Todd Caponi on Transparency Leadership

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 make a positive impact on the world around us. And today, third time's a charm, my good friend, Todd Capone. Todd Capone, first of all, he wrote a book called The Transparency Sale, which is my favorite negotiation book because it's all about being transparent. And he also runs a podcast called The Sales History Podcast. And I find it absolutely fascinating. I've never been a history buff, but what Todd looks at is the trends in history and how they can relate today. And he'll be amazed at some of the things he talks about in this podcast and how back in the 1920s, we were facing almost the exact same scenario with where we are with the great resignation and the perception of sales reps and how sales used to be an actual really honored profession and taught in not just colleges, but high schools.

Did you know that one? So anyways, we talk about his new book, which is Transparency Leader, but we start with the history and some of those things that we can learn from. And then we talk about today and where we are and what we need to do about it and specifically what leaders need to do about it. And he actually, at the end, if you go all the way to the end, he gives you a five responsibilities as a leader that can help you really hone in on what you need to be focusing on. So hope you enjoy this. Take some notes. Be ready for that book, Transparency Sales Leader, that should be coming out soon. And let's make it happen. What's happening, make it happen, family? Big shout out to our partners today, Gong, Proposify, Vidyard, and Chili Piper.

Gong's data is more than valuable. It's cornerstone in any organization looking to collect the data that's going to tell them where they can improve and where they need to spend their time making changes. Proposify is one of my favorite teams of all time. What they do is they make the proposal and contract processes easy for the sender and the recipient. And who can't benefit from that being a great experience, right? Vidyard makes it easy for people to use videos anywhere. No matter whether you're sending videos in email or on social media, posting them somewhere or sending them in a DM, Vidyard has got you covered. Our friends at Chili Piper are so much fun to be around. They make it easy for people to get on your calendar.

And every sales rep has got to have this function locked in. It's one of the most important things we can do as a seller. How can I get you on my calendar easily? Chili Piper can make that happen for you. Be sure that you're checking out all these great tools. And now let's pass it over to John to find out who's joining him today. See you soon, everybody. Hey, everybody. All right. So I am here with my good friend, Todd Capone. What's going on, brother? How you been? What is this, my third time back? I think so, man. Third time's a charm, man. I'm excited because every time I learn something new here. And for those of you who don't know, Todd, he's got the transparency sale, which is one of the best negotiation books I've come across.

He's working on another one that we're going to talk about today, right? It's called the transparency manager. The transparent sales leader. Yeah. Sales leader. And this is where I want to start here because we're going to start kind of, what can we learn from the past? Where are we now? And where are we going? And one of the reasons I wanted to bring up the past here is because, Todd, you're the host of the Sales Historian podcast, right? Yep, exactly. Yeah. And you're a history buff. So it's interesting here. I've always said that history for me is, it was my least favorite subject in school because I'm always going forward. And much to my, I know we can learn a lot from history, but I've never kind of lamented over the past and tried to learn so that I could execute.

I just execute and make a shitload of mistakes and go from there. But you're, you really learn from that past, not only from a history standpoint, but from a science and a neuroscience standpoint. So I want to start with this. What are some of the things that have stuck out to you about the history of sales that we should be learning and paying attention to these days? Because I think a lot of us, I mean, because you look at some of it and go, well, that was back 30 years ago, 40, you know, before there was technology. And so how is it even relevant today? And I've always said that, look, tactics and techniques, that's going to change regardless. Means of communication are going to change regardless, right?

I mean, they're changing weekly at this point. But what doesn't change is human behavior. Why people buy, how people buy, relationship development. Those poor psychological things about us as humans don't really change all that much. So through your history exploration, if you will, what are some of the kind of things that you look at and say, we got to be paying attention to this shit right now because it'll help us make better decisions moving forward? Well, exactly. Like, first of all, I was never a big sales history buff either. Like I was the one that the history teacher was walking around smacking on the head to keep awake in class. But, you know, when you really think about it as a profession, and I think just as a group of people, we tend to step on the same rake over and over again, right?

Like we relive history over and over. Like, why couldn't we see that? And so I think one other point there is when I read LinkedIn and read some of the posts, I think, you know what, like this book here, if for anybody watching, this one's like 1918. I can literally take paragraphs of this and drop them in the LinkedIn. People would know, they would look at it and go, wow, that's brilliant. And not know that it's 104 years old, right? So like the stuff that these writers, the theories, the things that they were building back then are exactly the same. So if anybody says like this way, correct me if anybody says there's something new in sales, I'm like, shut up. It's not new. It's just repackaged from somewhere in the past.

Like any new sales training, any new sales methodology, literally anybody who comes to you and says, I got something new in sales. I'm calling bullshit across the board because I could go back and look in one book 20 years ago, 30 years ago, where that same essence of whatever that tip is or whatever that approach is, is there. You're just putting a prettier package around it for the most part, right? Exactly. Like I just found a quote, it was like 1912 that says, buyers know more nowadays. They've got so much more access to information than they ever did. And like salespeople are freaking out. I'm like, that was 1912? Are you crazy? So like that's number one, I just find fascinating. I think back to your question.

One of the things that really stands out to me, it really came to light in a event that took place in 1916. So 106 years ago, and it was called the World Sales Congress. It was the first sales convention of its kind. Like it was attended by 3000 people, took place in Detroit, Michigan. A couple of things that stand out. Number one, the keynote speaker. Now, 1916, our country was heading into potentially World War I. Yet the keynote speaker was then President Woodrow Wilson. Whoa. Right? Like imagine a sales conference, you go to one of these things and the president is the keynote. Wow. This guy was keynoting this thing and there was a reason why. Number one was that salespeople at the time were trusted.

They were respected. It was actually admired as a profession. And the number two piece of that was Woodrow Wilson's message to the audience was, listen, we are at a core, like flipping point in our country's history where the rest of the world is out fighting a war. And we've got an opportunity to take advantage of this and build ourselves into a world superpower. And that happens by salespeople selling the right products to the right companies at the right price, the right time. And when that happens, those companies flourish. When that happens, they hire, the economy grows, and you as a salesperson and everybody in this room grows by doing right by customers. And I just, I look back at that and go, if that was the mindset of the majority, it's no wonder that sales was respected and admired.

It's no wonder that it was taught not only at the college level back then, pervasively, but I mean, you being a New England guy, it was taught in eight Boston high schools back in the 1910s. Yeah. It's amazing to me. Like they were teaching sales in high school. And part of it was because people growing up wanted to be in sales. Like I think about your kid's book, right? Like it's back then it was trusted, admired, or respected. And we, we can go into this rant here as we kind of go through today, but technology kind of stirred some things up for us. I mean, you just highlighted that that to me is the essence of sales. It's, it's, I always say it when sales is done right, it's the greatest profession in the world.

When done wrong, it's the worst. And when done right, it's believing in what you sell, knowing that it provides a service, going and finding those people that need that service and helping them out. I tell people all the time, I don't sell you shit. I help you achieve your goals or solve your problems. That's it. And if I don't, if your problems aren't big enough and your goals aren't big enough, why are we having this conversation? Man, I had no idea that would, that, that, that was, I had no idea that a sales was a respected profession. Cause I always thought it was the shit on cause of the charlatans and the snake oil sales, you know, history and all that other stuff. Um, and B, I had no idea that they taught it in schools.

That's even in high school. Oh my, can you imagine what, what it would be like if we got taught sales, like actual business skills in high school and how much that would reduce student debt that would reduce the, I mean, I w that's why I want to teach sales at such a young level, because I firmly believe, first of all, I think college is, is a, it's a great social education. I think it's a bullshit actual education. Um, and why not give a kid like, and so you're going to tell me, you're going to go $200,000 in debt to get a $40,000 a year job that you're going to spend for the rest of your life. Why not have a kid come out of high school with some knowledge about sales, get into sales, make some money, learn business, and then decide to go to college and maybe be able to pay for it or fuck it.

Just go into business because I figured that out and skip that whole thing altogether. I mean, to me, that's why this is so critical to, to change the perception back to what it was. Right. Yeah. I mean, here's what I think happened. Um, well, first of all, to your point about like college educated salespeople and back then, uh, it was viewed as being really rigorous and really irrelevant, right? It's almost kind of like, you know, you'd see in some cases today, as I've been talking to university professors around the country is this whole education and college is becoming much more like, I think there's 300 plus universities that are now at least teaching it and a hundred plus that offer it as a major or minor.

Um, they're actually building labs and they've got reps cold calling and putting together and like, that's cool. Like that actually. Uh, but back then I think that a lot of it was irrelevant. Yeah. Yeah. Now here, here's what I think happened. And, uh, when I think about today and I recently saw the latest sales stack chart, right? Which is like, I don't know if you've seen that slide. That's like your sales stack. Oh, it's the marketing stack. Yeah. Oh God. Yeah. Yeah. Right. It's like the sales stack where the logos are so teeny. You can't see anything. Yeah. You know, that's, that's cool. But here's the thing. When I say that the sales profession continues to step on the rake, the same rake over and over again, think about like the biggest evolution in the world of sales.

As it comes to technology, that was the telephone. Right, where we were given this incredible tool where we could, instead of having to get out in the rain and the snow and like go see everybody to make a sale, like back then sales was human to human face to face. Now I didn't even have to leave my house. I could start calling and salespeople ruined it, right? Like they, they ruined the, the telephone to the point where we needed technologies created to prevent salespeople from selling like caller ID, uh, which was created by Dr. Shirley Jackson originally in the early 1970s. That didn't work. The government had to step in and create the do not call registry, which is last time I looked, there's 221 million phone numbers on this damn thing, right?

Like 221 million people that are like, stop calling me salespeople, right? That's crazy. And then we get the next amazing gift, which is email, right? Like I can send you a note, shows up in your inbox instantly. Like how cool is that? And salespeople, again, what'd we do? Ruined it, right? But the spams and the, like, you know, all that crap to the point where technologies again had to be created to prevent salespeople from selling, which were the, you know, the spam catchers and the IP blacklist and all that. That wasn't enough. Government had to get involved again. Can spam act of 2005 to prevent salespeople from selling, right? We keep doing this over and over again. And my kind of summary on that is we've got to stop thinking about technology as our goal of the five-letter word is scale, a five-letter dirty word, scale, right?

Like scale at all costs, quality, you know, quantity over quality. The minute we do that, we use these technologies for that is the minute that we start sullying the profession and when you've got this massive sales stack, every investment that you're making and every time that you think about, I'm going to spend some money on sales tech, is it to do better by the buyer or is it to do better by yourself and scale yourself? And if the answer is the latter, don't do it. That's not going to get us to our goal. No, I actually did a post. I don't know if you saw it recently. I called the give a shit factor, right? Where I basically, you know, I was just like, guys, just like stuff, like give a shit, right?

And I tell the story of Morgan and how he was doing really well when he came on board, but then leveled off. And I said, look, the only time, you know, it's going to change is when you start giving a shit, when you start thinking about the person on the other end of that phone as instead of a phone number as a person, instead of an email address as a person, instead of a cadence that you have to put together as a person and have empathy for their day-to-day, what they go through, how many shit things hit their inbox, like those type of things, like that's when things change. And I call on the VC community to cut the shit because there are some VCs, because I think this is where we're coming from.

It's a, it's a, it's a top-down pressure, right? I mean, I think something a while back, and I obviously don't want to get into politics, but there was way back, you know, I think it was Hillary Clinton. I saw an interview with her where she said that they interviewed 50 of the top CEOs in the world. And they asked them, if you can make a decision today that you knew in five years was going to benefit the company, going to benefit the environment, going to benefit your employees and all that other stuff. But today it was going to make it so that you lost one penny, literally one penny off of your stock price. Would you make that decision? And 50 out of 50 of them said, no. And the reason was, was because if they did, they would get fired today and they wouldn't see their five-year vision come to fruition.

And so the VCs have this top-down pressure of go, go, go, grow at all costs, dump money into a problem. And therefore the leadership and management and reps all fall in line with that. And I just begged people, just at least give these kids a chance, at least carve out 20% of their time to dedicate to actually giving a shit. Or why not give them no tools for the first three to six months of their job? None. An Excel, you know, maybe CRM so they can track their activities and whatever it is, but they got a Google doc, they got a web browser and they have a phone and email and they have to be personalized and understand how to do research and those type of, and then give them the tools to help make that efficient, but not give them the tools first and then teach them afterwards.

Cause then they just become spam engines and marketing. You know, that's like, it struck something that you said there that we can talk about being buyer focused all day long, but what we measure is what matters. And I'll give you a, here's another sales history nerdery, you know, I remember the movie Glenn, Gary, Glenn Ross, uh, where there, there's the white, the chalkboard that's got AIDA on it, right? Fundamental attention, interest, desire, action. Train it all the time. That, that, that AIDA was actually, uh, the first evidence I found was like, uh, 1896 of that. Right. If you go through early 1900 sales books where I've got tons of them, that was the sales process. Yeah. It was, does the customer, do we have their attention?

Do we have their interest? Do they have desire? Are they taking action? Now what's interesting about that? They got something right. Like Glenn, Gary, Glenn Ross makes it ugly, but they were buyer focused, right? The sales process was about recognizing buyer behavior. What happened in the 1950s and 1960s? Well, we came up with Bant. Um, and then we started creating CRM solutions that had sales steps that are all seller focused, right? Discovery, qualification, proposal, contract, right? We, uh, we could say all day long that we care about recognizing buyer behavior and having empathy with them and driving them through the process. But if all of our CRMs, all of our measurements, all of our pipeline is based on seller behavior.

No, I, I firmly and passionately believe that maybe AIDA is not the right way, but it's something that I used in the first book that, you know, I've seen a hundred times before, which is the buyer goes through three stages, right? Why change? Like, you know, why is my, like a recognition of my status quo is no longer sustainable or needs to be changed. Yeah. Why you, right? Like, why should I go with you versus somebody else? So then once I come to that conclusion, why now do I do it now or do I wait? Does the pricing match like, and if we start to manage pipelines that way and start to refocus the stage names in our CRMs, we'll actually drive buyer centric behaviors from our sellers versus telling them, Hey, we need to be buyer focused, but have you done discovery yet?

Have you, I think there's a huge mismatch there. Well, no question. I mean, it's funny that dawned on me. Jeff Hoffman, my mentor, right? He came up with the, the, the Basho email or the why you, why you now email approach, right? Which was back 20 years, you know, 15, 20 years ago. And again, this is no, this is basically a veto, but crunched down into an email. You know what I mean? Selling a veto. So there's nothing, but again, just an iteration, but it was about being super personalized. And it was funny because I taught this for years and I just thought why you, why you now is kind of a catchy little thing. And it was kind of hard to say, and it was a weird acronym. So I just, yeah, the why you, why, you know, email, whatever.

But then I watched him on a podcast one time or on a webinar, I think. And he, Hey, actually broke it down. And I felt kind of like an idiot. Cause after 10 years, it dawned on me of why it was named that way. And he said, look, if, if you can genuinely answer those two questions, then you should expect a pretty decent response. Like, why am I reaching out to you, Todd, as opposed to anybody else in your organization? Why am I reaching out to you and why am I reaching out to you now, as opposed to last week or next month or whatever it is. And if those two are genuine, that you're the person I want to talk to. And this is why, because you were going through some sort of transition, something's happening to your business that I know that I can help with.

If you can really do that, man, the response rates should be through the roof. Right. And it's a, and it goes back to that give a shit factor. It's like, we go through these, I mean, look, I teach buyer personas and, and I just beg and I do it because I, you know, business acumen, I think is probably the biggest skill that we could teach reps outside of any technique or anything like that. If we could go back and just teach them business, right. Have them conversations with CEOs and CFOs and bring them on webinar, you know, bring them on a VP of sales, bringing on two or three VPs of sales that their reps sell to, and just doing a straight Q and a, what's your job? What's your day-to-day look like?

What are you held responsible for? Let me read your job description. Maybe, you know what I mean? And those types of things. Well, now I have understanding of, holy shit, this is what a VP of sales goes through on a day-to-day basis. What are the problems I solve for that VP of sales? Now let me go look for them. And it's just, I just am so frustrated about the fact that, that we're not allowing that right now. The technology is pretending to allow that. And I think when used correctly, the right technology does, because it surfaces all that information about you that I don't have to go research on and all that other stuff. But it's like, you know, Gary Vee said to me once, because I was freaking out about artificial intelligence a while back.

And I said, Gary, where does this leave us? I'm seeing artificial intelligence write emails better than we can. And he goes like this, he goes, don't worry about technology. He goes, be the last mile. So let technology do all the heavy lifting, all the research, even write some of the stuff for you if you really want to. But before it goes out the door, before it hits that human, look at it and humanize it a little bit. Make sure that it's relevant. Make sure that it's, you know, to the right person and all that other stuff. And that's where I think we're headed right now is like the Ironman or Ironwoman, right? Where if they can be, and this is why I'm scared about sales reps coming into the industry right now, because you and I, we grew up in this industry where we were knocking on doors.

We were going to networking events. We were developing core relationship development skills, right? And so us in this virtual world is actually, I don't know about you, but I fucking love it because I got that part of it. Now I just need to adjust it a little bit to be able to quickly relate to you and those type of things and ask the right questions. These kids are coming in out of school right now with no networking, no business engagement, relationship development, any of that stuff. And they're being given these tools as like machine guns with, you know, you're giving this kid like this massive shotgun with a ton of ammo who's 12 years old and is going to blow their shoulder out and just spray it all over the place.

And it's just, do you see us, how do we self-correct here? And I know we're going to get into the, you know, current in the future here, but do you see there being, based on your history and knowing like what has happened over the years and corrections and that type of stuff, do you see technology replacing the majority of sales reps today? Like they, like the manufacturing line did back in the day with the, you know, with the, with the widget stampers, or do you see us evolving as a sales culture into something different than, than where we are right now? Cause I do believe we're in a transition phase right now, but you know, better than I do. Yeah, man, there's so much to unpack there. Um, you know, I don't believe that, you know, if you look across history, right, there's a hundred plus years ago, they talked about technology was going to replace us.

Like they've been, that has been a phrase and a worry every 20 years since the beginning of technology and the industrial revolution. Right. And the only profession that has been fully eliminated is, um, I think it's the bowling pin setter. Um, it might also be the, the, the elevator operator. Although I think there's a couple of those left, like every other profession still exists. So like, that's number one thing to worry about. Um, number two thing can I, and it doesn't have to do with history or technology, but it has to do with what you just said about business acumen. You know, um, every organization has an incredible resource sitting in their organization that can be an incredible source for this, right?

If you're selling to salespeople, um, you know, like one of the things I would do with my team is, you know, if you're selling to salespeople, I'll walk in with my inbox as a CRO and go here, here's my inbox. This is what it looks like. And here's the three things that stand out like a beacon in the night. Here's the things I'm reading. Here's the things I'm worried about. Here's my comp plan and what I care about. We did that at exact target. We were selling to marketers. I would bring our CMO into sales meetings once a month and be like, Hey, bring your inbox. Tell me what's standing out. What events are you going to? What are you reading? What do you care about? What are you measuring? What are you worried about?

And all of a sudden our team got to that clinical level of empathy with marketers where they could go have intelligent. And it's right there in York. I bet you for whatever you're selling, if there's anybody close to that in your organization, bring them into your sales meetings. If there's not, go find a couple of consultants that you can go spend. Yeah. Customers. Exactly. Customers. Pay them if you want. I don't care. Bring them into meetings and go ask them those same questions. You've got these incredible resources there. Why are we not using them? It used to drive me nuts. I got reps would come into my office and say, John, I'm having a really hard time getting through, you know, or selling to CFOs, right?

I like, I just, I just don't know how to sell to CFOs. And I'd say, hold on a second. I'd open up my door and I'd yell down the hallway. Hey, Calvin. And he'd be like, yeah, John. I go, Calvin, are you a CFO? He'd be like, yeah. I go, Calvin, do you have reps selling to you pretty much constantly and always prospecting into you? And do you respond to some of them and not respond to others? He's like, yeah. I go, could you do me a favor and hang out with one of my reps here and tell him what gets through to a CFO? Hey, yeah, sure, John. John, I'm having a hard time getting through gatekeepers. Hey, Shelly, are you a gatekeeper? Could you sit down? I mean, it's just like, it's right fucking there.

I mean, I have this model that I'm actually probably going to, this is going to prompt me to do it because I've been sitting there on this. I'm going to tell this on LinkedIn in a very quick way, which is the easiest way to align sales, marketing, business acumen, and help reps out and figure out your messaging. This is it. And then tell me if this is what you think of this. Once a month, two hours, block it off on the calendar. Okay. Go get three customers who fit the profile that you want to go after, right? So see, like say it's CROs. Go find three CROs from your existing client base who wants to see you be successful as an organization, because if you're not successful, you can't support them.

Have them get on a webinar with your reps. And well, actually, I'm sorry, before you do that, have the reps research CROs and say it's CROs and SAS. CROs, SAS, priorities, challenges, 2022, right? So do some collaboration. What do these people care about? Read some job descriptions, right? And come up with some questions to CROs. Then have those three CROs sit on a webinar or like a Q&A, ask them what gets through. What about this? Are these really your priorities or what should they look like? Cool. Then third hour, so three hours, break up into teams, right? Five reps per team, three to five reps per team. And each one of them create a cadence specific to that persona that is aligned with those priorities and challenges and everything else, maybe sharing some content.

So now say you got five teams, all going after the same persona with a slightly different cadence. This one adds video. This one does, you know, phone. This one does voicemail, whatever it is. Then everybody rips 20 accounts that fit that profile. Touch one goes out. That's a hundred touches to that cadence. Touch two goes out. That's another email. Touch three is a call blitz. And now it's part. And at the end, you look at the data and you say, okay, everybody, we learned some shit because now the reps are going to be curious when they get on the phone with somebody. They're not going to ask their dumb ass band questions. They're going to ask contextual questions based on what they learned and they're going to be genuinely curious, which is going to show.

So their discovery is going to be better. And at the end, we're going to be able to understand what messaging works and what doesn't work. You do that once a month, pick one persona once a month and run that through with your squad. There is, you can't tell me you won't be able to be successful and learn some shit and figure out some stuff very, very fast. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll add one thing. I just wrote an article about this a few weeks ago and it was the tennis ball analogy. And so what this means is like back in junior high or whatever, I remember in class, they broke us into groups, teacher puts tennis balls on the table and it was like, come up with as many uses for this tennis ball as you can.

Right. And we came up with maybe like 40 that had nothing to do with playing tennis. Right. It's like, you know, hang them in your garage, put them on the bottom of a walker, you know, like what coin per, like there's a million of them. Yeah. Now, the reason I bring that up is one of the things that we used to do with our current customers that would renew. So they would renew is we would ask them two questions afterwards. Question number one is, Hey, you've got a million uses of your time, your money, your dollars. There's other options out there. I think I know the answer to this cause I'm biased, but why did you renew with us? Then just listen, right? Like, and start to hear the value that they get beyond like, Oh, I, you know, I just it's easy.

And then question number two is, Hey, when you think about the solution and the way that it was positioned up front, like, you know, tennis balls are sold for playing tennis. They're sold in sporting goods stores. What's one or two things that you've gotten to value from using us or working with us that you weren't expecting at the beginning. And the answer might be nothing, but the answer might be, gosh, I didn't expect to get this value. I didn't expect to get this benefit. Keep asking every renewal. You'll get a list of these things. You'll start to see, you know, a trend. And now, you know, as I always say, from a transparency perspective, you are not all things to all people. However, you probably are more things than you even know.

I agree with that. And I think that that balance can be found through that exercise that you're talking about, but make it a part of your practice of, you know, working with renewed clients to just learn, Hey, what's the thing that you weren't expecting that you got from us? And I think you'd be amazed at what you hear. What's up, everybody? I know you're enjoying this conversation. John does a great job with genuine curiosity on these episodes, and our guests consistently bring the heat. We want to take a moment here and let you know that you've got an opportunity, an opportunity to become better than you were yesterday. And you can do so by gaining access to all of JB Sales' content, all of their training tips, techniques, tactics, and takeaways can be yours for $1 a day.

$365 for the year gets you annual access to everything, including our private Slack channel for members only, which you get access to all of us directly 100% of the time, 24 hours a day. And then at the same time, you're going to get access to our bi-weekly Ask Me Anything sessions where you can bring real deals to the table and get the help that you need. where you need it. This is very, very important. Sales reps that invest in themselves are often found at the tops of their leaderboards. Join us today and get the help you need to become the seller that you deserve to be. That URL, one more time, is joinjbsales.com. Let's get back to the show with JB and our guest for this week. And that's going back to being buyer-centric, not seller-centric, right?

Like understanding what matters to them. I say all the time, I did a blog post a long time ago called Sell to the 20%. Most people do not give a shit. If you think of any product or service that you own, I guarantee you, you only use 10% to 20% of the functionality of whatever that product or service is. Think CRM, think anything, right? So because of that, that's how I believe people buy. They don't give a shit about the whole thing. They care about this part that aligns with priorities, challenges, goals, whatever the hell that is. And we got to dig to find that. And so with that, you know, transitioning, because I think this, you know, we kind of touched on the leadership component of this and, and, you know, people beat up on reps all the time.

Oh, you're sending spammy emails. You do shitty discovery. You know, your demos suck and all this other stuff. And you treat us like, you know, a number. Well, where does that come from? It comes from leadership, right? It comes from what we're asking. You said it earlier, what we measure gets done. And so with what's happening right now, right? We hear about the great resignation and I'm going to call bullshit on that a little bit, but in our space, it's real. In our space, it's real. Like we said, like I said earlier about the single mom with four kids is not part of this great resignation. So I wish, you know, everybody would stop talking about it as a macro thing. It's really in very specific industries, specifically in SAS, right?

You're making 150 bills as a 22-year-old kid sitting behind a desk with no more, you know, connection to your office because your boys aren't there with your, you know, your girls aren't there with you having fun and drinking and stuff like that. So now if you're going to pay me $170,000 and you're going to pay me $150,000, well, I'm going to go to $170,000 because there's no more loyalty here. So I think we need to relax a little bit, but also from a leadership standpoint, how do we need to change as leaders? And I'm going to say, how do we need to, but also how can we in this environment? Because that's a different thing, right? I know we all know there's a problem here. We all know there's an issue, but in the current construct of where we are with the pressure to grow, grow, grow at all costs and all this other stuff and VC funding and, you know, IPO and all this other stuff.

How can we fundamentally evolve here to, to meet the challenge of where we are today? Yeah. I mean, there's, there's a couple of things. I mean, first of all, when I talk about stepping on the same rig, you know, 101 years ago, the economy looked a lot like it does today, right? Where it had gone through a period of steady growth. And then there was an event that shuffled things and shut down the economy for a short period of time. Uh, in 1918, it was, uh, the world war one, there was a Spanish flu, but the economy didn't shut down because there was no means of working remotely. You still had to go to work and there was a high death count as a result of that. But the economy did shut down for world war one.

We weren't in world war one for long, came out of it. All of a sudden spending went through the roof. You got crazy growth. You've got high demand for salespeople, low supply. Sounds a lot like today. And you had high turnover for salespeople in 1919 and 1920. That was voluntary, meaning reps, good and bad chasing money, right? Like bad reps, reps were like chasing money at the time. And because you hired, there was a sales executives would, and I, the quote isn't exact, but it was like, they would hire practically anybody. You fast forward to the end of 1921, you've got 77% sales rep turnover. Whoa. And it's not voluntary. The end of 1922, it had gone up to 85%. I call it the great salesperson purge of 1922.

And right before it, inflation spike. So all of a sudden there was an inflation spike. And then you had what was called a deflationary depression in 1921. And the quote back then was sales executives discharged practically their entire sales teams. Now, the reason I bring that up is that I do get a little worried when I look at the numbers, when I see that ZipRecruiter reports that there's over 700,000 open sales roles in the U.S. And that's not retail. That's not car sales. That's not real estate. That's B2B sales jobs. 700,000 jobs are open right now? Yes. Yes. And it's been consistent. 700,000 on ZipRecruiter. Now, you match that up with this other data point. If you go to Crunchbase and you look at the number of new tech unicorns each year by year, right, the number is typically between 120 and 160 new unicorns per year.

As a matter of fact, 2020 had the record and it was like 157 or 167 or something like that. If you add up those four years, so 2017 to 2020, the number is like 560 new unicorns. How many did we have in 2021? 587. 587 new tech unicorns in one year when the four before it was 569. Now, that screams bubble to me. Like, I don't, that worries me. And for anybody out there listening, by the way, a unicorn is a billion dollar company. Yeah, it's a company that takes funding at a billion dollar plus valuation. That is 500 last year? Yeah. Oh, it was almost 600 in 2021 new tech unicorns based on their funding and valuation. Now, that gives me pause to think about 100 years ago, right? And so what happens?

You've got high supply, low demand. I'm sorry, the other way around. High demand, low supply. What does that do? You've got inflation spike. You now have to pay reps more to get them, which drives your cost of sales up, which means you've got to pass that cost to your customers. Once you do, your customers eventually don't buy as much and things start to constrict. Right. And so I don't, we're not having another depression. Like I'm not saying, I'm not saying, I'm not ringing the, but I just think that we as sales professionals and as a profession just need to be smart about the investments that we're making and smart about our careers to where we've got to tie to our passions and our mission and the purpose of what we do instead of chasing money.

Right. Right. And so to go back to your original question, from a behavioral science perspective, what we did from March of 2020 to today is fascinating, right? It's a case study in behavioral science where we all went home, managers overcompensated because they lost their visibility, their control. They couldn't see what the reps are doing. So they're doing two X daily check-ins like, what are you going to do today? And the rep gets on and I'm going to make that work. And then at the end of the day, how did you do today? Right. And it's like, they spend a half an hour before it figuring out what BS they're going to say. Like we did that overcompensation. We, and, you know, to kind of maintain that visibility into what the team was doing.

All of a sudden, then we realized that, Hey, reps are by themselves. They don't feel safe. They don't feel secure. Zoom happy hour, the hell out of things. Right. And let's send them some, you know, logoed socks and a Yeti cooler, and they'll feel like a part of things. Well, here we are two years later, like almost, you know, to the day it was, I think it was March 11th was the, when the CDC proclaimed that we had a pandemic in 2020, we're still overcompensating on that connection. But I believe that as a sales leadership community and as an organizational community, do your reps know what their work means to your customers and to their customers? And if they don't, you better figure it out.

Because if they're just a number with a number, there's no physical cost to change jobs. There's no emotional cost to change jobs. And the slightest trigger is going to cause them to just unplug from you and go plug in somebody somewhere else. That mission, that purpose, that impact, impact is your magnet. That's your glue. That's your unique value that that sales rep has. And if you find reps that align to it, they're going to succeed. And even when things get rough, which eventually they're going to get rough in some, those are the reps that are going to maintain and build their careers. While the ones that are chasing money, I think are going to struggle to find jobs. Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you, I'm ruthless when reps reach out to me because they're like, Hey, John, you know, I'm looking for, you know, my next gig.

I'm not really happy here. And I've been, I'm like, all right, well, you know, how are you making this decision? Well, this company is going to make more money. And I, I, as soon as I hear that, I go, if you're in this game for the money, fuck off, literally fuck off. If that's your primary end goal, which is you centric. And I get it. You're helping your family and you're, you know, okay, good for you. But if your genuine interest in being in this profession is purely money motivated, then get the fuck out. Now, don't get me wrong. You need to be money motivated. That's a component of sales, because if you're not, then yeah, get your nine to five job and be a lot more secure. It's a, it's a more secure job to get a salary.

Right. But man, if your focus isn't on adding value, doing the right thing and those types of things, because all that, all the money will come despite that. And that's where, I guess, help me, help me figure this out because the lore of, of what I would say that the, the, the modern day charlatans are, are the jet and the baller car and this, that, and the other thing. How do you combat that when, when, when that looks so sexy? You know what I mean? Like the, the long, like, look, I'm 46 years old. It's taken me a while to get to where I am right now. I was making dirt money for the first like 10 years of my career. I grinded the fuck out of it. You know what I mean? And I'm still, I'm doing okay, but I'm not a multimillionaire right now.

I'm not flying private jets. All that looks real damn sexy. And, and so I guess it does come back to this values conversation, but how do you, where, and how do you nip that to try to gear, uh, shift kids in a, in a, when I say kids, you know, young professionals, um, coming into the workforce right now with the allure of sales? Yeah. I mean, like, there's a couple of things, um, gosh, you know, like one of them is, I guess on the personal side, um, you know, I, my last role, I was the chief revenue officer of Chicago's fastest growing tech company and I quit it like a lunatic to go write a book and go speak and teach. Right. And so, um, I, I don't think I could ever get to a point where I fully, uh, replace all that income.

Um, but I I'm doing it with a lot less Advil, right? Like I, you know, my, my investment in aspirin and my health is like so valuable, but you know, again, I'm, I'm older. Um, so like, we've got to understand that. I think though, it goes back to, it's going to be hard to convince a sales rep, uh, somebody who's fresh out of college, that's got a six figure opportunity in front of them to not go pursue that. I think it has to start at the leadership level, right? That if your reps, uh, if you think that your reps are coin operated, they are, if you're doing it wrong. Yes. Right. Like I think that you've got to create environments where reps wake up every morning, loving what they do, who they do it with, who they do it for and compensation becomes the reward for doing that versus the motivator.

I mean, dude, you could come over to my house and I could go, Hey, here's a shovel, go in my backyard and go dig some holes. And you'd be like, screw you. And I'd be like, Hey, I'll give you a thousand bucks a hole. You might go, where's the shovel. Yeah. Right. No, like, you know, that that's that, if that's the type of environment that you're creating for your sales team, they're not going to stick around for long. And that's ultimately a losing proposition. Create environments where reps are optimized by, you know, the connection they feel their ability to predict, uh, the recognition and rewards that they get all of those different pieces, balance them out with mission, purpose, and impact, and then pay them as a reward, not pay them as a motivator.

And I think you've got a winning formula and you start to create reps that start to see that and build careers instead of building checkbooks. I love that way. Pay them as a reward, not a motivator. Yeah. Is that what you said? Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Right. Because if we use that dig ditches, right? If that's, if you're digging ditches for a thousand bucks, well, then I'm going to come around and say, you know what? I'll give you a, you know, $1,500 to dig ditches in my, and then you're going to go, Oh, yep. I'm going to go over there. But if I, but if I sit there and tell you, well, look, the reason we're digging ditches is so we can plant trees, um, to basic, to, to grow some fruit so that the, um, local, you know, community can thrive in, and, and we don't have to, you know, get GMOs in our foods and we can locally harvest our own food here so we can all eat a lot healthier.

How much do you, you know what I mean? Now it's like, Oh, now I understand why I'm digging that hole. Now I understand why I'm digging that ditch. And you know what? I might take a few extra less bucks than that guy next to you. Who's just digging holes in his yard to dig holes. Right. You know, I heard a story that is right on with this. There was a, uh, a group of people that worked in a warehouse that were basically assembling medical devices. So every day they would get in and they would just take the parts and like stick, you know, stack and screws all. It sounds fricking mindless. Yeah. Right. Horrible. Yet they had almost no turnover and their productivity was amazing. And this is how they did it.

Every couple of weeks they would bring somebody in for a lunch and learn. And that somebody would be somebody who is saying, Hey, listen, I am, I'm wearing that medical device right now. And I wouldn't be here if you weren't stacking screws like that. And then everybody would be like, Oh, cool. And then all of a sudden their kids would come around and like, I wouldn't have a mommy. And the next thing you know, they're all crying and they can't wait to go back and stack those screws. Right. That's what I mean by, you know, it could be as like that one's so obvious, but like my last company, we were selling reviews software. Who cares? You know, who cares? The consumer that using that information to make informed decisions on where to spend their hard earned money.

That's who cares. We're making an impact on people's lives and how they spend their money in smart ways. We're not just selling software and you're not just a number with a number. And we had some reps that, man, they freaking love reviews and those are our best performers. And it kind of goes, I mean, again, going back to, you know, you study a lot about neuroscience and everything is, is the reason, right? I mean, I think about the very simplistic approach of giving people a reason why you're doing something. It was highlighted in Cialdini's book, Influence, right? Where it's like, if you cut in front of somebody and say, Hey, I want to make some copies and you don't give them a reason, they'll be like, go pouncing and get in line.

But if you cut in somebody and say, Hey, I need to make some copies and give them a reason why. And it didn't matter what it was, right? Well, I need to make some copies because I need to make some copies. Like, even if it was as simple as that, if you gave a reason why you wanted to do something, then people let. So I, I translate that to cold, like very tactically cold calling. The reason I'm calling gets right to the point. Questioning skills. The reason I'm asking the question. If you want to see somebody's anxiety go down about answering a question, give them the reason why you're asking the question. And for a job, why do we do this? What's the reason we are providing this service? What's the reason we are doing this?

And if you can connect with that, it makes it so much easier to have a conversation about it. Well, yeah. I mean, if you look at my own, my old inbox, every email looked the same. And by the way, I, I, I know you teach this and I just, I don't see it enough that we focus so much on like the subject line, but it's that preview of the first 10 words that tells you everything. That's more important. That's more important. And it's like when I look at my own inbox and I've got a screenshot in the book of it, like every sentence starts with, I just wanted to, I wanted to, I just wanted to. You know what? You might just want to give me a million dollars, but I will never get to it. I'll never open that email because it looks like every other one, right?

I, I just think that when you think personalized and valuable, you stand out like a beacon in the night, right? Like it's just, it's so easy. Send me a note that makes me feel when I see that preview that it was meant for me and only me. It couldn't have been sent. Like when somebody says, Hey Todd, I saw that you graduated from IU, go Hoosiers. You know how many people graduated with me? Like 35,000, right? Like you could have sent that. No, make it personal and valuable to me. I'll give you one example of this that really stood out. I remember posting SDR roles on our website in our Chicago office. And two days later, a company reached out to me with a email that just said, Todd, here is an SDR salary study of what SDRs are making in the Chicago market.

Nice. Now compared to, I just wanted, I just wanted, I was like, Oh, that's interesting. I'm hiring SDRs. I want to open this. I do sentence number two says, Todd, saw you just posted some open roles. Thought this would be helpful. There was no sales pitch. There was no nothing. It was written like a tweet, right? It was like 140 characters. Here's something that's valuable. Here's why it's, we sent it to you. They did it again, two weeks later with a board deck template right after my quarter ended. And I was like, who are these people? And of course you've got that valuable real estate right below your signature, that signature block. I'm clicking on all those things. Like I want to know who these people are, right?

Like you've enticed me by adding value. You've made a deposit before you're trying to make a withdrawal in a unique, valuable way that could have only been sent to me. And I will always treasure that. And I remember it because it happens so rarely. So you'll love this. I've adjusted the, the why you, why you now framework to the ADA framework. Think of an email. The subject line gets my attention. The first sentence tells me whether or not I'm interested. And what am I interested in? Me. I'm not interested in you. So if you start your emails with, I'd like to introduce myself. I don't give a shit about you. Recent surveys say, I don't give a shit about that. We're the leading provider of, I could care less.

None of that is interesting to me. What's interesting to me? Me, right? So, and what we're doing is we're playing around with the personalization parts. I hate Todd, I read your blog or whatever it is, or, and I'd love to get your opinion on this because it's been working for us is we ask a question. So for instance, a, you know, subject line, what? Hey, Todd, how are you keeping your reps motivated and engaged now that everybody's working from home? Because it's a relevant question I can ask somebody like you. And it's like, huh? Okay. You got me interested here. Now desire, what's your value proposition? And then act. What do you want me to do? So if you break an email down like that and you think of those areas, it aligns directly with psychology and how people think.

Exactly. And I know I, uh, Alec Baldwin got it wrong where he replaced desire with decision. Yeah, no, it's, um, so it's desire, but I love that. Right. Again, it's buyer centric. And, um, you know, as I always, as I always say, and I, I'm not the only person that says that it's, you've got to lead to your solution, not lead with it. Right. Like that's just that simple, uh, there, there's a crazy analogy that I use in one of the classes that I teach, uh, which is on this idea of thinking about your own, uh, engagement, like a reality makeover TV show host. Yeah. And so like, when you really think about those people, right. That the individuals like Queer Eye, for example, on Netflix, it's fantastic.

Right. Like episodes one, season one, if you haven't watched it, I actually used to really like that first, that first, uh, the first season of first. However many years ago, that was brilliant. I loved it. And by the way, I side note, I just got Tom Jackson to do a cameo for me that I'm going to use when I'm pitching this stuff. And I think he was hammered on redneck, uh, margaritas, but, um, the point being like the person realizes that their, their world is not perfect, right. Cause they volunteered to invest time with these guys, just like your buyers do, right. They're not right. Like an inbound lead, uh, these guys come in and instead of spending the first 15 minutes talking about their accomplishments and their solutions and their awards, which would be the boringest show of all time.

Instead, they're coming in and going, Tom, why are we here? What's going on? They align with them. They disarm by being human. They, they embrace authenticity and transparency right at the beginning. So they create that connection and then they teach, teach, teach. Hey, you didn't notice this about your redneck margarita. You didn't notice this about your lazy boy. You didn't notice this about your apartment, your skincare, your clothes. And then at the end, once this guy's like, holy crap, you're right. It's worse than I thought. Then they reveal the solution, which is we're going to take you out. We're going to redo your apartment. We're going to fix your, uh, your drink. We're going to buy you some new clothes.

We're going to get you a nice haircut and you're going to get back together with the woman that you're still in love with. We're going to make all of that happen. And Tom is ready to run through a brick wall. And at the end of the episode, they're all celebrating because not only did it happen, but like the Tom Jackson's crying his eyes out. He loves these guys and will forever. Isn't that what you want? Like, I think there's an incredible opportunity when you switch it. Don't lead with you, lead to you. Love it. Uh, so let's finish up here, but let's give a little bit of a teaser. We talked a lot about this, I think in, in a lot of different ways, but this new book that you have coming out with transparency sales leader, which I can't wait for you talk about five responsibilities of leader and then the structure and the framework.

Cause you give us like, cause I think we, we hit on all of it, but, but give us kind of the, the structure here. And then kind of, if people want to learn more, they can obviously go, but what, what's a framework that you lose from a leader use from a leadership certain point in those five responsibilities. Yeah. I mean that the book comes from this place of having been promoted into my first sales leadership job, always wanting to do it, but always having a process or a structure as a sales rep. And all of a sudden I wake up in the morning and I'm a dog chasing the car down the street. Like, you know, you know, Jackie's, uh, got a deal that's not going well. And Johnny just, uh, quit and I got a higher, like every day was attending to the fires of the day.

And I felt like I was never catching up and I was totally reactive. So I sat down and said, all right, what are my true responsibilities? And I created a framework for myself, which was what I call the five Fs of building revenue capacity. And it's just, it's five responsibilities that we have as a sales leader that once you internalize, you can use to strategize and plan. You use it for your one-on-ones, all your communication. I did it for my, um, one-on-ones. I did it for my board meetings. I did it for our all hands. Like our board came to expect it. And then one time I got, there's a long story here, but the short version was we missed a number. Our VC flew me out to California to beat my ass for three and a half hours.

And I used the five Fs as my structure. And at the end, the VC was like, wow, you're world-class. Now I don't know if I was world-class or the fact that I just had a structure was different. And I'll rattle off the five Fs for you really quick. Uh, so you've got them, you've got five responsibilities. Your first one is focus. So make sure that your team is focused on the right opportunities, the right firmographics, demographics, prerequisites, uh, you know, in the right places. That's responsibility. Number one, to build and to maintain responsibility. Number two, then is to build your field organization to support that focus. Not the other way around your field means the right reps in the right places with the right experiences, with the right tools and the right resources.

Once you've built that field and maintained it, which is your recruiting and all of that, the third F is the fundamentals. What are the things that the reps have to get right consistently and are they, right? You're prospecting, you're positioning, you're messaging, you're presenting, you're negotiating, you're handoffs, all of that stuff. Your fourth responsibility, Captain Obvious here, is to a forecast. You've got to be able to predict the future, right? The forecast and the KPIs, like what are the things that you must measure to be proactive instead of reactive. And then the fifth category, which is arguably the most important and encompasses all of them is fun, which is how do we create an environment where our reps want to come here, want to stay, want to do their best and want to advocate on our behalf.

And that is a combination of, it's a model that I've built around the science of intrinsic inspiration. So what truly drives us. And so part one of the book is the framework plus tools you can use right away. Part two is all about the fun. Like literally half of the book is dedicated to intrinsic inspiration and how to maximize that and recognize it in your team. I love it. And, and I think that's, uh, that's the part and it, and not the cheesy version of fun. You know what I mean? Not the, or the, or the, or the cliche versions of it, of like the zoom thing and the happy hour. And again, those have their place. Don't get me wrong. I'm not going to totally shit on all over those, but, but there is, there's other aspects and it's also the, the individual.

I mean, it goes back to prospecting too. It's the individualism, the personalization of those things, fun things, because Morgan on my team is not motivated by the same stuff as James is. And you know what I mean? So understanding the nuances of each one of your people and what drives them and what fun means to them. Right. Cause maybe there are some people that are straight money motivated. So I'm going to put together a comp plan for you that says, if you reach these things go right. But other people like, I want to spend time with my family. I want more flexibility. I want all these other things. So what does fun look like? And then how can we collaborate? Right. So. Yeah, exactly. That's it.

Well, look, uh, tons to unpack. When's it? So I know there's some publishing come, you know, issues and all the supply chain stuff, but your gut, you know, you're, you're, you're ready to go. Right. So here, hopefully in the next few months, you're putting this thing out there. Yeah. Right now, Amazon, uh, is showing the launch date is I think May 24th. I have a call later today with my publisher that might push that out. A few weeks, but it'll be a late spring, early summer, worst case. All right. Well, look, if, as you're listening here, if you haven't, if you haven't read transparency, sale, read it. It's one of my favorite. It's what it's look. It's all, it's, it's, it's exactly what it is.

It's all about being transparent and authentic with your approach and not having an angle, but just being like, this is what the levers that I have to pull. Let's work together on this. And so read that first to get ready for this transparency, uh, leader, uh, sales leader. Cause I think it's, it, they're obviously they go hand in hand. So Todd, thanks. Yeah. And I'll leave you with a one sales quote. Yeah. It's my favorite sales quote of all time. It's from Arthur Dunn. The year was 1919 and his quote says this simply, if the truth won't sell it, don't sell it. There you go. I love that. Right. I just, I freaking love its quote. It's so simple, but it's a great way to kind of wrap up here. If the truth won't sell it, don't sell it and keep that always in your mind.

And exactly. And if I have to convince, you know, an alteration and an addition to that is, is if I have to convince you of something, I'm doing something wrong. I really, you know what I mean? I need to influence you. And that's why I love that book influence because sometimes you might be looking at it the right way or whatever it is. But if I have to now convince you that this is the right thing to do, you've done something wrong. So exactly. We don't buy when we're convinced we buy when we can predict. Yeah. I love that. Awesome, man. Well, look, how can people find out? Is it just go to LinkedIn? Where, where can people find out more about Todd Caponi? And by the way, for you listening, it's C-A-P-O-N-I-T-O-D-D, Todd Caponi.

So exactly. And that's the website, toddcaponi.com. I just had the website redone. I feel like an adult now instead of a crap where he's put them together, but a good place to go. Lots of free resources and links to just about everything there. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Todd, for coming on. Third time's a charm. As usual, I'll have you back on again. We'll, you know, probably in another year to see how this, how transparency leadership has changed and how we, again, need to evolve as leaders. So I love having you on here, man. I appreciate it. Thanks, brother. All right. And for everybody out there, as usual, like I say all the time, go out there and make somebody smile today. Because even if you had a terrible day, if you made somebody smile, you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that.

So thank you all very much and let's make it happen. Thank you so much for your time today and listening to the podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. With your support and our incredible guests, we're one of the top sales podcasts in the industry with over a million downloads. And I can't thank you enough. To keep the momentum going, if you could go to your favorite podcast platform and leave us a five-star review, I would greatly appreciate it. In return, I will answer any question that you have on Instagram. Hit me up there at John, Emma's and Michael Barrows with a video question or a DM and I will get right back to you, I promise. And last but not least, if you're looking for training, I'm adjusting my training approach this year and I'm actually going to be delivering training to the masses.

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