Jeffrey Gitomer: Old School Sales is New Again

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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. Now, today's conversation is with my good friend, Jeffrey Gittimer. Now, if you don't know Jeffrey, everybody thinks I'm the OG in sales. No, I ain't even close. Jeffrey Gittimer has been around for a long time and he is the true OG of sales. He's got 17 books, including The Little Red Book of Sales, which is still the number one selling book in sales to this day. And Jeffrey and I have a lot of fun. This is old school sales right here. Jeffrey is an old school salesperson, tells a lot of fun stories about his original days, knocking on doors, cold calling in New York City.

He's also a Philly fan. So we have a lot of fun between the Boston Philly thing and we give each other a lot of shit. So this one's a fun conversation. Hope you enjoy it. Let's make it happen. All right, Mr. Gittimer, what's going on? Welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast. Thank you very kindly. This will be a program of bald ideas. I think that's the way we should phrase it. I like how we both wear our shirts. Yep. You know what I mean? My shirt has my name on it. Yours doesn't. It should have your name on it. That's just a marketing thing. Branding. Yeah, I get it. Even if it's little. Yep. You know, even if it just says, fuck you, John, it'll still be fucked. Well, I got the JB. I got the JB right there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Everyone knows what that is. So, just by way of background, I grew up in Philly and New Jersey and New York. And I didn't really understand the science of selling, but I always had the gift of gab because my family were business people, not entrepreneurs. To me, an entrepreneur is somebody that their mom was a school teacher and their dad worked for General Electric and they bought a franchise. That's an entrepreneur to me. You know, their first time going at it. But I grew up in a family where everyone who came to our house owned their own business. Whether they were a doctor or a lawyer or a real estate person or whatever, window washer, they all had their own businesses.

And so, I would sneak down on Thursday night when my dad was playing Pinochle and listen behind the wall to these guys talking business. It was just class. And every Thursday night for years, they never heard me that I never said a word. I just went to college. I was going to say, that's an awesome education. You got your MBA there without even having to go to get it. Well, I can remember going to Temple University, which is, I majored in management and marketing, which was ridiculous, because I actually majored in football pools and dating. Those are my two colleges that social educate. I got my marketing degree as well, and it's pretty much useless. Yeah. I sold homework in college. That's when I learned supply and demand.

At the end of the semester, I could double my prices. Nice. But I didn't understand selling. I only had the gift of gab. And so, I got involved with an MLM company in 1972, read Think and Grow Rich 10 times. And part of the whole deal was recruiting new move-ins to a neighborhood. So, we get these lead papers, and you'd have to call the new move-in and try to set an appointment to sell them in getting involved in MLM. You couldn't leave the office until you had five appointments. That's pretty interesting, right? You could not leave the office until you had five appointments. Because I had five guys working for me, they all had to have at least one place to go. Okay. You get good. You get good at engagement.

You get good at... And the one thing I found is that cold calling is a great place to learn how to sell. But it's a lousy place to make a sale. So, with that philosophy, moving forward, I then got... When I left New Jersey and I moved to Florida, my dad and I owned a mobile home park. We had to sell 50 by 150 lots for $10,000, which is fucking crazy, or t-shirts. I invested 50 grand in the t-shirt business and found out that my partners, they knew how to print t-shirts, but they didn't know how to sell. So, I had to go to New York City and sell. Okay. Go cold call in New York City. Where fuck you is a greeting and everybody wants a bribe. Yeah, absolutely. That's... Like when I say... Like we talk about cold calling intros and you say, hey, how you doing today?

If you call another Northeast and say, hey, how you doing today? Is your intro... You either get hung up on or you get... Fuck you. What do you want? Yeah, exactly. It's a big story. Yeah. It's so interesting. And no one who lives in the Northeast, Boston notwithstanding, because you do live in... You just... Above the New York City line, they run into a lot of sissies, but it's a whole other story. All right, Philly. You're close to the Mason-Dixon line, so easy up. Yeah. But nobody cares about language. Yeah. I mean, somebody tells you, girl, fuck yourself. What do you go? Well, I'd appreciate it if you didn't use that. Like, seriously? Appreciate what? Just get over it, rub some dirt on it, and go back in and play third base.

To me, that's part of the process. But this is what I learned, John. And before I get into what I learned about cold calling, I'd like to ask you how you... You go train cold callers. What do you tell them to do? So recently... So there's a structure and approach to it, right? But recently, what I've tried to... And there's techniques that we go through. But what I'm trying to train reps on, and companies on, quite frankly. Because I do a lot of work with SDRs and BDRs, right? The ones who are doing those calls. And my firm belief right now, especially with the AI stuff, is that that is going to become a roll-up under marketing and operations. And it's going to be used as more of like account-based marketing and approach, right?

So these kids aren't going to be making calls, but they're going to be pushing buttons and everything else to set up full-cycle sales. But where cold calling, I say, is still important, as you actually mentioned it, it's a great place to learn how to sell. So brand new into sales, I still think you need to get your teeth kicked in so that you figure out grit. And second of all, if you think of it more as a marketing function, where it's an impression point, I tell reps all the time, they need to be mini-marketers right now. Every single impression, it matters, right? Whether it's a cold call with a voicemail, a tweet, a retweet, a comment on a LinkedIn post. I look at cold calling more as marketing right now than I do as sales.

That's interesting. And I think that's probably the right approach. As I explained earlier, when I was setting five leads a day for MLM, it was for all new move-ins to the neighborhood. So I would say, are you looking to earn a few extra dollars while you're here? And that was my leading question that sort of set the hook. And then I'd say, well, if you come in for an appointment, I also know the 10 best restaurants and the, you know, I grew up here. So I know every place you can go and I'm more than happy to help you. And I would get people to, I could set appointments. Because I learned how to get personal and fill their need rather than mine. Okay, but this is what I did and I'm revealing this literally for the first time on any podcast.

And it's only because I actually respect you. Not a lot of people do, but I'm in that club. Okay, no problem. So here's the deal. I had two partners in the t-shirt business and we would sit around and brainstorm, who did we want to sell a shirt to? Not who am I going to cold call? Who did we want to sell a shirt to? And we would target. We'd brainstorm the idea. What do we want to sell them? How are we going to do it? What's the pitch? And from there, we would actually print a sample of their shirt. 500 bucks it cost. Didn't care. Didn't care. Okay. And then I'd go to New York and bang on the door. So it wasn't a cold call. It was a targeted cold call. Big difference. Okay. And I don't, when people say shit about themselves, it's only bragging if it's not true.

My closing ratio for targeted cold calls in Manhattan is 100%. Taking that approach of making the t-shirt. Taking the approach of brainstorming the idea. Yep. And then going prepared. Yeah. And then master salesmanship takes over. I go and make my pitch. How would you get that meeting though? How would you get them? So let's, let's, let's hone in on that cold call. What was the, well, cold call. I put that in quotation marks. When you brainstormed the pitch, you came up with the idea. You printed the t-shirt and put the 500 bucks in. Now with all that strategy and you say, this is the client I want to go to. What's the call? What's the email? What's the one that gets that person to say? I'm at their door.

I'm at their door literally. And I have some kind of a strategy and I'll show you one. I have one on my shelf. I'll show you that in just a couple of minutes. But this is what would basically happen. I would go in and explain the call, explain the t-shirt business, give them an idea. And they would say every time, can you make me a sample? And I would say, sure. If you like it, how many will you buy? If you like it, how many will you buy? And I'd wait for a number. And I'd say, okay, well, if you love it, how many will you buy? And then I would take my tie off, open up my shirt like Superman, show them their shirt and say, do you like it or do you love it? And I'm telling you, it was like magic.

Like we had the formula. So we did the STP shirt for Andy Granatelli. We did the Fonzie shirt for Paramount Studios. We did the Alfred E. Newman shirt for Mad Magazine. I just picked places that I loved. We did the Coppertone, the Coppertone shirt with the girl pulling down the bathing suit. Hey, I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JV Sales Membership. It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, Filling the Funnel and Driving to Clothes. It also includes monthly workshops that I'll be running on specific skills and different tech like ChatGPT and how to leverage it in the sales process. And it gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done.

You get all of this for $420 a year as an individual or $5,000 for teams. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to www.jbarrows.com and click on the individual or team membership and use code podcast, you'll get 20% off. Let's make this happen together. You just made a point that I want to make sure is highlighted here to the people listening. And I do the same thing, but I want to add, we're going to talk, I want to talk to you about scale, but, but let me get there first. One is, I tell my reps that all the time. Like first get your ICPs down, like get tight. Who do you want to sell to? Get your top list of 25 based on demographic criteria, criteria. But then what I tell them to do is before you make one call into that account, I need you to come back to me and tell me why you personally want to work with that company.

Not just because they fit a profile. What about like connect with their values, connect with their leadership, whatever it is. Because my whole contention is, is once you make that connection of holy shit, I actually do want to work with this company, then the messaging and everything else kind of takes care of itself. But how do you scale this, Jeffrey? Every time you, like every time I've talked to you about, like, I think our last podcast and all this different stuff, I agree wholeheartedly with all this approach. But I live in the world of the SaaS and the tech kids who are being asked to make $50 a fucking day, do a hundred cadences. Thankfully, that's starting to loosen up a little bit here.

But how in the world do you scale the give a shit factor, which is effectively what you're talking about? The only way that you can scale is through proof. In other words, do I want my sales guy to make a hundred calls a day or 10 targeted calls a day? I actually don't give a shit as long as I get 10 meetings, for instance. Like, that's what I care about. Fuck and boom. Okay, so that's what you have to look at from the standpoint of what works and what doesn't work. So I'm going to go with the premise of the appointment or the sale is made emotionally and then justified logically. Love that car, what are the payments? Love that house, what's the mortgage? And so the emotion to logic has to prevail.

So no matter who they're calling, they have to determine, number one, what's the situation? Number two, what's the opportunity? Number three, what are the objectives? And number four, what is the proposed outcome? Okay, what do they have to do in order to be able to get that? And if the salesperson is not willing to do that, then go home and watch Netflix and drink a beer like a fucking moron. Yeah, or send out your 500 cases and hope for the best, right? Yeah, or quit your job because you're making another $100 a week someplace else. Yeah. You know, they'll pay me more money over there to make a cold call. No, they're paying you a pittance. They're paying you to learn. You're going to graduate school of sales by dialing numbers and talking to people.

Yep. And it's going to determine your resilience and it's going to determine your outcome in life. I couldn't be happier that I know how to cold call. I don't want to do them, but man, am I glad I know how. So here's a story for you, you know, and you know this, right? Like Q1, I mean, for me again, 95% of my clients are SaaS, right? So Q1 fucking fell apart across the board. And I remember like, and I've always sold, you know, right? So I'm always selling no matter what. But, you know, hardcore cold calling and that type of stuff I haven't done in a while. But when everything fell apart, I was like, shit. So I put my sales hat, like hardcore sales hat back on and ended up through emails and calls and networking and everything else.

I got like 49 meetings in February and 70 meetings in Q1. And if you look at it, a lot of people said, well, that's because your brand and all that other stuff. I said, yeah, well, you know, yes. And that's kind of why I built it that way is so I could leverage it when I needed to. You also have experience. But I could also make the call and it was also the activity and it didn't take talent. It didn't take brand. It took effort. It took the ability to get on the fucking phones and navigate through and send emails and make calls that mattered. Right. And the fact if I tell reps all this all the time, the reps who are trying to skip the SDR BDR so that they can become an AE and think that that's the holy grail.

If you can't figure out how to basically fill your own pipeline with your own opportunities, you'll you'll you'll fail eventually. But if you can figure that out, you'll never go hungry. Correct. I gave the clue to the listener. In those four parts of situation, opportunity, objectives and outcomes. But situation is the key. What is that customers present situation in business? Personal, if I can find that anything about them. What's the situation in the marketplace? What's the situation with their customers? If I can know that when I make the call, then I can speak their language. If I don't know that before I make the call, I'm going to sound like a moron. Yeah. Do you have a minute where we can chat?

I have a no, no. Like, Bob, I'm calling you today with an idea. If you like it, run with it. If you don't like it, hang up. Fair enough. Yeah, that's fair enough. Do I want to hear about do 27 slides or do I want an idea? Yeah, an idea. I want an idea. And those ideas, is that idea a value drop for you or is that an idea of how you can help? It could be either. It depends if it's product or service. It depends on the situation in the industry. That's why you have to study the situation. But it's value is always there. But what is it about? Can I meet with them and talk about the idea or do I get the idea and realize I'm not talking to the decision maker and I got to talk to somebody else? Some people go for lowest point of entry, easiest point of entry, which is, you know, well, I made an appointment with this with the purchasing agent.

Schmuck. Hey, schmuck. What are your thoughts on gathering information from the lower levels so that you can have a hypothesis up to the higher? Like, so let's talk about research, right? What kind of research do you do before you walk into an account? And is that, you know, through the website and LinkedIn, whatever macroeconomic things, but also how much do you tap into the org itself and non-decision makers, but potentially people that could be impacted by what you're selling? Want another secret forever? Please do. I call the sales department. Yeah. Always love to chat. They'll tell you everything. They'll tell you everything. That's their job. They're in sales. What's the give though? They want to tell you.

They literally want to tell you. Well, here's the deal though. You and I are in, I think, a very favorable position here since we sell crack to crack heads, right? We sell sales to sales reps and sales organization. So it's easy. Yeah. We prefer to sell marijuana than crack, but okay, we're fine on that. Yeah. I'm right there with you. So, but, but say, so I can, like when, when COVID hit, right? We took the design thinking approach. We went bottom up. I had, you know, my, my team calling into individual sales reps and we could do a give get, right? We could get some information from them, from insights, but we could also give them value because we do sales training. So I could drop some tips and some nuggets.

What about that kid who's selling cybersecurity to CISOs? Like how, how can they, what, first of all, what value can they add to somebody that they're talking to that's not a decision maker, right? And then what kind of research would you do before you would reach out to the executive? If I'm selling cyber security, the first thing I have to understand is the value of their data. Okay. If I don't understand that, I'm screwed. The value of their data. Right. Because if they lose it, they paint, they panic. Right. If something happens and something goes down, their email goes down, their website goes down, they're panicked. So I want to, I don't just want to know what it is. I want to also know how secure it is.

And so I might start out the conversation by saying, tell me the last time your stuff went down. What happened? And if I get it, if I have a good person, they'll tell you. And has it happened since then? Well, what are you doing to build that trust though? Hold on a second. What are you doing to build that trust for somebody to uncover that for you? Especially on an initial call. Like I got, I got a, you and I are got a 30 minute discovery, right? Yeah. Well, here's the deal. While you're talking to me, I'm Googling you. I'm on my keyboard and I'm hitting, you know, John Barrows and return. And I'm seeing what pops up. If nothing pops up, I'm dealing with a fucking nobody. So I'm going to challenge that, that rep, that, that BDR, whatever he is, I want him to be Google-able.

What has he written about the industry? Where's that posted? Does he have his own website, yourname.com and a one page website that says how I treat my customers? And if you want to go two pages, show pictures of your kids. So kids, ugly as they are, ugly as they are, kids, how I treat my customers. That's, that's a two pager. It's nothing. Or, or I would, if I am going to have an appointment with somebody, I say, could you please Google me before I call? And that way I'm, I already have a, I have a way in the door. They've already looked at my, at my, you know, YouTube channel or they've, they've read something that I've written. That's the whole thing. And it doesn't start out that way, but you have to work at it.

And so you have to have the discipline that says, I don't, I can't go home and have a, I have a bottle of wine with dinner and think I'm going to succeed the next day. You're screwed. And so many people do because they're working on a salary plus bonus plus whatever. And they're doomed to mediocrity, doomed to mediocrity. So I always wanted no, I don't want a salary. Just give me a commission. That way I, I eat what I kill. I'm fine with that. And I have the incentive to go kill more. If I make a sale, I don't stop. I go make another one. That's the best time to make a sale. All right. Taking a quick break here to highlight some of the other incredible podcasts on the HubSpot Podcast Network.

You have to check out the Science of Scaling podcast hosted by Mark Roberge. Mark is the founding CRO of HubSpot, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, co-founder of Stage 2 Capital, and actually a good friend. He's even been on the Make It Happen Monday podcast a few times. Each week, Mark sits down with some of the most successful sales leaders in the tech industry to learn the secrets, strategies, and tactics to scale their company's growth. One of my favorite episodes is one of the more recent ones around the diligence of marketing and sales leadership roles with Sidney Sloan and Adam Arons of Drata. Sidney is actually another good friend of mine and has a ton of insights into the CMO role.

This episode is jam-packed with insights on sales and marketing alignment, evaluating potential members of your leadership team, go-to-market alignment, and much more. Listen to the Science of Scaling wherever you get your podcasts. How have those characteristics changed? So, I'm 100% with you. I was always scared to shit of being 100% commission up until I was, and then I loved it because I was like, man, I'm a pretty self-motivated person, but man, you need more motivation. Realize when you wake up in the morning, you ain't getting paid if you don't go out that door. But I'm seeing this obvious shift, right, from a societal standpoint and leaking into sales reps of they're not as driven from a money-motivative standpoint.

It's not about grow at all costs anymore, like go, go, go, go, go, go. They live at home with their mom. Yep. And so, have the characteristics changed to be successful in sales, or are we just losing those characteristics and therefore not holistically being successful in sales? I don't think the characteristics have changed one iota. I think the people have changed. The society has weakened. And as a result of having weak people going and making phone calls, it's horrible. So, I want someone who's hungry. And I'll bet if you took one of your teams and said, listen, we're going to give you a salary to half the team and no salary to the other team to see what you kill, the no salary people will win every time.

Oh, every time. Well, and also there's going to be a certain type of person that gravitates towards that salary that typically has the characteristics. I'll also tell you one other thing. And I'm a father of four, a grandfather of four, a great-grandfather of one, and they're all girls. Yep. If I'm going to hire a sales team, it's going to be all women. Oh, I agree with that. Yeah. My daughter, that's why I wrote the book. She'll want to be in sales when I grow up. That's the reason I wrote it. You know, it hangs in my living room. Okay, so that's the challenge that you have. Are they weak? They've been weakened. They just start out weak. Let me ask you though, again, let's go generalization here a little bit with men and women, right?

In the sense that sales is still a very male-dominated profession, right? Give them all night. And some are only men. You know, outdoor sales are predominantly men. Yep. She-rock guys, lumber guys, whoever, you know. Yep. So with that, you know, typically the alpha male, like go fucking get it, you know, go, go, go, no salary. I got one commission, make it happen type of stuff. You know, hit the gong, build a list. But that a lot of times alienates other populations, mainly women, who would potentially be really good in sales because we have this bro culture of fuck it, let's go, let's hit the list. And that's not how a lot of women, what they are attracted to at least. I will tell you that if it was me, I would hang around any university and hire every athlete that comes out of there, male or female.

What though, because I'm seeing this shift and there's a perfect storm happening right now. And I'm trying to figure out how to address it because, you know, people have heard me talk about this before. We've, you know, over-engineered the sales process. You know, we've given, you know, 60% button seats better than a 0% button seat. Grow at all costs. Who cares? Whatever. And now we've turned these reps into robots, right? And taken away a lot of the art of selling and the fundamentals. We've skipped the fundamentals. And the freedom to go try a different way that works. Yeah, exactly. And so now, and now we add on AI, which is doing a lot of what these reps are doing a lot better, right? Pick any cadence tool, pick any whatever tool.

No argument with that. So, so where, let's fast forward here in sales. You said that characteristics probably haven't changed all that much because you still need to have kind of the drive and the coachability and all those other things. Where is that? Where are we headed from your perspective as a, as a profession? I think that there's always going to be a human to human need. I think AI can help a salesperson, but not replace a salesperson. So, this is what I recommend to my guys. Use AI, get an answer. When you get the answer, you have to customize it to the person and put a little bit of feeling behind it, a little bit of emotion behind it, because AI is a computer with no emotion and no humor.

So, I'm going to challenge a person. You can, you can take the AI response and I, I think it'll save you a lot of time if you do, but it's not going to make it stick because if your competitor is using the same AI, you're going to sound exactly, wait, somebody just said that yesterday. Well, it's funny you say that, right? There's a post that I did a few weeks back where I got super pissed off because I did, I posted something on, about an LMS and I was like, man, I wish I would have had this resource a long time ago. I would have saved a bunch of money, right? And within five minutes, there was like six or seven comments on LinkedIn that all mirrored the exact, like, it wasn't the exact words, but it was the exact, like, approach, right?

They just changed a couple of them. And I was like, son of a bitch. I'm like, they're letting, they're letting AI do auto posts and auto comments on LinkedIn. Yeah. And I went off on it. I took a screenshot and I even sent it to LinkedIn and I said, look, this is an existential threat. If you are not going to prevent this, this platform will be trash within the next year. And so the, the point of like, just to your point, I have the same conversation, which is automation, automation versus augmentation, right? Augment the sales rep. Don't automate the sales rep. Cause as soon as you figure out how to automate, say you did a good job, right? Say you figured out the prompt, the best fucking prompt in the world to write the best email, whatever.

Well, then I don't need to spend a hundred thousand dollars for a rep to sit there to send that prompt out. I can just take that prompt and do it myself. Of course. That's not going to work though. In the long run, that will not work. What will work is collaborate with AI and I'm going to, this is, um, here's the secret to think about. There's a difference between artificial intelligence and actual intelligence and you have to combine them. If you combine them, you win. Now, if you will give me the luxury of 30 seconds to go to the back of my library and come back, I'm going to give you an actual creative idea that I had to sell a t-shirt in New York city on a cold call. Okay. And keep in mind, and keep in mind, they want to tell me to go fuck myself immediately.

And, and, and they want to bribe. That's how you go. They all want to bribe. Yeah. Not some. They all want to bribe. I had a buyer from, from Sears, rest their soul, um, who took me to his home on long Island and showed me what other people bought him. And I'm talking about a boat, a car. I'm not talking about a little shit. Yeah. Got it. No. Yeah. Would not give that guy, would not give that guy breath. Give me 28 seconds. Pontificate everything you know about cold calling in under a minute. I will, I will pontificate as you go. I was a subscriber in college to mad magazine. Nice. Everyone knows mad magazine. Of course. When I had my shirt factory, I said, we have to make the Alfred E. Newman t-shirt.

We have to. She walked in and said, I'd like 5,000 of these statues, please. And they go, I don't think we sell them. I said, well, you need to find out. If you're in New York, you can say anything you want. So she comes back and says, we don't make them anymore. I said, listen, 5,000. Can you get me somebody that can potentially get them for me? Some guy comes out who was the whatever. We don't make them anymore. Like, go away. I said, I want to talk to Bill Gaines. Bill Gaines was the publisher of mad magazine. His title was publisher and chief bigot. But he's the guy who invented the comic book. Jesus. Got it? Okay. Long white hair guy. Okay. Yep. So Bill Gaines comes out and says, we don't fucking make them.

Go away. And I said, all right, forget that. I'll take 5,000 Alfred E. Newman t-shirts. He said, we don't have them. I said, I do. And I opened up my shirt and I showed him this. Nice. And he goes, get in my office right now. Get in my office right now. Got it? Because I blew him away with being prepared. It was a prayer because suppose they said they could make me 5,000 of these things. Now you got to come up with a cast to buy those things. Right. Yeah. But, okay. So I end up selling him 50,000 shirts. Nice. On a cold call. Nice. Because I was prepared. It was fun. I have an autographed copy of his biography. You know, dated so I know exactly when I made the cold call. And that is the challenge that a salesperson is not willing to accept.

They want to dial. They don't want to plan. So I'm a planner, then a dialer. And that gives me the freedom to win. And I think that's the difference, right? And it's funny because when I used to make a lot of cold calls, people would ask me, right? Hey, is this a cold call? And my answer to that was, and this is, you know, Boston John being an asshole, but it was legit. It was always, well, it depends on what you mean as a cold call. And they'd be like, excuse me? I'd say, if you're talking about a cold call being a list of names that are, that I have that I am just droning through with a generic pitch to try to sell you something, then no, it's not a cold call. Because I've done my homework.

I've been on your website. I know what you all do. And there's a purpose behind my call. So, you know, if you consider that a cold call, well, then sure. But I actually consider it more of a warm call because there's a purpose behind it. And, you know, and I would usually get a conversation, well, what do you know about us type of thing, right? But it was that confidence to come back to them and push back, basically, because I think... It's confidence. It's total confidence, John. But how do you build that without... But how do you build that without... Like, so I think you and I grew up fortunate in the sense that we grew up in the Northeast. We grew up with that attitude. We grew up with that, you know, cocky ego, whatever you want to call it thing that allowed us to be a little bit more, hey, fuck you.

I think I know what I'm talking about here, so I can push back on you. Most of the rest of the world, man, just does not have that DNA. So, how do you build the confidence at an early age as a sales rep to be able... First of all, preparation, I think, builds confidence, obviously. But how do you build the confidence to not immediately fold when somebody throws you that objection, to not immediately crumble when they say, I'm not interested, get me off this list, or walk into the office and say, get the fuck out? If you teach that kid that most sales are made after the seventh, no. And I don't know where somebody got that number. It's an old number. They probably pulled it out of their ass. But if they realize that they're going to get rejected a couple of times, then you're cool.

Now, there's a response that I created in 1993 that is the best objection response ever. Right. We're satisfied with who we've got. We don't need anything. I was hoping you would say that. Nice. And your price is too high. I was hoping you would say that. We're not interested in... We haven't... I was hoping you would say that. That throws the person completely off. And then the next line is, our best customers always come from people that tell me that. I like that. If you just give me another couple of minutes, I promise you, I'm going to provide value to you. And at that point, you can throw me out if you don't. And totally 100% up to you. Is that fair enough? Is that fair enough? Is my close.

Fair enough. So, and I also know that confidence comes from believing in what you're selling, right? Of course. So, you got to believe in it. Look out of there right now. Well, I wanted to get your thoughts on that, right? Because I tell reps all the time, like, if you do not believe in that, to me, that's the number one thing you need to be successful in sales, is a genuine belief that what we do matters. Right. So, if you're, let's go back to those younger sales professionals don't have as much, you know, experience as you and I do, you know, looking for an SDR job, whatever. They get one at some cybersecurity. They could give a shit about cybersecurity, but it's paying the bills. How do they end up, how do you coach or how do you suggest they, because we all don't give a shit.

Like, I didn't give a shit about copiers when I was selling Xerox copiers, but I believed that Xerox was the best copier in the industry. And so, how do you get reps to understand or believe if they're selling something that they just, it's not their quote unquote passion, you know? You're at a bar, it's two o'clock at night, everyone's going home with somebody, and you meet an opposite-sex person, and they're not up to your standards, what do you do? You lower your standards. And so, the sales rep has to decide where their level of standard is with respect to what they believe in and what they can honestly, sincerely present. So, to me, if it's not good for you, stop doing it. Don't kid yourself, because your mediocrity is going to be your new high level.

But if you love it, you can play in the majors. You know, for whatever you think of Philly, think of Bryce Harper. Bryce Harper could run for Jesus in Philadelphia and outvote Jesus. Most likely. Because he's passionate. He loves the game. He loves sports. He's an athlete. He's prepared for the game. He practices. He does, you know, and he goes to Sixers games. And he goes to Flyers games. And he goes to Eagles games. He's just a fan. So, if you're not a fan, if you're not, if you don't really immerse yourself in the knowledge of it, dude, go someplace else. At the very minimum. At the very minimum. If it's paying the bills and you need it to get to the next level, become a world-class expert at it.

At the very minimum. So, that nobody can ask you a question that you can't give an answer and help. With that, do you think that, how much knowledge does a sales rep need to have to be successful from your perspective? So, let's use a sales engineer, for instance, who knows 100% of the product, right? And I'm a sales rep and I'm an account executive. How much do I need to know to be effective, really effective in sales? Do I need to know it all or do I just need to know some? Where's your head at? First thing I'm going to do, and this is pretty interesting. I'm going to, before I ever make a call, I'm going to go visit my top 10 customers and find out why they bought. Yep, thank you. That's the first thing I'm going to do.

Second thing I'm going to do is say to myself, is there somebody I need to take with me when I start? Do I need that engineer with me? Do I need that product guy with me? Do I need that lawyer with me? Who do I need to brag, to drag to the call so that I look more like an expert and I'm going to listen to them literally and learn as much a learner in that sales call as I am a salesperson? So, I can give it to you in a real world thing. When I started to write for the Charlotte Business Journal, I used to bring every Friday a floppy disk from my Mac and a printed out copy. This is 1992. This is 1992. And for three years, I asked the editor if she would please give me back the blue line copy of my column.

She'd make the edits. So, I learned how to edit from an editor. And that was like gold to me. Total gold to me. So, I'm not just a writer. I'm a student. And the longer that salesperson decides that they want to remain a student, the better off they're going to be. If they don't want to be a student, get out of sales. Readers at Walmart can make 20 bucks an hour. Go. Yep. Go. Because you're not going to make it in sales if you're not a student of sales. So, you have to be a student of sales and a student of the market. And that's what I was going to say. It's like you can have, you don't necessarily have to have passion or like 100% belief that your product is the best product in the world. That definitely helps.

And that transfer of enthusiasm. But you've got to be a student of it. You've got to be a student of sales. You've got to love sales. Because if you don't love sales and you don't believe in your product, literally go find anything. Anything other to do. Like McDonald's is a better job. Wendy's just calling. Correct. Exactly. You need to flip a burger and roll. But. Yeah. Go ahead. Or maybe it's another field that doesn't have sales in it. Right. Or maybe it's marketing. Maybe it's customer success. Maybe it's something like that. It's just, you know. It's still going to marketing. That's what I've always said. If I could. So, I was the opposite. If I couldn't market, I went into sales. But, yeah.

I think that's. I mean, you did the same. Like when I was at Thrive Networks, when I was selling outsourced IT services, I didn't know what the fuck I was talking about. But this is what, this is really where I started to understand how much belief mattered, right? Because with IT services, I would sit in server rooms and I would literally sit there in the freezing ass cold server room asking engineers like, what the fuck does that thing do? How does that connect to that? And I got enough of it. I wasn't, I didn't know how to configure a router or a server, but I knew how that NAT and DHCP and those type of things and how they worked. And so, I was able to at least speak to it and get to a point where I was adding value no matter what.

So, no matter what conversation I was in, I was able to either ask the right question or provide some level of insight. But I wasn't able to go deep and that's where I would bring in the engineer or whoever else, but at least I was able to add value. And I think that's the piece where you have to know enough about your product or service to add value to any conversation, right? Whether it's on a cold call, an initial call, a discovery call or whatever, because if you are not adding value into that conversation as me receiving it, then what's the point of you, right? And I'm just going to cut you out of the equation 100% and go to your engineer, go to your VP of sales. I obviously don't need you, therefore you're out.

And that's the difference between a guy that shows his slides and a guy that has an idea. In 1908, Arsene Swedmorton said, the world makes way for the man with an idea. And it still holds. It still holds. Let's finish up on this. What do you suggest to those reps? So let's say they're listening to this. They're like, yep, I get it, man. I want to go all in on quality and do my research and really care. But I'm being asked by my boss to make 50 dials, 100 dials. And without the answer being, go find another fucking job, which is a legitimate answer. What approach do you suggest that rep take to downward pressure on them to do things that you and I both know are not going to be successful? What do you suggest that rep do?

How do they approach their boss, their manager, their team? Rep has to decide that he or she is going back to college and they're going to sales university. And when they wake up in the morning, they're listening to something that will inspire them or they'll read something that inspires them. They're going to do it. They're going to get in their car and there's something by Zig Ziglar, there's something by Earl Nightingale, there's something by you or me that they can put into their machine and listen to it and get to that call and be inspired. And when Dennis Waitley created his cassette program on winning in 1977, I was going from Bean Blossom, Indiana to Chicago, Illinois to talk to my then customer about a full year of consulting.

And I listened to the entire cassette tape series on the way to Chicago and I didn't quite finish. I got to Chicago and there was still one more tape and I listened to that in the car in the parking lot. I blew past the gatekeeper. I blew past the CEO's secretary. I walked into the guy's room who I knew. There were people in the room and I said, excuse me, Mel, sign this. I got to go to work. And he did. And that, what happened, you're inspired by somebody else telling you, you can do it or this is three things you can do to be able to make it happen. Go listen to Earl Nightingale, dude. Go listen to Dennis Waitley. Go listen to people that can inspire you to win. And then go listen to some detailed stuff that John or I creates that will help you get to that next level.

But become an expert or go home. Become an expert or go home. And I think that's the middle ground that most people are in. They're in purgatory. They don't want to do what their manager is asking, but they're also not willing to put in the effort off hours to get better or to try a different approach. And I tell people all the time, like, look, whatever your boss is telling you, I can do it. Because I'll tell you right now, like, especially brand new, if you're first, second, third year in sales and you don't do what I tell you to do, that's the fastest way of getting fired. Because I got to figure out whether you can actually even put in the effort first. But if I'm continuously telling you what to do and you don't like it, well, don't just bitch to me.

Create a side hustle. But that side hustle better be sales and your thought process on the approach so that you can then come to me with, hey, John, I did it your way and this is what happened. And I did it my way and this is what happened. You know, the results are better over here. Do you want me to keep doing this or this? And if they tell you to keep doing their way when it's not as effective, that's when you walk away. Yeah. I'm going to throw you what I recommend to salespeople. Whatever your boss tells you to do, whatever the training program is as a company, whatever the deal is, that's 50% of your time. The other 50% of your time is self-education. The great Jim Rohn, formal education will earn your living, self-education will earn your fortune, and you have to decide how much of a fortune you want to earn by how much you decide you're going to self-educate.

I am a student. I'm older than everybody. But I still spend an hour a day reading and writing. Why do I need to do that? I don't know. So far, it's working. I'm going to do it another 30 years and then that's it. I'm going to quit. So I'm looking at this from the perspective of, okay, this is how it has worked. I'm not going to stop that. I'm not going to, you know, I can't explain it in detail. You can only live it and you have to decide if you're going to live it or not live it. It's just that simple. And if you're coasting, go coast someplace else. Sales is not the career for you if you're looking to coast. I make the analogy to golf, right? Like you can never hit a zero in golf, right? You can't be perfect in golf.

So, or let's call it perfect. You can't hit an 18 in golf, right? So you can always get better. And it's the same thing in sales. Like if you think you're the best at whatever it is, I promise you there's somebody better than you. And so if you're not constantly looking to upskill and that's why the best, the best reps, the best athletes, let's go back to the best athletes. They want to be coached. They demand to be coached because if they're not learning something new, they get bored out of their mind and they go find somebody who will push them. Exactly. But let's talk about ethics for just one second, okay? People go play golf for business. Hey, I took my client out to play golf. I took my customer out to play golf, whatever.

Okay. The customer will never remember the score of the round unless they shot the best round they ever shot or they got a hole in one or almost got a hole in one. Right. But they'll always remember that you cheated on the third hole. Oh, absolutely. And here's how you can tell if a golfer's cheating. Put me down for a seven. If they give you, like, here's how you know you're dealing with a cheater in golf, is when your putt is five to six feet away from the hole and they say, ah, just pick it up, that's a gimme. If they give you a gimme first, then it should not be a gimme. That means they're a cheater because they're going to expect that later on in the round. Exactly. So that's the deal. And the salesperson has to be honest with themselves first so they can be honest with the customer second.

So you're a student, but you have honor. And it's transferable. The customer is going to get it or not. Totally get it or not. And by the way, my Mad Magazine sale led me to meet Don Martin, the guy who, the best cartoonist that they had. And he did the cartoon for Fonzie, which I sold to Paramount. So it all has, and I didn't ask for a referral. I said, how do I get to Don Martin? And he go, oh yeah, I'll give you his number. So I fly down to meet the fucking guy. And I said, do this and I'll pay you this. And he did. So just think about it from a standpoint of stop asking for referrals and just try to get to that next place. Wherever the next place is. And I think that's the problem with all of it, man, is patience.

Yep. Is patience. Like so many people are trying to scream through the first two, three, four, five years of sales to get to a point where they're quote unquote successful. Yeah. You know, I, I, I had my head down for 20 fucking years, like literally 20 years. And when I go back to those 70 meetings in Q1, a lot of it were favors that I pulled from people because I could. Right. Right. Because I always had that, you know, business networking, international, BNI, givers gain, right. That, that was ingrained into me early in my career, obviously through my parents as well. And so I just did whatever I could to help other people out. And it all came back around eventually. Listen, this is a great meeting.

We need to do this again. I say we keep going, man. It's too late. You and I could talk sales for fucking ages. Okay. So my people will call your people and we'll do another one. Is that cool? Let's do another one. Let's do it on your show. I'm in. I'm totally in. All right, brother. Hey, tell people where they can find out. I mean, if they don't know Jeffrey Guttermer, then. Just go to Guttermer.com or buy the Little Red Book of Selling and, you know, read it. You can't hold it up against the side of your head. How many downloads? How many, how many sales are you still getting on that book? It has already sold more than 5 million copies. It's the largest selling sales book of all time. And we just came out with the 20th anniversary.

I didn't change one word. I just added the backstory to the book and a bunch of full page quotes. And it'll still, it'll sell more in one year than most sales books sell in a lifetime. Yeah. Wow. Isn't that crazy? It's a staple, man. It's unbelievable. And you got seven, you got your, your 17 total, 17 books? Yeah, 17 books. Just go to Guttermer.com. G-I-T-O-M-E-R.com. Well, then. And call my people and then they'll call your people. All right, brother. Awesome. Good talking to you as always, Jeffrey. And thank you everybody for joining as always. Look, this is a fun conversation. Hopefully got you thinking of a little bit more. Go check out Jeffrey's shit. And look, always, always, always, like I say to everybody at the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today.

Because no matter how bad your day went or how good or how bad you think it went, if you make somebody smile today, 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'll see you on the other side. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. With your support and our incredible guests, we're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now. And I can't thank you enough. Now, to keep the momentum going, it would mean the world to me if you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network. Also, check out my new website, jbarrows.com, where you'll find even more ways to engage.

There's a ton of free content, and you can also get trained from me directly as an individual or for your team. Look, I'm out there selling every day just like you are, and I'm doing my best to stay on top of all the latest trends in sales and technology. So if you're looking to level up and you give a shit about this profession of sales, let's connect and make it happen together.