Richard Harris: Reviving Salesmanship and Personal Connection in Sales

Sales super teams aren't built overnight. They require unicorn-level talent, endless training, huge budgets, and lots of luck. Or you can just try Sales Hub from HubSpot. It's an all-in-one platform built with all the tools for your success. Smarter prospecting? Check. Faster revenue? Yep. Scales with you? Sure does. Are you ready for your sales team to reach all-star level selling status? Visit HubSpot.com slash sales to start selling with Sales Hub today. 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 for those of you who have been following me for a while now, you're going to know this name. He's pretty familiar to us. Richard Harris, my good friend. I've had him on the podcast three or four times, and we're just more friends than anything at this point. But he did come up with a book recently, and that's why I wanted to have him back on. And it's called The Seller's Journey, Your Guide to Closing More Deals with Neat, N-E-A-T Selling. And a lot of this is about qualification and a little bit of a different spin that Richard takes to it. But the reason I like Richard because, yes, he talks about tactics and structure, but he's also just fundamentally a good person and tries to introduce that into the world of sales about, you know, you don't always have to be the jerk, right?

You don't have to be the pushy sales rep. Actually, that is anti-sales in a lot of ways these days. And the approach Richard takes is super consultative, but very thoughtful with structure to it. So we dive into a lot of the techniques that he talks about in his book. I highly recommend you take a look at this one. It's actually a short one. I'm on the cover, as a matter of fact. I got a nice little quote on there. So you honored me with putting that quote on there. But enjoy this book, enjoy this conversation, and let's make it happen. Richard Harris, what's going on, brother? How you been? My man, good to see you. Good to see you. Good to see you, too. What's this, the second or the third time, at least, on the podcast?

It could be the third or the fourth. It depends, because we've done enough webinars and in-person and your podcast and my podcast. So it's a lot, so I'm always appreciative of the support you give me. Absolutely. And we go back a ways, too. So I think even on my early days podcast, I think you're probably one of the first or second guests, at least in that first handful there, because I was looking for people to come on. Same here. Yeah, I was like, who do I know? Who do I know who could leverage? Hell, I could leverage on your network. Love it. So, yeah, I appreciate it. Awesome, man. Well, good to see you. Yeah, great to see you, too. I know we've been running around like freaking maniacs here, so I'm glad we're going to use this as a chance to catch up in general.

But one of the things I want to catch up on the most part is this book you wrote. Because, you know me, I've always, people are like, oh, when are you going to write a book? And I've always wanted to. I know I wrote my children's book, and that was kind of a fuck you to the industry for everybody else being so full of shit with their book. But you wrote one for a purpose, and why don't you walk us through? I'm not even going to give you background. If people don't know your background at this point listening to me, then I can figure it out. Richard, for those of you who don't know, a peer of mine in this industry, a healthy respect for him and everything he does. I recommend a lot of people take his training.

Sometimes it's not a fit for me, vice versa. So yes, we are quote unquote competitors, but I don't consider Richard a competitor in any way, shape, or form. I consider him a good friend here. Except I was just on a call earlier before this today, literally, where your name came up, and I was like, hmm, so. Well, I tell him, I go, look, it's really when it comes down to Richard, it's his personal preference. Like, do you like his style? Do you like mine? Exactly. What I say is, like, the best thing I can say is, like, whether you choose me or John, you're not going to be unhappy. Right, exactly. And it's going to decide what resonates with your team the most. Yeah, exactly. I agree with you, but it was funny you said that.

So talk to me about this book. First of all, title and all that stuff, but what? Tell us why you felt that you wanted to write this book, and what was the message you wanted to get out there? Because the timing is interesting for me. Yeah, the most important message is that I wrote a real sales book before John Barrows wrote a real sales book. That was the most important in Seattle. Now, and John, by the way, thank you again for your quotes on the cover, so thank you. You know, there's a ton of sales books out there, right? And we've all, you know, look, we all love and have read Never Split the Difference, and we've all probably done Keenan's Gap selling. And my whole purpose is about this humanity in sales.

And I've been preaching this for a long time before AI came along that, you know, what's missing is, you know, we need to bring the humanity back into sales. And we've so over-processed ourselves that we don't, we've kind of forgotten. And I think it's one of the things, too, that, you know, sales is a conversation, which I know you believe, and people don't teach people how to have the conversation. And so, for me, the book was a couple things. One, there's kind of like two parts. The first part is the sales mentality. What's it take? How do you like it? You know, there's definitely, I think, one of the quotes I got from somebody was, this is the perfect amount of Richard's irreverence that you've always liked, finally, in a written format.

And literally, the first sentence of my book says, here's my email address. If you don't like it, call, email me, and I'll Venmo your fucking money back. Like, you know, like, so the point was to write something a little bit, I think, a little bit different. Authentic to my voice, talk about the humanity of things, getting people in the right mindset. And then, you know, later in the book, it's 13 tactics, like, of how to use things in your sales playbook that aren't there. Things like, you know, using and versus but, and respect contracts, and how to negotiate with procurement. Nobody ever taught us any of that stuff. Like, I've learned a ton in the last two years on that. How to stop discounting so much.

How do you hold the line? Like, so there's a lot of tactics in there, but then there's all this, the mindset stuff. And the goal is to bring that humanity back into sales. My irreverence is there to keep people from falling asleep. But ultimately, there literally are scripts written out of like, here's how you could say it, and here's how I say it, and here's how you do it. And I don't feel like that's out there. Nobody's kind of written, here's how to say it. There's, here's the concept about discounting. And, you know, you try this, and you try that. But nobody like role plays at all. So there's like literally role plays of me negotiating with a person when they say, well, I need a lower price.

Well, here's how you answer that. And then you wait. And then all these things. So it's about combining that mental piece, the humanity piece, and then teaching you how to actually do it. So that, that's, that's why I wrote it. And, you know, selfishly, I don't think I'm going to make a ton of money, but it's a good business. It's, it's the, oh, he wrote a book. So clearly he's worth sulking. Well, you know, like there is, somebody said recently that they wanted to create a course, you know, do you, you get this all the time people, Hey, how do I get into the space and all this other stuff? And I asked him like, well, why do you want to create a course around whatever you're doing? So I'll just, and he, the word legacy came up and I was like, can I be very direct with you?

I'm like, if you want real legacy, don't do a course, don't do an online course that somebody is going to consume and throw and, and, you know, move on to the next one and never save and never come back to. If you really genuinely want a legacy and then write a fucking book because that, that'll stay, that'll stay there. It'll be on a bookshelf, you know, whether people read it again or not is a different story, but that will be your calling card. And it is in our space. It is one of those things where if you do have the book, you do get top billing, you do. And this kind of builds into the brands, right? I mean, you and I talk, well, yeah. And you and I talk a lot about, you know, personal brand building and all that stuff.

And, you know, I actually think now brand is more important than ever in this world of AI because nobody knows who to trust. And authenticity actually matters now more than ever. So stuff like a book and stuff like building your own personal brand and supporting that, I think is more critical than ever right now, moving into this weird world that we're moving into. Yeah. It's, it's interesting. There, there are two things I'll comment on. So last week I wrote a post about, um, you know, if you don't have proof of life on LinkedIn, you're screwed in sales. Yeah. True. Like, so it's all about proof of life. Right. And it was interesting to see a lot of people got it. A lot of people didn't. Um, and it was okay.

The, the other thing that I've, this is going back to that legacy thing of like, you know, I've written before that, you know, it's not going to go on your tombstone that you made president's club three X times. So like, understand what your legacy is versus your brand. Right. You know, the book is a little bit of both, right? It's, it's, there's definitely a big piece of brand for me. Sure. There's some legacy stuff there, but you know, you know, I think, you know, I've thought about the stuff of like, gosh, if I, if I passed away, what would I want people to remember me by? It's like, I think they'd want, I want people to know that I'm pretty honest and pretty sincere. I'm not perfect. Yeah.

I dropped the F bomb a little bit too much and cares, you know, but that's the irreverence of me. Like that, that's what I want them to remember. That's my legacy. And, and maybe, maybe a lot of people or some people remember that I helped a lot of people. Yeah. That's probably, I'm probably like you where it's like, I've made more people, more money than I've even made myself. Oh, by far, by far, you know, I've, I mean, you know it as well as I do this, like you'd be doing a training and you know, like senior reps in there making. You know, five, six million dollars a year. And you're sitting there like, I could fucking sell circles around this kid. And this kid's making five X what I'm making right now, or five, three X what I'm making right now.

It's like, it's a humbling experience to be able to check that at the door and realize some of the people out there, regardless of their skill level, are going to be making more money than you. They're going to have, but then I think that comes back to your definition of success, right? Like what is, what is happiness? And I think you and I both drive the same amount of joy from what we do that is worth more than money. Hey, I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JV sales membership. It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, filling the funnel and driving to close. It also includes monthly workshops that I'll be running on specific skills and different tech like ChatGPT and how to leverage it in the sales process.

And it gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. You get all of this for $420 a year as an individual or $5,000 for teams. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to www.jbarrows.com and click on the individual or team membership and use code podcast, you'll get 20% off. Let's make this happen together. Yeah. And there's plenty of people in our space that we've coached and helped along the way and they're probably doing it better than we are, you know, in some ways. And it's like, really? Like, all right, well, you know, that's really on me because they're capitalizing in ways I just don't want to put my time. So, to the legacy piece, it's, what do you want it to be?

And it's, you know, that's the human part. Like, your legacy isn't that you wrote a book. Your legacy is that you wrote something that resonated with some people and hopefully that helped them have a better life. And that's a legacy, not the book. No, I think, you know, on my tomb, it's however it's phrased. It's, you know, the stat in a lot of sports, the over, under, or like plus minus, like when they're on the field, is it a plus or a minus, right? Because there's some all-stars, but if you actually look at their time on the court, there's actually a negative impact on the game when they're on the floor, even though they might have scored 30, 40 points a game. Like, I want my plus minus to be a plus.

That's it. I want to give more than I've got, that I've taken, and I want to make a difference in some people's lives and whether that's through a book or through that conversations or whatever, I think that's where, you know, ultimately I want to end up, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, what else can I share? Well, let's talk about the mentality first. I want to kind of get your thoughts on why we're still where we are right now in sales in the sense that it still drives me nuts that, and you probably get it just as much as I do, where people are like, yeah, you know what, John, I need some help because my reps are still product pitching. And I think we need to move to solution selling. And I'm like, you do realize that Xerox came out with solution selling back in the late 70s, early 80s, right?

Like, you're about 40, 50 years behind the times right now. But yet, you still have sales reps who, for whatever reason, think that it's great to send out emails about how great they are, to start demos without even qualifying, to show up and throw up, to send over a proposal. Like, why are we still in this space of like, what the fuck? How is it not obvious that you need to have a, to your point, conversation with somebody as opposed to a pitch? Why are we still here? So we're still here for a couple of reasons, particularly, you know, look, you and I, not always, but mostly live in a world of startups and SaaS and, you know, tech companies where it's a copycat lead, right? Like, why have, why have, why have none of the sports teams who suck ever hired us to teach their salespeople how to pitch season tickets?

Because they all use the same guy they've all been using for the last 30 years, right? None of us in sales got promoted because we were great at managing, leading, training, or coaching. Nowhere. We were all great at closing and maybe we helped with the interview and maybe we did a little bit of onboarding and we raised our hand and said, I want to be a manager. But nowhere were any of us taught how to manage humans and nowhere were our bosses taught how to manage humans, right? Unless you went to a Xerox or an IBM or a big company or Salesforce today or something like management coaching doesn't really come in, you know, until you probably get to what? Two or 300 employees, maybe. Maybe, maybe, yeah, maybe the really good ones, the really good executives, the founders will start to get that coaching earlier when they're like at 50 or a hundred employees when they, but a lot of times they don't realize how much they suck at it for a while.

So part of it is it's not ingrained that way. You know, it's kind of like, why is it that, you know, there's not more women in sales or people of color? Well, one could be, you know, in college, you know, there were marketing degrees. There were no sales degrees. Even now there's still very few overall. Well, so naturally there was no attraction to it. More people went into marketing, right? And then that's just sort of where it ended up. And then men were in sales to begin with. And so they recruited men. I mean, it's like this cycle is this long cycle. And you could say the same thing about people of color or other, or other, you know, minority groups, which, you know, we're working on, but it's still not where it should be.

So I think it's, it's a creature of habit piece. I also think too, there's this mentality that, um, this isn't my quote and I put it in the book, but, um, you know, salespeople are the biggest instigators of change yet. We're the hardest people to change ourselves. Ooh, that's a good one. Like we will not change ourselves because we think we are smarter than everybody else. Really? Like, I don't know, maybe it's me because I know I'm not smarter than everybody else, but usually sales reps, you know what I mean? You know, I call them grumpy Gus. There's grumpy Gus who sits in the back of the room. He's never been to 12 sales trainings and they're never going to get anything out of it. And you know, like we're the biggest instigators to change.

But if someone comes in and suggests something, you know, and I think some of that comes down to how you and I do this in the human way of like, we're here to give you ideas. If you pick it up and run with it, that's, that's on, you know, you know, I can't do anything else. Right. So, um, but I know so many salespeople who are not hungry for knowledge generationally. I see it more and more like Gen X for sure. We're like, I've been through enough sales training. This is beneath me. Um, I'm starting to see, I hear millennials and Gen Zs definitely are more hungry to knowledge, but that's because I think they've had access to knowledge. Right. Like, so I wrote a book, right? Like I wrote a book, the seller's journey, the sellers journey.co shameless plug, but you know, the, the younger generations, you know, they go get all this stuff digitally.

They natively grew up that way. We didn't. So I think those are, there's multiple layers to why is this? Those are the layers that I see. I don't, I don't know. What do you see? Well, I think it's, I mean, there's a lot, right, but it's just so frustrating to me because it's so obvious that it doesn't work. Like, it's so obvious that the email, the templated emails with the, you know, the, the jargon words and I'm don't get responses. It's so obvious that asking dumb ass bad questions and then droning through a presentation doesn't close. Like, I mean, I, I think it's probably because we've been able to get away with it for the past 10 years because of volume, right? At least in the SaaS and the tech industry, it's like, all right, let's just go, go, go, go, go.

And you're going to trip over some opportunities no matter how good or bad you are, as long as your product actually is a decent fit. And I think that's probably where sales reps have gotten this false sense of security is if they do sell for a company where their product is a good fit, right? For a specific need, it's almost like you don't need a sales rep to even bring a client through this because they see the value of it and they're just tolerating us in the sales process. I mean, you've seen the stat, you've heard me talk about it before of the Gartner, right? 43% of people want a rep free experience. 43% of B2B buyers do not want a rep fucking involved in the sales process. And it's because of how dog shit the sales process is.

And I just, so I, I, I, I mean, I could come up with a million. We're not educated. We don't, you know, whatever. But to me, it, it, it goes back to the data. It's like, if you're doing something and looking at the numbers and none of it's working, don't you just automatically have to say, uh, this isn't working. I have to try something new. Or do you think we're just mostly stuck in, I'm just going to keep doing this because this is what I know how to do. And I'm not comfortable getting out of my, my comfort zone. Yeah. You know, it's, it's interesting because, um, so many answers to this, you know, I still have questions. I still get people calling to say, Richard, can you come and do prospecting training on email and LinkedIn and all this stuff?

And I'm like, yeah, but have you set up your, your email? I don't know. Well, you should probably go do that. And Richard, I want to take your business. You should probably go get that done first. Right. Um, actually a conversation I just had a little bit ago and, um, people think they know what they don't know, but they don't. Right. Like, you know, Sears used to say the customer's always right. And I'm like, oh, the customer's always fucking stupid. Otherwise they wouldn't be a customer. Right. And that upsets people. Oh, it's like, well, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're just kind of like, whatever. Like it's the same thing of like, well, your customer has so much more knowledge about, you know, than, than ever before.

I'm like, well, so to fucking you, if that's your excuse factory that, oh, they got more knowledge, they can find the competitors. Like, well, so can you, what are you doing? So that to me is why it's theirs that we've created these excuses all these years and we've let technology unintentionally hurt us. We've leaned on it. We've crutched on it too much. Right. Like we love you and I both know we love the tech. We couldn't build a sales team without the tech. We couldn't do prospecting without it, but we let it overtake a little bit too much, you know? Well, we over-engineered, we got lazy. And I think that's, that's my biggest thing with all this technology, right? Is it, and it's my fear with AI too, is, is everybody's looking for it, for the answer versus for the co-pilot.

Right. And, and not a, that's not a plug for Microsoft, but, um, you know, augmentation versus automation. So many of us are looking and you get this question all the time, uh, cause I do is, you know, effectively the question is in some way, shape or form, what's the silver bullet? You know what I mean? Like what's that email that I can send? What's that thing I can say? And I don't know whether it's a societal thing because we've just gotten to the short-term gratification piece. And everybody's looking for like the immediate thing to drive a result, whatever, but it is so obvious to me when people are looking for that versus actually willing to put in the work. Yeah. I, you know, it's interesting because I, you know, I, I think, and particularly look, it's 2024, we're recording this as early as January and 2023 and, you know, it was a hangover from 2022, but it's, it's, but that's coming because of, again, in the world we swim in, unrealistic expectations around revenue growth, right?

You know, I talk about a lot, um, if you haven't read Robert Greene's book, um, not the laws of business, I read the other one, um, but it talks about how we rationalize irrational thoughts, right? We rationalize like, oh, if I have this many reps and this many, this, and this is the number and this is the number, and I think they can close these, then that's the goal, right? And it's like, well, did you look at the pipeline to see where you currently are? Do you, what's your, what's it take to build your pipeline? How much is more like it's, it's way more than that. And, you know, it's like, I, I was certainly still working in the real world where they're like, okay, Richard, here's the goal.

Are you going to sign up for it? And I would be like, yeah, it seems reasonable, but reasonable doesn't seem right. Isn't right. Isn't rational. And even, I probably even was a chicken shit than the fact that there probably wasn't, but I didn't want to say no. That's it. So, so I, so it happens. We got here because of the technology we got here because of aggressive goal setting. We got here because of all these things, all of, with the best of intentions yet here we all are, you know, instigators of change, but we don't want to change ourselves. You know, what's crazy is so I've just, I just did three sales kickoffs over the past month and a half, about a month or so far. And I, you know, I go through know your sales equation, right?

So it's like you pick your, you get your quota and you back into it. You figure out just basics, like how many activities you need to do. Right. And I'm talking senior reps and I'm talking three to 400 people in a room. And I, I bring that up about knowing your equation and it's beginning of the year sales kickoff. If I just listened to the CEO come up and talk about how growth goals and all this other stuff and how we're going to go get it and everything. And I said, all right, who in this room has broken down their numbers to, to figure out how exactly how they're going to get to their quota this year? Who, who in the room's done that? Dude, none. And when I say none, I mean, fucking not one hand went up.

I'm like, wait a minute. You all don't know how many deals you need to even have based on your average contract value. You don't know what your close ratio is after your POCs. Like what? So here's my question. Is that the reps fault or is that their leadership's fault? I think it's, I think it's leadership's fault to start with, but I think it's a rep's fault after they realize what the fuck, like, because I always say like, you can't be emotional. If you want to learn how to push back on your executive team or anybody, learn how to speak Excel, we in sales speak word. We talk a lot and we're very emotional about certain things. CFOs are, there's zero emotion. There is literally a spreadsheet.

There's a number on it and you go. There's zero emotion. Right. That's the quote of the day. Some are better than others, but you know what I'm talking about, right? So, so, so I, and I'll tell you right now, I didn't, I didn't learn how to become a manager until I learned how to speak Excel because my old boss, my old CFO, Calvin, when we were did our startup, right? Like he would literally come to me and be like, all right, John, you gotta, we gotta grow 50% this year. I'd be like, poof. Okay, look, let me go do it. Right. And I'd be a giggy, giggy, giggy. And I'd got work hard, you know, more hours. Go, go, go. And there was a certain point we grew to as a company where he's like, okay, we gotta grow 50.

I go, uh, 50% again over, over last year. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Calvin, I can't do that. I can't work harder, man. Like there's only some blood from a stone and be like, and he didn't care about my emotions. So I spent a year tracking every single, like every channel where leads came from, every conversion ratio for every product we had, every, you know, sales cycle length based on certain industries and everything like that. And I came up with, I mean, this spreadsheet was the most massive, ridiculous spreadsheet you can. I was going to say, what was your CRM? Lotus notes? Nope. It was, it was Excel. And so, and, and, and then it showed. And so the next year when he came to me and said, John, we got to grow 50% this year, I'd be like, okay, Calvin.

So let me plug that number in here based on these conversion. Okay. So I'm going to need two more sales reps, two more inside sales reps. I need another thousand bucks a month for marketing. So we can spend that on ad spend to increase that. And we need to have another partner channel over here. And he'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We can't afford to, we can't afford to hire all those people to, and I'd be like, okay, well then I can't afford to hit your numbers. So look at it. Like, this isn't my opinion. These, this is data. And, and it was finally after I put that in his face that he was like, holy shit. Okay. And we actually started to have a real conversation. So I, I think to answer your question, I think it is management's fault for at some point in a sales reps career, not educating them on what they need to do to hit the numbers and think about that.

I mean, we do it with clients, ROI analysis, that type of stuff. But then I think at a certain point when a sales rep is so frustrated that they just keep being asked to do things that they are emotionally not, don't feel like it's the right thing. Shame on you. If you don't know how to turn those feelings into objective criteria. Yeah. So you should do a webinar on that, by the way, I think people would sign up for that. So I actually have a whole thing about how to manage up and the emotions of it. So, you know, I should talk offline, but you know, as I was listening to you, it kind of dawned on me that it's, you tell me if I'm, if I'm on the right track of like, it's management's responsibility to teach the reps accountability.

Right. So the reps need to learn how to be accountable, but it's manager's job to responsibility to teach that piece. And then the manager is still accountable to the, to that too. So, so anyway, I was just trying to sort of, how do we buzzword this? Let's buzzword this, John. But I think it's, it's true. Like it's, first of all, this is why I'm not a manager, right? I suck at being a manager because I suck at holding people accountable, including myself. Right. I'm definitely one of those go like, fuck it, let's go do it. But I, but I at least have, I've broken down my numbers to have the confidence in myself to be able to know what I need to do. And then I just go do it, but holding me accountable for like monthly shit and all that other stuff.

I, I, that's not me. So that's why I suck as a manager. I think I'm a decent leader. I'm an okay coach. I am a fucking horrendous manager. So you have to have people who, and this is why your best sales rep is never your best manager, because your best sales rep is usually your artist who goes out and goes. I actually want the B minus sales rep who can explain to me what their process is and why they missed their number and what exactly they're going to do next quarter to be able to do it so they can replicate that process on somebody else. That's the manager I want. Yeah, I, I agree with you. And I think the piece to look for there is what you were saying too, is does that B minus person, can they learn the emotional versus the non-emotional, right?

Because generally speaking, a B minus person doesn't want to be a B minus person, right? Hopefully not. They want to get up and they want to learn and, and can they learn to separate that piece? Right. So, um, that's, I, I completely agree. So let's dive into some of the takeaways of the book itself, right? So we got the mindset of just being in the right mindset to realize what I think it takes. And, and actually let me stay on that for one more point. I got a question that popped into my head as far as, do you think the mindset now with, with the environment that we're in right now from AI and sales and, and the, what I think is a fundamental shift last year, I personally think we're in a legacy model, legacy mindset, and we have to reset on everything.

So is the mentality right now, does it have to be different to be successful in sales? than it did say 10 years ago? Yeah, I think, I think so. I think, I think the glass is still, you know, 10 years ago, the glass was half empty. It's still half empty. It's just a different amount of half. Do you know what I mean? Like 10 years ago, it was the technology. Like, I remember when, you know, all our friends at the sales loss and outreaches, all those, those were considered nice to have. I remember, like, you, you know, I was like, oh my God, that's really cool. Then all of a sudden it became must have. It was like, you know, I wouldn't go to anywhere that doesn't have a bunch of, a sales stack, right?

So to come back to the AI piece, I, yes, we're working in a legacy model to some extent. The answer to that question though, is when is your buyer going to be comfortable buying from an AI model? Because you can go and invest in all this. Like, so, so right now, B to C, right? Business to consumer, we're comfortable, right? You know, I'm old enough. I don't know if you're old enough because I'm a little older, but I'm old enough to remember when, you know, in the late nineties, everybody was like, oh my God, people are going to spend a billion dollars a year on Christmas presents online. People wouldn't put a credit card number in the computer. I don't trust it, right? So I feel like we're there right now.

Science of Scaling, hosted by Mark Roberge, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week, host Mark Roberge, founding CRO at HubSpot, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, and co-founder of Stage 2 Capital, sits down with the most successful sales leaders in tech to learn the secrets, strategies, and tactics to scaling your company's growth. His most recent episode, How Do Diligence, Marketing, and Sales Leadership, with one of my good friends, Sidney Sloan, is a fantastic listen. It talks about how we do a ton of due diligence on founders for CEOs, but not as much due diligence on the CMOs or VPs of sales. So they dive into all the challenges around those roles, especially those first hires, and you're going to want to listen to this if you're in the startup space.

So listen to Science of Scaling wherever you get your podcasts. And we all buy, like, you can buy a $100,000 car without having a Tesla. I bought my Tesla. I literally bought my Tesla online. No shit. I called up because I was like a little confused or whatever it is, was the first time I bought it. I called up to their sales department and I was like, hey, I got some questions about this. And I hear click, click, click, click. And I go, hold on a second. I go, are you on the same website that I am right now? Like, are you on the Tesla.com building a car? He's like, yeah. I go, can I ask, like, what value do you bring to this equation? And he was like, and he was dead nuts on us. He was like, quite frankly, not much.

He's like, you know, I'm just here to make sure you feel good about this. But everything you're seeing I'm doing, I'm like, holy shit. Right. So, yeah, I dropped a hundred G's on a car without needing to talk to a person. Exactly. And so we're there, right? We're at that stage. So then the question is, well, what, what kind of things will we buy with an AI model? Right. Like I could go plug into, you know, Apple. Here's how much I need. I want this kind of memory. I want kind of this. I want kind of that. I don't buy it. Right. Now, when it turns into a conversation, am I going to trust it? Right. All the chatbots are already grooming us for this, right? It's the chatbots that are grooming us away.

So I don't think we're at a place where we're, you know, I've been saying that I think in two to three years, the sales rep, you know, will be out of the equation. I don't think we're there. I don't think the consumer is ready to buy that yet. You know, right now I've done so much shopping, you know, Safeway is our grocery store here, right? I've done so much shopping that I would expect Safeway at some point to say, hey, Richard and Kathy, you know, you haven't bought anything from us in three weeks. Do you need milk? Do you need this? Do you need that? Do you need this? We'll have it delivered by tomorrow. That hasn't happened yet. Right. So, and that to me is sort of the first equation. I think Amazon's getting there, like the recommendations.

Yeah. Or, or even, I mean, Benny, I've talked about this a long time ago, probably six or seven, you know, five or six years ago where, you know, you go to a hotel and you and I travel all over the place. It's like, I go to Courtyard Marriott enough. I go to Marriott's enough that I should walk in and there should be a little thing on my phone that alerts them. And they should say right to my face, hi, Mr. Barrows. Thanks so much for coming in today. Notice you've never actually visited our property before. Cause they still ask me, have you ever visited my property? I'm like, how the fuck don't you know that I have been here or not? Like that should be a blatantly obvious thing. You should know what kind of wine that I like when I go up to my room.

You should know what kind of food that I order and how I like my bed without me going on and clicking off. I want extra pillows and shit like that. And you should be able to literally look me dead in the face and say, thank you so much for coming back in today. But that still has, that still hasn't happened. So yeah. Now they're still saying thanks for being a, you know, a gold platinum member or whatever, but that's about it. So, um, so I don't think we're there yet. I don't think we're as close as we would, we think we are, but you know, if you're in sales, if you're not the most paranoid person in the room, then you're not really in sales. Like that's how we operate. You know, I just think that this is different though.

I think the AI stuff is different, right? Because again, when do you think we're done? When do you think I don't think we're ever done? I don't think we're ever done. I think a large portion of our population is going to be done here within five years. And when I say that, I mean, the SDRs and the BDRs are going to roll up under marketing and operations. They might not, um, be out, but they're going to be salaried positions and they're going to be pushing buttons and doing true intent data and feeding back to full cycle sales reps who can use the AI as Iron Man, Iron Woman to be like, have all the insight. My vision for sales in the next two to three years is you and I are going to be sitting in front of a dashboard.

And instead of me thinking about, okay, who should I talk to today? It's going to say, no, no, no, no, John, you need to talk to Richard. Um, because Richard just did these things online and his company just did this and here's some cool stuff that happened. And by the way, they just released earnings and here's the components of your solution that align with that. Oh, that, that exists. Um, you, in fact, it's the, I don't know if you, it's up to you, it's your podcast, but the company you told me about the other day that does that. Oh yeah, the 10k analyzer one or the, um, which one? Oh, the Calendly or the calendar one. Yeah. Um, and the thing that's missing in my opinion is the Salesforce information.

Here's the summary of the conversation you've had. Here's what you need to be asking. Here's their personality. So therefore you need, so, you know, it's all this stuff exists in silos. They just need to be put together. And I think that's the key piece. Um, you know, but it'll still come back, you know, and now that, you know, the summary can be recorded and input into Salesforce or your CRM or HubSpot or whatever, you know, it's, um, let me ask you on that one. Cause I, this is, I'm actually curious your perspective on this. I've actually changed my opinion on this one. I thought the summary emails, fuck it. You know me, like that's my favorite nugget, right? The summary email after a conversation, I send it to you.

So I got all excited with attention.tech and with Gong and with all this stuff. And I was like, oh, this is insane. And it, and it did it, it put it into those formats, but what it missed, and this is what I don't think sales reps understand is I take notes during the meeting because for me, it helps me think it helps me remember things. It helps me slow down. If I just that dude, it's you and me, we had a good time in college and high school. It helps us remember. Yes, exactly. With all the damage that I've done to my brain cells over the years, me writing shit down. And look, I might not, I'm also not situationally fluent enough to pick up on every red flag or every yellow flag, but I might jot it down, right?

So what happens is after I come back off that meeting, say we, this is a sales call, I then take my notes and I kind of look at them and I summarize them and I put them into that format. And that practice alone, that one of me reading my notes, re-summarizing, is like, ooh, it helps me reflect on the meeting. It helps me think, oh man, I'd missed something or I forgot. So actually, I think it's a massively healthy thing for me personally to do. When I off, when I offloaded it to be like, oh, I'm now in the moment and look at me, I can just have a free flowing conversation with Richard and I don't have to take notes and I don't even have to do the summary email afterwards because it's automatic.

I lost all context. I lost all real insights into that conversation because I automated it. And so I was, I'm wondering from your perspective, like that is a perfect example of me where I think old school is better. But I, but is that because that's the way I learn? I'm going to, I'm going to get you, I'm going to get you a shirt that said hashtag get off my lawn old, you know. So, so I ran this problem a while ago too, with all the original stuff like Fireflies, I think was the original, uh, one of these. And, um, and I talked to everybody and I would show them my format. Like I've seen your format of a post meeting email. I have my format and they couldn't build it the way I wanted it. Um, so that's one reason I don't use it.

The other thing is, um, you know, by me typing it in, it helps me remember like the physical act of typing. It makes me remember it as, and it does, it does engage my presence. Like I'm far more present cause I'm really paying attention. Then the other key piece that I think, I think matters is I specifically repeat certain key words that they have said to me. My team is challenged with, uh, cool calling gatekeepers and how to get through blah, blah, blah. And I will make sure that's in the email from an active listening perspective. Right. I think at some point, you know, to probably there'll be some tool that can compare the notes they've taken, compare the notes that I've taken and start to over time, make it sound like me and do that.

I do agree with you that I feel like I'd feel disconnected, um, from the, from remembering, which is really critical. I also think the fact that I am typing this and I'm sending it, um, is that humanity piece? Is that, is that an, is that an us thing because we're old men and we like, this is the way we like to learn. I'm trying to, cause what I'm trying to figure out is where's the line of the old school and the new school where I think the old school is still necessary, but the new school is great. Right. So, so yeah. Yeah. Um, my answer to that question isn't for us to decide. The answer is to ask our customers. If I sent this to you and I sent this to you, which would you, would you care?

Would it even matter? Because, you know, this email that you and I train people to send, it's very selfishly more about me than it is my prospect or customer. I know it's beneficial for John to get this. I've write it in such a way I have seen here as you write it in such a way that they can literally hand it off and go, oh, here, Mr. and Mrs. CRO, here's what we discussed. So they don't have to like go into storyteller mode. Right. So, but selfishly it's more for me than it is for them because I will forget stuff. Um, now, you know, it depends on what my customer thinks, you know, and it depends on what the generation, like, I think, you know, look, you know, you know, our kids, you know, Charlotte and Riley and Bodie are, they're all going to, they have a different approach to all this and it'll be very different in 10 years when they get into the job.

Yeah. Right. It'll be fascinating to see what this will all. So I, I, I, I still don't, I guess the answer to that question is this, we've been able to take notes faster for decades, right? Like I learned to type on an actual typewriter, right? And then we had a computer and then you could, I couldn't, you know, I came along right before you could bring a laptop to class. Laptops didn't exist in college, right? Well, now you can do that faster, but we're still taking notes. So I think that's the answer to the question until I, our problem is, do I trust the machine? Yeah. And I don't, here we are. This is a perfect example. We're the biggest instigators of change yet. We won't change because there's a machine that could write a pretty good summary for us.

Yeah. That's how I, all right, let's finish up with what are some of the like highlights from the book? So let's, let's give some tactical, cause you said that there's 13 tactics, uh, things. So one of them, I'm, I'm pulling it up here. I don't know if you're going to do a video. There's a cover of that. Good looking cover. Good color too. The seller's journey. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Particularly that part of the top that says, uh, a perfect combination of sales fundamentals, actual techniques, and agile approaches to help any sales professional level up. There's see John Barrows, JV. Good quote right there. Um, that's the best part of the cover. So I'm trying to pull, so there's a couple of things in there.

Well, how do you, how do you bring up the competition? Right? Like, you know, what do you say when they bring up the competition? So there's, there's a topic in there of, of me saying, well, you know, when you think about the competition in that feature, is that how important is that feature to making this decision? I'd very tactical because so often we hear this feature. Well, can you do this? Like so-and-so is like, oh no, I can't, but here's a workaround and I can do this and we can do that. And it's like, why are you wasting your breath on that? Maybe they're just asking. Right? Maybe they're just curious. The other one, I'm actually trying to pull this one up. Um, you know me, I'm always about delivering price and asking people, how does that feel right after deliver the price?

The other one, I'm trying to find the number, uh, is due to, oh, and versus, but, you know, how you use and versus, but, and I specifically wrote the book using and not, but a bunch of times. And then when I got to this little snippet, it looks like I use the word, but 88 times in the book. And I use the word and 1,087 times. So, but there's a reason for why, right? You know, all those things. And then there's a negotiating with procurement. Like, did you know that procurement actually would love to talk to you by about the third sales meeting? If you're at a big company, not the end, which is when everybody thinks they want to be there. Procurement doesn't want that because now all of a sudden they've got all this pressure.

So there's just, and then how do you talk to procurement? How do you talk to them in a way that's not combative? They really don't hate salespeople. They really don't. So anyway, so there's a whole thing on that. So those are the kind of tactical things of like, how do I maintain control and not overly discount, right? And then it's all situationally role-played. So you can put yourself in that picture and hear both sides of the conversation. Nice. Let me ask you on that one feel, because I've adjusted the feel. And I remember you said that a while ago, like you give them prices and says, how does it make you feel? What is, what kind of responses do you get? Like when it's way out of whack, right?

When somebody is like, dude, that's, uh, it makes me feel like shit because it's wicked expensive. Like what's the response on there? So that I just did this earlier today. I'm like, I feel like I just got stabbed in the heart. Uh, so the first thing is that the number you give has to be some odd number, $15,378 or $79, right? It's gotta be, because that's a distraction because then we're like, where the fuck did you come up with that number? So there, there's too busy thinking about that so that when I say, well, John, how does that feel? They don't know how to resist that answer. So part of this is psychological because as soon as I say, oh, it's $10,000. Well, I already know I can negotiate it with $10,000, right?

The Tesla you bought was not $110,000. It was $111,000, 328, blah, blah, blah, and 42 cents or whatever the math number is, right? So when they say, well, that's too expensive. And it's like, okay, well, what were you expecting? Okay. And it doesn't matter what they were expecting. My answer is always, well, I, you know, I appreciate that. You know, here's the thing. Our pricing is based on what the market dictates. And from what we can tell, you know, the market dictates that this is a fair and reasonable price. What else have you seen in the marketplace? So now all of a sudden I'm seeing if they have come, what competitors are trying to figure out their budget. Like I'm having a conversation that I can't have.

If I say cost is $10,000 and they go, well, that's not in our budget. I was like, okay, you know, I, I know, you know how to navigate that, but a lot of people don't, you know? So that to me is where it is because of pricing is always, every time we see a price, we have an emotional reaction instantaneously every time. So that's why I teach it and do it that way. Um, and then you can sort of, you know, my phrase after that, you know, this is in the book too, um, is, you know, well, there are four ways you can earn a discount or I'll say, Hey, okay. You still need a discount. Okay. Look, there's a couple of ways we can both leverage commercial terms to our benefit. So I've completely changed the conversation from pricing to commercial terms, which means it's a negotiation.

We both get to leverage it, meaning it's not a one way street. And then I dropped things, you know, here are the four ways, you know, you get 2% for, um, a prepaid discount. You get another 2% if you sign a multi-year and you get another 3% if you give me a, you know, if your CEO gives me a quote, which by the way, I'll promote and you get publicity. There you go. I actually, now all of a sudden, so that's how I do it. I know I went through that really fast. No, no, I love it. I know we've been in here a while. I like the way Todd Capone positions it as this is what I'm willing to pay for. So instead of giving you a discount, like I'm willing to pay, like what's important to me, right? Long-term relationships, I'm willing to pay for that, right?

A bigger contract, I'm willing to pay for that, those types of things. So, and also I, I change, I try to take the word discount out of the vocabulary 100% because I understand discounting is part of the game, but to change that word to, to creativity or flexibility. It's like, yeah, we can get creative with the pricing and I have, I do have some flexibility and then I'll put some parameters to say, it usually comes in the form of larger size deals or longer term contracts. So when you're ready to have that conversation, I'm happy to have it with you, right? Have you ever done the, well, this is what the market dictates or some version of that before you go to the pricing? No, I've, I've gotten pretty, I mean, again, we're talking two sales guys who sell crack to crack heads.

So we can do a lot thing that are a lot, like that most people can't do. Let's see how smart we are against each other. I mean, my answer to is, you know, how much you like, you know, how much is this? And I give it to them, they're like, well, where'd you come up with that price? My answer is none of your fucking business. Like literally it's none of your business. Why could, do you know how you came up with your pricing? Can you explain to me how your SAS product is $1,200 a license? I don't, I don't have a John Barrows, you know, reputation yet. I'm getting there. That's why I wrote a book, right? So I need, I need to get my reputation up there where I can say, what the fuck are you talking about?

Well, I do, I do something similar though with you. It's like, I'll get, I'll give, get, right? So if somebody asks me the price, I'll be like, all right, well, let's talk a little bit about like, well, how many reps do you got? What are you looking for remote or on site? So give me some parameters. And then I usually go with the range of, all right, you're probably in the range of 30 to 40,000 and I've adapted your approach slightly, but it's a, it's a slightly different approach. I'll say, you know, is that in line with what you'd expect to pay for something like this? Cause I do want to know, cause if I give you the parameters of like 20 to 30 grand and I, and I say just very simply, is that in line, you know, who's something you'd expect to pay for something like this based on what you've seen?

And if their answer is no, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, that is way more than this conversation's over. I'm not even going to like if 20 to 30 grand, which I know is probably the, the, you know, low end, high end type of thing for you. And you're like, whoa, that is way outside. I'll be like, you know what? Appreciate the conversation. Let's save each other a bunch of time here. I'm not the cheapest, nor do I ever want to be. Um, so if that's really way outside your budget, we can stop talking now. Right. Yeah. Here's Richard's contact information. Go contact him. He'll take that. Well, if you, if you want like the individual things, right. That's why I like, you, you got a lot of, you have different things that you can sell them compared to me.

Right. I have two programs. And so a lot of times people are looking for just a sliver of it. And I'm like, no, I'm sorry. And that's where you get the stuff. Not that I, not that it's too expensive. It's just, I, I don't cut up my content the way you cut it up and you consult way more than I do. I train. So, but I think that's, but again, the iteration of like not being afraid of price, I actually bring it up early because I don't, I don't like to build value and then drop a price on you and have you be like, you know, your fucking mind is the way I'm spending 80 grand on this. So I don't, I don't do that. You know, like, uh, you know, I don't, I mean, granted, you know, my initial conversations, 30 minutes with someone.

And again, we're, we're selling to people who are in sales, so they get it. So they get to a price by the end of the conversation. Right. Um, you know, because I, I, I, at that point, I don't want to, you know, dick around with them if they aren't interested, but I don't, I don't bring it up super soon. Like I, I kind of make them want to know. And, you know, I, I do sort of prove the value through economic impact and stuff like that. I do too. It's just, I don't, I obviously don't bring it up, but I like right up front, but I will tell you that if I can start to get a sense early that they're not in the range, you know what I mean? Because the, oh yeah, I think I like four or five reps. It's like, I can already tell like, we're sorry, probably isn't going to play.

Yeah. I got, I got you. I mean, it's one of those, like, I think about adding value, but on that initial discovery, even on that 30 minute call, we will be discussing price period. Um, whereas, whereas other people hold on, I got to get my AE involved and then they can tell you, I think that's a fool's errand. You have to, on your first discovery call, at least get a general understanding of where we fall in the price range. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. Totally agree. All right, man. Well, if you and I could catch up for, for hours here, but let's, let's wrap it up. Tell people where they can find out more information about you, about the book, about everything else. And, uh, yeah, so, uh, you know, you know, me, John, it's four one five five nine six nine one four nine four one five five nine six nine one four nine.

That's my legit cell phone number. Uh, you can find the book at the sellers journey.co. You can find it on Amazon on the very first sentence of the book literally is, uh, what does it say? How did I write it? Uh, yeah. My email address is Richard at our Harris four one five.com. If you don't like it, I'll send you your money back. Love it. Love it. That's. Oh yeah. And link, I guess you can find me a link. Yeah. That's the easy one for Richard and I. So, uh, awesome. Richard, as always great cutting up with your brother friend. Yeah. You too, man. I really appreciate you. I appreciate it. And I appreciate you more than, you know, likewise, my friend, likewise, I enjoy our conversations every time and I enjoy our friendship and I'm glad, uh, glad way back.

When, what was the first company again? It was, um. Mashery. Mashery. That's it. That's it. And I always said that you were the manager cause I kept following up with you and I'm like, what the fuck? There's no more business to be had here is cause you were one of the managers that actually took the shit and implemented it and didn't need. I was like, Oh my God, finally somebody who actually took the shit and ran with it. So I asked for your, I asked for your booklet and you wouldn't give it to me. So I was a little bit more of a dick back then. So, all right, well, awesome everybody. Well, I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. And as I always say at the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today.

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

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