Doug Landis on How to Attract and Retain Talent in Sales

Hey everyone, the Make It Happen Monday podcast is back in business. I'm sorry we've been gone for a little while, but I need to take a little bit of a break to reset and recharge as we retooled the podcast and now we're ready to take things to a whole new level. Now I started this podcast a while ago with the goal of learning from people who are way smarter than me while sharing my journey along the way and trying to help others achieve whatever their definition of success means to them. And with your support and our incredible guests, we're now one of the top sales podcasts in the industry with over a million downloads and I can't thank you enough. Moving forward, my goal is to continue to bring you interesting conversations that will get you to think and execute more effectively with guests who I truly respect and believe make a positive impact on the world around us.

To kick off the new and improved Make It Happen podcast, I couldn't think of a better person to have on than my good friend Doug Landis. If you've been listening to this podcast, you've heard Doug before and you know the knowledge and insights he brings to the table. He's been a leader in sales and sales enablement at companies like Oracle, Google, Salesforce, and now works as a growth partner at Emergence Capital, who's a VC firm that invests in AI-based tech companies. In this episode, Doug and I tackle the importance of core values and how the past few years has forced companies and individuals to re-examine their own values and start living them with purpose to achieve real success. We then get into the so-called Great Recession and what companies and leaders need to be focused on to attract and retain talent.

We even dive into the metaverse and NFTs and the impact they're having on business these days. So I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I do. Let's get going. What's happening, Make It Happen family? Big shout out to our partners today, Gong, Proposify, Vidyard, and Chili Piper. Gong's data is more than valuable. It's cornerstone in any organization looking to collect the data that's going to tell them where they can improve and where they need to spend their time making changes. Proposify is one of my favorite teams of all time. What they do is they make the proposal and contract processes easy for the sender and the recipient. And who can't benefit from that being a great experience, right?

Vidyard makes it easy for people to use videos anywhere. No matter whether you're sending videos in email or on social media, posting them somewhere, or sending them in a DM, Vidyard has got you covered. Our friends at Chili Piper are so much fun to be around. They make it easy for people to get on your calendar. And every sales rep has got to have this function locked in. It's one of the most important things we can do as a seller. How can I get you on my calendar easily? Chili Piper can make that happen for you. Be sure that you're checking out all these great tools. And now let's pass it over to John to find out who's joining him today. See you soon, everybody. All right. Let's welcome back to the podcast for, I don't know, third, fourth, fifth time here.

My good friend, Doug Landis. How are you doing, brother? I'm great. Great, great, great, man. Good to be back. What is this? Is this like the fourth time? I think it's like the fourth time. Yeah. I hope everybody is not getting too sick of us because you and I can rent. We can, we can kind of go off on teams. I mean, look, we're seasoned, you know, salty seasons, gray hair. I have gray hair. You don't. I don't have any. That's why I shaved it off. I got to keep the beard tight too, because when the beard goes a little too long, you start to see the gray. It starts to be gray, right? That's crazy, but it's funny. So I was thinking, I'm like, man, you know, I can't, I can't imagine, you know, how, how much we've, you and I have been riffing about, I don't know, just a million topics there are about, you know, sales, go to market, startups, leadership, the world we live in and life in general.

And, um, I can never get enough of it, but I hope your audience is, is in the same boat. I, you know what, man, um, the, the reason I started this podcast was to, to educate myself and, and learn from people who I respect and, and I'm, I'm trying to be the proxy to the audience. Right. And so to me, every time I have a conversation with you, I learned something new. So hopefully I, I, I trust the audience has got the same thing. And, and also, you know, um, to start things off, you know, I, with all the shit that's going on right now, I mean, you, you and I go back about 10 years now at this point. And, um, you know, I decided that moving into the new year, I really only want to be around and talk to people who, you know, who are positive energy.

You know what I mean? And are like, I got this whole concept instead of time management, energy management, right? Like what gives you energy and what takes energy away from you. And I've committed this year to, I mean, obviously there's going to be things that I have to react to that take energy away from me, but proactively who I choose to spend my time with is going to be just people who I genuinely enjoy having conversations with and give me energy. And the same thing with customers too. Like, I don't know about you, but I just don't have any tolerance or patience for negative energy anymore. Cause there's just too much of it out there. Well, there's, I mean, the world is full of it right now.

Right. And so interestingly enough, I think, I think before we had to think about ways in which, you know, we had to go, we had to go find the experiences that were giving us energy. You know, and, and largely you had, I feel like you had more freedom and more choice. Now it's like, you have to be so much more mindful and particular about the things that are giving you positive energy because there's so much negative energy in the world right now. I mean, you, you had said something, you know, you did a post a little while back about the lollipop moment about people who, you know, have, have made a positive impact. Could you explain kind of what, cause I had never actually known about the lollipop moment.

So could you explain kind of what that is? Yeah, it's a, it was a really beautiful story that a friend of mine shared with me. It was a Ted talk. Um, and it was about leadership and the conceptually, the idea is leadership basically exists anywhere and everywhere. And the lollipop moment actually, as the story goes, and I might do a, I might bastardize this here just a little bit, but a guy was a young girl was going off to college and she was scared to death about going off to college. And she went there with her mom and she was standing in line to register and, and everything in her body was saying, leave, leave, leave. This just doesn't feel right. Um, and a, and a, and a real, when you see this guy speak, he's kind of a big dork and, um, um, he was there, uh, trying to promote a nonprofit organization that he was working with.

And he walked up and he was walking up to everybody, giving everyone lollipops and he walked up to her and he handed her a lollipop. And he made a comment to her, to the person in front of her about, you know, Hey, isn't she, you know, one of the most beautiful people you've ever seen. And that experience, the fact that he took time out of his day to acknowledge someone, to recognize someone, to be present with someone, um, really changed her life. And she chose at that moment to stay in school. And interestingly enough, she also started dating the person in front of her, the guy that, the guy that he said, isn't she the most beautiful person they dated, they ended up getting married. They invited him to the wedding.

Right. So it's like, it's, to be honest, it's like the ripple effects of the little things that you do. I think, you know, in this world right now, there's where this world is full of so much negativity and so much hard energy. I think we have an opportunity if you're present and just be mindful about making someone's day just a little bit better, even though you may be in the midst of your own chaos, um, you can really change someone's life and in turn change your own life. And that's that what he was saying is like, that's real leadership. We think about leadership as this, this concept, which is, you know, oh, it's something that we all strive for like leadership to be a CEO or maybe a CRO or a president, president of a country in some cases.

Um, but no leadership can happen in your house. It can happen in your own and it does happen every single day. You have the opportunity to lead, to show other people what life can be like if you make a different choice. And, and that's a good transition to, to kind of talking about where we're at today, you know, because, you know, another one, I remember you posted a while back about the great resignation is bullshit, right? There's, there's no real difference, um, of the numbers now or last, you know, you know, six months ago, whatever it is that it was two years ago. Right. And the other part of this is that I think this, the, the, everybody talking about this great resignation, it's a very small sliver of society that is going through that, if at all, because if you think of like a single mom working three jobs, like to, to try to put food on the table, there's no great resignation happening there.

They don't have those options. You know, the privileged white kid like me who works in the SAS world and says, oh, I don't like this company because they don't fucking give me, you know, eight weeks of vacation. I can go over there. Sure. That's a great resignation. Right, right, right, right. But for the masses out there, it's not, there's, there's, there's aren't those options out there. And so, so, but I do think that I've noticed a pretty significant shift in what people find important, right? I think that if there is a, you know, I, I think there's, there are a bunch of silver linings here with the COVID situation, but I think one of them is, is that I think a lot of people have taken that step back to say what is really important to us, right?

What, what matters. And for me personally, like getting off of an airplane and being able to put Charlotte to bed every night and have dinner with my wife, you know, all that stuff, like those have become far more important to me than, than, you know, that trip to wherever the miles that I get here, the status that I get. And so what do you, from your standpoint, you know, you work with a lot of leaders out there, you know, of organizations that you invest in and everything else. Have you seen a shift in leadership? Um, as far as their actions, not their words, because I think a lot of people say, Oh yeah, we got to change and no, I'm, I'm, I've changed my approach, but have you seen actual concrete, actionable change in leadership over the past year or so?

I think there's still a ton of room left to change, to be totally honest with you. I think we've been talking about it. It, you know, look, change takes time and the great resignation is this topic. That's been, you know, we'll, we'll say kind of top of the, you know, it's been kind of top of everyone's mind for the last six months, maybe the last year, we'll just call it that. But, but let's, let's, let's think about this. 80% of the world's workers do not work behind a desk. The deskless workforce out there is much bigger than all you and I and our little SAS companies or DC firms. They're all stressed out, worried about hiring, hiring AEs and SDRs and CSMs. Everybody else out there doesn't work behind a desk because they work in a manufacturing facility or a hospital or a hotel or a restaurant.

I mean, you know, so this rate, great resignation is, as you said, is impacting a very small percentage of us. And it's kind of like, you know what, you're in the 1% most likely, you know, the rest of us that are worrying about hiring. Now I'm not going to lie. Hiring has become much more difficult. It's become more difficult because people realize to your point, well, if I can get my job done, if I can work, but not actually have to be in San Francisco or in the city of New York or in the city of Chicago, I can be in Idaho. I can be in Arizona. I can be somewhere where I have better work-life balance, where I feel better because I'm not caught up in the rat race, especially with the expenses, then why not?

Right. And I think what's happened was COVID gave everyone an excuse to ask that question and leadership didn't have a good enough answer. And trust me, we had a number of early stage companies that were like, no, no, no, we're only hiring in San Francisco. We're only hiring in New York. We only are hiring where our headquarters is. I guess what happened? Six months into it, they're like, okay, we have to change our strategy because we can't hit our hiring numbers. Right. And I'll tell you for any, any sales leader, right now, January is the most stressful month because you realize that if you don't get your butts in seats, you don't have enough quota capacity to actually get to your revenue targets.

And now you're, you're online. Right. So, you know, the great resignation to me was more of a wake up call to say, Hey, listen, the perks that we used to love, you know, the free food and the games and the, you know, the happy hours and all that stuff. It's different now. We, we have, we want, we have different perks that we want, right. We want flexibility. We want, we want more freedom, but we also still want you to care just as much. Yeah. And that's, and that's the challenge, right? I think the, the, the disconnect. So I think you and I are in a, I mean, are fortunate in a lot of ways, but in one of them is, we've been, we've been in this game for a while. So, you know, you know, 45, right.

Like I, I did the, you know, worked in the bullpen with a crew and got to know people and learned how to develop relationships. Right. Learned. I went out to networking events. I mean, literally when I was starting my career, I, I had, I would join like three networking groups a week where I'd wake up at six 30 in the morning, go there, network, then cold call and meet with people all day and then go to five or six networking events a week too. Right. And be up until eight o'clock. Right. So, you know, 10 o'clock at night. So I, I learned that skill of, of networking of relationship development. I am scared right now. I am worried, not scared, worried for the kids coming into the workforce in this environment that is the remote environment.

And so what do you think we need to do now? Or where do you think this is headed with this whole, and let's, let's go to our world now, like not the 80%, but let's go to our world of these kids coming into the workforce. Well, I mean, it probably does speak to the 80% as well that aren't getting that ability to sit with the team and get the, you know, the secondary conversations, the water cooler stuff and, and, and learn how to cultivate those relationships. Are you, do you see, where do you see this going? And what, what do you see this, this over the next few years here that causing? Yeah, that's, that's the hardest part, to be honest, you know, that's the one thing that I say that I miss the most about this new, new environment that we're in is, you know, like you, I travel all the time.

I go to all of our portfolio companies all over the world, honestly. And, and the one thing that you miss is the dynamic water cooler conversations, right? You and I are having a conversation in the hallway, somebody walks by, they jump in the conversation. Next thing you know, we're covering a really important topic that hadn't really, we hadn't really thought about, right? We didn't realize was actually something that we could potentially solve for or elevate, or at least at a minimum discuss. And, and that doesn't happen in this new world. And I think we're going to, we're going to have to find more ways to be more, and this is, this is a super risky statement because unfortunately in this environment, I feel like we're, we're on even more because we're online and we've got more, people have more access to us and it's more kind of, the hours feel longer.

However, there needs to be ways in which we can have more, create that dynamic environment, right? So one of the things that I know people are doing, leaders in particular, be like, I'm leaving my Zoom room on and open. Come in, just knock on the door as if I had an office and come in and bring your conversations to me. And, and it's interesting because I actually just saw somebody post about this yesterday. They had their first experience in the metaverse and we've seen some applications that create, that create this like environment where you are a figure in an experience in a room. And as you move around the room, you could hear different conversations. And to be honest, you know, a year ago when we saw this, we're like, it's pretty cool.

It still has a little ways to go. Today, it's, it's, it feels almost like you're there. And, and that's going to have to happen. It's going to have to happen. You know, there's going to be a happy hour and there's going to be a room and all of us are going to have these little figureheads in there. And I'm going to walk over here and I'm have a conversation with you and Kyle. And then I'm going to walk over here and I'm going to have a conversation with, you know, with some, some new leaders that I've never met. And I'm going to be able to navigate that because we're all in a room together. And for that, to be honest, I'm kind of excited about that because we get back to those like dynamic conversations that you don't have right now, because everything has to be scheduled meeting or call.

I will tell you right now. I mean, if there's one thing that I, you know, I got the Oculus goggles probably like three years ago, four, actually four or five years ago, I got the one that was hooked in and it had the cord. Right. And then I upgraded to the, what the wireless ones, uh, cause my stupid rabbit ate the cord. But, um, but, but I, when I put those on the first time, I was like, Holy shit. And I finally saw that connection. And now NFTs, I don't know about you and you're, you're, you're, you have your finger on the pulse of the tech side more than I do, but I've never seen in my life, something progress faster than NFT metaverse defy, like this whole web three shit, man. Like a year ago, I was like, ah, and then it was like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa.

And now it's taking over everything. And look, I think you and I are old enough again to, to remember that this is kind of like the internet, right? When the internet first came out in the mid nineties, people like, this is a joke. It's a fad. It's never going to, and then it exploded and there was all sorts of weird shit. And then it crashed fucking overnight. And then it rebuilt to, to, to basically run our lives now. And I see that with NFTs and metaverse. And as much as we roll our eyes at metaverse, in a lot of ways, being like all fucking virtual environment, man, it is coming and it's coming strong. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. This is going to be the new way we do conferences in many ways.

Um, so, so it's funny. I was thinking about this the other day too. It's like, how do we train people to, to, um, you know, we oftentimes talk about networking skills, right? So back in the day when we used to do these networking events and, and to be honest, living in San Francisco back in the day, and of course we're dating ourselves now, but I could literally be fed by the number of happy hours and parties that I went to every night, right? You paid 10 bucks, you get a smorgasbord of shit and a bunch of free drinks. It's amazing. It was so great. However, like today with this new environment, you know, one of the things we have to teach people is like, how do you actually approach someone in the metaverse or in this digital domain that we're, that we're in that we're, because we're not used to, you know, we're all not sitting in a room together.

It's like, how do you teach them to approach someone? What is networking look and feel like? How do you network in this new environment? Because it's going to be slightly different. Um, people's boundaries are going to shift and they're going to change a little bit. So it's, it's definitely coming. We are super early. It's like, you know, it's the edge of it, but Microsoft buying Activision yesterday for $68 billion tells you this is real. This is happening. Facebook changing their name to meta. This is happening. There's no question. So, so, so get on board now. NFTs, the whole domain. That's crazy. You know, what's interesting about NFTs. My belief is this. It's like, look at the end of the day, it's all about someone's willingness to pay.

And so if you create enough, if you create enough demand for something, whether that's real or false, someone's going to pay for it. And if they're willing to pay for it, then there you go. There's the value of it. Well, what struck me, I'm actually taking a course on NFTs right now, which is blowing my mind. And, and he compared it where, where, and I, I crossed this bridge a long time ago because I, first I was like, this is dumb. Right. But I've been following, you know, I follow Gary Vee a ton and I watched his launch of his NFT thing. And I've started to make sense to me. And it's like, you know, I have, I have a Michael Jordan rookie card, right? So it's a, it's an actual physical card.

It's a Michael Jordan rookie. It's in mint condition. It's probably worth, you know, a hundred thousand dollars, whatever it is. But Doug, you've never been to my house, right? You've never been to my physical house. So I can't show you that. Right. So people say, well, it's a physical thing, but it's this digital thing and who cares? Well, guess what? Or the Mona Lisa, for instance, right? The Mona Lisa, there's one Mona Lisa and people, the Louvre, like 80% of the people that go to the Louvre are going for, to see that thing. Have that experience. Yeah. Now I had the Mona Lisa picture poster in my fucking college dorm room. Right. So you look at it and like, well, what the fuck? Like I got the Mona Lisa there.

It actually looks better here than it does in person. I don't know if you've ever seen the Mona Lisa in person. It looks like shit. It's like, you know, it's tiny and it's between like eight, you know, inches of glass. But, but you think about that in the metaverse or you think about that in NFTs, now you come over to my virtual house and I can show you all my shit and it's all about scarcity. Right. So you just have to make this mental shift to understand that the world of, you know, ready player one is, is going to happen whether we like it or not. Now, how do we, how do we address that as the, both the physical and the virtual world? That's what I'm super curious about is like virtual augmentation, not virtual reality.

Right. Which is where I don't, I mean, you've seen the Apple glasses that have come out now. Yeah. Right. Have you seen those things? Yeah. I haven't actually worn them. I just, to your point about Oculus, which I just got one over Christmas and I put it on and I was like, I remember reaching out to him like, dude, what games can we play together? Cause this is pretty cool. I'm not gonna lie. It's pretty cool. Now, is this how I want to do business? Not exactly. Cause the headset's kind of big and awkward and funky. And you know, when the headsets get a little bit better, I think, you know, it's, it's definitely going to be a, it's, it's definitely going to be more a part of our everyday norm.

To be honest, you know, let's say this virtual world, to be, to be totally honest, this is something that I know it's been, we've tried this for years now, but I feel like over the next year or two, this is going to happen, but we're going to be able to start to send out headsets to our sales teams so that we can actually train them in simulations, real life simulations. You know, someone's going to walk in, it's going to be a computer program and they're going to, they're going to act as if they are a prospect or a customer. And you're going to have that experience without actually having to get on a plane and go meet with that, go meet with a physical customer. So that when you get in on your zoom call and you're having a conversation with the customer, you can recreate that.

In fact, I just met a company called Zenerate. Now they do this for customer support, but it is a simulation where the AI actually talks to you. And I saw it and I was like, wait, what did she just say? And did you program that? And they said, well, you know, look, all AI models have to be taught, right? And then they learn and they get smarter and they get better. And so you create a scenario, you teach the AI that scenario, and then it just learns. It's cool and creepy at the same time. So throw a headset on with this virtual person and next thing you know. And so, you know, I think from a training perspective, that's that's happening. That's coming. No question. What's up, everybody? I know you're enjoying this conversation.

John does a great job with genuine curiosity on these episodes and our guests consistently bring the heat. We want to take a moment here and let you know that you've got an opportunity, an opportunity to become better than you were yesterday. And you can do so by gaining access to all of JB sales content. All of their training tips, techniques, tactics, and takeaways can be yours for $1 a day. $365 for the year gets you annual access to everything, including our private Slack channel for members only, which you get access to all of us directly 100% of the time, 24 hours a day. And then at the same time, you're going to get access to our biweekly ask me anything sessions where you can bring real deals to the table and get the help that you need where you need it.

This is very, very important. Sales reps that invest in themselves are often found at the tops of their leaderboards. Join us today and get the help you need to become the seller that you deserve to be. That URL one more time is joinjbsales.com. Let's get back to the show with JB and our guests for this week. So I guess what skills from your perspective with, with this shift remote with this, you know, the customer, you know, the customer experience being everything, um, you know, all these different macro things, you know, product led growth. We've all talked about this on our previous podcast. Like, what do you think the skills, um, that rep or, you know, younger kids coming into the, to the environment are, or should be focused on at this point?

Should it be the interpersonal skills? Should it be the, the technical skills to be able to use all this stuff? I mean, all of the above, obviously, but if there was a, if there was one that you would pick, um, what skills do you think are going to be more important moving forward than they are now, for instance? Well, it feels like to me, I'm always going to go back to the interpersonal, the technical, yes, it matters. Some people just have an affinity towards technology and others don't. But the one thing that is, is shifting, and I was having this conversation just yesterday, in fact, the buyer journey hasn't changed that much. Selling, by the way, hasn't really changed that much. If you think about, you know, the snake oil salesman is our buddy, Todd Caponi likes to talk about and what they were going through to today.

It hasn't really changed that much. The thing that's changed is when I get ahold of you, John, and you finally respond, whether that's in the virtual world, or whether I run into you in an airport, or whether you pick up the cell phone, because I get your cell phone number, I have to be on. I have one shot. And I'm thinking of an Eminem song now. You better lose yourself in the moment, whatever you're right, because I got one shot. That's my hype song for training, by the way. It's the best song ever, or one of the top 10 at least, right? But like, I got one shot, so I've got to be on my game. And so, you know, you can't, you don't get a whole lot of opportunities because there's just not enough time.

And also, given how much work we've done as buyers leading up to this, you got to know, I know my stuff, right? I likely, as a buyer, have a very prepared mind. So you, as a seller, have to be even more prepared than you ever were before. And this is why I'm more convinced than ever that, you know, and I actually, right before we got on this podcast, I was a sales call with Sophos and, you know, they were asking like, hey, what skills? And my comment was business acumen, right? Because the, and this is why I think it's accelerating the shift of predictable revenue, because we've talked about this before, where, you know, predictable revenue model of taking inbound kids, you know, 22 years old, taking inbounds and then making them make cold calls just to set up meetings and then going to AES and be mid-market enterprise.

That is fantastic from a business growth standpoint. I can scale a sales team pretty, pretty efficiently with cheap resources, grow them up, but that's not customer centric in any way, shape or form. Nobody likes to be handed off 15 times. And COVID proved this because when COVID hit and everything went remote, you know, SDRs, these poor kids, I mean, executives don't want to talk to SDRs in a good economy for crying out loud, but in a bad economy, to have a kid call you up and give a, like a basic bitch pitch, and then maybe ask a couple of bant questions. And then maybe just maybe they hit the holy fucking grail where you're like, holy shit, I'm kind of interested in what you had to say. And you ask that one layer deep question, and then they fall apart and say, I can't do that.

Let me bring in an AE, let me bring in an SE. Like, I have zero tolerance for that. Like if to your point, if you catch me, and if you catch my attention for that brief second, if I don't get value out of that brief second, this conversation is over. Your chances are done. And so I think that's where the, I think the shift of techniques and all this other stuff, that's fine. That's just to get the conversation. But once you have that undivided attention, man, your business acumen needs to be fucking on point to be able to have to be able to get me to stop and think for two seconds and go, huh, I haven't thought about it that way. Or that's a good question. Why'd you ask that? And I'm going to go deeper on this.

And you better give me that information right now. Cause otherwise I ain't giving you a second chance. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so, and, and look, to be honest, the expectation is a lot higher because look, you're, you're at home, right? You're working remotely wherever you may be. That gives you more time and freedom and space to actually do your homework, to be prepared, to come prepared to the conversation. Not like, you know, I, I tell you what I, I find I'm responding more and more to outreach. And what I'm noticing is it hasn't changed. And that's what, that's what makes me sad, right? The tactics and the techniques that people were using two years ago, they're still using them today.

And it's, and it's like, dude, are you serious? You still haven't done your homework. It's still not relevant. You're not bringing any, any value to this conversation quickly, right out of the gate. And it's like, what are you doing? What, how are you using this time working from home now or working remotely to, to get better? And, and to your point, I'd say, you know, business acumen, it's funny. Cause that's all, was all my focus for our companies last year is look, you have to understand how to come to every conversation with a prepared mind and a point of view and a hypothesis about, about their business, about their role and about their current state and their environment and why they would ever want to change.

And if you don't have that, you are wasting my time as a buyer. Yeah. That's, I mean, time is the most valuable asset any of us have, obviously we can't get back. So if you're going to waste my time, this is what, I mean, to, to your point of like the same tactics, right. I mean, still to this day, I, you know, I rip on demos like you read about because every one of them is the same thing. They start with the three slides of like our company background, our history, our client list and our rewards. And, and I, and I just, and I, anybody, and look, I got the marketing background, so I get it. And I, but I just asked them, I go, let's just put a couple of data points together here. What's the number one thing that everybody loves talking about themselves, right?

Nobody gives a shit about us. So, and what's the most valuable asset any of us have time. So you're telling me that you're going to take my time, my most valuable asset in the first 10, 15 minutes of the goddamn conversation. You're going to talk all about you. Are you out of your fucking mind? Like you better be, you better be the, the influencer of all influencers. That is like the challenger sale dream job, you know, where you are just, then I'll listen to you. But if you're some 22, 25 year old kid, make it like, boo, like, I don't want to listen to this shit. I want to have a conversation. And I think that's the, that's the zone I'm living in here, which I, and I'd love to get your perspective is that I really honed in on this, which is there's two thresholds, right?

One is the give a shit factor. Like I can't get you to give a shit. Okay. So, but once you give a shit and once you care about your profession, about growth, about that type of stuff, then it's about using tactics and techniques to get to a conversation and elevate yourself to eventually to the point where you'll be conscious, unconsciously competent in what you do. Like you and I, in a lot of ways, I, I train this stuff six ways to Sunday, right? I don't use a lot of the techniques that I train anymore because they're just internalized for me at this point. I'm unconsciously competent with my conversations. I can, I can have a mental agenda of how I want to see this conversation go and then know what my outcomes are going to be.

But that middle zone of the kids who are getting into it, they need these tactics to, to get them to a point where they can have a conversation. And so I guess, you know, from your standpoint, like what are some of the things that, that can accelerate that, that middle zone? I can't accelerate the give a shit factor. Right. And I think that's what leadership needs to do to, to figure out how to get the reps to care or hire the reps that care. Right. And that's what I think a big shift in the value of, you know, when you took about your core values, right? Like once you align those, it becomes a lot easier. But where do you see that journey breaking down or where are some of the ways that we can accelerate that?

Wow. Um, that was a lot in that question because I've been in four things that just popped into my head and I'm like, shit, where do I go with this? Um, the first thing is like, look, the give a shit factor. I think one of the things that we do when we're interviewing candidates is we have to try to figure out how do we know their, how much they care about this problem, about our customers, about winning, about, you know, really, you know, succeeding. How do, how do we test for give a shit factor? And I love that by the way, for everybody listening, put that in your damn interview process. What is the give a shit factor? Right. Um, you know, I, you know, Mark Roberge and I have been talking about this for, for ages, largely driven by him, but there's, you know, coachability, there's emotional intelligence, there's salesmanship, there's work ethic, right.

There's, you know, like the core characteristics that you look for. I think the give a shit factor is in one of those, what I call intangibles and, and largely, uh, you know, the way in which I test for that is if I'm interviewing somebody and they show up to the call and they are not prepared, right. Meaning they haven't, they don't have great questions to ask me, they haven't done their homework. They don't have great answers, right. They're not on time. Unlike me, I was late to our call. I apologize, but you know, unfortunately I've got some, you know, I give a shit, but at the end of the day, we've got a test to give a shit factor first and foremost. So we can't take that for granted. Cause right now, you know, all the, you know, every employee out there is like, Oh, I can jump ship and go get a new job and make 300,000 more.

And at the end of the day, it's like, not if you don't give a shit, not if you're just jumping around from job to job to job. So leaders make sure that you incorporate that as part of your process when you're evaluating people to hire. So that's the first thing. Cause you can't, you know, either you care or you don't care. I'd say, you know, the middle factor is we have to create experiences where we can test for that because to be honest, you know, once someone gives a shit, then we have to give them the tools and the skills to actually do something with that emotion, with that energy. And, and, you know, I think, I think the biggest challenge right now, the world of sales enablement, it was like, well, how do I do this?

Because, you know, like to you, I can't bring John Barrows into a classroom anymore right now, at least not right now. And so how do I create that energy in that environment where people are going to learn in that, you know, to, to, to show up to a conversation with having done their homework, their research, and they're prepared and they've got a prepared mind, you know, at the end of the day, you can always say, well, look, you know, I'll look at the numbers and then we're going to work backwards, but those are all lagging indicators, right? That's after the fact. And so I think at the end of the day, we have got to create a situation where everybody knows how to prepare. Everybody, we're focused on, to your point, business acumen, we're focused on how to set them up for success in the conversation.

And, and if, you know, the other thing that you're talking about there is, you know, great leaders, you know, the reason why CEOs and great leaders that we all know in our world are so effective is because they come to the conversation. They don't talk about themselves. They already know they're great. They're like, they care so much about you, the customer or the prospect. And you can see it. If you've ever sat in, if you ever get the opportunity to sit in and by the way, Hey, CEOs out there that happen to be listening to this, do this, record yourself running a meeting with a big prospect or customer and share that with your go-to-market teams, because that's how they learn what leadership is about.

And that's how they learn, you know, how to show up prepared for a conversation. Now, mind you as a CEO or founder, you can get away with a lot more because you're, because you're, because you have a, you have, you have an automatic amount of credibility, if you will, that a salesperson doesn't, especially in SDR. However, how someone holds themselves, themselves, how they treat their prospect with respect and, and, and, and how they show up to the conversation with a point of view about the prospect's business and how that conversation happens, that needs to be, that right there is what needs to be modeled and molded for our, our, our teams. And to me, that's leadership, that's real leadership.

And that's one of the issues that we have in a lot of these companies, by the way, is we have too many leaders out there that are still managers. They haven't learned how to become a leader. They're a manager. And so they're managing to the numbers and the activities and the business, and they're not, they don't know how to make that shift from manager to leader. And the, and it's, and that's not an easy shift to make either. You know what I mean? And I think any leader has to know like those three pillars of coaching, managing, and leadership. That's, those aren't easy to master any one of them as an individual thing, but it, but true leaders need to master all of them. They need to be good coaches, right?

So they can teach people how to do certain things. They need to be good managers so they can know how to the numbers and, and, and that, but then leaders to get people inspired to, to want to do better. Right. And I've always looked at leadership as, you know, like it's getting to people to do more than what their job description is, you know, and, and, and giving them a vision. So they feel something bigger part of the bigger than themselves, right? Because if you don't, if I don't believe in a vision, then I'm just going to do my job. But if I believe in a vision, I'll fucking bend over backwards and do 10 times more than my job to help achieve that. If I know I fit into this and I got somebody I can follow to be there.

A hundred percent. It's a sense of purpose. It's like, why are we here? Why are we doing this? So, by the way, as a sales leader, you need to have a sense of purpose for your own sales team. It's like the sales, the sales culture is equally as important as the company culture. And, and you got to realize that they're, they're different, but they're also the same. But as a sales leader, you also need to create, or a CS leader, you also need to have a, create a sense of purpose for your own team. You know, it's interesting that, you know, I look at, um, you know, one of my, one of my favorite leaders is Kyle Porter at sales loft. And the interesting thing is, you know, which you and I both know really well.

And the interesting thing that I've seen is, you know, sales lofters don't often leave sales loft. They don't typically, they're not the, and because I've been involved in the business for a long, long time, they don't jump ship very often to another job where they're going to make, you know, 50 grand more. That was never their ethos when they left. It was usually like, Hey, it was time. Like I, I felt like I had maxed out my potential and it was time for me to go. And it's largely because Kyle and his leadership team created a culture and an environment with a sense of purpose. Yeah. Creating the best experience for a customer. And it was like, we can all get behind that. And guess what? People would run through walls for Kyle and the leadership team.

And, and by the way, forgive more mistakes too. You know, it's like if they make a mistake or if they don't, you know, like get the comp plans wrong or screw up territories or something happens, the teams are always more forgiving. And I think that, I mean, I've always said that it, you know, I've never worked for anybody else because I'm a pain in the ass, but you know, if there was one company, it would have been sales loft because of the culture that they had built. And I think this goes back to kind of where we started, which was the values piece of this. I think if there's one thing that I would recommend to any leader out there right now and rep too, by the way, is to go through that core value exercise of, you know, and I think I was introduced to it in Napoleon Hill's think and grow rich that I got to read again, but it was like somewhere in there, it talked about identifying your core values.

And I did that early in my career and it gave me a roadmap because it was, it allowed me once I actually document 12 personal guidelines to success. And what I started to do was marry up every relationship and opportunity to those values. And if they share those values, then I went for it. And guess what? It was fantastic because my reps knew or my teammates knew that I was coming from, this is where I was coming from. So to your point, if I fuck something up or if I did something wrong or whatever it was, it was never malice. It was all, I made a mistake, but my core values were still there. And so I got a lot of leeway to do certain things that probably most people wouldn't. Yeah. Yeah. To your point, I mean, values.

So you as an individual need to understand what your core values are, because by the way, that's how you make decisions. And when you make a decision that's not in line with your core values, that creates dissonance in you and it gets uncomfortable. So by the way, if you happen to join a company where you know your core values and they don't know theirs and you feel you're feeling some tension there, guess what? A great exercise to recommend is like, Hey, as an organization, what are our core values? As an organization, meaning like the sales team or the SDR team. And Oh, by the way, as a broader organization, a company, what are your core values? We do this mission, vision, values exercise with all of our early stage founders.

And it's largely to get them focused on who they are and what's their sense of purpose. Why do people want to join your organization? And what are they, what, what's your stake in the ground? What do you stand for? And if that doesn't exist, then guess what's going to happen? People are going to leave because they're not connected to something. And I tell you right now, they have to feel that sense of connection to something greater than themselves because they don't have the physical environment to go to have that experience of sharing the energy of like, yes, we're all in this together. So we've got to create it virtually. Well, guess what? It starts with making sure that you're really, really clear about your values and what you stand for as a company.

And then as an organization and as an individual, and if all that aligns up, then you're right. People will run through walls and you know, they're going to work extra hard, even though they're working from home and they're not going to take advantage of the situation, which I know there are a lot of leaders out there that are worried like, Oh, my reps working remotely are all taking advantage. They're not working, blah, blah, blah. And so they go back to becoming a manager and getting into the details and the weeds. And you know, it just creates a toxic environment versus a healthy environment that we know that we want to create. Yeah. And that trust factor too, right? Like once I have those, once I know you and I share values, I trust you to get your job done.

I trust you. I mean, I tell my team all the time, like, like, I don't care what happens if I get, you know, if a customer comes back and is pissed off about something, or if a partner is pissed off about something, if I can look back and say that you stayed true to our core values, I will defend you to the fucking nines. But if you break those core values, I'm going to come down hard on you because you broke something that I fundamentally believe we should all share. Right. And so like, if you screw over a customer, if you talk, you know, that type of stuff, then we're going to have an issue about this. Right. But if you just stood up for yourself because a customer is pushing back on you and it didn't fit our core values and they decided to want their money back or anything like that, okay, no problem.

Here's your money back. I don't want to work with you anyways. Yeah. So yesterday we were talking, um, uh, on LinkedIn about this notion of like, you know, sales leaders and comp and all that stuff. And one of the things that I, I commented on was like, look, I think as leaders, we need to all adopt the mentality of like hire slow, fire fast. Yeah. And to your point, if somebody is doing something, if their behaviors are not in line with our, as an organization core values, then guess what? It's likely not going to work. So don't, don't waste your time. Like there's just a, there's a value. There's a, there's a value issue. Right. But you can't have that conversation if you don't know what your values are, if you haven't gone through that exercise.

And that's like, for me, you know, like the fastest way to get fired is lie. Right. Yeah. Like if I catch you lying, there's, there's not going to be a pip. There's not going to be a fucking transition here. If I catch you in a hard lie, right. I'm sorry. You're done. You know, cause I remember, like, I remember my dad, when I was growing up, that was the one thing. My dad let me do anything I wanted to do. Literally. Like all my friends were like, Jesus Christ, your dad lets you stay until one hour. And it was because my dad, all he cared about was me being honest with him. He was like, if you're out drunk and you don't, you know, and, and you don't want to drive home and you call me up at two o'clock in the morning and say, dad, I'm drunk.

I'm not coming home tonight. I will be upset, but I will be far happier with you than if you lie to me or tell me something. And, and the times that I did break that, I mean, it was, it was months before I could earn that back. And I felt it, you know what I mean? It's the same. So for me, I like core value is lying. Right. And that's the thing going to your point of firing fast. It's okay. You immediately broke that value. And so this isn't a debate anymore at this point. So yeah, yeah, totally. I think by the way, it also goes to one of the things I'm hearing more and more about right now in organizations, and I'm also recommending it more and more is to go out and do an Enneagram test as an organization or do Myers-Briggs or do a, do a personal assessment for a couple, for a number of reasons.

Number one, because we're not all together. And so we're still learning about one another. And this is a great way to learn about how people operate, how they show up in the world and how they communicate, right? Enneagram, are you a three? Are you an eight? Are you a seven? The more I know, and I understand that, the more I know what you appreciate in communication and what works for you in terms of communication, right? We, it's almost like getting back to, and by, we used to do this, you know, 20 years ago, where we all get kumbaya on and sit in a room. And even though we're like in suits, we're all kind of going through this exercise. We all thought it was maybe a little, a little woohoo, a little weird, but the reality is today it's so much more important for your organization to do that kind of work because you need to understand ways in which to better communicate and engage with each other.

Because at the end of the, you know, we're, because we're not together in a room, right? At least not, not for right now. And even when you do get back together in the room, you know, I know when we were a boxer, our EMEA team did this, you know, red, green, blue, yellow exercise, what have you, and your dominant color, you would put it as like a box or like a little cube and you put it on top of your, your, your cubicle that you were sitting in. And so people knew walking up like, oh yeah, I'm walking up and you're, this person's a red. And so that means they're like all business. They need their numbers driven. They're data driven. They're like, so when I go into this conversation, I'm not going to sit here and shoot the shit for the first five minutes.

I'm going to come into my, I'm going to come into your cube. I'm going to walk up to you and I'm like, I'm going to give it to you. I'm like, here's what's up. Here's what I want to talk about. Here's what I want to get through. And then afterwards we can shoot the shit. I'll, I'll tell you that's my cheat code. Um, and I, it's, this is why I'm, I'm still curious why crystal nose hasn't been bought. I know, right? Because it's my number one cheat code because crystal nose, for those of you don't know, it's a disc profile, but it, it, it automatically does it based on your LinkedIn profile. And so what I do is I am like, before I meet with anybody, I put their name into crystal nose and I see, are they a high D and I and S to C or whatever it is.

And really just the basics of it is I'm just looking, are you, are you and I the same, right? Are you, cause I'm a high D obviously. And, and so, so are, if you and I are high D's, fuck it, I'm just going to be me. I'm just going to go at this conversation. But if you're a high I or a high S or a high C, I need to take a step back here because I might run over you. And to your point, going back to the limited amount of time that we have to make an impression on somebody, if I'm a high D and I'm coming after a high C and I'm like straight to the fucking point and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're going to be like, dude, fuck off. Like I'm immediately going to turn you off. And you're not even going to listen to the value that I'm trying to bring to the table.

So that personality of being able to read that. And I think the cool news is, is that there's tools like crystal nose right now that are helping us with that. Yeah. And so it's a little bit of a cheat code, but it doesn't replace the, how I engage with you. It just gives me a kind of like a, Hey, this is how you should approach somebody now take that into account when you have this conversation. And it breaks down that barrier to develop that relationship a lot faster than what we used to be able to do is walk into somebody's office and look around and say, Oh, which is funny too, which is goes back to the old school selling tactics, which is like, Oh, building rapport, look around their office and look at, look for things to connect and engage with.

By the way, people today have been like, look at their LinkedIn profile and find things to engage them with and use that as a reason to reach out. It's like, Oh, don't do that. Like, please don't do that. Yeah. So I see you went to Oregon. Okay. Great. Awesome. So actually I got a quick idea and then we'll wrap this up, but think about that. I'd love your perspective on this. You know how let's flip this around. I used to be able to walk in your office and see, right. But now I'm looking at Doug Landis right now and I see two leather chairs. I don't see much, you know, or in, in, in other cases, there's a virtual background that is just a fake thing. So I can't, I can't develop the rapport based on what's in your background.

So what I've started to tell reps is think really hard about what's in your back, your background. Totally. Give them a reason. Think about this and think about this as a, because in this, where this struck me was, uh, so Megan, our COO, her husband, he has a huge picture of the dude, right? So, so, you know, the dude from the big Lebowski. So it's right here. So when you log in and you see his zoom, it's right there. Right. And there's two reactions. He gets to that. One is the person like, Oh, the fucking dude. I love that movie. And it's like an immediate rapport builder. Right. And the other is no reaction. And if you don't react to a picture of the dude, like you and I, I know you're a little different than I am like type of thing.

So he gets him to understand how to approach that person. So what my thought is, and if anybody's out there listening, I recommend zoom, do this by the way, use something like a crystal nose and another data scrubbing tool to automatically. So I'm about to meet with Doug Landis, right? I'm going to push a button and it's going to scrape Doug's profile all six ways to Sunday and his personality. And then on my background, it's going to auto change stuff in my background that you will relate to. And then if I meet with Kyle Porter next, my background is going to change to apply to, to, to relate to Kyle. Like to me, that'd be a fucking brilliant way to, to skip the line a little bit here. That's genius.

That's genius. By the way, what you don't see is if I just move the camera a little bit to the left, what do I have? I have, you know, 800 bottles of wine. That's all your wine. So most people, when they, I don't, you know, when they don't have the blurry background on, that's oftentimes that's what they see. They're like, Oh, you're a wine person. Okay. All right. I get it. However, but you're, I think that I, by the way, I think that's genius. So every, anybody listening, whoever wants to build that, build that for us and sell it to zoom and you'll be really rich because I think that is brilliant because you're right. So the point is we're often thinking about what are the things that I can see in your background to learn something about you and from your profile or Facebook or wherever I do my, my stocking.

But what if I can make that easier for you? Right. I'm going to put up the Chelsea banner behind me for my favorite football club in the world. I'm going to put up my Oregon Pappies right behind me, you know, and you got my bottles of wine already. So there you go. You got me in a nutshell, sort of. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a, but it, but I think it goes back to, you know, there's, there is nothing I think that replaces relationships. And I think that if there was anything that I would point to, to, you know, people out there right now, figuring out this virtual world is just manufacture those relationships somehow, you know what I mean? Whether it be popping into zoom sessions and leaving an open forum so that somebody can come in and just have a conversation or proactively going out to, to, you know, just introduce yourself to people to get used to that feeling again.

So that if it starts to come back a little bit more, it starts to, it's more natural than this awkwardness, but yeah, you know, this, this year, one of the things I decided is because I felt like I was getting so disconnected from all my friends. Cause my wife and I moved down to LA from San Francisco, and I felt like I was getting so disconnected. So like every day I just try and reach out to one of my friends every day and that's it. Even if it's just a text message, you'd be like, Hey, what's going on? Because what I'm doing is I'm, I, I realized I was taking all my relationships for granted because when I was in San Francisco, I could be like, Hey, what do you know? Let's go grab a beer.

I could be there in 30 minutes since I'm not, I'm like, Ooh, I actually have to be more proactive. Otherwise I'm going to end up isolating myself. And then I'm going to go in and, you know, a tailspin and be like, ah, you know, it's going to trigger all my, all my own, you know, insecurities and depression. I'm like all by myself. And, and, you know, it's, I'm like, well, well, shit, that's on me. What if every day I just reach out to somebody just to, just to check in and, and well, never check in as Jay Barrows would always say. But I think you can check. No, I think we're friends. You can check in personally. You can check in. I was just making a joke, but yeah. And to be honest, you know, I get so much more fulfillment from their reaction and their response.

They're like, Oh my gosh, so great to hear from you. Even it just, that's the, that's the exchange. I'm like, okay, cool. Um, so back to, we were talking about values. It's also thinking about like, what's, what does fulfillment mean to you? What, what fulfills you? What brings you that, that joy? And, and, you know, and if it's not working at the current company, then, but by all means, go find something else, you know, they, but, but, you know, but do it with a, for the right reason, not because someone's going to offer you. I was, I was listening to somebody say the other day, like, oh yeah, the rep two years of sales experience is making 250 OTE. And I was like, what, what, what, but that's, I mean, that's, that's crazy.

That's crazy. That's not sustainable. And also, you know, two years experience, 255, like good for you. You know what I mean? Like you did it in your first two years. Where's that going to take you next? I, I, quite honestly, I think that's going to set you up for a lot of, uh, heartache, disappointment, and heartache moving forward. Because if your base is too fit, if you start at 250 and you don't go up from there, which is hard to go up from there, I think the top 1% of people in the United States make $400,000 a year, the top 1% of people in the United States. So everybody thinks about millionaires and all this other stuff. If you're making 250, 300 Gs a year, you are fucking in the top 5% at worst.

And so thinking, and then, and then you're, like I said, I think you're setting yourself up for failure because I'm all about getting better and improving. Right. I mean, I've always, I always say to kids when they get married, right, make sure today isn't the best day of your relationship. Right. Cause a lot of people, oh, it's this beautiful thing. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is this, this is tomorrow should be better than today, even though today's your wedding, because if not, you're going to, it's going to be hard for you to sustain this. And so, you know, starting at a base of $250,000, like you're setting yourself up to not be getting better and, and, and almost be disappointed.

So I agree. I think the value piece and, and, and really just looking at yourself of what makes you happy, man. Like I think happiness is the ultimate goal of success. Like when people say success, when I told Charlotte, this, you know, whenever anybody asks you, what do you want to be when you grow up? The answer is happy, period, period. That's it. And to be honest, you know, yeah, exactly. Figure out what that looks like. And by the way, don't ever stop thinking about that. Don't ever stop taking a look at that because you get comfortable. And the next thing you know, you're like, wait, wait, how did, how did I get here? Like the old talking head song. Um, yeah, now I'm really dating ourselves.

That note, my friend, let's, let's wrap this one up. Like you said, like we could always talk about for this ship for hours. And, and I know, uh, I know Kim's, uh, reaching out to Lisa to try to schedule some time for us to actually go on a trip together. So let's try to make that one happen. We need to, yeah, we need to find it. Yeah. To, to, to this audience here, you're going to see photos of John and I sitting on a tropical beach sometime this year. It's we, uh, yeah, because we care. Absolutely. Absolutely, man. Well, look, I'm looking forward to it. Like I said, you know, I wanted to, I wanted to start off this year and kind of, I'm redoing the brand and redoing the podcast. And I, and I really just want to focus on people that I genuinely appreciate and, and, and give me energy as opposed to suck it away.

And you're on the top of that list, Doug. So again, as always, thanks for, thanks for coming on. And thanks for being part of a part of my world here, man. Amen. Right back at you, my man. Love you, brother. And, uh, for everybody, love you too, man. And everybody out there listening, uh, you know, Doug nailed it. Um, but I say this every time and I'm still going to say this every time at the end of every fucking podcast, which is no matter how shitty your day is, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause if you make somebody smile today, I don't care how bad your day is. You had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that. So like Doug said, go text somebody today. Just say, hi, make a phone call.

Somebody you haven't talked to in a little while. All right. All right, brother. We'll talk to you soon. All right, brother. Okay. Peace. Thank you so much for your time today and listening to the podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I do with your support and our incredible guests. We're one of the top sales podcasts in the industry with over a million downloads. And I can't thank you enough to keep the momentum going. If you could go to your favorite podcast platform and leave us a five-star review, I would greatly appreciate it. In return, I will answer any question that you have on Instagram. Hit me up there at John M as in Michael Barrows with a video question or a DM, and I will get right back to you.

I promise. And last but not least, if you're looking for training, I'm adjusting my training approach this year, and I'm actually going to be delivering training to the masses. I'll be delivering live training the first and second week of every single month with our two marquee courses, filling the funnel and driving a close to anybody who wants to join. And it includes membership in our on-demand platform with weekly AMAs. So you can go to jbarrows.com/open to check out the details. Thanks again and have a great day.