Jonathan Mahan and Jordana Zeldin: How to really “Practice” 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 today we are talking about practice. Yes, Allen Iverson, practice. So I have Jonathan Mahan and Jordana Zeldin, who are co-founders of the Practice Labs. And we dive deep into practice and the difference between practice and memorization and practice and live application, which I've always been curious about and how sales is really one of the only careers or professions where people expect you to read a book and then immediately apply it without really practicing it.

I've always had an issue with role-playing because I think it's either in the most fake scenario possible or it's the most ridiculous scenario possible. So we talk through their approach to coaching and how you can really get information to sink in and be applied after you teach it. And we also talk about genuine curiosity and whether you can actually teach that or set people up in a position to be curious. So we dive very deep into this practice and some cool tips and ideas on how to make sure that whatever we're learning, we're applying and we're baking it in. So I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen. What's happening, make it happen, family? Big shout out to our partners today, five Vidyard and Chili Piper.

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Be sure that you're checking out all these great tools. And now let's pass it over to John to find out who's joining him today. See you soon, everybody. All right, Jordana and Jonathan, co-founders of The Practice Lab. How are you both doing today? Quite good, John. Although I'm coming down with a bit of a cold, so here's hoping it doesn't do any worse from here. It's that moment where you're not sure. Hopefully it's not COVID or anything like that, but these days you get that little sniffle and you're like, oh my God, what's happening? Let's hope for the best of that, Jonathan. And Jordana, you had reached out to me. I think the premise of this podcast is practice and how sales reps are taking the challenge of taking what they hear on LinkedIn or what they've come from a training for me and actually learning how to truly apply it.

And there's a gap there of that. So that was the original premise here. But before we get into that, talk to us a little bit about the journey here for both of you on how you got to this point and what you're doing so the audience has a little bit more context on where we're going to go with this conversation. So Jordana, you want to start us off here? Yeah, sure. So I've been in sales for about a decade in one way or another. I started out as an account executive and once I really hit my stride, I found myself getting more excited about like coaching and empowering other people and their sales wins than my own. Prior to my life in sales, I had been running an arts nonprofit where I was mentoring emerging artists.

And prior to that, I was directing theater. So coaching and mentorship has always been a really big part of my life. And when I decided that I want to pivot from being a seller to being a sales coach, I found myself working in a company called Sales Gym that took this really unique approach to developing sales skills, which was entirely practice based. And my coaching up until that point had been just really intuitive and question based. And this company basically taught me how to apply the approaches that athletic coaches take to improving performance in their athletes into the sales space. And once I started coaching that way, it was like I was hooked. I couldn't go back. And then in parallel, and this is a great moment for Jonathan to jump in.

Jonathan was starting to notice some interesting similarities and potential between how athletes train and sellers train. So John, why don't you take it from there? Yeah, yeah. So my journey to practice, you know, in my in my whole sales career, I've always done little bits of practice here and there. But what really thrust me down this path to creating the practice lab was when I started my last sales job, it was like 18 months ago or so I started a company as an AE. And I was going through their training in the morning, and I was watching their onboarding videos, and they were training really good stuff, right? They were teaching all the right behaviors, the right questions to ask the way to handle objections way to talk about pricing, all these behaviors was spot on.

I love the training, then I'd have some lunch. And then I go on a walk in the afternoon and listen to calls and gong of my peers, actual sales calls. And I'll tell you what, there was almost no overlap between what people were actually doing in their calls and what they were supposed to be doing what they had taught to be done. And I realized in that moment that that's equally as true of me, right? You know, I've read, you know, quite a few sales books, right? But if you were to watch my calls, yeah, you'd only see a few of those behaviors here and there, right? I've read gap selling literally three times in a row, but I guarantee you if Kenan heard me sell, he'd be facepalming the whole time.

Yeah, if you go on one of his live shows, he'd probably slaughter you, right? Like, I'm even scared to go on one of those. I'm like, Kenan, I'm not. Come on, man. I don't want to try to sell you. For real, for real. So, there's a big gap between intellectually knowing and understanding a behavior and having the skill set to really pull it off. And then at the same time, in the evenings, I was reading a book called Peak and later a book called The Talent Code. And both of those books are by researchers who have spent decades studying top human performers across disciplines, figuring out how do the best really become the best at what they do, right? So, whether it's actors or comedians or musicians or athletes, there's some common trends that you see.

And one of those common trends and really the backbone of both of these books is this focus on deliberate practice, right? You look at a whole performance, you break it down into its component parts, and you start focusing on practicing one piece at a time. And you practice it so much, so thoroughly to the point where it becomes effortless for you. And then with all that preparation done, come performance time, you know, you can be masterful. And it was just this eye-opening experience for me of like, hey, wait a minute, why does net sales not do that, right? Why are we the only discipline out there that just kind of assumes once you know something, that's the end of it, you can do it, right?

It would be laughable for an Olympic gymnast team to sit around watching videos of how to do better flips and just say, okay, we're good, let's go do it now, right? It'd be laughable for an actor to just read a book on acting and be like, great, I'm ready for my next big role, I read a book. But for some reason in sales, that's expected, right? Hey, folks, we're going to pay this company X dollars to come do a training or, you know, we're going to have you read these books or listen to these podcasts. And the idea is, if you just understand it, that's good enough, you can do it. And that, you know, that didn't sit well with me, I realized for myself, at least as a seller, in order to advance in my journey and mastery, I needed some form of practice.

So the practice lab literally started as me just doing these sessions with some peers of mine who were also onboarding at the time. Like we'd meet up once a week and do these sessions, and it was great. And it really helped us develop our skills. And then a few months later, I decided I wanted to kind of take it to the public and to the outside world. And that's really where Jordana has come in. And she's been instrumental in kind of crafting this business to really become a business rather than just something me and my partners and colleagues did on Tuesday afternoons, you know. But that's where it all started was that experience that I had. I love it. Let's, let's talk about two things I'm curious about.

I want to talk about practice versus memorization and practice versus role playing. Because you mentioned something where, you know, you break things down into the process, and you practice that one thing over and over and over. So it becomes route so that when you're up to performing, if you will, it just is natural. I want to differentiate between practice and memorization. And because the reason I say that is, I was part of a keynote one time, and I was in the audience. And it was this big keynote. And I saw this woman who I knew had practiced quite a bit. And I think what she was doing was she was memorizing her keynote. Okay. And so when she either practiced too much, or she didn't practice enough.

And I think she went down the memorization route. And what happened was, she started on, you know, when she got up on stage, she started talking, she was right in her in line with her, you know, presentation, everything else. And literally, she hit a wall. And when I was and when I mean a wall, it was one of the most awkward things I think I've ever experienced in front of this many people, like, you could tell her brain stopped, because she couldn't remember the next word in that sentence that she had memorized so often. And she stops and she's like, and then she kind of reversed course a little bit. And then it was like, Oh, sorry, you know, you know, I'm just, you know, I'm a little nervous.

And so she kind of tried to recover. But then she went back and started the exact sentence again. And it stopped at the exact same point again. And it was honestly one of the worst, most awkward things. I almost jumped up on stage. I was sitting on the front row. I almost just jumped up on stage. I was like, Hey, everybody, what's going on? So anyways, just to kind of make it less awkward. But that to me was a was a memorization thing. I think like I think she was trying to memorize her entire presentation. So where do you stand on knowing the pitch, if you will, versus being dynamic enough to be able to understand the pitch and adjust? Where does that fall in when it comes to practice? This is such an important point that you hit on john, because there are moments in a sales conversation, like for example, when you set your agenda, that's kind of like a scripted moment, it will more or less be repeatable each time.

That's something we're doing a bit of kind of consideration and scripting and practice around that moment is really important, right? If you want it to go off well. However, you know, as you're noting, like sales is not a script, right? And it's certainly not a monologue. And it's so deeply about like the moment to moment human interaction that's at play, right? So the question is, okay, Jordana, like, so how do you actually practice that kind of agility, say, like an athlete does. And some of the things that Jonathan and I have noticed are that there are very specific soft skills that are universally human that are really powerful in sales, where you can take yourself out of your typical sales role play, certainly out of like your scripted, you know, work, and into a real human to human conversation to specifically focus on grow awareness of and refine those soft skills.

So for example, like how often john do you hear like, it's really important for salespeople to be more curious, right? Like curiosity is and you're like, okay, like, how do I do that? Right? Well, that's a really important thing as a seller to be able to do and to grow awareness of how to do it. So in one of our exercises where we're really focusing on what we call impactful questioning, which we can all agree is a really important sales skill as well. Before we even get into talking about effective ways to formulate and tee up questions, we actually spend a week in lab helping sellers first, A, tap in to what it feels like literally in their body when they're authentically curious in the context of a real conversation with their role play partner.

But we also direct them and this is really significant to be curious about the kind of right, most effective and most impactful things because so often sellers are like, all right, great. Like I have a prospect on the line. I want to know like, how many licenses do they need? When do they need it by? Like what are the specs, right? Qualification. And it's fun. Look, you can be authentically curious about knowing all of those things, but we all know that the more impactful questions trigger your prospect to them into a place of thinking deeply, of shifting their perspective, right? Of thinking about their challenges in a way that they've never, never, maybe never even considered, but you're giving them the questions and the time and the space to do that.

So by practicing and growing sellers awareness of what does it feel like to be curious and where as a seller or a human being, what areas of someone's life should I be probing into to net the most deep and substantial conversation I can? That's one of those moments where you're practicing the soft skill rather than the memorization. So do you think, I ask this quite a lot on the podcast and I've been searching for the answer on this. Jonathan, based on that, can you teach genuine curiosity or is it, so this is the nature nurture thing, right? I think one of the things we were talking before we got on this podcast, I think one of my strengths, if I have any, is that I was born naturally curious.

And I also think that comes from the fact that I know I'm not the smartest kid in the room, right? So, so I get people in the room and I'm like, oh, I, you know more than me. So let me, I'm, and I'm curious about that. And I think that's why my podcast works because I'm, I'm genuinely curious about your background or about insights that you have. But there, that's, that's something I think I was born with, or I at least evolved because of my parents and those types of things. I think you can teach curiosity, but can you teach the real genuine curiosity of like actually caring? So like Jordana, with that, with that example that you use, like I can talk to you personally about your background and I can be really curious about you as a person, but then translating that to, I'm now talking about this software thing that I'm trying to sell to this CRO who is, you know, somebody I probably would never meet in the real world.

Like, and I don't really give a shit about this person, you know, you know, like, so how do you translate that feeling? Cause we all know what it, what it is to be genuinely, or to have somebody be genuinely curious in you. But those are things that I can care about. Those are things that I can connect with. I find so many sales reps have a hard time connecting with their product, their service, their solution with the people. So how do you make that transition? Jonathan, do you have insights on, on how do you make that transition for them? Yeah. I mean, first to answer that, the first question, can you teach genuine curiosity? I think, you know, without having hours to pour over this, I think my answer would be, no, you can't, but you don't need to.

Every human being is born with immense amounts of curiosity. Now, culture tends to beat it out of us and it tends to kind of get, you know, put to sleep and not used. So I don't think you can truly teach it. I think five years old, right? The why, why, why? Everybody has kids with like, there's a, there's a phase of every kid's life where they just ask the question, why, why, why, why, why? And then they stop asking that question and it's so depressing. Yeah. Yeah. So society beats it out of us. So I think what you can do is reawaken it. You can help people tune into it, but it's already there, right? It's part of just us as humans, but I do think you can reawaken it, right? We have exercises that again, really help people a tune into what that feels like in their body, help people practice some in that sensation of curiosity when they need it.

And again, give people guidance on what's the most important stuff to be curious about. Cause again, you can be curious about all sorts of things that are irrelevant in sales. But our job to really help move people towards making a change, making a decision, we should be curious about impactful stuff, right? Stuff that really has to do with motivation and change and impact. That's what we should be curious about. And I do think you can, uh, you can train that. Now there is an important element that you brought up of, if you don't give a shit, you don't give a shit. Right. And I've, and I've had to sell products I didn't give a shit about before. And it was a lot harder. I would definitely advise people to find a new job.

It's something you care about. Um, cause I don't think there's really a way you can solve that problem. Right. You can like, you know, use self-discipline to help you kind of limp along and maybe get by, but you can't truly sell in like an enlightened, effective top, top of the line way. If you don't give a shit about what you're selling. Right. Yeah. I mean, it was, I was just having this conversation with this gentleman who wrote a book on Nick Saban, uh, who's, you know, college, I don't know a ton about college football, but he's, you know, the top college football coach of all time. And what he says when he looks for candidates, like for, for players, they have to love football, like live, breathe and die football and, and really love it.

Right. Versus being an insanely gifted athlete who is good at football, but they're, they're using football because they're trying to get into a school. They're using football because they're trying to make money. They're using football, but they don't love the game. And that factor right there to me, there's two factors that really, you know, create genuine curiosity. One is caring about what you do and what you're selling, but also caring about the prospect. And that's why when I tell, for instance, my trainers, we all have, every trainer has a list of top 25 accounts, right? So these are the tier ones. And I tell them, don't just get, make them be because of the demographic information. Yes.

Boil that down. But then look at them as like a business and say, is this a company you are interested in? Is this, is like you, you can see like, it's cool to you because of their leadership, because of their values, because of what they sell. Because once you make that connection where like, Ooh, this is a cool ass company that I'd like to work with. Forget about the demographic thing here. Well, you're going to automatically be genuinely curious because you want to learn more about how to do that. So you put those two factors in and then you can, you can create that curiosity factor. But if you can't, like, if you don't have those pieces, I think, again, to your point, I think we can guide people towards how to be curious and ask some questions, but not necessarily make that genuine connection, have people feel like they care.

The one thing I'll add to that, both of you, is that I think a lot of sellers don't realize that they can bring themselves and their curiosity into their selling. They're handed a checklist of discovery questions. And that zaps all of the life out of what can be a pretty enlivening human interaction. So while I agree, if you are selling some widget that has zero connection to your personal values or mission or any of that stuff, it's harder for sure. But when the sellers that we work with start to set their intention to be like, to be curious in like their next discovery call, something shifts in the caliber of the conversation. They have access to more interesting questions. Their prospect feels more listened to.

Therefore, they disclose more. And all of a sudden, like just a couple of weeks ago, one of the sellers was like, I had the most in-tune discovery conversation I've had when I set this as my intention. So caring is really important, but I think that curiosity and giving yourself permission to show up in your full humanity can be a really powerful gateway to make a shitty, boring, whatever job start to feel, you know, really rewarding and compelling. And I think that's that leap I'm looking for is like, how do you bring that? How do you like, okay, cool, you know, curious, but now in the practice piece of it and really bring your authentic self to that conversation. What are some, I mean, Jonathan, you mentioned stuff about impact and being curious about impact.

But Jordana, when you, when you talk about bringing yourself to this conversation, I mean, we could personally connect about a lot of things, you know, family, kids, whatever that might be. And I could be curious about that. But a lot of that time that comes across as fluffy rapport building stuff that people see through. So I guess, where do you like, what are some tactical things that you can tell people of like, okay, we just practice this stuff. And now you're going into a quote unquote, boring situation where it's kind of a boring scenario with a boring product and a boring company that you're like, what are some of the areas that you could say, start here? Or when you talk about set that intention, what would some of those intentions be?

It's such a great question. Actually, Jonathan and I are kind of intimately familiar with this question, because at one point in our, the history of our relationship, I was, was coaching Jonathan as a seller. I was a coach and he was a seller. And one of the things that we noticed, we were working on, I think it was John, your agenda. And I actually had almost an identical coaching conversation with another seller in the lab a couple of weeks ago, where we were working on the agenda, right? It's kind of the scripted, more predictable moment. And there are certain beats you want to hit in order to have a certain effect and to set your prospect at ease and create a kind of vibe of transparency and collaboration.

But what I noticed, and this happened with John, is like the moment the seller opened his mouth to deliver his agenda, the person I knew had like left the building and it was like somebody else. And John used to do this too. Like his facial muscles would tighten. He wouldn't breathe. And I was like, seller, the person I was working with the other day, like, where did you go? And in the report piece, he was saying something like, wow, I can't believe it's Friday. I was like, hold up. Is, is the fact that it's Friday really well for you? Like authentically? He was like, well, no. I was like, so that doesn't belong in your selling. Because if you start out the interaction, leaving yourself, disconnected to yourself, saying things you don't give a shit about, but you're pretending to because you think that's what you need to do in rapport, you're already starting behind.

And once you leave yourself, it becomes so much harder, John, to have access to your curiosity, to really impactful questions, to all of the skills that you know intuitively or through training or through the practice lab, let's say, are going to, are going to move the needle for you, but you're already like playing some seller version of you. So this sounds really, really simple, everyone who's listening, but like, are you breathing when you are selling? Literally, if you are not breathing into your belly, you are disconnected from yourself a little bit, and it's going to be really hard to find your way back. What's up, everybody? I know you're enjoying this conversation. John does a great job with genuine curiosity on these episodes, and our guests consistently bring the heat.

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Join us today and get the help you need to become the seller that you deserve to be. That URL one more time is joinjbsales.com. Let's get back to the show with JB and our guests for this week. And I want to go back to this memorization, this script conversation with this, because I think I see the same thing, like cold calling. It's hysterical. Like if you sit in a bullpen and you just, and the phones are off and you start having conversations with these kids, like, oh yeah, how you doing? Yeah, what's up? Like this weekend and whatever. And then all of a sudden the phone rings and it's like, hi, this is John Barrows with JB Sales. And I'd like to talk to you. And it's like, whoa, like, who are you?

You're now a different person. And I think to your point, it's kind of been beaten out of us, but let's talk about scripts for a second here. I've always had a slight disdain for scripts because if they say X, then go to Y. If they say Y, then go to B and that type of thing. And I went through it. We did, when I was first in my first startup company, we had an outsourced appointment signing company. And we literally scripted this to this, to this, to this, to this, so that they knew exactly where to take the client. And then I listened in on some of those calls and I almost threw up. Outsourcing is one thing. Insourcing though, you're hiring people. There is something to be said about, I mean, I've loosened my opinion about scripts because I think there is a part of them that is valuable, but I like structure.

I like giving people structure to play within versus a script. However, when somebody starts at a new job, they don't know what they don't know. So is a script a good place to start so that they at least have a memorized talk track that they can maybe make their own quickly? Or should we coach first without the script so that they can give them the flexibility on the calls when they start? Personally, I feel like, you know, scripts have more value in those moments in the sales conversation that are the most predictable, right? For example, the very opening line of a cold call, very predictable. They say, hello, what do you say next? Right? Very predictable. When you get into more unpredictable things, that's when the kind of the scripts value falls apart.

As far as, you know, having value for a new hire, I think they do. Truthfully though, I think I would just rather invest that same time, energy, and effort you could invest on scripting and invest it in helping them better understand the problems, right? Helping them practice their mental skills, right? So that they can be better. Because truthfully, investing all that time to learning the scripts, knowing that they're only going to be really valuable to that rep for the first 30 days, doesn't seem to make sense, right? Why not just invest on the skills they're going to need long term, which is something that's massively overlooked in sales training, right? There are so many companies I've trained at, and I've been on my own to figure out why a certain product matters to customers, what pain points it solves for customers.

Like, I could go on a huge rant about this. I'll keep it brief though. But my personal opinion is that like the number one job of sales, the reason our profession exists, the reason why we can't just be replaced by a demo on a marketing site is to really help be the interpretive layer between what our product does and why it matters in our prospects world. It's our job just to learn about them, to learn about our product and draw those connections and connect the dots and say, hey, you know, this part of your world, this part of our product would connect directly to that part of your world, and it would have these impacts. Like that's our entire job, interpretive layer between our product and their world.

And again, that's what salespeople should be trained on when they start a new company, right? Yes, learn half of it, which is the our product half, that's good to know. But then you also need to learn the other half, which is your prospects world, right? Again, what are their challenges? What are their needs? What impact do these features have, etc? And that's where I would spend my effort on training folks rather than scripts. So it's not like they're not worth, not useful at that moment, they probably are. I just don't know if they deliver the most bang for the buck. Because again, 30 days from then, the expectations are going to leave those scripts behind. I was just going to say too, I think too, Jonathan, one of the things we've noticed in this cohort of the practice lab is that we've started out by helping people understand, like, the why or grab hold onto the concept before helping them to give it form, which could be said to be scripting.

So let me give you an example. Like, just this week, we have a lab called Connecting the Dots, where this is the whole thing that we're trying to help sellers do is understand that it's way more important for them to know how what they're selling matters to their prospect than it is for them to know all the features and functionality and capabilities of what the thing does, right? So in the first part of this exercise, we kind of put sellers in the context of a demo, had them teeing up their features. And then it's their partner's job to immediately cut in and say, so what? Why are you showing me this? And then it's the practicer's job, not to like spit out the best thing they can think of because they're in role play, and it has to be perfect.

But to actually take a beat and think, well, why, like, why the fuck does this thing matter? And like, talk it out, articulate it, and then their partner pushes back, what's the, so what's the impact on me? Like, oh my God, I've never thought about it. And like, they go through multiple iterations of the partner pushing them to think about the impact, right? That's round one. Then it's like, all right, the sellers now have an understanding, maybe a different understanding or a deeper understanding of the possible ways that the feature that they're about to show has impact. How do you give that form in a compelling way? And that's where we give some structure and some framework. And in our case, we call them connecting statements, where before you talk about a feature, you say something like, earlier you mentioned, or a lot of our customers are struggling with X, or you know what it's like when.

But it starts with their first understanding the impact before putting it into anything resembling a script. Our onboarding here has nothing to do with product. It has nothing to do with training. It has everything to do with learning about the customers. So, you know, for instance, I usually give my new hires a list of our top 10 customers. And I say, you have to go talk to them. And you have to also write a report at the end of why these are our top, what are the commonalities of them. And all I do is I give, and I don't give them the highest revenue. I don't give them the most, there are characteristics within these about the stage of the business they're at, whatever it is. So talk to them about the problems that we solve and, and really forget about our marketing speak here for a minute, but really what value do they bring?

We, we bring to them. And this is why I almost like, you know, the predictable revenue model that we're all kind of in, in the SaaS world, I think is totally broken. And I wish it would change because it's just not customer centric. But I think a great transition here is like, okay, let's bring SDRs in, let's kind of get them their teeth cut, make sure that they can make some calls and deal with the stress of sales. But then before we move them to an AE where they have to now close and do all the demos and stuff. No, no, no, no. Let's put them as an AM. Let's put them as an account manager or a customer success person. So they get to work with the customer to see how the customer actually applies whatever they're doing and learn the use cases and the real value and the real impact and ask, you know, and so now after they go through that process, then they move into full cycle sales because they'll learn in that scenario how to close, right?

Because, but it won't be the hardcore close of your quota. It'll be upsells, cross-sells and renewals. So they'll learn the closing skills. They'll learn how to manage the sales process, but it won't be in the stress pact of, hey, you're an AE, go, you know, if you don't close, you're going to die. And then they'll get that perspective. And then potentially some of them will move to the full cycle sales, but then they'll have stories for days and it won't be a pitch. It'll be a conversation about all the cool things that they've seen from the customers. So to me, I just hope more customers make like more clients make that transition because it gives us such a different perspective than anything that our marketing team is going to tell us about how great our stupid product is.

That's a beautiful vision, like for, for a career trajectory. Yeah. Within a company. It's just a healthier one for us too, I think, as an organization. Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. I've actually done both the, you know, the front end sales role, but I've also done the account management upsell role. And you're totally right. You learn so much from being on the backend about how the product actually impacts people's lives and how they actually use it and what difference it actually makes that you can then sell it a heck of a lot more compellingly than when all you have in front of you is, you know, something your sales enablement team give you just listing out the features it has and how it's better than the competition.

And I think that's the problem with onboarding, right? Like most onboarding is product heavy. And so what happens is the, and this is a macro problem too, because we are now as a society teaching to the test, right? There's no more creative thinking. It's MCAS. You have to search and the teachers get, you know, bonus on whether, how many, what percentage of the kids hit a percentage on the MCAS they have to. So there's no more creativity involved in here. And so you take a kid who has been grown up in that now environment of test taking and you give them a script, they're going to read the script. It's just the way they're going to, you, you, you, you teach them features and functions. They're going to memorize those features and functions.

And then you give them a phone and you let them go. And what do you think they're going to talk about? They're going to talk about the only thing they know how to talk about. Forget about the soft skills. They're just going to regurgitate what they've memorized because they got their stupid badge at the end of bootcamp to make them feel good about it. It drives me nuts. Yeah. That's like a, that's like going into like a, uh, like a path talking about sales leadership as well, but so many sales leaders are incentivized to reward the wrong behaviors. And so it's a vicious, a really vicious cycle. Yeah, it really is. Let, let's talk about role play. Um, cause I, I have a distinct disdain for role play.

Um, mainly because I've seen role play done so wrong in so many ways, right? Cause either role play is the perfect scenario that will literally never happen. And the trainer, and it's mostly for the trainer to show off because the trainer's done that role play so many times that they look like the expert. I mean, I remember like a colleague in our space, Guru Ganesh, right? He was the number one Sandler trainer of all time. This guy's hysterical. And he stands up there and he gives everybody this bullshit card. He said, you can raise your hand and call bullshit on anything that I'm telling you, right? And inevitably in the first 10 minutes, some AE in the back of the room, who's senior raises their hand and they're like, this is bullshit.

And he comes up, he's like, all right, go. And they do this role play. And within like two minutes, Guru's got this guy spun around an axle and he's like, Oh my God. And the kid's like, okay, you're right. You're right. Right. But I look at it and I'm like, Guru, you've done that a million times before. So that is a fake scenario that nobody in this room can replicate. And it just makes you look good. On the other hand, it's the ridiculous scenario that'll never happen. It's like the most complex thing that will never happen. And, and there's, so I've always avoided, I've always looked at direct application. So my practice is we tear out our accounts, tier ones, tier twos, tier threes. I used to throw away my tier threes because they suck.

But now I actually keep my tier threes to purposely practice on them. Right. So I practice on live scenarios. I call up like shitty accounts and I throw up all over myself and I learn. And then I move upstream because I have a disdain for process, for, for role play. So talk to me about your philosophy on role playing and how to do it right so that it has the right impact. And it's not an eye roll for me when I'm watching it. Yeah. So I share your disdain for role play as typically done. Um, and always have for years. And the reason I have this disdain for role play is that the environment, the world you're in, in a role play, there's very little resemblance to the actual world of a real sales conversation, right?

The roles of the game are different. The inputs, the outputs, the reactions you get, what you say, it's all different. So it's like, why bother mastering this fake fantasy land role play when I could become a master of this and still suck on a real call, right? Or vice versa. I could suck at role play and be great on a real call because those two environments are just very different. So it's not good to play. It's not a good place to play, right? Imagine if you had like a flight simulator for pilots, except all the rules of gravity and all the functions of the plane were different. What's the point, right? I could be a master of this flight simulator and still be terrible in real world. Well, a perfect example of this, you ever see the movie, um, uh, the guy who landed the plane in the Hudson, remember?

I didn't see the movie, but yeah. So there was a really cool part in the movie where they did this, this, this, um, uh, simulation of the flight, right? And so what happened was as soon as the alert went off, the plane immediately veered, right? And they said, look, you could have landed this thing on the air, like on the, on the airline track, whatever. But why did you go into it? So, so it's your fault. Like you screwed this up. You shouldn't have done that. And he was like, Oh yeah. He's like, the button went off and the plane immediately took a right. He's like, that's not what happens in the real world. There are so many other variables that I, as a pilot need to now think of about, okay, we had to figure out what the problem was.

So add another 15 seconds to this for us to at least figure out what the problem really was and then run your simulation. And they ran the simulation and it crashed right into a building. And he was like, so the human factor here has to be incorporated into it. So how do you address that? And when, and how do you guys run role plays or do you, um, to get that real practice the right way? So a couple of things. One is that we use role plays in some scenarios, but we do not use role plays for others. Um, similar to what I mentioned earlier about scripts, we found that role plays are a pretty effective tool for predictable moments in a sales cycle. Um, because at that point, your prospect can actually do a pretty good job of role playing what a real prospect would do, because that moment's pretty predictable.

However, other parts of the conversation that are very unpredictable role plays completely unsuited for, um, everything we do involving discovery, involving curiosity, empathy, questioning, listening, all of that stuff is not done through role play because it'd just be hot garbage, right? I've tried role playing discovery before, and there's very, very little value to it because again, your prospect who's pretending to be a prospect never acts the way a real prospect does. So it doesn't really prepare you for the real world. So in those situations, uh, kind of like in alignment with what Jordana mentioned earlier, we have people go into breakout rooms with their partner and no one role plays anything.

You just be your real selves. Cause remember you're practicing empathy, curiosity, listening, question asking. You don't have to be in a sales context to practice those, right? You can practice those in a regular conversation with a human being. So we give them parameters on what kinds of conversations to have and what to talk about and what kind of questions to focus on. But those muscles, quote unquote, those neurological muscles of listening and question asking and curiosity, they can get practice outside the context of sales. Now, when it comes to things that are in the context of sales, where we do use role playing, um, we focus on things that are a little bit more predictable. For example, at some point in his life, he's going to hear the words, Hey, it looks great, but we're going to put this off until next quarter, right?

You can role play how you respond to that, right? Because you're going to hear those words at some point. So you can be prepared with how you're going to react and what you're going to say. We don't use scripts. We use really loose frameworks, but we do use role play in those scenarios. Similarly, if you look at an AE's demo, they are going to talk about the same features on every demo. So what we do is we like to zoom in to specific moments and role play those specific moments. So you're never going to be in the practice lab and practice your whole 30 minute demo all at once. Because again, role play is not very good tool. And for that scenario, what we do is we zoom into specific moments and say, okay, then as soon as you're done showing that feature, what question are you going to ask to get your prospect engaged, get your prospect talking?

You can practice that moment. And at that point, your partner, they don't really have to do a whole lot of role play, honestly, right? They give you some pretty simple prompts. And then you take it from there as a seller. Because again, we're zooming into specific key pivotal moments in the demo that matter. And we just practice those key moments. And role play can be effective when you're zooming in like that. I think too, just building on that, John, there are a couple of other mistakes that sales teams often make when they're employing role play. One, as Jonathan alluded to, is like they practice the whole call. And it's like, if you are, I mean, think of all of the plates that you have to have in the air as a seller, that all of the skills, all of the moments that you need to calibrate, if you're practicing your entire 30-minute conversation.

And any feedback that your manager has for you, it's going to be impossible to implement because it's 25 different things over 25 minutes, and it's all going to go out of your brain. So one of the really important things, and Jonathan and I have taken this directly from these books like Peak and The Talent Code, is to chunk it down into these specific behaviors so that you can grow awareness of the things that you can do moment to moment. Every week, we're focusing really on just one behavior so that you can start to make small but like very powerful changes in your behavior. The other thing is that sales leaders all too often treat practice as performance. It's like a test, right? You come up, like they call up one AE and another AE, and you're going to do an objection handling scenario for the group.

And it's like real time. It's fast. And your partner is trying to trip you up. And like you're under pressure because your sales leader is there and you can't make a mistake. And that is the least safe place to practice on the planet, right? Practice inherent in the best type of practice and neuroscience backs this up is the kind of practice where you can slow it down. Think about a musician practicing on the piano. They're not doing the concerto at real speed. You slow it down. You make mistakes. You think about those mistakes. You double back. You make a different choice. You make a correction. It's this really awkward and stumbly process. And that can't happen at game speed. And that can't happen in an environment where the expectation of your practice is perfection.

I think that's the key is like you can't be afraid to fail, right? And I think that's another thing, unfortunately, from a societal standpoint is like failure isn't rewarded. It's hurt, right? So to me, the failure is the part where you learn the most. But it's how you give that feedback on that failure that matters, right? Because if it's a failure and you give wrong feedback on that failure, then that person's going to be scared to fail again. But if you use it constructively, then they might actually learn from it. And I think that's a skill going back to the leadership part of this, which is, you know, teaching leaders how to provide feedback, how to give. And do you get into that at all?

It's like literally how to deliver feedback to people? Because that's one of the harder things is that one of them is accepting feedback, but the other is giving feedback. Yeah, so it's interesting. There are a gazillion like feedback frameworks out there. And many of them are amazing. But there are a couple beliefs that kind of values the ground feedback in the practice lab. And the first is really big picture. And it's the belief that feedback is a gift, period. Like, it's a gift to give, and it's a gift to receive. And we introduce that to people right at kickoff. So everybody's coming in with that same mentality. We also encourage people kind of along the lines of what I shared, not to give feedback on 10 different things.

It's like, what should your practice partner keep? And the keep isn't like the shit sandwich where you like tee it up with a compliment and then hit them with criticism. It's actually like, what's the thing they did well that you want them to put a pin in so they know to do that thing again? What's one thing to keep? And what's one thing to change? And it's what's one thing to change in the next iteration that happens immediately. Because so often in like, you know, coaching calls with sales leadership, your leader will give you a lot of feedback. And then they're like, all right, so go do it sometime. But you don't have that immediate practice-based accountability. So when you're practicing in iterations, you have an opportunity as the practicer to try that feedback on for size right away.

And I think that's what's like, so for me, from a coaching standpoint, when, you know, manager and everything else, that's always what my focus on is, is if we're going to do a role play, we're going to do a role play right before you're about to go do that thing. Right. So if you're about to make a cold call, we're going to do like, if we're going to do a cold call blitz, I'm going to do role plays right before that cold call, mainly just to get the juices flowing, to get those first awkwardness conversations out of the way and get you prepped for this. It's the same thing if you're going into a quote unquote negotiations where you're trying to get something. For instance, like if I do a forecast review, you know, I'll go through and I'll be like, all right, you know, what do we have?

You know, we have a give get scorecard and we'll say, okay, validate it. But now, all right, what's our goal for the next meeting? Well, we got to get a meeting with power. Okay. Like you're talking to your main point of contact and we have to get their boss involved in this. So let's role play that scenario. I'm going to be your, your main point of contact. You're, I want you to figure out how to ask me to get to my boss and I'm going to tell you no, and I want you to see how you can, you know what I mean? Deal with that objection there just to, so, and here's another, and I'm going to throw a different objection at you. I'm going to different objection at you, different, just to get you ready for that, what's going to hit.

So it's directly applicable because practice, it's just like why I don't speak Spanish anymore. Right. When I was five, you know, I was in fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade, I took Spanish and I did really well in Spanish, but guess what here in America, we never practice Spanish after we take it. When we're kids, we're never set in those environments to continuously use Spanish. So I don't know how to speak Spanish. So the, the, the immediate applicability of that practice is what I think is so critical of this. Yeah, for sure. Let's finish up with this. One of the reasons I love sales, I mean, I love sales for a lot of reasons, but one of them is I do feel like sales is one of the only professions you can truly practice everywhere you go.

So you talk about this as far as, you know, real world scenarios, getting connected with people in social settings. What are some of the things, you know, I joke around, for instance, there was this really cool study a while back where this engineer who was really an introvert, you know, was dealing with a consultant and they were like, Oh, I can't negotiate. I'm, I'm, I'm really not good at it. And the guy was like, look, do me, do me a favor. You can negotiate for anything. And he was like, no, I can't, I can't do it. He's like, just ask for the good guy discount. And the guy was like, excuse me. He's like, everywhere you go, I just want you to ask this one question. Hey, do you have a good guy discount?

And, and they say, well, excuse me. And then just, you know, answer with, well, I'm a good guy. And I was just wondering if you have any discounts for good guys. And it was kind of this funny thing. And what was hysterical was this guy went around and no matter what it was, if it was a restaurant, if it was a hotel or whatever it is, he would just very kind of shyly say, Hey, um, do you guys happen to have a good guy discount? And it happened so that almost everywhere he went, he got, he might not have gotten a discount, but he got something added to it, you know, free dessert or an up, you know what I mean? Like breakfast in the morning at the hotels. And it was hysterical. So he was practicing in those scenarios.

And I always look at that as almost every social setting I'm in, I'm consciously practicing. I'm, I'm consciously monitoring the room to see how others are reacting to me. They're reacting to other people, how that question landed. And it could have a presented it better. So what are some things that you suggest would, you know, people do to help improve their skills of curiosity, of questioning, of discovery in the real world that are a little less, um, stress induced, if you will, because it's not about, I have to hit my target this month. Not only do I agree with that, I would say too, that, um, that can even be a litmus test of your, your sales training and your sales behaviors. If what you're being taught or what you're doing, your sales calls feels weird, icky wrong to do in the real life with other people, that's a sign that maybe you shouldn't be doing those things.

Um, because what we have found unintentionally is that in the practice lab, as we teach people, these behaviors, you know, we get probably almost as many success stories of people saying, Hey, I tried this out with an old friend. Hey, my mother called this weekend. Hey, I was in a disagreement with my partner and I use this. We get as many of those stories as like people saying, yeah, I did it in a sales call because yeah, when you're doing the right behaviors, they are truly universal, right? So, you know, uh, in a negotiation, right? When a prospect push pushes back, it's good to rather than just immediately pushing back on them, pause, be silent, get curious about why they're pushing back, why you see things differently and ask an open-ended question to get them talking.

That's the same skill you can use. If your partner says something ridiculous that you disagree with, and you're like, how could you be that dumb to think that same process, pause, get curious, ask an open-ended question to better understand. So a good litmus test of sales behaviors is again, do they, can you use them in the outside world? Um, as far as places to try this out, obviously everyday conversations, um, with those close to you, um, is fantastic, especially again, when you're practicing things just like curiosity and listening. Um, it's amazing the quality of conversations you can have with complete strangers. When you say, I'm going to head in this conversation with curiosity and deep listening.

Like I literally just met one of my neighbors who lives like eight houses down for the first time last night and talk to them for an hour and a half, just using the same skills, skills I always do of listening. And when I hear something, use what I just heard to inform my next question, to keep them talking, paying attention to emotional hot button topics. And wherever there's a lot of emotion, asking them open-ended questions to get them to explore and talk more there. And I got to know these folks super well in an hour and a half, just because I think I was like borrowing an animal trap from them or something. And there I was for a long time. So there's a lot of places to learn it. One in particular, I would encourage people that has been massively impactful on my sales career is host a podcast.

Yeah. It's the same skills of listening, of asking good questions, of like, and having this balance of like knowing where you want to go and what you want to talk about and being in control of the conversation, but also being open and receptive to hearing what they want to say and changing course. And like the same kind of mental gymnastics, you need to be a good podcast host are the same mental gymnastics you need to be good at to be a good discoverer. So that's one particular place to go. This is doing that. Jordan, any thoughts on that? I'll just plus one, all of that. Yeah. I mean, what the whole thing, John, I mean, for me, like the reason that I'm here in sales is not because I like, I care deeply if a company exchanges a good for cash.

It's because it is this playground to talk about all of the most interesting things about, about human relationships. So yeah, right on, John. That's the same. And that's where, you know, that's why I think about, you know, if you have kids, for instance, talk about practice, you are negotiating every day, all day with your kids. And if you look at it as this combative thing where it's no and not, like you're gonna keep arguing with your kids. But if you look at it as where are they coming from? Let me understand where, you know, why you want that, like talk to us, you know, blah, blah, blah. And you think about it from that perspective of curiosity, seeking to understand the why behind it, those types of things.

You'd be amazed at how that translates into better relationships with your kids, with your spouses, with whoever it is. Because now you're, even though you're, you know, it feels weird because you're taking kind of your, what you think is business and applying it to your family. But at the end of the day, the more you can combine those two and be this going all the way back to that, you know, first part of our conversation of you have to be the same person, right? If you're somebody else in a, in a different scenario, the, that people see through that really easily, you know? And so that's why it cracks me up with people who are on social, you know, if you see them on Facebook, they're one person, but you see them on LinkedIn, they're a totally different person.

And it's like, that might've worked about 10 years ago when, when that wasn't as, you know, integrated here. But as soon as I see you're a different person than who you are online, you lose all credibility in my world. And so being able to apply that to your children, to your family, but in an authentic way, and then translate that into business is a, it's kind of the healthy transition. I think a lot of us should make. And that's why I think sales is such a great profession. Cause it's like the only one that you can really do that with, right. I mean, accountants, like, I guess you could take your accounting home and be super boring and you know what I mean? But like, you know, like you can't really practice accounting, you know, managers, you know, Excel sheet and all that other stuff, but really sales is the softer side of it, which is so fascinating to me.

So I love, I love what you guys are doing. So let's talk, let's wrap it up. Where, where can people find out more about the practice labs, more about each one of you? What are you working on these days? What do you want the audience to know? Yeah. Thanks so much, John. So, so Jonathan and I are both pretty active on LinkedIn. That's the one place to find us. The practice lab.co is our website and we are just gearing up. It's right now we're recording this mid August. So we're just gearing up to launch applications for the next cohort of the lab, which is going to be launching in Q1 2023. So we've got some cool events and stuff and all those details will be on the website. If you want to want to check us out.

Awesome. So it's the practice labs.co, right? It's the practice lab, singular, practice lab.co. You got it. Perfect. So, well, thank you very much for both of you coming on here. I really enjoyed the conversation. Us too, John. Very much. Thanks for having us. Absolutely. And everybody else, hopefully you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did and took some little nuggets that you can go out and practice yourself. Not like Allen Iverson always says, but go out there and actually practice because it does make a difference. And look, like I always say at the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today because no matter how bad your day is or you think it's going, if you go out there and 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 for listening and I'll see you on the other side. Thank you so much for your time today and listening to the podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. With your support and our incredible guests, we're one of the top sales podcasts in the industry with over a million downloads and I can't thank you enough. To keep the momentum going, if you could go to your favorite podcast platform and leave us a five-star review, I would greatly appreciate it. In return, I will answer any question that you have on Instagram. Hit me up there at John M as in Michael Barrows with a video question or a DM and I will get right back to you, I promise. And last but not least, if you're looking for training, I'm adjusting my training approach this year and I'm actually going to be delivering training to the masses.

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