Eric Hamilton: Funding Your Passion through Sales

Sales could allow you the opportunity to fund your passion, right? If you're good at sales, you can use that to fund whatever it is you're passionate about. That's what I actually love about sales. Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. And I got a sales one for you, true and true. This one's with Eric Hamilton and he's an accomplished sales leader with over 25 years experience. And he actually works with a client that I worked with and we've done some really fun stuff together.

He wrote a book as well, which is called The Sales Blueprint, What Winners Do Differently. And that's what we got into in this conversation. This was pretty tactical. You know, we talked about work ethic and culture and leadership and what to focus on, right? There's so many things right now going on, like how do you stay focused, how to hold yourself accountable and how to hold others accountable. And what preparation looks like, discipline, consistency, how to stay motivated, how to run a meeting. So we got super tactical across the board on this one. So whether you're a manager or a rep and you want to improve, you should listen to the rest of this one. So let's have some fun. Eric Hamilton, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend.

How are you doing? I'm fantastic. I'm fantastic on this Monday afternoon. And this is the Monday as we look back on the podcast that Dallas will show. Anything is possible. It will be an interesting night, man. We'll see. Like I said, I hate as a Bostonian, like there's always something about just no matter how good it looks, like there's always that, like it's going to fall apart. Like for some reason, it's in our DNA that we've just know we're going to lose. So I'm hoping that they'll pull on them 18 and take one up on the Lakers here. So we'll see what happens. Like we talked about, you know, beforehand is there's a lot to be learned, I think, from the team aspect of what they're doing and those type of things.

But as I said, the more I talk about Boston sports on this, the less listeners I get. Let's get into sales, man, because we know each other for some, you know, working with work together from a client standpoint. But let's talk a little bit about your origin story. Like where are you coming from? Right. I always like the audience to understand, you know, I mean, we can all read LinkedIn profiles, but like where's this DNA come from? Where's your sales DNA? So would you grow up parents, upbringing, those type of things? Then we'll get into the book that you wrote and a lot of cool things that I think we're here to talk about today. Yeah, that sounds great. So, again, first of all, I appreciate the opportunity.

I watch Make It Happen Monday, so I am a member on your course, so I do check it out. But so, again, Eric Hamilton, I'm born and raised in a small city in Michigan called Kalamazoo. And so I spent all my time there, graduated from Western Michigan University with a bachelor's, had nothing to do with sales. I was, I have a major in computer information systems and black American studies, so it has nothing to do with sales. Then I moved on to get my master's in MBA in business management. But still, with that being said, when you talk about sales DNA, how that actually started was old school, old school. So I'm going to date myself a little bit. Do you remember pagers? Well, the first thing I sold was pagers.

This is going back. I was selling pagers. I was selling long distance services to family members and to neighbors and walking around the neighborhood. Like, I started selling at an early age because what I've seen in sales is that it didn't matter how much education I had or my background. What mattered was what can I do with the hustle, the grind? Like, was I willing to put forth the effort? And I found I was enamored by that at an early age. But to your point, I think I was listening to one of your interviews earlier and you're right. You just don't grow up when you're young and say, I can't wait to be in sales. You just kind of stumble into it. You find yourself pretty good at something and you kind of take to it.

So that's my journey into sales, kind of starting with the basics. And I think the one time I really, really found myself enamored with it was it was after the pager time and after the long distance because I found myself able to connect with people pretty well. But it was when I was in college and how I paid my way through school was I sold the cable services to people on the phone. So I'll call people at five, six o'clock at night and I'm just trying to sell you an upgrade or a new cable service package. And you know how many times you get rejected and hung up and we'll get into some of this job, but there's things like small tips that we still that I can apply now. Like I would have, they made us have a mirror next to our desk.

And so your tone that comes across, a lot of that is based on like, are you smiling? It's going to come across the tone. It's in your energy. So we would glance, glance at the mirror real quick and then, all right, hey, this is Eric Hamilton. And it just makes a difference. And so I find myself time to time looking back saying, oh, I'm not in the best mood right now. Let me go, just take a glance in the mirror. Let me just look in the mirror real quick and then jump into it. Dude, I love that. It's funny to bring it up because I was just doing a cold call blitz prep for a team that I was working with. And I told him, I go, look, a lot of this just has to do with your mentality and your energy, right?

You can get through that. There's a whole stat about how we communicate as human beings, right? I think it's like eight, 35, 57, 8% is the words, 35 is the tonality and 57% is body language. And so when you're over the phone, if you're hunched over, you know what I mean? It's going to come across that way. And I actually did the same thing for one of my reps a while back where when this kid was in a good mood, Eric, I was, I mean, he was one of the best cold callers I'd ever heard in my life. Yes. I would leave my door open and I would listen to learn from him and his, like what he was doing. But man, when he was in a bad mood, it was, it was a disaster. And so I did the same thing. I took a mirror and I put it in front of his desk and I said, look, if you come in and you're looking yourself in that mirror and you are not in a good mood, I want you to send emails all day.

If you're in a good mood, right? Get on it, get after it, right? Get after those phones. And I think there's all these little small things that we can do to put ourselves in the right mindset to do some of the stuff that we might not want to do or like to do, but it gets us to your point that grinds, like getting through that stuff and learning that is the lessons are valuable as it relates to life and everything else, but obviously sales and development, right? Because I just don't think a lot of people are willing to put in the work these days. Yeah. So there's a quote from Kevin Hart early on in his career, and he's a pretty famous comedian at this particular point, but he says, everybody wants to be famous, but no one wants to put the work in.

So a lot of people like the sound, like I'm sure we work with a lot of AEs and sales professionals. I've never heard a sales rep say, I do not want to be successful. However, when you start to break down what they're actually doing, either they're defining success as something different than what I think it is, or they're just don't really want it. And it sounds good. I talked to my son sometimes, my 14 year old, he loves the sound of playing quarterback. Like he likes that because when they win, everything is great. But when they, when he threw these picks, you have bad plays, stuff like that, then he gets down. And so I think, you know, it's important to have that mindset. That is extremely important.

If you really want it, you got to do things to put yourself, it doesn't matter how you feel. Like I, I began, I read this, uh, this article, John, and it was, uh, habits of multimillionaires. And there's a ton of them out there. Obviously you can Google them, but a few things I picked up. One was most millionaires get up at 5. AM part of the 5. AM club. I was like, okay, well, I typically get up by six 30, but I made the commitment. Now, originally was it fun? No. Uh, I also read, they read a book, uh, every other day or every day, try to get some kind of reading and also exercising. So I added those three in, you know, how often I wake up at 5. AM and I don't want to work out. Right. Yeah. I don't, I don't, I don't really want to.

However, it's not about how I feel. Like mindset is I got to get ready to accomplish what I need to get done. Less about, I feel, I don't feel like prospecting right now, but this is not about your feelings, John. You got to get this done. This is what's expected. So turn this thing on, look at yourself in the mirror and get it going. So I love the mindset conversation. Hey, I hope you're enjoying the conversation so far. I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JB sales membership. It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, which are filling the funnel and driving a close that cover all aspects of the sales process.

It also includes monthly workshops that I'll be running on specific sales skills and different tech skills like chat GPT and how to leverage AI throughout the entire sales process. Finally, the membership gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to jbarrows.com, click on the individual membership link and use coupon code podcast at checkout, you'll get 25% off. Now let's get back to the conversation. So let's, let's start with that because work ethic, I think is something that is, has been questioned quite a bit recently. And I, you know, I always feel like I'm getting closer and closer to talking about like, like my dad, you know, like back in my day and all these different things.

So what, what, where, what are you seeing right now? Like, cause you, you're now a little bit more frontline, right? You work with reps, you work with man, you know, those types of things. I train them. So I kind of get to see a little bit of it. So my perception could be one thing, whereas the reality is different, but what are you seeing as it relates to that willingness to put in the work? Your kid, my kid, same thing. I real quick, my daughter, for instance, she's, she's playing volleyball. She's 13. She's going to high school, playing volleyball. And I wasn't able to unfortunately make it to their little ceremony. And, uh, at the end, and she got the, um, what was it? Best, not best teammate, but basically like, like the best teammate award.

Right. And I was super proud of her, but she was upset that she didn't get the MVP. And I was like, sweetheart, I'm actually more proud of you for getting the best teammate award than you are. Then you, but I was like, why? Like what's some, well, that's number one. And I want to be number one. And I said, okay, did you put in the work? To be number one. And, and I love her to death. But when I tell her, like, if you want to be that great, you, I don't need to tell you to go out and practice. You, you are out practicing. Like you, you don't just practice during your scheduled times with your team or the games. You need to take it upon yourself to grab that volleyball, go out in the yard and start hitting it around and start running and jogging and all that stuff.

Cause right now I was very bold that you're very direct with her. I said, you didn't put in the work to be MVP. So you're not going to get it just because you show up on game day and she, you know, it's a hard lesson for a 13 year old girl to, to understand, but I think we are, my sense is that we're losing it, but I think there's reasons for it. And I would love your perspective. Um, so I love the example that you just gave with your daughter, um, that while she did receive something, it wasn't what she wanted. And you were able to kind of extract a pull it, kind of reframe that around. Did you do this step might've led you or increased the likelihood that you would have received that? So I love the perspective and, uh, I don't want to get sidetracked yesterday.

It's father's day, but I think it's important that we do make sure if we're going to be, you know, the number one sales leader in the world, like that's our goal and make all this money, like, let's make sure we're applying that to our, are we trying to be the number one dad? Are we trying to be the number one husband, number one son, like fill in the blank. But I think there's, there's opportunities for us to be world-class and more than just our careers. So who else do you with that conversation? Um, and just kind of going back to work ethic and stuff like that. I think I'll talk about like kids first and I'm moving to the sales side, what I'm noticing, but from, from the kids side, I do a lot of coaching.

So I coach basketball, football, I was coaching baseball for a while for my, my 14 year old. And, uh, at this particular point in time, the work ethic, it's diff, it's different. It's just a different time. And I don't want to say the same thing back in my day. Cause everybody says that, but from the overall work ethic that a lot of the kids put in right now is different, right? Even the things that they're eating, the things that they're drinking, that's different. We had the water holes, right? When you were tired, you went and got the water holes and you know, now like I'm in Texas. And so it's a big football state. And so you've got these high end facilities and it's like some excessive electrolyte water that they're drinking.

I'm like, who, like the facilities, like the gym at these, this high school down the street. Oh my goodness. It's, it's the biggest, the baddest gym I've seen. This is like lifetime. It's, it's insane. They have so much at their disposal. It's real easy to lose track of the work that you have to do because you have access to so much stuff. And so I haven't noticed that with the young ones, I think on the sales side, I think it's a combination of the culture. And this goes to, in my opinion, it goes to the leadership. Like you can, you can build the type of team that you want, but it's got to be consistent. And if you want to have a team of go-getters that are going after it every single day, a lot of time with leaderships, we start something almost like you mentioned about the give and gets, like you started, but you got to be consistent with it.

It's the same thing. If you, if you have a team that's based on prospect and when you want them to be go-getters, I think a lot of times what I see as sales leaders is we'll start and we'll be on them about certain things and then we'll stop. We'll slow down. Not as much. And so therefore, what are they going to focus on? Something else because it's not front and center for us. So I think leadership can help kind of mold the direction of where we're going to stay, keep the pedal to the metal on that. Because a lot of times it's really easy to say, once we've done it four or five times, I don't need to continue to go through MedPick. We already got this. Like, you know, MedPick now. Well, actually let's go through the deal.

Let's walk through MedPick again, right? Even though you know it, let's walk through and see if we can identify some areas for growth. So I agree with you on that. I think it's a mindset and I think it's leadership has to continue to push on that because most AEs, they're going to go in that direction of where leadership is really focused on. And what's easy, right? I mean, I think that's your point. The leadership is, I've noticed, you know, it's unfortunate that it's tough to be consistent because they're being pushed in a million different directions. And so it's easy to fall off on certain things that you assume that the team likes or knows already or whatever. But I mean, it comes back to sports.

Like the sports teams that I know that do the fundamentals consistently are usually the ones that win consistently, right? They might not always win the championship, but they'll always be in the playoffs. You know what I mean? And they'll always be grinding. And so how... Accountability is probably one of my biggest faults, personally. I'm kind of like that. That's why I'm not a good manager, right? Because I think I'm a decent leader. I'm a decent coach. But when it comes to management and holding people accountable consistently. So I want to really talk more about the sales reps holding themselves accountable. So talk... Because you got your book, right? It's called The Sales Blueprint. Yes, sir.

Yes. Right. And you said what winners do differently. And talk to me a little bit about what the individual winners do to hold... Like, first of all, what do they focus on, right? Because there's a lot to focus on. It's like, how do I know what to focus on to get better? And then how do I hold myself accountable for that? As we were talking to prep this, for instance, you know, a lot of people... I've learned this about goal setting recently. You know, first, oh, smart goal setting, right? Tell everybody about the goal so that there's accountability there. But the problem with that psychologically is that when you tell somebody, oh, I'm working out so I can lose 30 pounds. Just by me saying that makes me feel good.

Yes. Right? It makes me feel like I'm doing something. Hey, Eric, you know, yeah, man, I'm working out every day. And my goal is to lose 30 pounds. So, me telling you that is actually dilutes a little bit of my motivation to do it because I've already gotten my mini endorphin rush just by saying it. So, a lot of people now are saying, don't be broadcast with your goals. But then how do you hold yourself accountable? So, talk to me a little bit about the first piece of like what to focus on and then how to hold yourself accountable from a sales rep standpoint. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, just to the point of a lot of people, especially around the summertime, they're like, all right, we got to get beach body ready.

Let's go lose 10 pounds or whatever the case should be to your point. After you do that, then what? If you said, if you just said, and then it's like, it's over. Like, all right, I lost the 10 pounds. Let me go back to eating these pieces and hot dogs and donuts and stuff like that. And that's a psychological thing, just like a system that we can get in over and over again is I'm going to work our real heart, get some muscles, lose some weight, go to this beach and then just go back and doing the same thing. It's a vicious, vicious cycle. And just kind of move that over to sales. And the book talks about some of this. I think first and foremost, when you talk about what to do, what are you setting up, is how do you prepare?

What does preparation look like? And a lot of people, organizations I'll go to that I've been to in the past and I'll come in from a leadership perspective and there's no real, there's no real strategy. It's just a lot of people doing stuff. And John, we have a tendency to see when people are doing stuff, like we feel good. Even as salespeople, like I did a lot of stuff today. That's great. Did any of it lead to any revenue generation generated type of activities? Right. And a lot of times are like, no, but I did a lot of stuff. I heard this phrase a while back where you're not paid to work hard. You're paid to execute. So whatever your job is, the byproduct might be you're working hard. But in actuality, you're paid to execute.

And the more you're able to execute on things, most likely the money will come along with it. So I think first and foremost, we have to start from the basics on preparation. So what I believe that winners do differently is that they prepare for success. So what we can't control is you can't control that you're the best sales professional that any company is ever going to run across. You can't control that. That's my opinion. There's some things you can do to influence it, but you can't tell me that. What you can do is you can prepare harder than everyone else. You can be the most prepared sales professional they talk to. Right. Those are things within your control. Those are will things. So what winners are doing is they're preparing themselves for success.

You talk about like New England Patriots prior to Brady leaving your shop. There's a whole different world after that. But Belichick's process was, and I even referenced this in the book, is he had a process. He built out a systematic process that he felt like I could interchange the person, the player, because the system works. And so what I do when I go into an organization is I build out a system that for me, the system has worked. So I continue to replicate it. Now you add on stuff to it, but winners have some kind of system that they're using. Whatever that system is, it can be changed and it could be your own little flavor, but you got to have some consistency and some system that works.

So I think that's, that's very, very important about how winners are preparing for success and going about it. Now, just on the accountability piece, this kind of gets to discipline. Consistency and discipline goes hand to hand. And again, I'll use the reference of working out in the morning or waking up in the morning is I don't feel like it. And to be disciplined and consistent is doing the things you don't really feel like doing, but they need to get done. David Goggins. You ever listen to David Goggins? I don't think so. David Goggins. Okay. So he is a military guy that did three hell weeks. He's an insane guy. If you look him up, he's got stories for days, but he, he's got to be pretty vulgar, by the way.

So if your audience is going to listen, he's vulgar with his, the point of it is he always talks about, I don't stop when I'm tired. I've stopped when I'm done. And whatever that piece is, if you're able to have that mindset, now you can hold yourself accountable because it's not about I've worked eight hours. I did an hour of prospect. Gosh, John, I'm just saying the other day, I set a bar for the team to do an hour prospecting a day. When I asked everybody how much they did, do you know what they told me? An hour. Why? Because that's what the expectation was. What? Like, do you want to be here? Like, do you want to be excellent? Or if I tell my son to clean his room, it's going to be the bare minimum.

Yep. He's going to do the bare minimum that dad will accept or go outside and throw the football. If I say 50 throws, he's not doing 51. He's doing 50. Yeah. Yeah, that's the frustrating part to me. Like, it's like now because like a lot of people think they just did the activity that they deserve whatever it is, right? So, I deserve a promotion. Why? Because I've been here a year. Also, I mean, I had no joke. I had a rep or a manager tell me that they were dealing with a rep who is legit 29% of quota. 29%. And they were pissed that they weren't getting a promotion to the next level because they had been there the amount of time they felt it was theirs to get promoted. And I was like, this is why I'm not a manager.

Because first of all, that person would have been fired off my team a long time ago at 29%. And second of all, with the mentality that you're coming in my damn office and asking for a promotion when you haven't even done the bare minimum. I mean, yeah, I guess you've shown up, but you haven't put in the work. You haven't gone the extra mile. And I tell reps all the time, too. Like, if you ever want to, it's actually not hard to stand out these days. You just got to do what isn't asked of you. Obviously, you got to do what is asked of you. But be the person that's like, hey, can I help with that? Can I do that? Can I take on that responsibility? Whatever it might be, because A, you'll learn and you'll grow.

And B, people will pay attention. And that's what the hustle is all about. Like my daughter, she's not the most talented. She's not the most gifted athlete. I go, sweetheart. But if you are the one who works the hardest during the game, if you're the one who's like diving for the ball and hyping everybody up and trying your hardest, I promise you, you will stand out like a sore thumb in this league. Because most people are just, you know, waiting for the ball to come, you know, sitting up, you know, serving when they're supposed to, you know, that type of stuff. And it's just, it's rare. I think you hit on it, though. The challenge is it's so different right now because I don't want to say it's easier, but they have more options, right?

So it's like, so you and I, we got into this and it was like, look, we had to get a job, work hard, get a promotion, get to that next level. We had to go to college because the resume, right, those type of things where now you don't need a college degree. You can have 15 different side hustles. If you don't like whatever the situation you're in, you can pop off and go someplace else pretty damn easy in a lot of ways. So what's the balance there of this options that these kids have and can go do whatever they want versus the discipline? And that's where I feel like I'm a little bit nervous right now for the entire generation is that because there are so many options, the discipline isn't there.

Because as soon as they bump into something that's not comfortable, they go, they go find something else, but they're going to keep hopping around to average shit. Yes. Yes. That's a really good question. And, you know, to that point, I also think as parents, especially now compared to back in the days, like we will come save our kids from stuff. You don't want them to go through any pain or pain that we've had from when we grew up in that like that, that struggle develops character. So you are who you are at this particular point in your life due to things that happen good, bad and different, whatever they are that brought you to this point. And if you didn't go through that adversity from whatever it is, you wouldn't be exactly where you are.

Same thing with me. And I just think as parents, we can kind of overprotect our kids, which sets up that example. I think I heard Dawn Staley talking about it, who just won the championship. She said she was talking to the parents and she said, listen, parents, as you are here, your job is to take care of your children. My job is to make them better players, women players, as well as just better humans. So she's going, she was saying is they're going to go through adversity with me, but I don't want you trying to come in and trying to save them because this will make them better. And she establishes that from the first day that she meets with the parents, because a lot of times if we're just talking about kids, again, a transition.

So when you get older, you don't know how to deal with adversity if you've never been through it because you've been saved. And so when you get to the sales side, you're going to get adversity all the time. You're going to get a tremendous amount of no's. There's so many no shows, no's, not answer the phone, like no one's answer your email. There's times, John, where I feel like I wrote the perfect email. I'm like, oh my goodness. Like, I'm looking at this like I don't even send more than one. This is it. No response. Like, wait, what if you have it, if you can't deal with rejection or not feeling like you put forth your best effort and for whatever reason it doesn't happen then, then what happens is you begin to doubt yourself.

You struggle. And I think it's very important that it doesn't matter how great you think your email, your pitch is, whatever you just did. Just understand you just need one person to say yes. You just need one yes. You just got to get through a lot of no's to get to that yes. Unfortunately. It's true. So how do you stay motivated right now? Because this is, look, I'm sure you're dealing with it just like I am. You know, a lot of reps right now are really struggling because it ain't easy out there right now. It is a dogfight. Yeah. And, you know, connect rates are going down. If you look at almost every conversion ratio out there, they're all going the wrong direction, right? Forecast accuracy down.

Conversion ratios between cold call and meeting down. Meeting to discover down. All these ones. So how do you state and going back to you and I have been through adversity. So we've been here, done there, done that before. We've seen this game before. Yes. Maybe AI is throwing a little bit of a wrinkle in it. Don't get me wrong. But, like, you know, my first job was I graduated in 98, 2000 hit. You know what I mean? Then 2007 hit. And then, you know, it's like, damn, all right, back at it again. And so as much as what happened over the past two years really hurt from my standpoint, probably the hardest two years of my life from a business standpoint, I was able to get through it. Because I was like, yep, I got this.

Yes. How do you instill grit? How do you keep motivation right now if you're not used to that? So really good question, John. And I think it's a combination of things. When you go through a time where we were at a couple years ago when the economic times were kind of crazy. Like, it was important to really, if I'm not going to have a lot of pitches, like if they're not going to pitch the ball a lot, then how do I maximize every single ball that comes over the plate? And so that's kind of how you get back to a process. You've got to build out something to where if I never get the opportunity to meet with John again to talk about this deal, how do I maximize this meeting? Sometimes, John, it's qualifying, get fast.

Like, getting it out of the lake, you know, you're not a good fit for me. You're talking straight price. I'm a premium. Like, we're probably not a good fit. And typically, when you say something like that, the prospect's like, whoa, wait, why do you think I'm not a good fit? Anyway, that's a different story. But I think now is how do you maximize the opportunities that you do get? And that's where building out a process, being prepared. The first thing I say is you've been in this business a long time. You could pick up the phone and talk to someone at fill in a blank company and probably have a good conversation. But is that the best version of you, John Barrowson, your company? Is that the best representation if you are not preparing at all?

You just show up for a call. And so, I always make sure as you start, you got to have a prep call. And that prep call internally should be very, very detailed. What is the objective? Who's doing what? And just some of the small stuff, John. If I've been on conference calls where a prospect has 10 people on, we've got five people on. It's like, hey, I'm Eric Hamilton with such and such. Great day. Hey, pleasure to meet you. John, go next. Yeah. Hey, John here. Yeah. So, my name is. Okay. Hey, Becky. You want. Becky. Oh, hey. I was in mute. You've wasted 10 minutes of your call. Is that effective? Is it efficient? So, how are we expecting to be excellent? How are we expecting to do something that's excellent and have excellence if we're not maximize the time we do get with our prospect?

So, I think that's very important is to come in with the right mindset and game plan because that helps you become more confident. If you come in and you're prepared, I know the company. I know what the person, I'm putting the person into crystal nose, like I'm doing the details. I come into the call more confident. The other piece I'll mention, John, is there was a TED Talk that I looked at and I can't remember the lady's name, so I'm going to apologize, but just look up. It's a body language TED Talk. Really, really powerful. She talks about the importance of seeing yourself in a different light. So, she mentioned going to the mirror for guys, going to the mirror before meeting and kind of sitting like this, like you're widening yourself, looking bigger.

And mindset-wise, it's a perception and your mind begins to believe it that, yes, I'm powerful. Yes, I'm strong. For females, she talked about the Wonder Woman pose. So, hands on your hip, like face in the mirror, and it builds that whole posture. You're seeing yourself in a different light. And there's studies that were done. I can't quote them right now because I forgot them, but there's studies that done that if you're doing that, it increases the testosterone and such like that to where you actually feel more confident. So, just small things. You have to maximize the opportunities that we have with prospects because you don't know how many you're going to get again. Yeah, no, that's spot on, man.

And I think that's, there's a lot of just, you know, what I've come across over the past few years is, you know, self-talk is real. You know what I mean? Like, I used to be like, oh, you idiot, you know, for doing that. Those type of things. And I realized how I didn't think they were the bad. I mean, that was just me being a little bit hard on myself, right? Because I got to get better. But there is that inner monologue that you have with yourself. And whatever that is, is basically, you know, affirmations, whatever you want to call it. It's real. You know, the more you talk about negative about yourself, the more negative you will feel about yourself. The more positive you talk about yourself.

Now, you don't want to be delusional, obviously. And, you know, and talk about stuff that you don't really have a lot of control over. But there is a mentality of getting in that right mindset. I mean, going back to athletes, every athlete envisions, like they literally play out the game in their head about how they want to see it go. Dolphers, they shut their eyes and they envision the ball going onto the green and by the right right before they hit it. And that manifestation is real. And I think you're right. Like the preparation to, you know, I tell people, you know, I give an example of preparing for the day. If you if you walk into a day, just let's use one that everybody can make vacations.

Go to a place like New York. Okay. And two options. You either plan for that trip to New York or you don't plan for that trip to New York. If you don't plan for that trip to New York, what are you going to do? Probably go to Times Square, kind of fumble around a little bit, go to some crappy trinket shops, maybe hit the Statue of Liberty, right? And you probably walk away being like, right? New York. But if you sit down, map it out, what do you care about? What do you want to do? And how much time you want to spend doing this versus this? And actually have, you don't have to have it like detailed out, but you have a plan where you're going to go and get the most out of it. Nine times out of 10, you're going to get a better job out of that day.

It's the same thing with prepping for your day the day before versus doing it the morning of. How do you plan? Like for you specifically, are you a are you a list guy? Are you a are you a back into it as far as a goal standpoint? Like, how do you look at goal setting and how you hold yourself accountable on a daily basis? Yeah. So I love the New York analogy as well. And I'm going there in a couple of weeks. So I need to get more and get tighter with my agenda with the family. Yeah. So for me, I do a couple of things. So my wife and I, I'll start what I used to do. I'll start what I used to do. And then what I've kind of adjusted to, um, I spent a lot of time at CenturyLink eight years and they, they taught this whole smart goals.

And that was key, like had to have smart goals set. So that's what I began to build on is I would set short term, long term goals for myself, like career goals. Like I, I'll keep it real simple. Like I separated into four things and I call it the four pillars of balance, which is also in the book, but you have your career, you have faith, you've got your family and health. And when one of those four things are off other pieces of your life begin to suffer. That's why I think it's important if we're going to be world-class, uh, sales professionals, can we be a world-class father or mother? Can we be a work? Like, can we take care of our health, right? Do we have spiritual peace? So I, I began to build my goals around those.

So now I have three or four goals on each one of those pillars. And then the last thing I began to add to it is my wife and I went to a vision board class two years ago, I think it was. And I didn't really know what this was. I heard of a vision board, but I didn't really know much about it. But I was like, okay, fine. Y'all go. And we ended up, uh, creating these vision boards and long and behold, I put them up and I still got the first few of my room. You begin to achieve those goals that are on the vision board. Every single goal, there's one we missed last year. Outside of that, everything, my 2024 vision board, all 10 things have been accomplished. And maybe it's something saying, well, Hey, you said division too low.

There is part of it. This is like, wake up in the morning. No, but let's think that it becomes more, it's reality based when you're able to see it, it goes back to the mindset. So for me, I love, I love the vision board from a yearly perspective, just looking at an annual and then individually, I started breaking down shorter term with goals based around those four pillars. Now, if we go even more micro with this thing, each day I have things set that I want to accomplish. So I start by looking at on Sunday, I look at my week. All right, what do I got coming up in the week? What are the big things that I got coming up in the week? All right, let me begin to plan around those. And then once I get a good frame of the week, now I can begin to break down the days.

And while your day, I call it a sales motion. And I think all sales professionals should have some kind of sales motion. And I think there's a lot of sales professionals that again, go back to day, just do, just get up in the morning and go do stuff. You got to have some kind of sales motion that's consistent behind it. Yes, it's not going to be from freaking 801 to 850, 904, I'm doing these things, but some kind of consistency behind it. So now you can hold yourself accountable. So those are my couple of things and how I go about vision, goals and stuff like that. And then, you know, you continue. If you miss a goal, it's not the end of the world. You reset, try to identify why I missed the goal and then go back.

And that constant, like having to your point of having a plan, I get, I'm sure you get the same thing. I get a lot of reps come to me and ask me, John, like, I'm not happy with my current, whatever. I'm looking for a new job, you know, any suggestions? And my question is always, well, what's your plan? And they're like, what do you mean? I was like, all right, you know, that stupid question we all get asked, you know, what do you want to be in five years during an interview? I used to kind of roll my eyes at that. I want to be a manager or whatever. But now I actually think it's a really important question you need to ask yourself, period. Forget about your job for a second here, lifestyle-wise.

Like, where do you want to be in five years? What's that look like for you? Vision that out. And, you know, so therefore, lifestyle. Do you want family? Do you want kids? Whatever that is, right? Then back into it to say, okay, well, based on that, how much money do I probably need to be able to make to be able to live that lifestyle? Therefore, what kind of job do I need to have to be able to live that lifestyle? And then you back into it. And it goes back to the shit sandwich in the sense that if I'm not happy with where I'm currently at, the shit sandwich, if you will, but I know that it's going to get me to that next level, to get me to that next level, I'll keep eating it. You know what I mean?

Like, I'll take out the trash if you want me to when it comes to this. But if I don't have a plan, I'm just going to go around looking for better shit sandwiches. And guess what? They're all shit sandwiches. They're all going to taste like shit. You know what I mean? So I'm going to just keep bopping around. But if I got that plan, I will endure. I will go through this pain because I know this is going to get me to that next level. And I don't think a lot of people, they have these short-term goals of like, hey, I want to do this. I want to be that, whatever. But they don't macro it out a little bit to say, okay, let's try to expand this a little bit more so that you have a bigger picture of what your life could be.

Yeah, that's a really, really, really great point. I think that the other piece, John, I would say to this is a lot of salespeople, it's almost like the more money you make, the more you spend. I think that if you're not passionate about sales, but you're good at it, or even if you're not very good at it and you just, you do it, like sales could allow you the opportunity to fund your passion, right? If you're good at sales, you can use that to fund whatever it is you're passionate about. That's what I actually love about sales is that there's no other profession you can think of where you can give yourself a raise at any time. You can give yourself a raise at any given time, make another sale.

You just gave yourself a raise like that opportunity at that should fuel the hunger. The drive is that I can do this. I'm passionate about whatever you can think of, like utilize this for that tool. And I also highly recommend doing some investments as well. So, you know, just lose all your money that you get, but that's a different. Absolutely. But I mean, same thing. I would tell people, you know, rep kids who go to college, I'm like, look, I don't care what you get where you, whatever your degree is, you want to think you want to be when you grow up, go for it. Just learn how to make money doing it. So you can get a business minor or a sales, like some job that entails sales. So you learn how to sell.

You want to be an artist? Fine. Learn how to sell your art so you can do that passion. Right. And, and that's to your point, that's why I'm so passionate about introducing sales to kids like younger than, right. Then, then by the time we get to them where it's the default profession and now we got to reverse engineer a lot of bad habits and all that other stuff. I'd much rather have a kid at, you know, 10 years old say, you know what? I can see myself as a sales professional when I grow up. Now, how do you do that the right way? And going, getting educated on it. And I think that's the self-fulfilling prophecy about this profession is most people aren't educated in it and it is the default profession.

And you give a normal kid who's, who's got some good ethics and that type of stuff. You give them a territory and a quota and tell them with limited training and you tell them you don't hit your quota, you're going to get fired. You ain't going to be able to pay your bills. You get some pretty ethical kids to do some very unethical things. And I think that's why we're in this situation. We are from a perception standpoint. Yeah. And there's a negative stigma that's associated with, uh, with sales, right? No offense to anyone who sells cars. Okay. This, let me preface by saying that, but there's a, there's a, a concept, a myth that when you think of a sales person or sales professional, it's a used car salesman trying to sell you a lemon to get some commission.

And the, the overall sales has evolved so much. Like there are a lot of universities now that have a specific, a sales degree. Like I had an intern last year, we shot her out. She was outstanding, right? Just at the end of the summer, I would throw in any customer call. Like she was that good that she, she possessed it. She had it, but she, she's been trained on it, right? It wasn't falling into it. It was intentional around it. Right? So some of the things that we can do, John, is continue to talk to these students that are either headed into that sales and marketing piece to give them a real world advice or catch them right afterward where they got some training, some education. Now we just get them on the right tactics area, exactly.

Cause they can fall in a couple of different paths, right? They can take a good path, hopefully get some good education, or they can unfortunately fall into the bad path, the Glen, Gary, Glen Ross, the Wolf of wall street scenarios. And, and again, it just kind of snowballs from there. What are some of the other kind of big takeaways, you know, the last, we got about 10 minutes more here. What are some of the bigger takeaways of your book that people can learn from, um, that, that would give some people either some structure, some tactics to walk away with so that they can do and start leveling up their game. Yeah, absolutely. So I think there's a couple of things, right? So we talked about the mindset and preparation, which I think is important.

I think the other piece you're going to learn inside of it is how to actually run a meeting. What does it look like once we get to the meeting and the flow of the meeting? Like, how does the concept, and for me, John, I like to, I like to provide like a template for folks to use. You fill in the all blanks, your own blanks, but the concept around it, then post meeting, what does that look like? Like, what does it look like to debrief? Like, what is that? So I'll walk through the details behind that. Cause I think it's really important to make sure that we're prepared. And then from there, right, we start getting into one of the, one of the most, the biggest challenges we have in sales is how to actually forecast accurately.

To say that the deal is going to come as one thing. I'm going to get this deal. That's great. That's great. When? Well, it's going to be this month. Why? Well, somebody said so, right? So we, I talk about some of the things that we can do, like an executive alignment or executive engagement. Cause I think it's important, depending on the type of business that you're in or industry you're in, where you can have a relationship with a VP, a director, manager level, whatever that is, but to have an executive on your side that actually has business acumen. I'm not knocking anyone in here, but just because you're an executive doesn't mean that, you know, you, you fill in the blanks, but to have the right executive alignment set, there's information, there's value in that, that they can basically extract information that you're unable to get because you're a step down.

And the information is flowing downward and they're, you know, above the line, you can say they're more direct for the most part. So information is going to flow freely. Either we can do it or we're not, or it's not in the budget, isn't the budget, or I'm next, I just don't like you, whatever it is, you're going to find that out in a different way. So I highly advise executive alignment is extremely important. That will help you increase your forecast accuracy and a CFO. If they can't trust that the sales professionals are going to deliver on the number that they say, which also is a CRO that has to report that, but if they began to question if they're going to do it because they keep missing over and over and over again, then we've got a big problem.

I told you I'm going to get 500 grand. I consistently bring in 250 and I'm dropping at the end of the quarter. Well, there's things that we could have done to seeing that coming. No, it's still coming. It's still coming, John. The deal's coming. It's just going to be two weeks later, right? So those are important concepts, I guess, if you keep it simple, those are things that you're going to extract out outside of the things like, you know, basic strategies behind, you know, being more well-rounded, which I think is important with life as well. So I'll leave it as simple as that. What, on the forecasting front, are there key indicators that you look at, the deals that you kind of get insight into that are like, if that doesn't happen, the likelihood is really low.

Like a rep could come to you and be like, yo, Eric, I got this great deal, but you're looking at it and you're like, dude, not a chance because there's one or two things that you don't have on this that you need. Do you know, like for you, what have those been? So one in particular is understanding the engagement, like the paperwork process. Now that's pretty, that's pretty vague. And if anybody knows med pick, then we understand that that's a piece of it. It's one thing to know what the paperwork process is. But the other piece is to understand who ultimately is the person that is able to say, yes, this project is going to go forward. What I'm finding out more and more, John, is especially lately, there's more scrutiny around deals.

So you got boards that are involved in some of these decisions, right? So just trying to make sure we understand everything. Are there any detractors that we don't see? So I try to start with the basics is walk me through the paperwork process. If they don't know who ultimately signs, if they don't know the timeframe, the timeframe just freaking kills me because you can say it goes to legal. And then after legal, it goes to John to sign. Okay. Well, how long does that typically take to work with legal? Okay. Well, after it gets on a legal walk me through. So I always say, I love to freeze the question. Help me understand. It's not a pushy question. It's just a help me understand. It's just being very curious that that's what I want the team to be.

It's very curious, not interrogating. We're not sitting them in a chair like law and order, but we're asking the right questions to understand that. So first and foremost, if they don't clearly understand the paperwork process, we got work to do. I think secondly, is trying to understand the opinion of it. Like what, why are, why are you doing this now? Yes. And even to say, and going a step further, well, what happens if it doesn't happen? Like what, what, what would happen in that particular case, right? If it doesn't happen and just try to understand. And the answers that we get from the AE, sometimes they're good, which, you know, all right, you ask some good questions. Other times like, yeah, we need to go back.

Or maybe I'm going to jump on this next call with you or something like that. But those are a couple of quick things, John, in my opinion, if we don't have a clear understanding of that, you can't forecast it because you're going to miss your forecast of which I'm going to look bad, which means the next person looks bad. The next person, the finally getting to the CFO where everybody looks bad. Yeah. Yeah. That, that question of, I've gotten a lot more used to asking that, like, okay, so what happens if we don't go live? Like, say you want to go live on a certain date. Why? Obviously. Right. Cool. Whatever. Okay. And what happens? What's the impact of the business if we don't? And that, that, that question right there is, is what dictates my forecast accuracy?

Because if they have a good answer for it and it's real impact, I can push as hard as I want to on that deal. Right. But if there's, wow, usually the problem is, is usually it's a scary answer because like the majority of the time it's, well, you know, just keep doing what we're doing or, you know, whatever. And on that one, man, you, you were either not talking to the right person or I am not forecasting that one, uh, because there's no urgency there. There's no, you didn't find impact. You didn't find real pain. You didn't find what the real problem was. So those are, those are pieces. And then obviously getting power, right? If you don't have power in a deal, you might as well not even try.

And the challenge too, John, is sometimes we try to manufacture, uh, urgency is, Hey, you know what, we're going to, we're going to put this, this promotion in front of, we're going to, if they do this, it'll be a couple of points. And if, if the, if the urgency that we have doesn't align with the urgency they have, I'll give a thing. If you're giving the product away, it's very rarely, it's going to work, right? It should be an alignment. Like if we're really forecasting accurate, John and Eric are agreeing to this. And we've walked through the process. You agree that you need to have this done by X. I agree that I can actually execute by this timeframe. Like we're agreeing to it. And then I always highly suggest when you get to that last, um, last hurdle of the deal, set up weekly touch points.

Sometimes every, sometimes twice a week, just so you can check in the progress. And maybe it's 15 minutes, maybe it's five minutes, but some kind of consistently. So you can ask, Hey John, has anything changed since last time we talked? And most likely, Oh yeah, I get, I can't forecast this deal no more. John. Gosh. Exactly. Exactly. Right. And that, that question alone, like what's changed since our last conversation, even if it was two days ago, because the amount of things that are changing right now are bananas. I mean, it's literally changing minute by minute at this point. Absolutely. Awesome. Well, Eric has been awesome. And tell us people where they can find out a little bit more information about you, about the book, those types of things.

Cause there's a lot of good stuff in this book that I was skimming through and I thought it'd be what people would enjoy. Yeah, I appreciate it. So it's on Amazon. So you can check, search for the sales blueprint, what winners do differently by Eric Hamilton. It's also on my website, which is the sales blueprint for success.com. And you can order anything, order from my website. I personally sign, I'll add a note in there and ship it off to you. But yeah, it's, it's good information. It's a process that I've used that works for me. There's a lot of processes out there, but this one works very well for me. It's shown, it's proven. So I appreciate the opportunity, John. It's always a pleasure.

Thanks for coming on, man. I love the sharing your knowledge. I think this is, you know, we're in a position right now as a sales community. I don't think we have the luxury anymore of being average. I think we all got to level up right now. And if we don't, we're already irrelevant, quite frankly. And so just every little structured tips that people are out there putting out there that work for them, to your point, trying to translate that over to people so that it can hopefully be the ones that take it and run with it and, you know, self-motivated. But if you need some motivation, give Eric and I a call every once in a while. We'll maybe give you a little kick in the ass, right? I love it, Eric.

Thanks again for coming on, man. And thanks, everybody, for listening. Like I always said at the end of all these podcasts there, go out there and make somebody smile today. Because no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, make somebody smile today. You know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much and I will see you on the other side. Hey, everyone. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. With your support and our incredible guests, we're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now and I can't thank you enough. Now, to keep the momentum going, it would mean the world to me if you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network.

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