Encore: Sales Leadership with Rob Jeppsen

Hey, it's Lucas, the producer. Don't forget that we are changing things up a little bit to round out 2018. We're featuring some episodes of podcasts, which John was a guest on and playing them on our podcast. This week, we are replaying John's appearance on Rob Jepsen, the CEO and founder of Exvoyant's podcast, the sales leadership podcast. I've listened to this one a couple of times. It's a really good one, really actionable, especially as you are growing and building a team or looking to get inspired into the new year. So grab your hat, your briefcase and enjoy. Hi, I'm Rob Jepsen, and my mission is to help sales leaders everywhere create record-setting growth in the companies they lead. I'm here to share the secrets of the world's most successful sales leaders.

I don't care how big the company or how big the team, we showcase sales leaders that are beating their markets, winning at crazy rates and doing it predictably and sustainably. The sales leadership podcast is brought to you by Exvoyant, the digital sales leadership and coaching platform that's transforming market-leading sales organizations around the world. Be sure to meet with the Exvoyant team at Dreamforce and learn how to transform your Salesforce system from the system of record to your system of action and improvement. You can find details at exvoyant.com. Now, get ready for some serious insights from sales leaders that are making it happen. And remember, don't worry, we got you. Hello, and welcome to the sales leadership podcast, where high-growth sales leaders share high-growth practices and tactics.

Today, we are joined by one of the icons in the sales world, John Barrows, sales trainer to the world's fastest-growing and highest-performing teams. Now, John is not your average sales trainer that teaches a class and moves along. John is an active, practicing salesperson that shares what is working for him and working at scale. John always brings the heat, and he shares tactics in a way that moves the needle and moves it almost immediately. John's a good friend. He's a lover of all things sales and sports, and we are lucky to have him join us today. John, I know we're in for a wild ride. Thanks for joining us, and welcome to the show. Hey, Rob, what's going on, brother? Appreciate you having me on here, man.

Dude, I've been looking forward to this one since we started the podcast. And as you know, John, I reached when we started talking about this, I asked you if you would be guest number 10. And we have had nine really, really good sales leaders. You've listened to some of the podcasts. You know who those people are. They are high-growth leaders from big companies, small companies, tech companies, non-tech companies. And you've seen it. And I want you to start to share some things. But before you do, can you introduce to the rest of the world that they've been living under a freaking rock who you are and what you do? Yeah, so yeah, I mean, I think that really encompasses it, right? I'm more of a sales rep than anything else.

You know, that's my passion. So I grew up here in Boston, still live here. Went down to Maryland, drank my way through four years of college. Got my degree in marketing because I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. And, you know, just kind of like everybody else, fell into sales. You know, back then, there was definitely no majors or anything like that that you could get in sales. Now, thankfully, there are a few. But got in with Black & Decker and DeWalt, selling power tools, then Xerox. That's really where I got my ass kicked, but a formal sales education. And then I started a company with a few buddies from high school doing outsourced IT services. And I was about 25, so I had no idea what I was doing.

So I took every training, Sam, Ramirez, Hyman, Taz, all of it. And I came across Basho. And it was the first training that I really liked. So I used it, helped grew Thrive Up. We ended up being the fastest-growing company in Massachusetts for a few years in a row and then sold off to Staples. And then after I realized I wasn't really a corporate guy and they fired me, I started working with Basho. Not because I wanted to be a trainer, because most trainers I had come across were either failed sales professionals or professional presenters. But because they had a very unique model where you had to practice what you preach. So the trainers didn't just train, they had to sell. So I did that. And then, long story short, they screwed it all up and I took it over.

So I've been off on my own now for about five or six years. And I'm training companies like Salesforce, Google, LinkedIn, Box, Dropbox, a lot of those fast-growing SaaS companies. And I'm trying to stay at least one step ahead of the game. The reason I, it's not that this is SaaS training, it's just I like playing in the SaaS world because most, you know, SaaS obviously pushes the envelope from a technology standpoint, but they also push the envelope from a sales standpoint. If I'm training Salesforce on the same stuff I was training them on two or three years ago, they're not renewing my contract. So it's force me to stay up to date. I love it. In fact, one of the things I love about you, John, is that I've heard you say this, and the reason I love it is I feel the same way.

And I guess sometimes when you find the kindred spirit, you think this is really smart. I love how you said, when you hear someone trying to pitch sales training to you, the first question you should ask them, and tell me if I get this wrong, because I love what you said. Ask them, when was the last time you freaking used this yourself? Yeah, I do that. And this is just, this is kind of like magicians, you know, when magicians give up tricks, right? And it's like, you shouldn't do it. But I'm going to give everybody a recommendation to see how much that trainer knows their shit is to literally, I let them do their intro. Like, I still go to trainings to this day, you know, because I want to learn, right?

And so I'll let them do their intro, you know, half hour, whatever it is. But then very early on, I sit in the front row, and I raise my hand and say, hey, could you just do me a favor? Could you give me an example of the last time that you applied what you're about to train us on? And it's amazing how many deer in headlights you get, right? Inevitably, what the trainer does is they start going, well, you know, I've been working with my customers for the past few years to help. I got some examples. No, no, no, no, no. When was the last time you personally applied what you're about to do here? And by the way, you could have applied it, and it could have been a disaster, right? Yeah, yeah. But if you haven't done it in the past six months, or I'll give you maybe a year, if you haven't applied what you're about to teach me in the past year, I really have a hard time listening to you.

I'm with you, dude. That's one of the reasons that I love you. I mean, again, your style and your insight and what you do, it just flat out works. But I love how you are not afraid to call a spade a spade in your straight talk. And that's why you've got to be on our show, dude. Straight talk is what sales leaders need to listen to. Now, we've got a lot of people listening to the show already. They love it because these are people that either are in high growth mode and want to stay there, or they're on the outside looking in saying, damn it, I've got to get into high growth mode, and I want to know how. And, John, I don't think that there's a better resource anywhere than you on helping them know kind of what that blueprint and what some of those building blocks are.

I want to just make this an open conversation with you and I. You see it all, man. You see the best like Salesforce and Google and those, and you see the ones that want to be the best. What do you look for? What separates them? And how do you start building a blueprint for high growth success? So we're talking specifically to sales leaders. Like what to look for in those? Yes. Yeah. So, I mean, first and foremost, it's interesting. Right before our podcast here, I was on a call with a client. And they're, you know, they're in high growth mode and they're trying to figure out how to get to that next level. And we were just talking about hiring like hired guns. You know what I mean? Like hiring the stud sales rep from another competitor and how that almost never works.

And it's the same thing with leadership, right? It's rare that a leader coming in from the outside who can just come in and make an immediate impact without really understanding the business. Yep. I personally love, you know, growing my own sales reps, growing my own leadership because they get it right. And I think that's a key to it. First of all, it's like you got to know the game. Like you have to be the best salesperson within the organization. So if you're a CEO, like before hiring any sales reps or sales leadership, you need to go out there and sell and figure out at least some basics of the sales process and some of the basics of the objections and those type of things. So you can map out a structure that you can then apply to somebody else to go execute on.

And I would say outside of just learning and listening and understanding the client's needs, the existing customers and those type of things and having a deep understanding of not just how to sales techniques and, you know, how to cram stuff down people's throats or chase deals, which unfortunately most managers are. I think the best managers I see are the ones who are, who have a structure and a process that they follow. Not to the T in the sense that I'm not talking scripts here. I'm not talking that everybody has to present the exact same way or everybody has, you know, this is like a very, you know, micromanaged sales process. I'm talking about a process. Yes. Because too many sales, too many sales reps.

Like, so we talked, I talked earlier about kind of my, my history in the sense that there was no education in sales. Now there's finally an education, but we as sales professionals, we are the least educated in our profession, right? Out of any other profession out there. It's almost right. It's the default profession. So if you think of the lack of education that sales reps get, well, it's 10 times as bad as far as managers. Yes. Because most of the time it's the best sales rep that gets promoted to be the best, to be the manager. And a lot of times that best man, that best sales rep is not going to be, they're not suited to be the best manager because they're the artists, right? I talk a lot about art and science of sales, right?

They're the artists. They're the ones who just kind of know how to do what they do. They have a strong work ethic. They're good at what they're, you know, they, they understand how to pick up on nuances, where to spend their time, but they don't have a mentally, they haven't thought about it. As a process, even though they do, if you were to break it down. So now to take somebody who's somewhat of an artist and tell everybody else, okay, now make them all Picasso. Like that's damn near impossible. Right. Yeah. But sorry, but if you have like a paint by numbers to a certain degree where you put yellow there and you can walk somebody through a process. Now you can apply that and tweak it, tweak it, tweak it along the way.

So I think that's probably one of the bigger pieces that I see missing is that managers are deal chasers and they don't really have a structure or process that they apply. So therefore they don't know how to measure or improve what they're doing. Okay. This is brilliant. John, you hit it hard right from the start, man. I start asking for the blueprint. You hit me with, with two things. There's really two things in one vein that you're hiring in rather than developing people. And I want to go back to that for a second. I want to go, I want to finish this with your paint by numbers. Cause that's a bad-ass way of looking at it. I love it. Cause too many people use process for micromanagement to your point.

I've always said, uh, metrics are for mapping, not for measuring. I love yours. Paint by numbers is such a visual way. Let's talk for a second though. Um, lots of people feel, uh, pressure that they got to hire in like this big, uh, pedigreed guy from another company. And, and you're saying maybe, but maybe not. Can you give them some, some guidelines to look through on maybe a, when should you versus when should you try to develop? Cause I really liked that, John. I think it's way better if you can develop people on your own rather than just bring them in. But could you give them a blueprint of that? Yeah. I mean, I think it's stages. I mean, one of the things I've definitely learned in my, uh, you know, startup world here and acquisition stuff is that it, it takes a little while to figure out where you fit.

Um, is, and what your skillset is, cause then for instance, there's some leaders that are fantastic at taking a company from zero to 10 million, right? With all the chaos and there's nothing, you know, and so they're out there going crazy, but then once it hits 10 million and there's some structure and process around it, you know, they, there's somebody maybe better that goes from 10 to 50 or a hundred million. And then there's somebody else that has a skillset of a hundred to IPO or something like that. Right. So I do believe that there are, that, you know, once you figure out what you're good at, that that's really the area where you should focus on when you're looking for a job, right. Um, as a leader, but as a company, I think you need to understand what those milestones are, as far as what your growth and projections are of like, do you want to be IPO?

Do you want to do these types of things? And what stage of your business are, you know, are you at because I think there are different leaders for different things. Now, could that be one person? Ideally, absolutely. That they move upstream, you know, in other cases. Yeah. Okay. We're, I'll give you a perfect example. When my, I was fantastic at, at taking my company from zero to 10 million, 12 million. When we got acquired by staples, I looked at it as a cool challenge because I was like, Oh, it's kind of bored. I'd been doing it for seven years. Um, and I had figured out the process and it was working. And then all of a sudden we got acquired. I'm like, Oh, this is a new challenge for me. Right.

It's my job now as a, as a VP of sales to figure out how to take my little $10 million company and integrate it into a $20 billion organization. Right. Yep. And, and I was like, this is, this is cool. But very quickly, I, I didn't realize it, but I wasn't the right fit because I was still the startup guy, but now I had to assimilate into this huge corporate culture. And, you know, I kind of make the joke about staples. Like they literally invented red tape. Right. And that's just not me. Right. That's just not me. Because I, I'm not a, I'm not like a, you know, you know me, I don't have much of a filter and I really don't like politics. Right. So, so it took them firing me to realize that I wasn't the right fit.

So that's one piece. But the, on the other side, early on in my career, when we were, I don't know, we were probably a couple million, you know, probably two, 3 million. We were on our way up, same company, Thrive Networks. Right. And I really, and I was young. I was like 25, 26. And I remember like having self-doubt in myself. And I went to my other two founders and I said, Oh guys, look, I know we got to take it to another level, maybe, you know, expand across the region and those types of things. Like I don't have that skillset. So I'm willing to take a slight step back. If we want to go out and hire kind of the, the been there, done that guy. Right. And so I actually proactively told my CEO and my CFO about that.

They then went out and literally hired the number one, like the, the, from our top competitor, they hired this, this VP of sales. And when I tell you this guy was such a bag of shit, I couldn't even. Like all he did, he was a desktop manager. He sat behind his desk. He brought his list of contacts that he had from the previous company. And all he was going to do was poach them. And he literally just, he didn't know our culture. He didn't understand it. He just thought that he could apply his mentality and his approach to our, to what we were doing and be successful. And he was a disaster. So I think the key here is you've got to give the, the leaders that get you to a certain point, you got to get, I personally believe you should give them a chance to, to see if they can execute at the next level based on the stage of where your business is.

Right. So, but they have to have a structure and a plan and a process around that, that everybody agrees to so that you, you can have some directly measurable things that you're judging them on, not just your opinion that they're not doing a good job or they're not going fast enough or that type of thing. Again, going back to process, if you don't have goals, metrics, and things that you're all in agreement to about what you need to do, then, then you need, you don't need just a new leader from a sales standpoint. You need a new leader from a company standpoint. Bam. So John, you made another comment in there before we get to, I mean, this is all in the same vein and we're going to go off script.

Yeah. We had no fricking script, which is why this is awesome. I love what you said, the leader, you know, you said, and I agree with this, you ought to be the best sales guy. Maybe they aren't the best sales guy because they can't do it all the time, but they had damn well better be able to do every part of the sales process, in my opinion. Yeah. Like cold call, I'll give you a quick example to start. Do it, go. You know, like SDR managers, the ones that I see, the, you know, SDRs, BDRs, the ones that make the calls, the ones that I see, the managers that are the best are, are actually on the floor with the reps, making cold calls with the reps. Coaching, listening in, those types of things.

The worst ones I see are the ones that sit behind in their office and, and, and yell out to their team. How many dials have you made today? And, and go back to my experience with Basho. Here's a perfect example where, look, I had just sold my company to Staples, right? So I'm a big man on campus. Look at me. And now I'm at Basho and I'm just a little, little sales guy. I'm a little, little trainer now, right? I'm not sitting at the table. I'm not an executive, none of that. So I, you know, I had to fit, I had to know my role. And I remember we had a call blitz every Friday afternoon, right? And so, and I had, you know, I had made 400 dials a week for five years at early on in my days of Thrive, but then I was a VP.

And so I was doing coaching, but I wasn't like hammering the phones anymore. And so now at Basho, I got to get back into it, right? So I'm like, all right, Friday afternoons from three to five, we have these call blitzes. And I remember my boss, like we have, and I didn't want to do it, right? So I'm sitting there shooting the shit with the guy next to me, whatever. And my boss comes in and he looks at me and he goes, Hey, Barris, how many cold calls have you made today? And, and I, and me being the jackass that I am, I flipped it immediately to him. And I said, I don't know, Tim, how many cold calls have you made today? And yeah. And now mind you, I'm not recommending people do that. That's a fireball fence, right?

Cause I called, I called him out in front of the entire team too. Like this was like in the bullpen, the whole thing. And he like, was like, what? And he, and he didn't say anything. He actually didn't react. Well, no, he's what he said was, well, I generated a million dollars in revenue last year. And I'm like, that wasn't my question to him. My question was how many cold calls have you made? And he, and then he slinked back into his office and he shut his door. Now, again, arguably that was a fireball fence. He probably should have just said, get the hell out. Right. But what the reason I did it was because he had, I had never seen him make a cold call, not one. And so he would come in and he would bark, cold, cold, cold.

But I never saw him. So then fast forward to the next week, he's in my, my little cube was like with an earshot of his office that the next call was from three to five on the next Friday. He was in his office door open headset on crushing the phones. And he was good. Like he was like, I'm listening in on him. I'm like, holy shit. Like that dude is legit. He actually knows what he's talking about on the phone. And guess what happened to me? I am. I immediately got on the phones. I immediately started making cold calls. I was like, okay, all right. Yep. I got to do this. And so that's my biggest thing with management is, is lead by example, get in the trenches with the reps. You know, don't just sit there and bark at them.

Don't be a deal chaser. Don't just try to save deals because you don't think the rep is good enough to close it. Show them how to close that deal and give them some insights that'll help them elevate their own skillset, not just yours. So John, I love this. This is so good. I'm writing down as one of my notes, one of my takeaways that, that I hope everybody that listens to this podcast hears is you had better not just be able to measure every part of the process. You had damn well better be able to do every part of that process and show someone how to do it and do it because you can, and you're skilled. And too many people do exactly what you said. John, they get, they get this position and they kind of dust their hands and they say, well, I'm going to look at the spreadsheet.

Spreadsheet leadership is shit. No, it's the worst. It's the worst. And this is also, you know, again, you don't have to be the best. And this is, and this, I know you're, you love this, which is, you know, the whole unconsciously incompetent, you know, that whole thing. Yep. I actually don't, you know, you move through the unconsciously competent to the consciously incompetent to the consciously competent and then unconsciously competent, right? The, I actually think the best sales reps are usually the unconsciously competent sales reps. They just do what they do, right? I don't want my best. I don't want those to be managers. I want the consciously competent sales rep to be the manager. And by the way, that consciously competent sales rep is probably your B plus A minus sales rep.

They, they're, they're consistent with their results. They don't always hit their targets, but they're relatively consistent and you know what to expect out of them. And when you ask them, Hey, what's your process for getting a meeting? What's your process for preparing for a meeting? What's your process for, you know, presenting those types of things? They actually have an answer for you. The reps that can answer the questions of what's your, what's your process for getting to whatever the result you're landing, the ones who can articulate that those are the best managers. John, this is gold, man. This is gold. This is going to be one of those deals that I'm stoked that our listeners have this resource to go back and listen to again and again.

So we keep our skills sharp. We're going to show rather than tell. We're going to be one of those people that rolls up our sleeves. We are going to have a process that we follow not to micromanage, but so we can paint by numbers. How hard is it for a sales leader to create a paint by numbers approach? John, any thoughts on how you build one of those? Because a lot of them on this, they're listening to you right now will say, I wish I had that. How do I do it? Yeah, see, you know, it's funny. I used to have reps, you know, I would, early on when I was young, I would say, you know, I need you guys to be more strategic in your thinking and all this other stuff. And they would, you know, the feedback, especially the younger ones would be like, John, like, I'm just not a, how do you, how are you, how do you become a strategic thinker?

I'm just not a strategic thinker. Right. And I'd be like, let me demystify strategic thinking here for you for a second. Strategic thinking is nothing more than outlining a process. And I don't, by the way, I don't really care what the process is, because any process is better than no process. And so, so outlining the process and then figuring out what the steps of that process are, and then finding the weakest link of that process, pulling that piece down, coming up with a couple of different approaches to address that piece, plugging it back in and seeing how the process runs. And if it improves, find the next weakest link. And if that, you know, find the next weakest link. So I think it comes down to just having an understanding of what the process should be at the various stages and then, and, and, and put, letting it run for a little while so that you get some data and some insights as a baseline to measure against.

And then my biggest recommendation for everybody, and this is managers and reps included, you know, somebody asked me, John, now that you're 42, if you could go back and, if you could tell, if you could go back and tell your 22 year old self something, what would it be? Right. And my number one answer to that was a B split test, right? A B split test, everything you do. And so now here's an example, right? Um, a lot of people say, oh, objection handling, you know, that's, that's brutal, right? Like my team sucks at objection handling. I'm like, there's no rocket science to objection handling. It's just science. Identify the objection that you're getting your ass handed to you on, right? Oh, you're too expensive.

Or we, you know, we don't have time for this. I don't have the research, whatever it is, right? Identify what that is. Come up with two different ways of handling that objection. And by the way, again, Google it, right? Best objection handling techniques, right? And find two or three that you think are, are relevant to, to that objection for your audience. And then for an entire week, your team, and ideally do this with your team. If you can do this as an individual, but ideally as a week during the week say, okay, out of everything else, everybody's doing when this objection comes up, I want you to use this approach. And then I want to track on a, you know, positive or negative response. And then for an entire week, you have five, 10, 15 reps on your team.

Focusing on that one objection with that one approach and tracking it. And at the end of the week, you collect the data and you say, okay, we hit that objection 50 times this week. We got 30 positives and 20 negatives with this approach. I, you know, Hey, let's add that to the list. And so you can create this, this, this environment of continuous learning. And this is what I did when I was a manager of six or seven reps. That's all we would do. I didn't have the money to invest in training. Like we were self-funded. I mean, literally when somebody came in and told me, John, it's going to cost 10, 20, $30,000 for training. I would laugh them out of my office. Right? I would. I would be like, dude, I don't have $10.

Right? So, so, so what I would do is we, we would pick topics once a week and I'd say, all right, everybody, what's the challenge we're having this week? Gatekeepers. Okay, cool. Who wants to do a little bit of research on best way to get through a gatekeeper? Google. Boom. All right. Let's role play this out a little bit. Cool. This week, I want everybody to try it this way. And then we'll collect the data, see if it works next week. And then next week, we'll pick another one. What's next? And you almost have this mentality of, of building your playbook, if you will, along the way, but you're leveraging the team. And, and there's continuous knowledge and improvement along the way. Cause so that you don't just stay static, right?

You don't just come up with a solution. And then three years later, you're still using that. Cause that's just not going to work anymore. So, you know what, John, as I listened to you, too many people will just like say, I'm doing what I'm doing this. I'm just going to see if this works. And 400 calls with a bad result is just a crappy week. But if you have 200 with a bad result, and then another 200 with a possible good result, all of a sudden, it was a really interesting week. Or even if it was 200 bad, 200 bad, at least I learned two ways not to do it instead of one, right? Well, and that's the thing. And this is another piece that I've had a few reps talk to me recently about how do they stay motivated in sales, right?

Cause it's such a brutal profession. Well, look, if you, if you base your success in sales purely based on your quota, it's going to be a rough go. Like you're, because there's so many more losses than there are wins. And that ends up eating you alive if you don't really focus on the small wins. And so if you're just looking at the big goal is the way you're going to measure your success, then I don't think you'll, you'll probably won't last too long in this profession. But if you walk in every day and say, what can I learn today? Right? Like what, like, yes. Okay. Obviously my goal is to get some meetings or close these deals or whatever it is. That's my big goals. But, but what else do I want to focus on?

And to your point, if you know, let's, let's use a day, right? Say an individual rep, if they make $50 a day and get no meetings and it's kind of all over the place. And yeah, that's a shitty day. I totally agree. But if you make $25 with this approach and $25 with this approach and still get no meetings, that's actually not a bad day because you just, to your point, figured out two approaches that don't work. And then tomorrow you come in, try a couple of new ones. You'll eventually start to figure out what works and what doesn't work. And if you kind of extrapolate this to the team level, well, now all of a sudden you, you can create an engine. And then by the way, by doing that, you have a process that you can repeat and then you can coach your reps to fit into that process.

And then by the way, as they graduate through that process, they can apply that process when they're managers and so on and so on and so on. Okay. I got, I got, I'm looking at the clock, dude. We're starting to run low. And so I got two questions I have to ask you before I finish the way I finish everyone. So you're a sales leader. You got a team, you're growing. You've been, you've been doing all this stuff. I'm keeping my, I'm keeping my skills sharp. I'm leading out in front. I'm painting by numbers. I'm AB split testing. I'm doing all these things, right? Okay. How do you handle the whole problem a leader has of engagement with people? Cause you said it, it's a hard fricking job, dude. What are some, cause I don't believe, I mean, this is, I'm taking too long to ask the question.

I believe, I believe that sometimes they focus too much on motivation. And I think rarely the motivation is the problem because they're in sales. They're, they're motivated. They want to win, but how do you keep them engaged? Which is a little different than motivation. Any, anything you've seen great leaders do? Yeah. I always, I always caution people on motivation. First of all, that's why hiring is the most critical part of any business, right? Because you can't train motivation. You can't train drive, right? Somebody has to have that. So if they don't have that, you got the wrong people on the bus and there's not much you're going to be able to do. And that's why playing games with like, who can get the most call competition, I think is a bullshit strategy.

Yeah, well, cause that'll motivate some, right? But others aren't motivated that way, right? Especially this new generation coming in, like you and I, look, I'm, I'm pretty sure when you got into sales, it was similar to me. It's like, give me my territory, give me my quota and please get the hell out of my way. Exactly. And by the way, I'll set all your records. Just watch me go. Exactly. But please leave me alone and I don't need to be brought back for team events and all that shit. Like, just get out of my way and let me go. This cult, this, this generation is, is almost the exact opposite. Like money isn't the motivator, you know, competitive, like rah, rah. And by the way, that's also like the dude bro frat culture that, that repels women from sales, which is why there aren't enough women in sales, especially tech sales.

Right. So none of that stuff is, yeah, I mean, I think you can pick and choose, but I think to your point of really getting to, um, the engagement factor is, is really about, it goes back to what I, what I said before, which is you, you have this culture of continuous improvement where you're constantly asking, you know, small things of your team to improve upon. And you pick things that you work on as a group and then you assign things to people. So for instance, I used to do what I said there, which is pick a topic on my Monday morning sales team meetings that we were having a challenge with. And then what I would say is, okay, who wants to tackle this one? And I would get somebody to, you know, raise their hand.

I'll, I'll take care of it. And look, I'm not talking saying, you know, take two days out of your week and go do research on this. I'm saying take lunch, do a little Google search on a good way to approach this scenario, come back and present it to the team about what that approach is. And then you're going to be the one responsible for coaching the team on how to do that thing that you just learned about. Right. So now you put them in a position where you'll easily see, by the way, you'll, you'll see the reps that gravitate towards that and the ones that are struggle with it. And that's for you as a manager, something that you can look at from a leadership development standpoint, because some reps are going to present what they found really well and know how to, you know, work with the team and that type of stuff.

But you almost make them king for the week or queen for the week. And they, and it's their job to, to, to work with the rest of the team on this one topic and then report back to the team on the results. So with that, it's this weekly thing, right? Every player on the team gets a new, you know, once a week, every player gets something else that they pick on and, and they're, they're, they're researching, they're presenting, they're tracking and they're coaching themselves at a very, very minor level that doesn't expect them to do too much more than what you're already asking of them. And, and that way it fosters this environment of let's all get better together, right? And you're going to be the one that leans, leaves the charge on this for this week.

That's a great way. That's a great answer. And, and, and I think that that's a super good, that's a tactical thing that everybody can do, uh, and fully immersive, right? Just fully immersive. Okay. So I always finish two ways. I usually ask everyone what their greatest sales challenge, a sales leader, their greatest sales challenge that they've had to overcome as a leader. I want to ask you a little different way because you're in here as a special guest. Uh, yeah, you're a practitioner, but you have the added benefit of you work with the most successful companies in the world. What, if you're a head of sales, if you're a sales leader of any, whether you're the CRO down to a functional sales manager, how do you define success other than just sales?

What should a sales leader be looking at to say, I'm winning here and it can't be the scoreboard scoreboard's an obvious one. I'm asking you, I know you, John, I know you fairly well. I love you're a straight talker. You walk in, you know, if you've got a successful organization or someone that you got a shitload of work in front of you, probably in the first three minutes, what do you look for? You know, I look for a lot of stuff. As far as success, I mean, everybody's definition of success is different, right? Some it's money, some it's this, some it's that. I, I think success is based on, are we, are we moving in the right direction to achieve the vision of the organization as a whole? And are we playing our part and are we getting better along the way?

So for instance, one of the challenges I see a lot with, you know, I get a lot of executives who ask, Hey John, you know, how do you get my, how do I get my team mode? And I'm talking like C levels, like, you know, it feels like my team's not as bought into this as me. And, and, you know, they ebb and flow as far as their interest in being successful. And especially when companies get around to like 50 people, right? I think 50 is the benchmark where the startup passion that the founders had turns into role players, right? Like, you know, the 50, the 51st person that you hire is there for a job, you know, that, I mean, they're just, they're, they're not like, Oh, you know, I believe in the mission.

It's like, I want to get paid and I want to do my job. Right. And I think, first of all, we need to give up as leaders, the idea that everybody needs to be an A player. I actually completely disagree with that. I think the world needs to be players to just do the job that they were hired to do and do it well. Um, but I think what I look for is, does the leader articulate a vision about where the company and are they honest with it? Right. Because a lot of people, a lot of these startup companies I come across, like, you know, that they're positioning themselves for acquisition. You know that they're positioning themselves for an IPO or whatever it is, but they're trying to hide it from their team for some reason.

And you could, you'll never be able to get somebody to do more than what they're asked for if they don't buy into a vision and know where they fit in that vision. And so I think painting, having a clear vision of where the business is going over the next two to five years, having, making sure that everybody understands in that organization, their role in helping achieve that. And then making sure that obviously you're, you're making progress towards that goal based on the bigger one is, is where I see the most successful organization, most consistently successful organizations, uh, and, and, and people, um, they have a vision and they, they set goals and they back into how they're going to get there and they execute on that and they iterate along the way.

Those are four good ones, role players, not just stars, vision, integrity, and then a clear or well-pit lack, uh, pathway to success back into your numbers. Those are good. John, I knew it was going to happen, dude. I knew we were going to go long. Everybody's going to be pissed off at me once again, that I'm giving you off because they want me to give you more. They're saying, they're saying less of Jepsen and more of Barrows is a good thing. That's what I'm going to get those emails. I'll come back, man. I'm always happy to join on at number 11, 12, or 13, or however far you go with this. Oh, we're going to go a long way. So yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll get you back on. I want to finish with you the same way I finished with everyone, brother leaders, uh, often are readers.

You know, we, we like to be informing ourselves and we have a really cool library of, of books that these high growth leaders are suggesting anything you would suggest that a sales leader ought to read and make sure it's part of their, their book list. Yeah. I mean, the one I always recommend is it's not a sales book. It's a psychology book. Uh, it's, it's called Influence by Robert Cialdini. Um, and Cial is C-I-A-L-D-I-N-I. And it's a book on psychology and why we do the things the way that we do them. Um, and it's all directly relevant to sales. And so a lot of the psychology around getting people and employees to do certain things is the same psychology you have to use to get, uh, our customers to do and prospects to do certain things.

So that's the one I would recommend, but I'm more of a blog guy. You know, as far as, uh, you know, blogs and snippets than, than full blown books. So, um, you know, but that's one that I definitely, uh, really recommend everybody I talk to. All right. So speaking of, of, of follows blogs, snippets, et cetera, I don't know if, I don't know anybody in the sales space that does better than you and giving actionable stuff. Like you have so much free stuff at my company. My money's where my, what my mouth is. I got a sales team and you already know this is no bullshit. I require every one of my guys to follow you. In fact, I reach out to you and say, let me know when they've connected with you because I made it required.

I appreciate that. And so how do they follow you? How do, how do our listeners get more of you, John? Yeah. Easiest way is just go straight to the website because everything's there. So it's jbarrows.com. J B as in boy, A R R O W S.com. On there, you'll find, I got a resource library that, as you said, I give away probably 80 to 90% of my stuff for free that you can grab their videos and templates and stuff like that. And then you can find me on all the social channels as well. My handle on most of them is John M as in Michael Barrows, all one word. And that's Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram. We also have a kick-ass Facebook group called Make It Happen. So if you go to Facebook slash jbarrows, you'll find the Make It Happen group, which there's a ton of really good engagement there.

And Morgan and I moderate that quite a bit. And we also have like our Make It Happen podcast. And then we also do a, uh, you know, a happy hour Friday afternoons where anybody can join us questions and Morgan and I rip into them for a little bit and have some fun. Well, I, I, uh, I, I consume your content and I'll tell you to all of our listeners, follow his podcast, read his stuff. I've reached out to John many times saying that podcast was a difference maker for me. I've sent you that message more than once. I appreciate it. And, uh, so I hope that, uh, everybody that's listening to us is also listening to following you, John, we've talked about killer stuff. From all of, you know, from keeping your skills sharp and that paint by numbers and AV split testing, your way of doing engagement, you've given them a killer, killer start on things that they can check off on.

Am I going to have a difference? I can't thank you enough. John Barrows. He's teaching the fastest growing and most successful sales teams in the world. He's helping sales leaders make sure their teams can paint by numbers, predict their own future by using metrics for mapping rather than net managing. But most of all, he helps leaders understand that improvement is the greatest source of motivation. John, my man, on behalf of sales leaders and salespeople around the world, thanks for giving us 35 minutes of your time and happy selling. Yeah. Thanks so much, Rob, everybody and make it happen. Hey everyone. And welcome to the so what portion of the sales leadership podcast, where we break down the interview and we ask ourselves, why did that conversation even matter?

Now, I love John. John's awesome. He's earned the distinction as one of the best in the world at what he does in helping companies get to high growth mode and then go finding next level after that. The reason I wanted him on this show is because he has this really unique perspective of, I work with all these companies that are doing amazing, but I also work with these other ones that are trying to get to that level and I see the difference in what the leaders do. And I asked him if he would be able to share what some of those distinctions were. And as I've gone through my notes, I've created a John Barrow's top 10 list of the top 10 things do the sales leaders do that are in high growth mode that the average ones don't do.

But before we get there, I want to go to a point that he made. He said it's very, very rare to bring in a hired gun rep, one of those gunslingers that comes in and just does their thing and makes an impact. They might get a deal or two, but they rarely create lasting impact. And he said the same thing when you bring in those kind of hot shot sales leaders, they rarely make lasting impact for these 10 reasons that I'm about to share with you. But you don't have to know John very well to know he's a huge sports fan, especially his New England area sports. And I think that the best way to articulate John's point is to look at what happened to his beloved Celtics last year. They drafted an amazing first round draft pick in Jason Tatum, but they also went after one of the hot shot overpriced free agents in Gordon Hayward.

And very quickly, they realized they weren't going to be able to rely on Gordon the way they thought they would. And instead, they're going to have to go and develop this emerging player. And at the end of the day, by coaching this person and emerging with this person and giving him a chance to show what he was capable of, Jason Tatum certainly ended the year as one of the top two rookies in the league. I would say he was number two to Donovan Mitchell, and he surpassed everybody's expectations. And I think that that's a great way of looking at what we want to do with our sales teams. We want to take these people and develop them into the stars, rather than say, who are the stars I can go get, and then cross my fingers and hope that they pan out.

Now, that said, we're going to avoid Gordon Hayward syndrome on your team with John Barrow's top 10 list. Here we go. Number one, the top sales leaders in the world are engaged in how their products are sold. They can do it. They can do every part of the process. They don't just talk about it. They can prospect. They can do discovery calls. They can do proposals. They can do objection handling. They can do all of it. That's the first thing. They're able to do it, which leads to number two. They can do more than that. They can also articulate how. John spends a lot of time on the interview on the consciously competent versus the unconsciously competent. He says the consciously competent reps are usually not the number one sales reps, but they are the best managers because they're able to explain why something works and what someone needs to do.

The unconsciously competent, they're the artists. They're the Picassos. They're the ones that just get it. They're the Michael Jordans out there that just go, right? And so you want to make sure that your managers are able to articulate why. And that's the biggest reason why hiring the top rep is often something that doesn't really pan out. It's not just because the skills are different and it's not just because you missed their production. It's because they quite often are not consciously competent. They're unconsciously competent, which takes us to number three. The great ones, they demystify the strategic thinking process. I love how John talked about it. They do it by testing everything.

You know, they have to because they're consciously competent. They aren't the artists. I'll try this and I'll try this. We'll do what works best. We'll try this. We'll try this. We'll do what works best. And he talks about chasing improvement as a primary thing that the great ones do. Which takes us to number four. Since they're chasing improvement, they don't just chase deals. The unconsciously competent sales leaders, they gravitate to deal chasing. Okay? John said it three times in this interview that deal chasing is a mistake. Instead, we've got to coach the reps how they can do it. Okay? Don't just be the guy that says, give me the ball and I'll shoot it. We're going to teach them how to shoot it.

And that's a huge distinguishing factor for the great leaders versus the average ones. Which takes us to number five. They don't just define success by hitting their goal. They also define success by learning. And that's so important. He talked about if you only define success by hitting your goal, John predicts you'll flame out. He believes it's just as important to know each rep is learning and improving and to use that as a source of definition of winning. Okay? That's first five. Second five. Number six. They keep their team motivated with the culture of continuous improvement. Now, John talks about how they don't have artificial, hey, little contests that might apply to some people but not all.

The way that you can apply to all is connecting to their journey for each rep. Each rep needs to know exactly what they're working on, why it matters, and make sure they value how it's going to help them. And so, the great leaders are super aware that motivation and engagement, more than motivation, engagement comes by knowing that they're improving. And so, that's why number seven is so important. John talks about winning with role players, not just star players. This is avoiding the Gordon Hayward syndrome. We want to make sure each player on the team knows their role clearly. And then, he talked about this twice, work with them to back into what activities need to happen, work with them to know what skills need to happen.

And as you develop them, you will find very quickly you have a team of stars instead of the one or two that you thought you hired, which takes us to number eight. Involve the team in creating these improvement strategies. I love this question that he says you should ask in a sales meeting. Who wants to take this one on? Always be identifying the thing that the team wants to improve and say, who wants to take it on? Let them go out and research it, teach it, track it, coach it, and then report the next week on how it went. Work with everybody on the team along the way on the ideas on making it work. Let them be queen or king for the week on how we solve that. And what you'll find is you'll foster a culture of we're all getting better together.

I love that. It's an interesting idea that I thought for sure everyone could benefit from, which takes us to number nine. He used a key word at the end and he got passionate about those. He said, I'm building an engine. Don't build performers. Build an engine. He talked about an engine and I believe it's driven with repeatable process. Not a team of big game hunters that may or may not buy into the team's way of doing things. You want to have a whole bunch of Jason Tatum's that soak it up and understand what they got to do and why. The great ones coach each rep to these processes and then they find that individual pathway to the top. That whole concept of go get them, that just doesn't exist in the High Growth Leaders Playbook and that takes us to the last one.

He said, the great ones are awesome at articulating a team or company vision and they're honest about it. I love John's statement, a team needs to know where they're going and believe it. You'll never get someone to do more than what they're asked for if you can't give them a vision and help them understand where they're going and why they fit. That's the top ten. I hope there's two or three at least that you can do that will help you. I know that John's conversation with me today will redefine many things that we do at our organization. So, John, thank you to each of you out there. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John.

I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John.

I hope you enjoyed listening to John. John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John.

I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John.

I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John.

I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John. I hope you enjoyed listening to John.