Encore: Negotiations with Mark Raffan

Hey everyone, it's Lucas the producer here. We've unplugged for a few days at Jay Barrows and hopefully you can do the same and hopefully you've closed out the year strong. Throughout the month of December we've been highlighting various podcasts which John has been a guest on and this week is no different. One of our most popular episodes featured Mark Raffin, the Negotiations Ninja. Prior to Mark coming on our podcast, John was actually a guest on his and that's the episode that we're featuring today. So enjoy this episode of the Negotiations Ninja podcast featuring John Barrows. Happy holidays. Super excited to present John Barrows to you today. John is a sales trainer extraordinaire. If you're active on LinkedIn or social platforms like I am, you'll see his stuff all over the place.

He's super prolific and it's really good. Not only is it everywhere but it's actually good and it actually works, which is amazing. He provides sales training and consulting services to a lot of the world's fastest growing companies. Companies like Salesforce, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Google. I think he does work for them too. His previous experience has been sort of all over the place in terms of sales. From very entry level to VP level, he's seen and done it. And so he's not, like he says, he's not just a trainer that teaches sales. He's actually a sales guy that happens to be a trainer, which is pretty cool. The stuff that he teaches is practical. And that's what I love most about it is that you can actually take it and apply it immediately out of any conversation that you have with John.

And so that's what we focused on today. We focused on the practical aspect of closing and what people struggle with when it comes to closing, how to close better, and the misconceptions that we all have about closing. I'm not going to talk too much about it because I don't want to take away too much of his thunder. He brings the noise in this episode. I'm super excited to present him to you. It was a great interview. I really enjoyed it. Would love to hear your feedback on it. Thanks again so much for listening. Enjoy. Mr. John Barrows. How are you? What's up, Mark? I'm doing great. How are you doing, man? I'm doing great, man. I'm so happy to have you on the show. For the listeners, this is actually round two for John and I.

We had some recording issues last time because my kids were screaming in the background, demanding candy from my wife. And she said no. And then they lost their minds. And so John was very patient with me and agreed to do it again, which I'm super grateful for. Thank you so much for that, John. No worries, man. It actually reminds me. Remember that? What was that CNN where the guy was like really serious and the kid came in in the background. It was on video and he was all freaked out about it. And like the wife came in. It kind of reminded me of that. Oh, yeah. I loved that one. That was awesome. I thought the guy should have just rolled with it. But she picked him up and put him on his lap or something.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was a great interview. Okay. So for the listeners, you've already heard the intro. We're going to be chatting about something pretty cool today. I think we're going to chat about closing and how to close and sort of what closing is all about and how you should not close. And there's a big misconception, I think, especially in today's sales world with modern sales about what closing is. But before we get into that, maybe, John, you could give us a little bit of background on who you are, your personal history, and how you got to where you are today. Yeah. No, I appreciate it. I'll try to keep it brief. But I kind of fell into sales just like everybody else. Back when I, about, I'm 42 now.

So back about 22 years ago when I was graduating college, there was no degrees in sales. Now, thankfully, there's a few. But I, so I got my degree in marketing. Didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. So I did that. And then I got into sales with DeWalt Power Tools, giving away free tools, which really wasn't sales. It was more event marketing. And then I sold for Xerox and that was sales. You know, that's where I got my formal sales education and learned how to, you know, sell a commodity and also take rejection. And I did that for a few years, a couple of years. And then I started a company with a few friends of mine from high school where we did outsourced IT services to the SMB market.

And, you know, I was 25 and I had no idea what I was doing. So I took every training there was, Sandler, Miller, Hyman, Taz, all of it. And I came across this one company called Basho. And it was the first training that I took that I really liked because it was very tactical in nature. You know, not a lot of fluff to it. And so I used it, helped grow, thrive up. We ended up being the fastest growing company in Massachusetts for a few years in a row. Got us to about 85 employees and about 12 million in revenues. And then sold it off to Staples. Staples came and bought us and spent about a year going through that integration. And come to find out, apparently I'm not a corporate guy. I don't have much of a filter and I really don't like playing politics.

So after a little while, Staples offered me another position, which is a really nice way of firing me. And I was looking for a job and Basho, the training company, came knocking and said, hey, John, do you want to be a trainer? And my original reaction was absolutely not, right? Because, you know, up until that point in my career, I'd really never met a trainer that I'd liked because most trainers were either failed sales professionals or professional presenters. And if you've ever been through a training where you could just tell the trainer's never done what they're telling you what to do, or if they did it, it was like, you know, 20, 30 years ago, you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. And they said, don't worry, you have to use these techniques to sell so you can train, so you can get paid.

So I was like, all right, I kind of like the whole practice, what you preach thing. So I joined Basho, brought on some of the bigger accounts, took on some of them, yeah, took over some of the ones. And then long story short, a CEO, a new CEO came in, restructured the company, screwed it all up and tanked it. And I took it over. So I went off with Kensei Partners with one of my other business partners and about five years ago, went off on my own with Jay Barrows, mainly to focus on the SaaS industry because I just like the SaaS world. It's, you know, fast paced, innovative, all that stuff. And so now I train companies like Salesforce, LinkedIn Box, Dropbox, Okta, Aptis, you know, a lot of the Google, you know, a lot of the fast SaaS companies out in San Francisco, I train their teams on techniques, mostly, you know, prospecting, negotiations, objection handling, and this conversation closing.

So having a good time doing it, but still, I still consider myself, I don't consider myself a trainer. I consider myself a sales rep that happens to train. And there's a big difference, I think, between trainers that train sales and sales reps who actually train. Love it. Love it. Definitely lived by that philosophy too. I love that. Cool. So like I said at the beginning, we're going to be chatting a bit about closing today. And I guess the first question I would have for you, coming from the world where you're coming from with the experience that you have, or what are some of the major challenges that salespeople face when it comes to closing deals? Well, I think first of all, just asking, right?

I think there's an inherent fear of, well, I'm going to back up. There's two things. I think most people have the perception of closing, that it's closing for the deal, right? So they don't really think about closing until it's time to ask for the order. And if that mentality holds true, if that's really the way they're thinking about it, then what happens is it's kind of now this very anxious thing to, I have to ask for the order because I've just done all this work to get the client all the way to the end here. And now it's kind of the moment of truth. And I'm chicken shit about it. Like, I don't want to ask that because I don't want to hear no. Um, so those two things I think are probably the biggest thing is I look at closing as closing at literally every step of the sales process and, and for everything, right?

For instance, I think one of the most important things that anybody can get at any stage of the sales process is a defined next step, right? So what you do is you close for that next step, even if it's send me information, right? So somebody says, send me information, the way that most, uh, people deal with some reps deal with send me information is, uh, great. When do you want to follow up next week? Fantastic. And then they touch base check in 45 times. Whereas for me, when somebody says send me information, that's something I'm closing for. I'm happy to send you information. When do you want to schedule a brief 15 minute call so we can follow up on that information, see if it makes sense for us to take the next steps.

Now, oh, next week, when next week, actually, you know what, you have your calendar in front of you and that right there, that's a close, right? And it's, you know, I didn't say, you know, I didn't sign the contract, like, and use some Glen Gary, Glen Ross shit, but you know, that right there, closing them on that next step. Cause it's so much easier to get them to agree to that next step right then and there than it is to chase them next week. So again, stepping back closing, we can close for everything, but it depends on it really, the key is understanding closing. Like when I, when I, and closing techniques, when I took this training at Basho, you know, I, I, if you would have asked me, John, what is your closing style?

I'd probably say I'm pretty direct closer, but I never really thought about closing and the different techniques. And then I took this training and I realized there's like 15 or 16 different ways to close a client, right? The techniques, the assumptive close, the trial close, the direct close, the, you know, all the, all these different techniques. And when I learned about them and they were labeled for me, I was all, all of a sudden started to be a little bit more thoughtful with, okay, I could use this close on this type of person for this type of thing. And now, and my biggest recommendation to anybody these days, when it comes to closing is proactive versus reactive, right? Don't just react.

I used to be very reactive when it came to closing. I would, you know, I'm just kind of gut feel. Okay. It's time to close. Right now. I'm very thoughtful about it. I walk into my, I walk into the situation, whatever it is, a call with a client, a meeting, whatever. And I'm like, okay, well, what am I closing for? Who am I closing? Right. Are they, are they direct? Are they, you know, nice? Like, you know, whatever. And, and then what, how am I going to close? Like, what am I going to say? And by the way, if they object to it, how am I going to handle that objection? Right. So now I go in with a plan as opposed to just kind of seeing what happens. Cool. So you're, you're basically planning your closes before you go in instead of reacting to them.

Absolutely. Especially for scheduled stuff. Right. I mean, obviously with the cold calls and those types of things, you know, stuff happens where you have to be a little bit dynamic, but you should always know at least kind of a few things you're closing for so that there's some reciprocity there in the process. So you're not just giving away everything to get that one big thing at the end. You talked earlier about Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, and there's that famous line, always be closing in Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. Do you think there's, do you think that like modern media has given us a, a, a weird spin on always be closing? Because I don't think it, it means what most people think it means. No.

Well, that's, I think the, so, you know, people ask me all the time, what are your favorite sales movies, John? Right. And you know, the ones that come up as the Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, Wolf of Wall Street, Boiler Room, those types of things. I actually think those are the worst sales movies I've ever seen in my life. Um, I was actually bummed when Wolf of Wall Street came out because even though they were great movies, they depict sales in all the wrong ways. And when Wolf of Wall Street came out, it was right around the time where finally kind of Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross and Boiler Room were, were, you know, people didn't remember them as much. And so I'm like, okay, at least, you know, there's no more cheesy ass sales movies out there.

And then Wolf of Wall Street came out. I was like, oh shit, you know, the perception's back. And because to your point, I think that, you know, Hey, always be closing, you know, people perceive that as always be asking for the order. You know what I mean? Like you're going to sign the contract and I said, and stuffing it down people's throats. And that's the exact opposite of what it should be. So, you know, yes, I think that kind of modern media has put us in a position to think that closing is a bad thing. Um, but if you think about it as just moving through the sales process and doing the right things along the way and closing little things along the way, it makes it a lot more palatable, right.

And a lot more, uh, realistic to do because look, people, closing doesn't just happen. You know, people talk a lot about, Oh, just, you know, I get a bunch of yeses and all of a sudden, no, it doesn't, you know, you still have to ask for the order. You still, I, the, the, you know, the analogy I use for this is, you know, if you've ever done skydiving or something like that, the reason that person's on your back when you go skydiving, well, there's two reasons. One is to make sure you don't die, but the other is to make sure you go right. Because if you ask any skydive instructor, not, you know, 50% of the people that would go up on that plane would go, would come down on that plane. If there wasn't somebody there to, to, you know, kind of push them out.

Um, and it's the same thing with closing. Like it's not a natural thing to ask people to, to sign, you know, to, to sign off on a contract or whatever. It's just not natural. It's much more natural to kind of just see how things go, but you have to be comfortable with pushing a little bit to get the person over the, over the finish line, if you will. Right. But when I say finish line, yes, the finish line on the close, but also all these little minor, you know, lines all the way through the process that'll help you get there. Yeah. You're almost conditioning them along the way. Yeah. So it's not the, and that's the thing, right? That, that conditioning is huge because if you haven't been closing me throughout the entire sales process, and then all of a sudden you come with this big ask, first of all, you're probably going to be awkward asking it and I'm not going to be used to it.

So it's going to feel like, Oh, come on, dude. Like you just, you just ruined it. You know what I mean? Like you, you just, you built up all this rapport with me and now you use this sleazy ass closing technique or whatever it is, or you said this thing, or you offered me the discount at the end of the month when I didn't even ask for it because you needed it to close by the end of the month. And you just ruined all the hard work you did up until that point. Yeah. Totally agree with you. Do you think the reason that most salespeople are opposed to asking for the order is that because they're afraid? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's because it's the moment of truth, right? I mean, again, we've done all this work.

We prospected, we, you know, found that needle in the haystack, we've demoed, we've gone through pricing and all this other stuff. And now it's okay. You know, that's, here's an example. I would venture to guess at least 80%, if not more, when somebody says they're going to sign by the end of the month, 80 to 90% of the reps will say, okay, look forward to hearing back from you. And then they'll wait until the end of the month and then they'll panic and they'll be like, oh, you know, when should I reach out to them? It's the, you know, two days before the end of the month, they said, you know, should I wait until the end? And, you know, and they panic about it because they didn't, they didn't set the expectation.

It's like the client set the expectation, but that's not probably going to happen. Someone said, so just like with send me information, I make the close easy for me. For instance, when you say you're going to make a decision, I'll say, great. When are you going to make that decision? By the end of the week. Fantastic. When do you want to schedule a brief 15 minute call so I can get a yes or a no from you either way? And this way we don't have to play chase, right? So what I'm telling you is you, you just told me that you're going to close on Friday, like by the end of the month, right? Okay, great. Let's put some time on the calendar so I can get a yes or a no from you either way. And, and I say, so we don't have to play chase because we all know what happens at the end of the month shit happens, right?

They get busy, whatever it is. And then all of a sudden, you know, we offer that discount that's going to expire at the end of the month. And that person doesn't follow up at the end of the month. And they call us, you know, the first week of the next month saying, all right, we're ready to go. And now we're like, oh shit, now I got to be the asshole because now I either have to go to my boss and say, Hey, can we extend that, you know, that discount or I have to tell the client that that discount isn't available anymore. And everybody knows that discount doesn't just disappear. You know what I mean? It's not like your profitability changed over the weekend for crying out loud. So, you know, that that's why discount selling is always sad, but it's also about expectation setting, right?

I mean, you say you're going to close. Okay, well then let me get a yes or no from you either way. And, and that makes it easy. So now I'm not nervous about closing you. I've set the stage that that's a closing call. Like I'm going to get a yes or a no from you either way. So for instance, that's a trial close where I'm not saying you're going to sign the contract today. I'm saying, Hey, if we scheduled a call and after your evaluation, you know, I want to, then I want the hard close when that comes up. Right. Yeah, totally. How do you deal with a situation where let's say you're dealing with a procurement person and they, they know that, you know, the longer they delay it towards the end of the quarter that the salesperson is dealing with, the bigger the discount is going to get.

And so they can use that time pressure to nibble and nibble and nibble until right at the end when they get the, the big discount. How do you, how would you deal with that as a salesperson? Yeah. So, you know, I think we talked about this last time, right? Yeah. Right. Because that's where, that's the side you're coming from. Right. Totally. You know, I think a lot of it has to do with just, first of all, and I'll bring this up again, I'm going to beg procurement to, to come out from under the veil, right. To, to come out from under the email, right. Because having a conversation when people solves a lot of problems, I'll give you an example. I, my, my CEO, Megan, she's fantastic. You know, she's got a legal degree and a, and a finance degree.

And when she gets involved in contract negotiations, we'll do one red line, right. Where I'll let the client red line one thing, but then immediately when we get that red line is if we have to, if we can't accept it all, she'll, she'll make a phone call to the lawyer and say, Hey, you know, could you help me understand what are you trying to protect here? Like, forget about the, you know, the crossing the T's and dotting the I's at this point. Can we, let's take a step back and say, what are you trying to protect against? And then they have a conversation and she says, okay, well, what if we worded it this way? Would, would that be okay? And nine times out of 10, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. That works.

And, and then we come to an agreement pretty quick. It's the same thing with procurement, right? If we get a conversation, then, then we can talk about, look, I understand, you know, there's, there's wiggle room here or whatever, but you know, I need to this level. What do you need? Let's work together here so we can both get something that we want. So that's my ideal state is that I actually understand in the middle of the sales process. I talked to the client, obviously I want to understand what the decision process is, but I also want to understand what the procurement process is and who's involved and ideally getting introduced to them earlier rather than later. So I can at least have some dialogue, right?

Now, if that doesn't happen, I'm going to leverage my champion internally to go make things happen for me. This is why I really focus on champions and getting somebody internally who's going to fight for me, right? Because you as an outsider, as a sales rep, if you don't have somebody internally fighting for you, you know, you're going to have a hard time pushing things through because you're, you're, you don't know what's going on internally there. And when I say champion, I mean champion. I mean, somebody who's literally has the clout, not just somebody who's willing to talk to you or, you know, is way low on the totem pole, but it's just a friendly conversation. I mean, somebody who is in the decision-making process and has some ability to push a little bit, right?

Because, and we've talked about this, you know, procurement and legal do what they're told to do in the sense that if you don't tell a lawyer, like if you, if you don't, a lawyer, when, when a lawyer sees a contract, they are trained to look at every little component of that contract, make sure every T is crossed, every I is dotted, right? Because what they're getting paid to protect their company. But if, but if you have somebody internally who is the business champion of it goes to the lawyer and say, Hey, look, could you just, could we just make this one easy here? Just make sure that we're protected against the core stuff, but I need to get this contract through because it's really important for the business.

And we're trying to do this. A lawyer nine times out of 10, I'll be like, okay, let me, let's not go through every single thing. Let's just make sure that the core stuff is taken care of. It's the same thing with procurement. You know, I don't know the numbers, but I know a lot of procurement is, you know, they have their KPIs of getting 10% off or whatever it is so that they can get the best deal for their business. And that's what they will do. Unless somebody from inside comes and says, Hey, you know what? This is something I really need. Could you please not beat this vendor up? We need to get this through. Right. And it's like, okay, all right, well, let's just see what we can do here. All right.

So the champion on the front end, I think is super important, but an engaging with procurement early is to have a conversation with them and also documenting. One of the things that was very interesting. Um, I, I worked with a client who was having a, you know, everybody has challenges with procurement. And what this kid did was he actually documented the entire process from every single price, uh, adjustment that was made all the way throughout and put together this one pager that said, Hey, here's where we started for, this is what happened. You increased your licenses. So we reduced the price to this and then we added that and whatever. So by the time it got to procurement, it was a one pager that he handed procurement and then procurement could then take that to their boss and say, look what I did, even though they didn't do any of that.

And so it was a nice way of just like, Hey, we've already basically done all this stuff. We've already discounted to a certain point, but, and these are the steps that we went through. And so now you procurement person can effectively take credit for all that if you want to. Um, so he said it really helps, um, expedite the process, if you will. And I think there's a lot there in terms of, you know, making sure you talked about bringing procurement in early and having that conversation. I think what procurement has done for a really long time and the procurement people will hate me for saying this, but we behaved really badly. I think just as like the local, the resident asshole basically of the business, right.

To crunch and grind as much as we can on the numbers and then extract every dollar that we can, instead of trying to look at the solution creatively and trying to find the additional value of where, um, that company is providing value to the organization that we work for. Right. And a lot of, I think what a lot of procurement people could do better is try and identify where, um, that company is providing value, whether it's like for a SAS company, for example, whether it's reducing server costs or, um, increasing ROI, especially for like a good CRM product, increasing ROI on sales calls, reducing, because you're essentially automating the sales process. You're reducing the amount of time that a salesperson has to spend on a certain thing.

And that's money. That's real money. So if you can demonstrate and identify that value, even if the procurement person doesn't understand that as a salesperson, if you can demonstrate and identify that value that's being produced, it'll make your job a lot easier. And that chance of that procurement person becoming that champion for you is also significantly higher. Absolutely. And that, and so you bring up a great point there. So I talk about what that kid did as far as documenting the discounting all the way up to that point. So that the procurement person can have something to show, right. But also the value part of it and really trying to, you know, I'm not a huge believer in, in ROI calculators and those types of things.

Cause I think there are a lot of times, you know, angled obviously to show the best possible, but if there is some stuff that you can give, you know, that you've done through the sales process to, to identify that true value, then, and you can somehow show that or document that and hand that to the procurement. Now it's like, okay, this is, you know, it's not just about this discount. It's not about this price. Like we're going to get this massive ROI on this. If we make this happen. And by the way, if we do it sooner rather than later, we're going to increase that ROI. So it behooves the procurement process, a person to, to really expedite the, you know, the contract or whatever it is. Yeah.

And, and one more thing you brought up this, which I'm, I'm a huge, uh, I ask reps to really think of it this way. And I would ask procurement to think of it this way as well. I tell reps to get the word discount out of your vocabulary. Okay. I don't, I don't say get discounting out of your vocabulary. I understand that's part of the game, but get the word discount out of your vocabulary and change that word to creativity or flexibility. Because what it does is it changes the conversation with, with, with everybody. Right. Because now it's not just about a price, like, you know, getting it from X to Y. Now it's about what can we do here to make sure that we both walk away from this feeling good about it.

So for instance, you know, I have flexibility in my pricing when it comes to longer term contracts or larger size deals. I can get very creative with a client if they're talking about a year engagement versus a one-time training engagement. Right. So with that, it gets that person that gets procurement thinking, okay, how can we get creative here? How can, you know, instead of what kind of discount am I looking for? Yeah, I totally agree with you because when you start to speak about discount, you speak about price only, but when you're talking about creativity and flexibility, you're talking about scope of work changes, you're talking about things that can be added or removed to make the price more digestible for the person who's buying the product or the service.

So I think you're totally right. There's a lot of words that I think salespeople use that could be used better. Right. Like I think using words like cost or expense or something like that really conditions whoever is buying that product to think of you as a cost or expense. So if you change those words to investment and value and ROI and those kinds of words, then it, I think it really changes the shape of the conversation because no longer are you talking about an expense, you're talking about an investment. Absolutely. And the relationship, right. And kind of those types of things. So yeah, I, I couldn't agree more that the word choice sometimes is, is triggers the mentality. Right. So I was actually, I was at an event last night and I was talking to the VP of sales at drift and drift.

They do the chat bot stuff and they're trying to change the, you know, they do conversational marketing as the, as their whole approach where it's not like, you know, Hey, fill out a form and blah, blah, blah. It's like, Hey, let's have a conversation and see where it goes. They're also trying to change the game when it comes to sales. You know, he's, he's very arm and he's, he's very focused on, you know, not going through the typical sales process with somebody because as soon as for instance, the slide deck comes up and they talk about presenting and those types of things, or let me show you a demo, like all that stuff immediately says to the sales, it says to the buyer, Oh, I'm in the sales process.

Okay. Now I have to sit down. Now I have to look at their demo and now I'm going to, you know, not tell them certain things and we're going to follow up and that, you know what I mean? So now I'm going through the motions here as opposed to just having a conversation. So they're, they're very focused on changing the paradigm of, of those triggers that, that we do as sales professionals that trigger the mindset to the buyer of I'm in the buying process. Okay. Now I have to, I have to go doing these things. Right. And it's the same thing with our word choice with procurement. Right. I mean, we have to be very careful with the words that we use because they always solicit a very different feeling depending on how you, how you phrase it.

Totally. Totally agree with you. Okay, cool. Let's switch gears a little bit. I'd love to hear a personal story from you around a sales or negotiation failure that you've had. Um, we're big on learning from failure on the show. So, you know, nothing confidential, obviously keep it high level, but would love to hear a story that where you've bombed. I got so many of them. Um, let's see, I'd probably say, you know, one of the, there's two, there's two that come to mind kind of big ones, one, and it's directly related to closing. And it was when I worked at Basho, you know, I had inherited this account and it was, it's a huge, huge account. And they were actually one of Basho's first customers.

But what had happened was they, because they, they started, they were spending early on with Basho. They were spending 60, $70,000 a year, which was great for Basho early on. But then they kind of stayed at that level, 60, $70,000. So what happened was they kept getting, well, other clients were spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars with Basho. So because of that, you know, the CEO was the first one on the account. And then he transitioned that to the VP of sales. And then the VP of sales turned it over to another trainer and then another trainer, another trainer. So this account, this account, even though they had been, um, you know, one of our longest standing accounts, they never really got the TLC that they were, you know, that we should have given them because, you know, again, they were just an average account for us.

So I get it. I come in all on fire. I'm going to make a difference. I'm going to get this account to spend a couple, two, three, four or $500,000 with me. And, but I hadn't built up the trust, you know, and they had already been burned a few times because we didn't customize the content at all for them. We were still delivering after five years of working with them and knowing their business, you know, we hadn't, Basho hadn't customized anything. It was the same exact slide deck we were coming in and presenting every single time. So the VP was arguing, you know, obviously a little bit like, Hey, John, look, we're probably not going to do much. You know, you guys haven't caught it. You know, my internal team is frustrated the fact that you guys don't really pay too much attention to this.

I'm like, Nope, I'm going to be different. Right. And so I remember, and it was the end of the quarter. And, uh, and this guy said, look, if you really do customize this content to really, you know, focus on, on, you know, on us, then, you know, the contract next year could be, or this new contract would be 250,000. Right. And so I, I, all I heard was 250,000. And, uh, so I was like, all right, cool. And, and I remember it was coming at the end of the quarter and I got on the phone with this guy and I'm like, come on, man, you know, you're going to do this. Like, let me, I'm going to customize this. You know, I'm like, I bought into this and everything. And I, I mean, I was, I vividly remember having my headset on walking around the office, like hardcore negotiating with this guy.

And he's like, John, no. And he said, and then, and I pushed so hard that he was like, okay, John, fine. And I gave, he, he gave himself an out. He was like, look, if you customize the content and it, and my director of enablement is, is, is comfortable with that and feels good about that, then we'll move forward. He's like, so if you do that, I go great. And it was, it was like two days before the end of the quarter. So I was like, done. And that's, I heard, all I heard was he, if I customized it to the point that he said that they were good with it, then they were going to sign off on that contract. And I stayed up that entire night. Right. And I remember I was at the office and I customized the shit out of this presentation, right.

Out of the, I went on their website. I looked at all their old information. I pulled in the, you know, all the messaging and all this other stuff. And I, I felt like I really tailored this to exactly what their business was looking for based on what we knew about them. And I, and I fell asleep at the desk. I slept at the office, sent it over to him. And I was convinced that I was going to get that contract at the end of the quarter and be the hero. Um, and sure as shit, they looked at it and he was like, yeah, John, this looks good, but Sarah's not convinced that this is really customized to the level. So we're not going to be moving forward. And I was, I was devastated. Right. Because I was so fixated on closing a $250,000 deal.

And I was genuine about it. You know what I mean? I genuinely wanted to work with them and make sure that they, and I, and I felt bad about what had happened to them at that point, but I hadn't built up their credibility. I hadn't done the right job. I stuffed it down their throat. You know what I mean? And, and, and, and it was on my timeline, not theirs and all that other stuff. And we ended up, you know, after all that, after all the effort that I put in and I told my boss, I was going to close it and it was going to be a home run for everybody. You know, it didn't, it didn't happen. And then they didn't end up continuing with us. Right. So that's one just horrible disaster where I've stopped, I've stopped caring about the end of the month, end of the quarter.

Now I have the luxury of doing that now because I don't have a boss telling me, you know, hit your quarter target or monthly target anymore. But I really have, I really have focused more on prospecting in my sales career now, because what I've, what I'm very focused on now is, you know, all of that stuff from a closing standpoint gets solved with one pretty simple problem, which is, which is a big fat pipeline. Right. If you have a huge pipeline, then it doesn't matter when you close. Right. So for me right now, like my I'm full, I'm booked all the way through August right now with onsite training. So I don't need your business. I want your business, but I don't need your business because I constantly am prospecting, even though, you know, I'm busier now than I've ever been.

I still do prospecting on a regular basis because I want to put myself in a position where I close on your timeline, not mine. I don't care. You know, if you want closing on the month, you want to close the beginning of the month. I don't care. And that makes it a much more natural conversation. And I don't have to use any quote unquote technique or any, you know, you know, thing to, to, and I don't discount. I do not discount at all anymore. And if somebody's like, has a problem with that, I say, okay, well, no problem. That's okay. Then, you know, go do training with somebody else because I know the value of what I bring to the table. Whereas back then I was just trying to get that contract in and I, and I screwed it all up and I still feel kind of, I don't want to say sleazy about it, but I definitely looking back, if there was a video of me negotiating with that guy, it would be cringeworthy right now.

I love it, man. That's a great story. And I, you know what, I think that really speaks to the advice that you gave in terms of always be prospecting and, and have a big fat pipeline. One of the things that I teach on an ongoing basis, especially when it comes to negotiation specifically is the greatest leverage that you have in any negotiation, regardless of what side of the table you sit on is the ability to walk away and say, yeah, no problem. And, and walk away your, your, your, your strength lies in that, not to say that you would, and not to say that you should, the ability to do that, to have that ability gives you so much confidence and so much strength. And from the sales side, that means you've always got to be cultivating opportunities.

You've always got to be filling that pipeline. Absolutely. And it's, it's so, it's like I said, now I've never been in this position at like I am right now. And, you know, since I ran my, started my own company, I've never really been in the position where I, it's like, it didn't, it didn't necessarily matter. You know what I mean? Like if you closed at the end of the quarter or you closed on the email, I don't care anymore. And it's such a liberating thing because I, again, I can have genuine conversations with people. Cause when I want your, when I want your business instead of need your business, I ask the right questions. You know, I have the right conversations and, and, you know, and I close on, again, I close on your timeline, not mine.

When I need your business, that's when I do some shady shit. You know what I mean? That's when I call you up at the end of the month and give you that discount you didn't even ask for, or I go over your head because I'm not at power and I got to get to power, right. And ruin the whole thing. That's when I need your business. But if I want it, you know, power. Okay. I'll get there if it's, if it's necessary. All right. And we'll talk through that. It's closing. I don't know. Does it help you to close by the end of the month? When do you need this buy? Right? So that's why I can't reinforce enough. I don't care where we are in our careers. I don't care how experienced you get. I don't care how many SDRs or BDRs are filling your pipeline or marketing is filling your pipeline as an AE.

If you're not prospecting, you're doing yourself a disservice and you're doing your customers a disservice because you're, you're, you're eventually going to have to push and you're not going to want to, and they're not going to want you to either. Yeah, totally agree with you. Awesome. Well, John, if you were going to leave the listeners with one or two pieces of advice today, other than let's say, always be prospecting, what would it be? Um, I think the, I mean, there's, there's a lot, right? But I think practice, right? So as it relates to this, um, sales is, I think the greatest profession in the world, right? When done right, when done wrong, it's the worst, but when done right, it's, it's the greatest.

And for a lot of reasons, it's what makes the economy go. It's a, you know, everything, right? Whatever. But one of the other things I truly genuinely appreciate about sales is, is that you can legitimately practice sales everywhere you go. Right. And, and, you know, there's very few professions that you can do that in. And so with sales, what I really recommend reps do is, is practice. And, and I don't mean, I mean in their company, right? So that's why, for instance, I tear out my accounts, I tear ones, tier twos and tier threes. And those are great average and crap accounts. And I used to get, I used to like, be like, I don't want my tier threes. They're terrible customers anyways. But now I really like my tier threes because anytime I'm trying something new, right?

Anytime I'm dealing with like a, you know, the pricing objection, for instance, say I have, say I'm struggling dealing with the pricing objection, I'll run a list of my tier threes and I'll get a bunch of tier threes in my pipeline and I'll, and I'll push a little bit, you know, I'll be a little bit more aggressive than I would have otherwise. You know, for instance, that's how I learned to not discount with what I do today. You know, cause for me, I used to be a sales, a VP of sales of a startup company that we had no money. We had no funding at all. So we were self-funded. And so if somebody were to come in and tell me, John, you know, training is going to cost you 20, 30, 40,000, whatever it is, I would legitimately laugh them out of my office.

And so then when I came and started doing training, you know, I actually, oddly enough, would discount for smaller customers more than I would for bigger customers. Cause I looked at bigger customers. I'm like, you know, you guys can afford this, like whatever rate card. Right. Whereas if you only had like a four or five, six person sales team, like I charge, I don't know how, what you do, but I charge day rates. Right. And so it doesn't matter. You put five people in the room, you can put 25, 30, 50 people in the room. It doesn't matter when you put, when you put 30 or 40 people in the room, then the per head cost is actually pretty reasonable. Right. But if you only have four or five people in the room, the per head cost is pretty significant.

So when I would get a, somebody calling me up and say, Hey John, I need sales training for my small team here, four or five, six people, I would actually discount for them more than I would for a bigger client. But then all of a sudden I started realizing, Hey, you know, an hour, a day of my time is a day of my time, right? A day away from my daughter is a day away from my daughter. So now I had to figure out how to stop discounting altogether. So what I did was I got a bunch of tier threes in my pipeline. And when the pricing conversation came up, I'd be like, Hey, just want to let you know the pricing is $20,000 and I don't discount. And then shut up and wait for the response, you know, and sometimes I get, wow, John, you know, that's way more expensive than I was expecting.

And I'd be like, okay, fine. You're probably not a good customer for me anyways. Other times I get, all right, well, John, you know, I had to ask, okay, well, I had to say no. Is that okay? And what it did was it helped me build up my confidence to go after my tier twos and then after my tier ones. And so now I don't discount anymore because I have, I've, I've learned how to present myself in a confident way and, and, and, and handle it right. As opposed to be afraid of it. And so I say practice when it comes internally, but also practice outside, right? You, you could practice sales everywhere you go. For instance, every time I go into a hotel, the first question I ask is, Hey, what's your occupancy rate?

And they're like, excuse me. I'm like, are you guys filled up tonight? And they're like, well, no. Okay. So good. So could you give me a favorite? You got some suites going on upstairs that are going unused. Could you give me a favor and put me in one of those, please? And they'll be like, Oh yeah, sure. Mr. Bales, I'll be an extra $150 a night. I'll be like, Oh, hold on a second. I don't want to, I didn't want to pay for it. You said you have some unused suites going on upstairs. Like why wouldn't, you know, next time I'm in town, I could stay at that hotel, you know? And, and I asked that seemingly awkward question. I mean, because let's, let's put it this way. What is the absolute worst thing that could happen in that situation?

Yeah. They say no. That's the worst thing that could happen. I'm still going to get the hotel room. I'm still going to stay in the same stupid room. I was going, to stay anyways. And by the way, I don't need a suite. I'm usually in town for a night. I need a bed and a bathroom, right? That's it. And so, but I asked that seemingly awkward question in a harmless situation, right? So that when it comes time to asking that question and when it, when it means putting money in my pocket, how much more confident am I asking that question? Right? So that's what I, if there is one thing, I mean, there's all sorts of techniques that we can talk about, whatever, but I would really have people try to walk away with this, that sales isn't a job.

It's a mentality. Everybody is in sales. I don't care what your job is. I don't care what your role is, wherever we all sell, right? Whether you're selling yourself, you're selling an idea, you're whatever it is, we all sell. And so if you think of sales as not a job, but as a mentality, and then you start looking at ways to practice that craft and perfect that craft everywhere you go, you, you, you just start becoming a, a genuine sales rep that knows how to, you know, knows how to adjust and, and where the line is of rude versus direct and those types of things. If you think of it as a mentality, as opposed to a job. Yeah, totally agree with you. Practice, practice, practice. It's what makes the difference at the end of the day.

So many people take sales is just something that they do as a response to someone instead of something that they do proactively to achieve value in their lives, regardless of where they are. Yeah. And that's why I say it's the greatest profession because without, without something getting sold, it doesn't happen. You could have the greatest product and on the planet and you know, the best solution ever. But if it, if, if somebody isn't out there selling it, telling people about it, then it doesn't matter. So sales is what gets this, keeps this world moving. Right. If nobody was selling, then no, nothing would happen. And it's just, you got to make sure you're doing it the right way. Right. Cause like I said earlier, it's the greatest profession in the world when done right.

It's the worst when done wrong. And that's why I hate the Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, the, you know, the, the Wolf of wall street, the boiler room, cause that is sales done wrong. And there's one more recommendation I'd have for people tonight. If they, if it has a homework assignment after listening to this podcast, go watch my two favorite sales movies of all time. My second favorite sales movie of all time is pursuit of happiness. Right. Like, you know, talk about hard work, right. And being genuine and that type of stuff. That's my first one. My, but that's my second one. My first favorite sales movie of all time though, is Tommy boy. Great. Tommy boy is the greatest sales movie of all time.

Cause I, and I'll leave you with this. There's, there's a moment in every sales reps life where they, you know, I call it catching your sales group, right. Where you wake up one day and it's just a little bit easier than it was the day before. And you don't exactly know what happened or whatever, but it's when you stop pitching your solutions and you start having conversations about your solutions. It's when you start caring more about the client's needs than you do about your paycheck. And oddly enough, that's when your paycheck starts going through the roof. And there's a beautiful moment in Tommy boy where Tommy boy figures out his catches his sales group. Do you know, do you remember what it was?

No, I don't. So it's when he's sitting in the butt in the, in the restaurant with the chicken wings. And he's like, Helen, you look like a Helen. Let me tell you why I suck as a sales rep. Say I go into some guy's office. Say he's remotely interested in buying something from me. Well, I got excited. I'm like, Jojo, the circus boy, the pretty new pet. Right. And he goes through this whole ridiculous thing. And at the end, she's like, wow, you're twisted. You know what, I'm going to go fire up the, you know, the, the, the wings and get you those wings. He's like, oh, Tommy, like you, Tommy, right. In that moment, he caught his sales group. Cause if you remember up until that point, he was, he was trying to be his dad, right.

Oh, you can stick your head up a butcher's ass, but no, that's not the way. Right. And he was trying to wait until he was pitching. Right. And then he was just him. And then he, you know, against his confidence and, you know, goes from there. But, but that is such a beautiful example to me of the difference between trying too hard and trying to sell and use pitches and that type of thing versus just having a conversation. And the last point on that, by the way, to your point of, of, you know, having a big fat pipeline and what we were talking about before, if you remember at the end of that, uh, David Spade was like, well, how did you just do that? And he's like, what are you talking about? He's like, we had a, you know, we had a pizza in the trunk, so I didn't give a shit.

You know what I mean? So he was basically saying, look, I had a big fat pipeline. So if we didn't get the wings, I don't care. We got the meat lovers pizza in the trunk. So not only was he himself, he crossed over that barrier. He had confidence and he had a big fat pipeline. So we got the wings. So cool, man. Awesome. And if people want to find out more about you and what you're up to, how do they do that? Yeah, I appreciate it. I, you know, the easiest way is just to go to the website, jbarrows.com. So J B A R R O W S.com on there. You'll find, I have a resource library where I give away probably 80% of my content for free. Um, I also have a blog where it goes on on a weekly basis. Um, and a lot of, you know, all the social stuff is on there as well.

So we do a Facebook live group where Mondays we do a make it happen Mondays. And then Friday afternoons, by the way, uh, today we're doing a happy hour from four to five on our group where we answer questions that come up throughout the, throughout the week and those types of things. So that the, the, the website is really a way where you can find all of the different ways that we can engage here. So, and, and, and I, you know, I'm happy to answer anybody's questions, you know, on Snapchat or any of those different mediums, uh, just trying to get good content out there, good people to elevate this profession. Awesome. Love it, man. I had so much fun having you on the show. I really appreciate your time for the listeners.

If you want to reach out to John, I'll link out to all his social profiles, uh, and obviously to his website as well. He's pretty active on social, regardless of what channel you're on. John, again, thank you so much, man. This was awesome. Thanks Mark. I appreciate it. All right. Have a great day. Ladies and gents, if you're interested in some of the cool things we discussed today, or the resources or books we mentioned, take a look at the show notes. If you're interested in negotiation and you want to find out more about what we do, you can find us at negotiations.ninja.com. Thanks so much for joining me. And if you enjoyed the show, please share it through your favorite online social media channel, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, whatever you most enjoy.

Thanks again. And we'll see you next time. Bye. Bye.