. Yes, I'm going to run on the street. I live down in an apartment down the road. He said, okay, let's go outside now. I'm thinking, this is interesting. So he said, I want you to take a run, a light jog over to the flagpole, and then come on back. And so I did. And he said, all right, so what I was doing is looking at how your foot strikes the ground. Is it laying on the outside and roll in, the inside and roll out, more neutral? It's called supination, pronation. It's not good or bad, but everybody's different.

And the different shoes are better for different types of runners. Do the same thing from the side. Again, I'm looking at your foot, you strike the heel on your toe on the neutral, different shoes better for different people. And he said, hey, by the way, I noticed like, get your shoulders back a little bit more, shorten your stride, it'll make you a more efficient runner. Had nothing to do with the shoes, but he's establishing himself as an expert and giving me some advice. You go back in, he says, all right, here's the three shoes that are right for you. Try them on, let me know what you think. And so what he did was, he led me through this journey of figuring out what was right. He was guiding me, but then he relinquished all the control back to me.

I, and as buyers, like we want to be in control, but we want, we need someone's help to guide us there and lead us there. You know, there's been so much talk about, you know, buyers are more in control, which they are. They want to run more of the process on their own, which is false. There's 23% higher buyer's remorse when you don't have a salesperson to work with. Customers want to be in control and they should be in control. So help them feel in control, put them in control, but ultimately they want us to guide them through the process. So this whole idea of like leading the journey is looking at yourself. I kind of think of it almost like I'm a shepherd and I'm leading the sheep through, you know, through the field.

Like I'm the expert, I'm helping them through, I'm helping the customer understand their blind spots. I'm helping them understand, I'm helping understand their business better and maybe helping them understand their business better by asking the right questions and ultimately get to the right conclusions on their own. With me simply as the guide. Yep. And I think that's the trend there with product-led growth and a lot of these companies going out there. Like this is what I'm seeing right now and to see what you see is, you know, this convergence of sales, marketing, and CS in a lot of ways. Because for instance, sales reps need to be mini marketers right now. They have to have a brand. They have to do all these activities to leave positive impressions.

Because very few people are just like, yep, you caught me at the right time. Let's go. But they also have to be more educated on the product itself so that they can help, to your point, guide the client through it. And this whole trend of PLG, which is where all the VCs are putting all their money, is it's no longer just like the freemium version. And then, okay, you got 15 people using this. Let's get the enterprise, which was the kind of Dropbox, Box, Tableau, that approach. This is now literally get the product in the hands of the people, the full product in the hands of the people, help them figure out how to use it most effectively, and then sell, quote unquote, sell them. But you guide them through the best parts of it.

Because we've been taught to hold back on a lot of stuff. And I think we're shifting to a point where, no, no, no, no. I'm going to give you everything. Like, let me show you exactly where the flaws of this are and everything else. And that transparency builds trust. So are you seeing that, let me ask you this, product knowledge. I used to think sales reps, they need to know enough to bring in the experts and to go from there. Now I'm leaning more towards we have to know a little bit more about this product so we can answer more questions and guide them through. Where are you on what level of product knowledge a sales rep has to have in this world, in this complex world that we're in helping people make decisions?

So I'm actually a little bit more towards the prior. So that you need to have a decent amount of knowledge to actually be an expert to help the customer. But what I think, and I think it's going to be more valued over time and some AI, some stuff is driving some of this, which I know you tend to talk about, is that what I fear, what I think is starting to happen, is that if we become too product focused, suddenly we start falling on some of those fundamentals we talked about earlier, we start falling down on the, there was this research, I don't know where it is, so I have two people told me about the last couple of days, about how over the course of time, a lot of times an enterprise seller, when they're new to a business, they're very focused on asking questions, understand the challenges, understand the problems, and they start having a lot of success.

And the more educated they become about the product, suddenly they start, it starts eroding. Because they lose, suddenly they're becoming more product focused and less customer focused. So, so I think, you know, like everything, there's a balance. Sure. However, what I think can happen is if you become too, and I, I saw this happen in my last company, like people became so entrenched into the technology that I'd say, well, I'd ask a question like, well, what's the customer's goal behind this? Oh yeah, I don't know. All I know is that this is the product that they asked for. Okay. You probably went really deep on that technology, didn't you? Yep. Because I know it inside and out. Okay. But you've missed like the whole thing.

You didn't zoom out. And so that's kind of where I, I, I fear that I think the product led growth strategy is fantastic in the right place. And I think it's a, it's a great way to invite the customer in, you know, like HubSpot's original, like a website greater tool, like the ultimate of all product led growth ideas. Right. Oh my God. Genius. But then, you know, what would happen? Like all of a sudden you go through this thing and then, you know, Mark Roberge on the phone with you and you're like, where do I sign? You know? So, but the point is like, you know, look what they did. That was all like a, like they would lead you through a great product to guide you along the way. But I need someone to kind of like be at my side and nudge me in the right direction and encourage me to make a decision and guide me along the way.

Yeah. I think, you know, I've thought about, I still, I'm, I'm leaning more. We need to know more because we, we need to know some, right. But especially on that front end, like if we get somebody, catch somebody, whatever it is, you know, you strike gold and you have, okay, yeah, it sounds kind of interesting. If you let me off the hook right there, cause you can't answer those questions like an SDR BDR type of scenario, I'm probably gone forever. So I think we need to do a little bit more there. I think that we almost, the, the, the sales rep though, I think has gotten very lazy by using the SE, the sales engineer to do the majority of that product. So it's almost, they've, they've kind of just, and I know, and I'm, well, I'm going to put myself in this position.

When I had sales engineers, I got lazy because they were the smart ones. And I was just here to coordinate. Right. And, and because of that, I, I got lazy in a lot of ways, but I think it's more problem expert versus product expert. If you can, because if you, if you get, if you look at your example with the shoes, right, that guy might not have known like the rubber and the soles and the insoles and all that, but he knew the problem. He was an expert in the problem. And I think that's what we got to get better at as sales rep is we need to be experts at the problem that these companies are facing so we can educate. And your, your, your SE, your sales engineer example. Like, I think first of all, like it's very powerful when a company can get to the point where they can have sales engineers and experts to go tap into.

No doubt about it. The sales person has got to be that quarterback and be like, all right, I got, I know the problem. I know we're going to, let me go grab the right people or SEs and I'm going to pull them in. However, I do think that the, a, your top performers, they can pull it off on their own. Yeah. Like they could probably pull off the sales engineering thing. If the sales engineer wasn't available, they wouldn't be as good at it, but they could pull it off. So maybe that's like closer to what you're saying. It's like, I could do it. Maybe not as good, but I, I, I know the product and nuances enough, but like, I'm more of a problem person, as you put it, than a product person. And I think that's like, look, you don't want to go toe to toe with an engineer.

Like if I, if I, if I have like a deep technical engineer, who's asking deep technical problems, I'm going to run the hell away from that. First of all, they don't trust going back to your original point. They don't trust me in the first place. Right. I mean, especially engineers, they just straight up do not trust sales reps. So regardless of whether I can walk them through that, I got to do a lot of work to break through that barrier. But if I get an engineer to go toe to toe with them, but I should be, to your point, I should be able to carry the business level conversation with almost anybody in the organization about what we do and the problem and show them how to get it from an, from a technical standpoint.

No doubt. No doubt. Um, yeah. Where do you see things going now with, uh, and we can finish on this topic with, with AI. And do you think AI is not complicating things or do you think it actually has the ability to simplify things? I think it 100% has the opportunity to simplify things. Okay. I think that we're going through a phase, which is, is very reminiscent of early internet days, you know, early SAS days where it looked like on one side, like, oh my God, this is a silver bullet and I'm going to be left behind. Um, and then it went through all this disruption and like, oh, this is going to ruin everyone. It's going to change our personalities. And like, you know, I'm never, no one's ever doing anything again, you know, but it's just going to move through this kind of process.

Um, and in the end, um, you know, hopefully it's all done the right way, but that, um, it'll make it simpler and it'll make us smarter. What it'll also do is it will allow, is why I love like some of the problems that are happening out there because it will increase the value of people who are, who are intelligent and are genuine and are good human listeners. Like it'll make that stand out like never before. Like, and you think of prospecting and the crappy posts and emails and all the stuff that we get, they're so obvious, you know, it'll make that garbage stand out and it'll be a lot easier to kind of separate yourself. So the key will be finding that balance. I mean, I like, I'm, I'm empowered by it every day.

Like it just helps me make steps faster. So I'm not starting with a blank piece of paper all the time. Like I have something that's kind of kicking me off. Um, and to me that's making it simpler and more concise and more clear. And, um, it's good. It's going to end up being a better world because of it. Yeah, I, I think you're right. And I hope you're right, you know, to your point, you know, there's a lot of bad actors out there, obviously. And the way I always look at AI is, you know, augmentation versus automation. If you're looking to automate, then you might as well just pack it up and, you know, cause you can automate your job if that's the case. But if you're looking to augment, man, this is such a powerful tool to, to, to synthesize information, to prepare for things, to give you perspectives, to bring you up to speed.

It's a, it's, I mean, it's, it's mind numbing what it is. So I think a lot of people are seeing it as complex as they think it is, but with the user interface that basically commercialized AI to the world, it's, it is undeniable the power that it has in the right hands. Yeah. No doubt about it. Awesome. No doubt. All right. Well, let's, let's finish up where, um, uh, I know you got a lot of stuff going on. You got the keynotes that you do and everything else. So where can people, uh, find out a little bit more information? You got the book too. So talk to us about where you can find a little bit of information where you want people to connect. Yeah, no doubt. Thanks. So, yeah, so I, I, um, I, I do a good amount of keynote speaking sales, kickoff sales, leadership, growth topics called selling with simplicity, leading with simplicity.

You can learn more about all that at meetbobmarsh.com. Uh, I've got information, videos, active blog, the whole thing. Uh, I'm also relatively active on LinkedIn, so you can all find me on LinkedIn. Um, yeah, I'm in, I'm in the business of helping, of kind of sharing this story through keynote speeches. Um, and then I'm also an active chief revenue officer. So I'm in the trenches like everybody else with a company called impact 11, where we're helping other people kind of get into the world of professional speaking, share their voices, improve their voices, get stronger at it. Um, so that we can bring more of these really good messages out to the world. So, um, you can find me in any, any of those ways.

All right. Perfect. Well, go out there and for those listeners, it's pretty easy. Bob Marsh, uh, so it's not Robert or anything. It's Bob Marsh on LinkedIn. Yes. Yes. Just making sure. Perfect. Awesome. Bob. Well, thanks so much for coming on. It was good to see you again. And I appreciate the conversation, John. Thank you as always. Absolutely. And everybody else, hopefully you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. And that got you to think about just slowing down a little bit, right? Maybe slow down to speed up these days. And, uh, like I always say at the end, all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause no matter how bad your day went, or you think it's going, you make somebody smile and you know, you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now.

So thank you all very much. And I will see you on the other side. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did with your support and our incredible guests. We're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now. And I can't thank you enough now to keep the momentum going. It would mean the world to me. If you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network. Also check out my new website, jaybarrows.com. Well, you'll find even more ways to engage. There's a ton of free content and you can also get trained from me directly as an individual or for your team. Look, I'm out there selling every day, just like you are, and I'm doing my best to stay on top of all the latest trends in sales and technology.

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