Michael Manzi: Navigating Changes in Sales Through Leadership

How much of an expert do you think a sales rep needs to be right now to be successful? I think the sales rep needs to be completely knowledgeable on everything they're selling, except for the technical component. Shit, man. You want to get stoned and have this conversation? Hell yeah. 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's conversation is with Michael Manzi. He's the principal and fractional VP of sales for official sales. You can check out his website at officialsalestips.com.

Michael is somebody I've been following on Instagram for a while now. He is absolutely crushing it on that platform and giving out so many tactical tips on a daily basis. I don't know how he does it. I mean, I do a ton of content out there and he just seems to be a machine and it's all super tactical, which is why I was really interested in having this conversation. Also, he's from Boston, so very direct and in your face about his approach, which I love. So, we got into it here. As always, we talked about his background and he has a very similar background to me as far as his parents, for instance. You know, he talked about the art and the science coming from both of his parents. And then we dove into sales and what's going on right now.

And, you know, talked about stuff like personalization at scale and how business acumen is just really sorely lacking right now and how to improve it. And then got into a lot of his learning lessons along the way. So, this is one of those ones where, again, it's all sales all the time. It's super tactical. It talks about management and reps. And I think there's going to be something in here for everybody who's looking to level up their game. So, I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Mike Manzi, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How are you doing? I am stoked to be here. How the hell are you? I am doing well, man. I am doing well. It's, you know, the ups and downs.

Like somebody said earlier in my career, you know, don't let the highs get too high and don't let the lows get too low. And I've been trying to practice that to this day. But today's a good. Without success, at least me. Yeah. Yeah. I just, you know, somebody asked me recently, like, John, like, you've been in the fucking sales game for like 28 years, man. Like a kid who's like five years in the sales. And they're like, how in the fuck do you stay like with like, I'm burnt out after five years. How you been doing it for 30, basically. And I'm like, hey, you got to have the DNA for it. You just got to be a glutton for punishment. But B, I don't know your why and all the values and everything else included.

But there's a lot of burnout out there happening right now. And I'd love to kind of get your perspective on what you're seeing as well. Yeah. Actually, it's interesting something. I see a lot of burnout too. And I think it has to do a little bit with how the VC money has been changing a lot in the last few years with interest rates going up. There's so much more pressure on reps. So I think that five years ago, probably 70% of reps, 80% of reps will be hitting quota. It was pretty common for me as a VP of sales or as a CEO to have a 20% buffer between the actual quota of the company and the quota of the team. And now it's like nowhere near that. I actually had a couple of posts I did recently where I'm asking people how much money they make and your OTE.

And it's clear anecdotally as well as from like privata in other places. So I think that that pressure that the CEOs are feeling gets pushed into VPs, gets pushed to directors, gets pushed to people on the ground level. And we're the ones who end up having to eat it and getting fired when it doesn't work month over month. So I think that's the big problem. But I do think that everybody has to have levels in their career or their personal life really when you realize your issues and you actually make a conscious effort to try to fix it. And you only do that when you really have to. I always make this, there's insecurity moments people have. And it's like the insecurities moments when you get in this on the weight in the scale, this is 200.

And you're like, it's not going to work, right? So it's only then that you go, all right, you know, I'm going to die and I'm going to work out with it. And I think that in, in sales in particular, we need to have those insecurity moments where instead of we throw the towel and we're sort of looking at marketing jobs, we actually, we actually, um, you know what, I'm going to work on myself and give my own value and just make sure I'm valuable outside of like the number of what's on. So yeah, I think it's a problem, but I think a lot of us do the pressure from our interest rates, which is odd. Totally. Well, I also think it bred laziness, right? Like it was a grow at all costs. Like sales was relatively easy.

I, I actually, in all my keynotes these days, I'm positioning 2010 to 2022 as the golden years of sales. Like you've been able to get away with blasting out tempo of emails, setting up calls with anybody with a pulse, you know, asking dumb ass, joining through demos and letting your SE do the majority of the work like that. So it, it, the fundamentals aren't there. And the fact that you and I, I mean, how old are you? 38. Right. So I'm 48. So, and you know, even then like 10 years for difference, but we still grew up in a, in a, in a sales environment where it wasn't zoom. So we were face to face. So I didn't get a, I don't know about you. I didn't get a ton of, uh, sales training when I came into sales, but I was around it.

You know what I mean? And so I was like osmosis and I was picking up on shit and that these kids don't have that. So they don't. So we over-engineered the sales process. They don't have the benefit of sitting in the bullpen and listening to others and learning from others. And it was a grow at all costs. Money was free. Who cares? And so now that it's hard, I got a lot of reps like falling apart right now and companies because of it, because now their expectations are still here, but the situation is here. So I just, yeah, I totally agree with you, but I actually, I actually think that I don't want to say it's a generational thing, but I do think that there's like, uh, maybe it hasn't, maybe the generational thing actually isn't so much about the reps themselves.

It's even the leadership. Like when I came in, when I came in my body, I'll never forget my bosses. Like I'd say that the two best for me and my personality, my two best bosses I had, one was like an ex-Ohio staying linebacker who like physically scares you, you know? And he would just walk up and down the halls and go, man, you afraid of being a millionaire? Get on the phone. And it was like, that works. I remember my first, my first time getting to leadership, he was now my boss and I was the leader or one of the leaders. And, uh, first meeting we had and he asked me, or he asked the question in the group. I chimed in and he was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Manzi, this is your first one. Go sit against the wall.

And for like six weeks, he made me sit against the wall. And I'm like that, but it bred so much introspect. And I was so much more conscious about like, do I have something valuable to add? Is this going to be useful? Like, can I carry my own thoughts in a way to make this valuable? So it really, it really sharpened my skillset where I think that, um, and I'm not thinking about my, my first job, which was EF selling ice trips. You know, you know, the Spanish future were taking kids to Spain. It was, they were giving out blood lights. Whoever can get a deal close, you get a blood light. And so it was like that real, that environment, I think bred a very, um, tenacious and persistent and like excited to be in this sort of sales environment.

You remember, I think about 2007 was when I got started, 97, let's say when you got started, we're not that far away from like the true Wolf of Wall Street days. So there's a little bit of like sexiness and around sales boiler room style where I think now you've got people that are, that are my age managing teams and we're a little softer. You know, I'm soft. I know that I'm, I'm not yelling up and down the halls going, you're going to be a minute afraid to be a millionaire. So I've seen that that, um, pushes off on people. And I think also for years now, we've, um, we've, we've kept people around that aren't the right fit while also not being managed well enough to be able to train people. So like we've been able to just be like, that person stinks, keep them around.

I don't want to have a long conversation. The team gets that vibe and that's what happened. So I think we should get managing because we're too soft. We should get managing because we don't train people. And I think because of that bolt, that lack of that bullpen, it does lead you to just get stuck in your own head. And, um, you don't see someone else do something cool for like 10 seconds and go, I want to do that. Nothing happens. And then suddenly you go, man, I sink, I'm putting on a pit or whatever. And now you're stressing yourself and you're burned out because you didn't have like 25 micro learnings in one massive, massive learning. So a little bit all over the place, but. Hey, I hope you're enjoying the.

Conversation so far. I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JB sales membership. It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, which are filling the funnel and driving a close that cover all aspects of the sales process. It also includes monthly workshops that I'll be running on specific sales skills and different tech skills like chat GPT and how to leverage AI throughout the entire sales process. Finally, the membership gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to jbarrows.com, click on the individual membership link and use coupon code podcast at checkout, you'll get 25% off.

Now let's get back to the conversation. So you talk about your background, because I think your influence makes a difference, right? Of where you're coming from. So it sounds like you had a couple of pretty hardcore bosses early on, but back up a little bit, because I mean, give the audience a little bit of context here, not just on the work, right? Because I see you, you know, you had an interesting background. You did. Did you teach in Korea? Did you? I did. Yes. Okay. Yes. But before that, talk to me about you growing up, like as a kid, you know, what was the environment like parents, like were they entrepreneurs? Were they in sales? Like, I'm always curious, like where that, that itch comes from and where, where you kind of caught that, ah, this is like, I don't know whether it was later on, but where you were conditioned, what you are right now.

So give us a little context on that. So it's a good question. And it just makes me think about your, your kid's book, which I just think is like the work of God, you know, not actually, but like, kind of. So yeah, when I, when I grew up, I grew up in a household where my father was like hall of fame wrestling guy, not like WWF, but like wrestling, you know, he's a referee. He's in like three hall of fame short for a referee, owns a really small, like nuts and bolts distribution factory. So kind of like a man really figured it out, working hard, grew up in New York, like that's kind of his, his personality. And I learned a lot from him showing me like, yeah, this, this stuff's crazy. And that's really scary when you just do it and you will figure it out.

And we're smart enough and just do it. So I got a lot of like tenacity and just sort of figure it out. Don't worry about in yourself from him. But my mother majored in math, took like a steady job for 25 years, you know, did the album. I remember there, she called me one time, there was a point in her life where she could have chosen one route where it was going to be more public speaking. And one route where there'd be no public speaking. And she was like, I'm never going to do that first route. And so we are had two completely opposite eras, which I think is very common. But I think as a result of that, I found myself being very, very personal, outgoing and like upfront, like my father, while also very, very analytical of people and stuff that was happening.

And I just talked to my mentor, Mike Horian. And he was one of the original custom contact guys, actually. Anyways, I was talking to him and he was like, you know what you're really good at? You're really good at figuring out like what's the category of things that's happening right now, you know, top reps typically are top and they don't know what it is about what they did that made them top. I'm good at figuring out what is that thing. So I think that those two things made it very obvious to me, how do you make friends? How do you, you know, just figure out what I should be doing in life? Like how to make decisions? And it helped me figure out what I wanted to do, but pretty much within high school, I was like, I'm going to be in sales.

I'm probably going to own my own business of some kind, doing something, went to college to some business, chose Brian because it was like in some category for being good for entrepreneurship. And then it went into sales and that's based in history up until now. Have you revisited Brian? Their sales program right now is off the charts. Yeah, I couldn't believe it. They hit me up and were like, can you like judge some of that? Yeah. What kind of events are you guys doing? They're like, no, we literally do like. Dude, have you been? No, I have not. You have to. Like, so I'm actually part of like, I'm part of that whole product because I was asked to and I was like, oh, sure. Stephanie something, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Stephanie, right. And Boyer, I think. And I went down just to kind of, I'm sure, why not? Right. And I sat and judged some of these kids and there was like role play scenarios where they would come in. And dude, when I'm telling you, I sat there and I was like, holy shit. When these 20 year old kids are just crushing. Oh, like without even, I would hire them over almost any sales rep that I train, like SDRs or anything like that, because the quality and the preparation and the, because you talk with your parents, right? Similar things. I don't know about your parents though too. I'm curious. Yeah. It's the same, same scenario, but flipped. So my dad was an electrical engineer. Yeah.

He was, he worked on in the, at the FAA, kind of worked on some of the big secret spy planes and shit like that. So he's super analytical. And like, just fuck you mentality. Like, you know, fuck the world. I'm going to fight. I'm going to beat and win, whatever. My mom, on the other hand, was an artist. She got her two master's degrees. She taught art, art therapy. And she just has this innate ability to read people. Right. And so I got my, like my art from my mom and my science from my dad. So same thing. Like I'm not the artist. Right. To your point. Like that rep who's just fucking, like just awesome, but really can't explain. Like my mentor is Jeff Hoffman, right? Jeff Hoffman is a fucking artist.

Like that dude. He's so good. Like if you watch him do what he does, you're just like, there's no way I could do that. Like you're just, he just, I mean, when I say natural born sales rep, I think there's a very, very small portion of our population that are the true natural born sales reps. Not the douchey ones, not the Wolf of Wall Street. Yeah, yeah, totally. But like the genuine knows what questions to ask, that type of thing. And I think my skill is I was, I'm able to take what Jeff does and create a science about it so that everybody else can do it. A structure and a profit to it. Right. So. What are we doing here? Exactly. To become best friends. Yeah, exactly. And so, so with the, with the Bryant stuff, man, these kids are like, they're learning the art and the science of sales at 18 years old, at 19 years old.

And they are going to be light years ahead of where you and I came into sales when it, when it happened. It's so exciting to me because just, especially having gone to Bryant, everybody I know that went to Bryant or any sort of business school, Bentley or wherever else, what do they go into? Finance. Finance is where the money's at. I want to make money. I'll go into finance. What do they all do now? In sales or they're just like, it's a bullshit. Yeah, exactly. They're typing, they're typing, they're analyzing some company and they're making whatever they're making, but it's not as good as they bought it was going to be and there's no way to move up and I say got into sales and so that's exciting.

And by the way, their jobs are probably more in jeopardy than yours and I are when it comes to AI and the evolution and all that shit. So now it's like that degree. That is a funny one too, man. But yeah. Right. Like analysts, are you kidding me? Like, I don't need an analyst right now. It was fucking ChatGPT. Tell me what I need to know. Exactly. But who knows? We can be going away too, man. No, no. What are your thoughts on AI thinking over sales? Shit, man. You want to get stoned and have this conversation? Hell yeah. One of the others, fine. So it's both, right? So I think, you know, tagline I got is you are not going to get replaced yet by AI. We're going to get replaced by sales reps to learn how to use AI, right?

But it's, it kind of stems from my, I went and saw Gary Vaynerchuk back in 2017. He has this 4D session where you can go to his office and sit down and he comes in and does a Q&A with you and like 10 other entrepreneurs. And I had just seen an AI email written based off of one of the emails I used to train on. And it was better and faster than I could have written. And I asked him, I was like, Gary, what the fuck? Like, I just saw a robot write an email better and faster than I ever could. Like, where does that leave us in sales? And he said something that sticks with me to this day. He said, don't worry about the tech. You're not going to beat it. He goes, just, just let it do all the heavy lifting, but be the last mile.

Like, let it do the research. Let it even write the email. But before you hit send, just make sure you humanize it. Because as long as there's a human on the other end of that phone or the end of that email, we have a chance, right? Now, do I think the SDR model is going away? I think, yes, absolutely. Because we, because of what we said earlier, we've over-engineered the sales process and we've turned those SDRs into robots. And so now, now they're running these bullshit cadences with templates that just go out there. AI is doing it better. Do I still like the AI shit? No. But is it vastly better than a templated cadence? Absolutely. And I also look at it as, you know, let's go to our Instagram, right?

Why do I, why do I hate spam? Well, we hate spam because it's irrelevant, right? Well, why do I love Instagram? Well, it's because everything, that algorithms, I've trained that, well, that algorithms train me, you know, I've thumbs up, thumbs down, I've played on things, whatever. For now, every fucking ad, I'm like, yeah, I want that, right? So you're telling me that there's not enough information out there about you and I, about LinkedIn and all these different things that we do that AI can't scrape all that stuff and start sending us emails with super hyper-personalized, super relevant information. And if that happens, do I care whether it's coming from a human or not? No. Now, do I want to talk to a human?

Ideally, yeah. I don't know how long that's going to last. But I, I scared, I tell reps, you want to figure out how much of an issue we have right now? Go into ChatGPT or perplexity and, and, and pretend like you're a customer. So pretend like I'm evaluating official sales tips. Like I'm trying to evaluate John Barrows versus Mike and, and which training I should do, right? So I'm now going to sit down and say, hmm, tell me about the JB sales training. What does it do? What are the strengths and weaknesses? How does it compare to this? When you realize within a 10 minute chat with a tool like perplexity or ChatGPT, that you'll get more value out of that than a sales rep who's going to drone through bank questions and throw, you know, go through their PowerPoint presentation.

You realize how in trouble we are. So that's the difference. I think it's an 80 point. I think that what, where you said there to the last Lyle and like the use of it totally is what it is because, well, what, what do you think is going to happen is it's going to eat up the number of Lyle's right now. Like the first Lyle would say is SDR world. It's going to eat that up. The next world could be, you know, bad qualification stuff and general demo. And then eventually it's going to get to the point where it's like, there's one sales engineer, you know, or not even that person, but there's one sales guy who's like, I'm actually just here to meet, give you the information you need, push you over to John Smith and see you later.

And, uh, which is interesting. But anyways, yeah. You know, uh, what is it? Minority Report. You know, you remember that movie? Remember he had the things and he was just kind of like, that's how I think it's ABM. It's a company's marketing with all this stuff funneling full cycle sales reps again. And I'm going to be sitting in front of a dashboard instead of being like, who should I call today? It's going to be like, no, no, you need John. You need to call Mike. Um, and, and you don't actually don't send him an email, send him up, make a call. Cause he likes phone better than email. Uh, cause here's the three things. And three o'clock. Right. Exactly. And here's his, here's three things that his company just did and what they're going in.

Here's what's happening in the industry. So here are three talking points that you should say when you call him. Uh, here you go. And then I'm going to make that call. It's going to auto transcribe the whole thing, push it into CRM. And I'm going to move on to my next one. And that I think is where we're headed. Unfortunately, I think that's only about 20% of our population. So. Well, there's, there's still more to come. What's interesting to me about the AI stuff. When I think about some of the things that I do, so I do a lot of automated outreach for people, um, in a way that actually feels relevant, feels personalized, because it is relevant and is personalized. And we are using, um, the human element for the last mile of it.

And you know who it works terribly for CMOs of B2B SaaS companies can touch it, but we're straight for people that haven't gotten there yet. You know, we, well, when I sell to, uh, in the blue collars, like if you sell some blue collars, I've got one guy who sells to firefighters, one lady who sells to, um, shell masons. And them using the program that I do couldn't be out there. The best. Where, where it doesn't work is when people that are getting AI emails a hundred times a day. So that would get eaten up eventually. But right now it's kind of like a gold rush, at least to me, is this, this blue collar space that's now turning into more software technology. And that's who's getting wins from all this.

Uh, so how do you do that? So talk me through that though. Like, cause that, that automation, right. Is that, is the big challenge with all this. It's, it's, I don't like to automate a lot. Right. Because I know that's much to my dismay. Right. Cause that's probably why I haven't grown as big as I could probably could have or whatever else. But, you know, how do you make it personalized and relevant at scale with the last mile? Walk me through that. Yeah. So the first thing I do is I just feel what you did 10 years ago. And I saw you at a, at a, at a, um, event. I saw you at an event talking about how you had multiple sheets up and you were bulk tasking what you, all of your research. And then you're going to then use that to, to, to, to write your emails.

And that's what I'm on my mind for all these years. So thank you for that. My, um, you've been on my mind for 10 years, John. Um, so anyways, the, what I do is first thing I do is take our list of people, whatever that list is general list. And then I'm going to split that list into dozens of smaller lists. Obviously I'm going to bring that list out of two regular things like ICP and persona. Well, I want to go another level deeper, which is what, what I call insecurity moments, kind of like when you hit 200 on the scale. So if you don't know in your world, what the insecurity moment is, everybody's got a different thing. Generic one we can always use is, um, years in business. So John, when you first started your business, I'm sure at the end of the year, there was some level of insecurity.

There was some level of, can I do it again next year? Do I have the money to invest? Uh, try doing inbound, I'm going to do out. At the end of the year, just like we all do when we're thinking about our new year's resolutions. That's also when you're thinking through what should I do for my business? That's why everybody buys so much stuff in Q4 and Q1. So I try to separate the list out, let's say CTOs at these kinds of companies. That's one group, but I'm going to split that group into you. And the company has been around for less than one year, less than 10 years, greater than 20 years. Or the, and the person has been there for less than 90 days, less than a year, greater than five, greater than a year.

Because those people, individuals, she-mins, like the way they think will be a little bit different. If you've been in a company for a year and the company's only been around for a year, you've been there from the start, you've seen so many changes. You're going to have a different take on whatever product it is that someone's pitching to you than that same exact person who started 90 days ago. The person who started 90 days ago was like, I just jumped into this place, it's a shit show. We've got to figure out how to fix everything. And the CEO won't give us any money for crap. When the guy who's spending forever is like, this will be burned. I don't want to screw things up. So I take, so step one is segments in the list, significantly.

Step two is adding in the personalization. So what I've done here is, um, with, and generically, so not giving a specific example, but one, just the generic example is I pull their name, their email, everything else, everybody already guessed I have Apollo or Zipo or wherever else. And then I, I do some enriching to it. One, I take their, um, the company name and I turn it into an acronym. So everybody reaches out and says, Hey, JB Consulting, John Barrows. Everyone says that, and you know, that's just the dynamic field. So I, I will turn that into an acronym. Two, I'll do the same thing for their job. Um, and I'll even churn, take churn, even turn those into kind of more unique things. Like maybe it's just like JB homie or something.

Cause I'm trying to be funny. So I'll turn those into unique things. Um, next I'll usually find the first job they had at a school. Um, the next, next I'll find the number of months, number of months they've been at their current job. I, a year ago I was doing restaurant, um, near them and dish it's popular at that restaurant, but I kind of nearing away from that a little bit. Um, and then I'll find things that are maybe a little bit more, um, specific to that company. I've got one client right now. Um, and they sell to a lot of companies that are public. So we also pulled any company that is similar to the company we're reaching out to the name of the company, the CEO of that company, um, and like their most recent round of funding or something like that.

All of that is done. And they're all to, and it's put into an itself spreadsheet. And I plug it into a tool. And now those are all dynamic fields. So I can write an email that says something like, Hey Tom, from your time for subway to now being head guy for the last 36 months, we're all being able to accomplish, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. My value prop will be just unique to that one person's situation. Hey, as somebody who's been there for a year, you're probably stressed out about X or Y. It's kind of specific. And then I can say things like PS, you know, uh, whatever PS, you know, I hope I'm going to reach out to, to John Barrows who just got $22 million in funding two years ago as well.

You know, I'll be beating him to the punch. You don't try to be cheap. So that is the, how we personalize it, um, as scale. I should say the way that I do that is I have a team that will go and do the research for my clients so that they can just get a spreadsheet back. And that spreadsheet is put into a tool. The, the last thing though, which is really important is the scale. Scale got messed up this last couple of years. Um, and a lot of companies didn't figure it out. They hired more BDRs. They just said, let's try to make the emails a little more craftier or whatever. Um, but it doesn't work. So what I do is I use a tool called instantly. Um, and if you're not familiar with it, we do domain stacking where you get multiple domains, go Acme, try Acme, join Acme, whatever.

And then we get two or three emails per domain. Um, and then we put all that into a separate workspace, separate Google workspace. We plug that into instantly. And we basically say, Hey, instantly, here's a hundred lists of people. Here's a hundred people per list. It's all segmented or personal emails with all the fields we care about. Send those thousand people, um, all the emails we want to send from these hundred email accounts. I would send more than 10 emails per day per email account. So as far as Google or anything else is concerned, each of these email accounts is only sending 10 emails a day. Heck, each domain is sending no more than 30 emails a day. But the reality is we're sending however many emails.

I got one client, we send 75,000 emails a month. And so is there a way to do that? You know, are we sacrificing quality? Absolutely. If I could write a one-to-one email and look at their Instagram and do all that stuff ahead of time, it absolutely works better. But what this allows us to do is you do that and then I have a zap that says, if anybody opens or clicks the email, it puts them into a separate list. Now, instead of having a list of 10,000 people, you have a list of 150. And they're the ones you should cold call, do LinkedIn messages to you, send personalized gifts to you. And that's how you can like actually take the value from that SDR, that account executive to say, yeah, I need you to look at their Instagram and look at gifts to send them.

You know, no one's going to do that versus go write a bunch of fucking emails. So that's what I do. What I do. And so far, the results have been good. I mean, even at that scale, seeing typically between 50 and 90% open rates, which I know are intermittent, you never know if that's real or not. And similarly, your apply rates are between 1 and 5%, even at that scale. So it's kind of great. That's what I mean. I mean, look, those numbers even pan out with the personalization. Exactly, exactly. Because, well, I mean, this is so noisy right now. I mean, yeah, if you take a hyper personalized, right, really thoughtful, then that's going to get better. And, you know, not just one email, obviously a cadence, but I mean, you do something similar to me.

I'm actually, have you started playing around with clay by any chance? I haven't missed a run with clays. I had a client that used fly and they were talking shit about it. So I was like, I'm not going to use it for a bit, but maybe I'll jump in. Everything that you just said to look for, I know, all I now, so I do the same thing and I put all the variables. I like, I have a prep doc now of when, so you've probably seen how I prospect in my tier one accounts where I batched all my research, right? So I was working with clay and they're like, John, you do know we could make that a one button thing for you, right? I'm like, excuse me. So they created a table for me with all the shit that I look for.

So I look at the last three posts on LinkedIn. I look at your news and events. I connect with Owler. I look at all the, you know, those types of things. And then, you know, your background and your history and, and even your crystal nose profile because it has an API connector. So now all I have to do is take your LinkedIn profile and put it into the table and it auto enriches absolutely everything. And then it kicks out a Google doc for me with all that stuff on it that I can then use to create my stories. Now we're going to take it to the next level. And then we're going to batch, like you said, batch those things. And then based on certain criteria, they go into cadences based on those criteria, right?

So based on you're a VP of sales in the SaaS industry that uses Salesforce and used to work at Salesforce, right? Those types of things. Right. And you just posted, but you didn't, you know, you haven't posted in 10 years, but now you have. So maybe you're going to hack them now or whatever. Exactly. So I think that's the cool. I'm going to check it out. Yeah. I'll show it to you. Like I'll actually, after we get off here, I'll, I'll do a quick screen share and I'll just show you how it works. It's, it's fucking sweet. That's cool. So, and I think that's where we're coming from, right? Is like, that's the type of shit. Like, I don't need a rep to research. I like, I, yes, it, it benefits the rep, I think from a business acumen standpoint.

And that's what I want to ask you about is all this. So I think what you're doing with like businesses, right? And you're driving leads for businesses, small business owners who are blue collar in a lot of ways. So now I get to sell, but the, I'm kind of concerned with the evolution of a sales reps business acumen, because when they do go through the research, when they do sit down and make the calls and write the emails and do the prep work, they learn about business. Forget about just sales for a second here. They start to see things like, oh man, what does that mean? How does that do? So they can have a business conversation. And I think you and I, we've been in the business, we've been in the game for a while now.

We've started companies, we've got a bunch of other stuff going on. So we, you and I can have a normal conversation with somebody without qualifying them, without bringing them through a process, whatever. But it's because we've been around the block and we have some business acumen to us. How in this world, that business acumen I see is the thing that is lacking the most. Like most reps I get into a conversation with, most reps who are under 30 years old, I get in a conversation with, I get zero value from them as far as any insights about what's going on in the industry, anything that's happening out there that I should be paying attention to. So how do we address that with this, with, with automating a lot of this shit?

John, we, we have all got so many of the same thing. This is awesome. So I want to first take a quick step for any sales rep who's watching the, I just went back and looked at all my top, top, like the one top rep, every company, not the top like 10, just like the best rep. And the difference between them and everybody else was they understood the buyers from the buyer's perspective, unrelated to the product. And I'm sure you've seen it. We've all seen it. Like maybe it has to do with the sectioning off of different things and companies, the sales and aim would function has been more around how do I enable you to sell my product? Here's more product information. Here's more product information.

And so we've gotten away from this. Like, well, why does this matter? Really know why it matters because we're told by somebody that it takes on average 86% of your time to do X and if you did the software, it takes 40% of it. So it's the number one thing that makes people top reps. The biggest, the biggest shambler that we're running here is that we're not training reps on this at all. And I think that the, the research you're talking about, I don't think that's what does it. I don't think that's what gets it. It's the conversations with people about regular, regular business. So whenever a rep says to me, Hey, I want me to get better. What do I do? I'm like, I don't have time to like go through 1,000 videos.

I actually do this. I made a chat GVT of all my content. And so people could ask, anyways, it's kind of cool, but I'm like, here's the deal. What you really should do is go ask five people that are the title, even just the title of the people that you're going to sell to and ask them what annoys them. One of the things their boss constantly wants them to do. What does everybody else want them to do that they know they actually aren't going to do? What are the top trends that they're seeing in the States over the last few years? What pisses them off about their team? What tools are they using? What does a day look like? What sort of meetings do they have every single week? Those are the things that are going to get you to ask follow-up questions.

Well, why do you have that meeting? Why are you in a meeting with CS? Oh, and you can just ask those ancillary questions. That's just going to get you to have the business acumen because you're going to know, I think I understand why you're doing those things because right now, right now, anybody's father or mother told their kids what they do, the kids are like, I don't know what that is. I didn't either. That's what, so that was a learning lesson for me and I was so pissed at myself. And I, you know, I wish I, you know, you always wish you go back and tell yourself to wake the fuck up, right? Because I remember I had a, you know, I used to go to the Pats games, like my buddy right out of college, my buddy had season tickets, his dad had season tickets, right?

And so we would go to the Pats game and we would tailgate every weekend and we'd just get hammered drunk and have a blast. And his dad, big guy, right? Would just sit there reading his, his paper. I'd be like, Hey Joe, what's going on? Mr. LaVangie, how you doing? Right? Whatever it is. Long story short. I mean, this went on for years. He passes away. I read his obituary. I was like, what the fuck? He started three companies. He was part of two venture capital firms. He had all, and I'm like, and you were just like, well, no, no, no. We're drunk. I'm like, that's just Jeremy's dad who gives a shit. But the amount of knowledge I could have gained from that human being was so, just for like 10 minutes being like, Hey, so VCs, talk to me about that.

Like, what's the difference between a VC and a private equity? I don't think that, like, tell me, understand. Right. And I think we lose out on so many opportunities to learn. That's why I wish on boarding. I wish that we didn't teach product knowledge at all for the first month. And the only thing the rep did was go and talk to customers. The only thing they did was go talk to the exact personas that they're actually going to go try to sell to eventually and ask them all those questions that you just said. What's a day in your life? Look, what, how do you use our product? What do you like about it? What do you not like about it? What was your life before using our shit? And what is it like now?

Right. And forget about my marketing lingo. Where, cause it's like, here's an example. Oh, the rep, oh, it'll give you time back. Well, if you've been in business for five minutes, okay, great. I got my time back, that's just going to be filled up with a bunch of other shit. So thank you. Right. So like you telling me I'm going to get 30% of my time back in my head, I'm going, yeah, it's just going to get filled up with a bunch of other shit. So I don't really care. I'm going to pay 30 grand to go get a new meeting that I can now put on my calendar. Yeah. Thanks. Right. So I think that's the part that I don't know if, I mean, yes, I think we get expedited, but I do think there is just a, just a, you know, you got to be in the game for a while enough to be able to experience enough of this stuff to be like, oh, okay.

Right. That's why like triggers, for instance, we talk about triggers. Oh, they open up a new office. They launch a new product. Merger and acquisition. Well, everybody thinks that that's a good time to jump in. Hey, hey, congrats on the merger. Let's talk. Like, what do you, are you out of your mind? Like, what's the last thing that I want to talk to as a new vendor when my company just got acquired or I acquired a new company? Like, you're out of your mind. Right. Exactly. It's like, you should, it is interesting if we could get people to understand, like, when they're coming up on their first year, what are the, if we could only teach, what are the insecurities people have? Not like, where's your acquisition?

That means open to investing. It's like, oh, hold on. It should be like, it's the end of, you know, they just hit $25 million in ARR. Do you know what that means? That's probably when they're running and trying to get purchased. Yep. What does that mean to the CEO? Is he freaking out? Is he deluded? What's he thinking? So that, if you could understand those insecurities, it would be great. Whenever I, something I think that was the, I'm so glad that I did, you know, there's plenty of stuff I beat myself up for. Well, something I'm really glad that I did is every org I've worked at, I've taken a completely different industry, e-com, ads, whatever. And the first thing I do as an, as the VP, I'm like, I need to become smart.

I feel so dumb. All the renters are asking me questions. I don't even know the acronyms they're using. So I immediately, I'm like, I'm going to talk to you, five of my peers, five customers, five lost customers. And I just try to find someone in my network. And I'm like, dude, what's your deal? What do you do? Like, I don't understand. Can you let stream share your, where's your calendar? And within a week, I feel like I know more than most people know in a matter of months, not because I'm smart, just because if there's so much to gain from just asking, not related to your product questions. Absolutely. And that's, I think too many. We're on the same page, man. Yeah. It's, it's, I mean, again, I think it comes with experience and it comes with realizing like, you know, my, my perspective, I think it was a little bit different early years, right?

I was, I was just trying to like do my thing. I do remember always believing in what I sold though. Let me ask you for you, was it always important for you to believe in what you sold? I think to a, to a point, but I think that I was, I convinced myself regardless, you know, like I do actually think when I was back at career builder, they had me sourcing screens. It was like $5,000. Typically we were sold $400 stuff. The source of screen was $5,000 and it was like real source and screen candidates for you. And I, I didn't even bring it up ever because no one, no one internally had sold it. So I'm like, maybe this thing sucks and they're trying to have us push it. So it was only, I only started talking about it when I was, how I was believed in it.

So I guess, yeah, I mean, I think that's true. But I do think that as sales reps too, we find a job, we're like, that is really cool. I remember selling something at a company and I was like, one of the only people had sold this data part of the platform because I was so sold on it. You know, whatever, even my people that were talking next to me, like, dude, that shit doesn't work. I'm like, what? But look, it says it right here. It's freaking awesome. So even if you convince yourself and it's not true, then you can sell it because then you need to mind at least this. Yeah. And I think that's the key. It's like, you learn that, like, you do have to have that conviction that this thing is, is good.

But then like, and you, sometimes you convince yourself, but I do think there is a point where when you grow up, you're like, okay, I can't, I can't, there are certain things that if it doesn't really do it, I can't convince myself and I got to go find a product that I can believe then because then it's a lot easier, right? Totally. What's, um, so with that, uh, let's talk about product expert from your perspective. Uh, I forget what post you did recently, but it was about like, so there's, you know, the sales engineer, right? So there's, there's some people think that the sales rep needs to be the absolute expert in the industry so that they can answer all the questions, whatever others think, no, you just got to be surface level and, and know where to pull in the resources and be the quarterback and pull in the technical people when you need to, where are you on that depth of knowledge of your space?

And I'm going to, I'm going to put a pin on that compared to just industry knowledge. Cause I think that's going to go to the business acumen side of the house, but how much of an expert do you think a sales rep needs to be right now to be successful? I, and maybe you disagree, which I'm okay with. I think the sales rep needs to be, um, completely knowledgeable on everything they're selling, except for the technical component. Like we need to be able to talk through it. I don't need to know that the fact that it's an API key that you plug into the, none of that shit's important. To me, the sales engineer should just be, I don't speak Spanish. This guy speaks Spanish. I need a Spanish teacher on the call of this guy.

But outside of that, we have to understand it because, uh, the main thing that people are looking for when they're trying to buy something, or one of the main things that are really critical to that process as a buyer is trust. And I like to bring up this example for this kind of question. I'll bring up an example of if you went to a party and someone said, what do you do? And he said, I'm in sales. And they were like, oh, like Dodges or like Fords. You're like, oh, this person doesn't know about sales. So you're still going to have a pleasant conversation with them, of course, but you're not going to talk about how like your, your forecast is all jacked up because you got an enterprise deal.

It just kicked out two quarters because of, of, of how the security got involved. If that same person was like, what do you do? And you're like, I'm in sales. And they're like, oh, cool. It's Salesforce or I'm spot. Like what shop do you guys use? And how's up this forecasting? Is there anything worse than you freaking boss on that one-on-one? You're like, okay, you're speaking shorthand. We can now have a completely different deep conversation. I'm completely open to share with you that I've been lying in on my forecast for six months and I'm super nervous about getting fired because you've indicated that you speak shorthand. So if you can't do that, I think there's a challenge. Now, so one, I think it's critical that we know as much as we possibly can.

That said, I want to say that a salesperson's main job is not selling persuasion. A salesperson's main job is not being the back of the box to explain how the product works. A sales rep's main job is project manager. This person is like, I'm interested. I'm starting to buy it myself by going online and Googling and thinking about talking to friends. Can you tell me how it works and let's figure out how we can get this thing over the finish line for me because I'm trying to buy the product. So your job is project manager, which is a lot of being comfortable pushing back on the people, it's being comfortable pushing back internally, it's being comfortable coming up with new ideas of what they should be doing and what those things they should be doing is a lot relating to their business acumen.

But you don't have the authority to project manage if you don't have the product knowledge to speak their language and speak your language of what your product is. But technically speaking, no. What do you think, John? I'm similar. I don't think you need to be the deep product expert, but I think you need to know, right? Like I don't, that's why I think the SDR model is a fundamentally flawed model because if I catch you and you have some value proposition that's like, oh shit, actually, you know what? It's interesting you say that. I've been looking around for something like this. Yeah, tell me a little bit more about it. And then you're like, well, sorry, my account executive, who knows? And then the account executive gets on and is like, well, sorry, we have to set up a meeting with my SE.

Like I'm out. I'm done. Like if you don't, if I can't get value out of this conversation, I'm not going to have another conversation. And I think the tolerance for value, lack of value is over at this point. Because like I said, you know, just go into chat GPT and start asking some questions and realize you get more value out of that than you would a kid asking you questions who doesn't know what the hell's going on with the business, right? Or how do we apply? I do. So I think that's where I think we need to be better. But I also think there's not just the product knowledge, because I think we can supplement that with the SE or whatever. But I think it's also just like the industry knowledge, like what's happening in this industry?

What are the options that I have in front of me? Where's the industry going right now? Teach me something. Like I probably got one of the best compliments I've gotten in a long time from a sales call because the guy said to me, he goes, John, you know, one of the reasons we want to go with you compared to anybody, you know, to the other competitors that we're going through is like every time we get off the phone with you, we learn something like, and it's not because you're pitching us something. It's not because it's your product. We don't worry. It's not about your product. It's like you bring up a new tool. You bring up a new book that I should be reading. You bring up a new technique that I might have haven't thought of.

You send me an email with a link to something that I should be taking a look at. He's like, every time we get on the phone with you, we walk away learning something new. Whereas every other rep runs to it. Yeah, they're good. You know, they get their good pitch. They got their good slide deck and how they can solve our problems. But we don't learn anything. And I think that's my whole mentality. It's funny you said that too, because I feel like for years that we were always taught sales reps, like teaching something, teaching something, teaching something. But we were so ingrained. I think at least I was with this idea that it had to be something as it relates to like our product and their business.

So it had to be like, okay, did you know that in HR right now, 87% of people are like, no, no, no, no. It could be anything. It could be a fucking team or a shortcut. But even sales reps on my team, I'm like, hey, at every call, you must provide advice. I don't care what it is, but there must be some advice. It could be a tip on their fucking website, but they need to leave it going. That was great. I got value out of that 30 minute call. So I totally agree with you on that. That's like somebody told me early in my career that stuck with me. It's like every time he had a conversation with somebody, he wanted to be able to end the conversation with the question, hey, would you have paid for this?

Oh my God, imagine. Not that they had paid a million dollars or he didn't even ask really the question, but the whole concept was, did I bring enough value to this conversation that you would have thought about maybe paying a few bucks for it? Right. Versus me paying you for your time. Right. Because that's right. Especially the SDRs hanging around, $5 bills. Yeah. Like five bucks for coffee. Just, you know, shout out. Like I always tell reps, please do not ever send an executive a $5 Starbucks and ask to pick their, you know, to talk to them for five, for over a cup of coffee, because you just basically said that that CEO's time is $5 an hour. You fucking shit. Like you literally insulted the shit out of me by, by saying, I'll give you a five buck coffee for an hour of your time.

It's like, Hmm, thanks. Totally. Yeah. Again. Well, and by the way, the reason I know that is because I tried it and I got kicked in the teeth by doing it. So it was cool, man. It was cool for like three months and like 10 years ago. It was only cool. Exactly. Um, all right. And then we just keep talking, but let me ask you a guy, there was a couple more, um, that I wanted to get with you on, on this is, uh, and I let's, let's go on this one because I think this might take up the rest of the time is, is the, the PIP factor here. Oh my God. You said something that you do a lot of work with executives and the, like the, so the VP of sales and the CEO and that relationship there. Right. Yeah. And I think that's a whole nother topic that we can dive into as far as that relationship, what it looks like, what to look for as a rep in a company and all that other stuff.

When it comes to performance reviews right now, I look, I had a $6 million business. I was riding high at 20 people and it fell apart. And, and now I'm back on my own and I realized, I think I'm a pretty good leader. I'm an RA coach. I am a shitty, shitty manager. And the reason is, is because I don't like holding people accountable. I'm the guy you want in your forecast review. Cause we're getting strategized and figure shit out. But as soon as you miss your forecast, I'm like, do we have to have this conversation? And, and like pips literally make my skin crawl. Oh God, I'm getting uncomfortable right now. Right. So you said something and I, and I actually agree with this because I think, first of all, like PIP, you know, performance improvement plan for those of you who don't know what that acronym is.

I think they're there for a reason, but I think that they're mismanaged almost every time. And it's almost an inevitable way out the door from an HR standpoint. So could you tell the audience here, like what you're, if you're a rep and you get pipped off, what was your advice of a rep who's, who's in a PIP right now? If you're a rep and you're putting the PIP, you should quit. The reason, and the reason is because by the time that you are handed that document, your boss has talked to their boss for probably two months about your performance slipping, if not longer, or worse, your boss's boss has been yelling at your boss, going, why is that person still here for months and months? Likely also your boss and their boss.

There's some sort of peer group. Everybody has one-on-ones with their peers or group meetings with their peers. And they're all talking, hey, just so you guys know, John sucks. Oh, really? And your team, how's that going? That's happening for months. And so by the time you're handed this, you are already tainted by all of these folks. And 90% of the time, yes, there are exceptions, 90% of the time, this is just a covering your brass legal document that we're going to make so that if you get fired, when you get fired, if you then sue the company for wrongful termination, we can say, we told you what you did wrong. We told you on this date that you did it wrong. We told you how to fix it. And you didn't do these specific things.

It has nothing to do with any of these things that you're mentioning in this lawsuit. That's the reason for it. There are people that use them as performance improvement plans. At my first sales job, I was put on one because my attitude was so poor. I was a really frustrated and pissed. And I was like being a 22-year-old who was frustrated with the best. And they were like, we're going to fire you if you don't change your attitude around. And that was what helped me learn I needed to move, that I needed to change. So, there is a moment when there are situations where it's maturity. This person isn't mature enough to understand the gravity of the situation. But 99% of the time, this is just a cover your butt, lost seed saver.

If you get it, don't quit in the spot. Go find a new job. What do they call it? A paid interview program. Go find a job. And yeah, because there's almost no way of getting back. Even if you do come back from that, yes, the manager is going to look great, by the way, because they're going to go, look, he jokes you back up. But even worse, though, any time you slip, when you're feeling good, you're going to slip and you're gone. You want that sales manager job? It just got extended by two years. And now the guy who's behind you, who kind of sucked for a while, but is new, and he's going to get it over you because you had a bad couple of months or whatever. So, it's unfortunate, but as you're getting it, it doesn't mean that you deserve it.

It doesn't mean that you should have it. It just means that the company has decided rightfully or wrongfully, you got to get back out of there. So, be proactive. And you just kind of highlighted why I do not work in corporate America anymore, my friend, because to me. Totally. He sucks. Like, I'm the Jack Wells, so again, I worked for Jack for a couple months. And he's got that top grading, right? And what his whole thing was, everybody gave him shit for top grading, always cutting the bottom 10%, fuck off, who cares? And he was like super draconian about it. And he's like, what people don't understand about that is it's actually the nice thing to do. He goes, because let me paint a picture for you.

Because I was asking him, I'm like, Jack, like top grading, I kind of agree, but you're pretty harsh with this, man. Like, fuck it, always 10%. Like, you can't tell me that you're always cutting. And he's like, yeah. And he's like, because the situation here is this. He's like, say you have an underperformer, right? And you're just too chicken shit to have the conversation that they suck at their job, right? So, you string them along, you give them okay performance reviews, okay? Because you just don't want to deal with it, okay? But then, so they have this kind of false sense of security that, hey, I'm pretty good at my job. You know, I'm okay. Then, all of a sudden, layoffs come. And everybody knows layoffs start at the bottom and they move up, right?

So, now, all of a sudden, you've got somebody who's been in their job for 3, 4, 5, 10 years even. They get, now they get fired or they get let go. Now, they're sitting there going, wait a minute. I thought I was okay. I thought I was good at my job. Why am I getting fired? So, versus ripping off the Band-Aid and saying, hey, Mike, you don't suck in general, man. You just suck at this. I'm going to let you go find out what you're great at because this isn't it. So, why don't we just rip this Band-Aid off and you're okay and I'm going to cut you, you know, and so you can find versus holding on to you forever and putting you on a pip and drawing, you know, and dragging it out so that you now have this false sense of security.

And now, when you are looking for a job, you're like, what the fuck am I good at? I don't even know what I'm good at. I thought it was. My only pushback to that is the only way you can do that, or I would say the only way that you should be able to do that, that track is 10%, should be, we have an absolute killer management team, incredible support because you should be able to be like, hey, we did everything. Like, this person was so set up for success and it didn't work. That was a you problem versus I think a lot of companies now are like, well, you should probably get better at hiring because these are not going to help you. So, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's a fucking weird world out there, right, man?

I mean, like for me, I'd say I'm unemployable because if I was, if I worked full time in a company, I'd probably get fired in the first 10 minutes. You'd be fired pretty quick for more HR. Like you can't, you can't say that at the office, John, is what you probably get really quickly. Well, yeah, exactly. I actually add, when I do trainings these days, I actually have to ask the leader. I'm like, so how sensitive is your team? Oh my God, do the same thing. I'm like, I'm nervous a lot and I want to say things that are really inappropriate. Right? Like, look, I'm not going to be sexist or any of that, you know, obvious stuff, but if you get offended by a few F-bombs coming out, then I'm not your guy.

Like, just pick somebody else. I'm not your guy. Oh my God. Look, we got to get together one of these days in Boston and grab a drink. John, this is great. Yeah, honestly. Let's, let's, let's wrap it up here. Talk to, talk to us about what you're launching, man, because it sounds like you're launching some cool shit and where can people find out some more? Yeah, it's really interesting. Yeah. So anybody can always find me in official sales tips. I'm talking about anywhere, but I'm so psyched for the last three years. I've been, have people been paying me 20 to $40,000 to set up their lead system for them? A lot of what I alluded to, to earlier takes a lot of work to get that right. And then they've been paying me 20 or $40,000 to set up their sales system, all the scripting, all the CRMs, hiring, how do you manage those people?

And then if they, they had me be a fractional VP to run their companies because they're like, I'm a CEO, I don't know how to run it. I'm a sales manager. So this stuff has been locked up into very expensive and only for people that are rolling to drop that kind of cash. And so I'm going to unlock it by putting, for all of this time, I've been documenting every single step that I take. I gave every single step that I take to multiple people who don't work on computers to say, could you do this? Could you build an outbound system and a sales system for a company and you don't even know how to really use Excel or computer? And they have. And so now I've got this available, all of these, these checklist videos and all the documentation available as a done with you, a program where I'm actually going to be stopping in to check every single document you create, every single step that you do when you do to make sure that you get it right so that people for $400 a month can get the access that people were paying $40,000 for the same tool.

So looking forward to getting more leads and more sales for everybody. I just love it, man. Fantastic. And then, uh, so that, so it's, uh, official sales tips on, uh, what's it called? I'm sorry. Official sales tips on, on TikTok and everywhere. Official sales leader tips also on TikTok. And then, um, check out official sales tips.com. I've got about two dozen different templates for sales reps, free templates for getting new jobs and a variety of templates, courses, and tutorials for, for leaders to be better leaders. My goal is for everyone to make, to be more proud of themselves because they're better at sales because I do know that so much of our personal value. Though I don't want it to be true is tied into that number.

And so I'm dedicated to making sure that I make it as easy and fast as possible to, uh, hit whatever gumper is to make you feel good about yourself. Oh man, we're even aligned on the wise minds to elevate the people in professional sales by sharing my evolving experience with anyone willing to put in the work so they can achieve whatever level of freedom and success they want to have a meaningful life and make a positive impact on the world. So there it is. That's it. Look at us. What are we in? It's basically, this is a green piece over here. Yeah. Awesome, brother. Well, thanks again. Let's do this again, brother. Yeah. Let's, let's connect offline and I'll show you the clay stuff and then we'll grab a beer and see what's going on.

All right. Done. Get out of here, man. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me. Talk soon, brother. All right. Real quick before everybody, hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. And as I always say, go out there and make somebody smile today because no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, you make somebody smile and you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much and I will see you on the other side. Hey everyone. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. With your support and our incredible guests, we're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now and I can't thank you enough.

Now to keep the momentum going, it would mean the world to me if you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network. Also, I am super excited to be launching my new newsletter where I'll be sharing everything I know and everything I'm learning along the way while I'm out there selling every day just like you. Go to jbarrows.com slash newsletter to sign up today. Let's all level up and make this happen together. you