Why Sales Reps Need Business Acumen Now with Kevin Cope

Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between, and guess what I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. This week I have Kevin Cope on the show. Kevin is the founder and CEO of Acumen Learning and a best-selling author. And this is one that really hit home for me for multiple reasons. Kevin was at the Covey Leadership Center back in 1989. It was part of the merger that created Franklin Covey and helped build out that into a massive operation. Franklin Covey was one of the first professional development programs I ever used early in my career.

So getting to talk to someone who was there building it from the inside was pretty special. And here's the thing that got me. Kevin went from running a $100 million plus organization to making 50 cold calls a day when he started his own company. That tells you, you know, when you're a CEO of your own company, yeah, good luck. You're also doing cold calling, SDR work, all of it. That tells you everything you need to know about this guy. We dig into why I believe business acumen is the number one thing sales reps need to improve. And Kevin's five business driver framework and one stat that should terrify every sales leader, which is a 3% discount can wipe out up to 20 to 40% of your profit. Kevin also has a new book called Business Acumen for Sales Success, which I highly recommend everybody get.

So I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Hey, real quick. If you heard me last year, you know I stopped taking manual notes on all my sales calls. Yes, I'm still using otter.ai, but now I'm using their desktop app, which means there's no bot jumping into my sales calls. And honestly, it's become way more than just a note taker. With the desktop app, otter captures all my sales calls and turns them into searchable insights that sink straight into my CRM. And then I can ask otter chat any question about any meeting or conversation I've ever recorded. The best part? Chat is now connected with all the tools I use. So if something's buried in tools like Notion, Google Drive, Gmail, Salesforce, whatever, I can still find it all without leaving otter.

But here's what I actually love about it. The knowledge doesn't disappear when the call ends. It lives in otter. I can spot patterns across my pipeline, remember exactly what was said, and walk into my next call way more prepared. The time it saves me is absolutely ridiculous. And that's before you even get into what it does for teams. I'm partnering with otter to give you an exclusive offer. Go to otter.ai forward slash JBSales to learn more and start selling smarter today. Kevin Cope, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast. My friend, how are you doing today? I'm doing well, John. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm looking forward to this conversation for a few reasons. But one of them is, you know, for the audience listening, we're going to get to the importance of business acumen and why I think it's sorely lacking in today's sales professional and why most sales reps, when they ask me, how can I improve?

What do I need to do? The first thing I tell them is just improve your business acumen. Please go learn how to speak the language of business. I can teach as many techniques and, you know, stuff as you want. But if you, once you're in that conversation, if you don't know what you're talking about, you're going to get smoked, especially at the executive level. So we are going to get to that. But as we do on all of these podcasts here, Kevin, let's talk about the origin story here. So I know you went to BYU, but talk a little bit before that. Talk about growing up, parents, what formed you, where'd you get your influences, all that fun stuff. And then what'd you study at BYU? You and them, we'll take it from there.

Yeah, sounds good. So I grew up in Paradise, California, which you may remember, that's the city that burned the ground. What was it? About seven years ago. And then Matthew McConaughey did a movie about it. But my wife and I both grew up there. Oh, yeah? She was in junior high. I was in high school. And that's when we started dating. So you guys, nice. Yeah. So I was three of nine children. And one of the biggest values in our home was a work ethic. So at a young age, I was in construction, kind of footing my own costs and things like that. And then college at BYU, as you mentioned, I got a degree in business finance. Okay. Joined a bank after that for about three years. Was in a sales role.

Was actually a mortgage officer and made really good money for that out of school. So I had no idea it was even, you know, a profession or a business. But, you know, it turned out really well. Did that for three years. And then I joined the Covey Leadership Center in 1989. You'll remember. How'd you get that? Like, because especially Franklin Covey back in those days, like, what was that? How'd you get that opportunity? Was it circumstance? Was it proactive? So in my neighborhood was a guy who was best friends with the president of the Covey Leadership Center at the time. It wasn't a Covey. It was Bill Murray. But he made an introduction and basically they were hiring salespeople. And so I hired on as basically a phone sales kind of guy in 1989.

And it was just before the Seven Habits book was released. Just two months. I joined two months before the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was. No way. So you got like one of the first copies or something? Yeah. Yeah. Signed copy from Steven. Of course, now it's sold over 40 million copies. It's in 50 languages. I mean, it is one of the top business folks of all time. Still. I still recommend it. It's still probably on a bestseller list today, I would imagine. Absolutely. And so it was the right place at the right time. I joined when they were, you know, smaller. Really grew with that organization. Ended up heading all of worldwide sales. Yeah. And all of the consultants as well for the Covey Leadership Center.

We then merged with Franklin. So it became Franklin Covey. Yeah. In 1997. And then my last role was the president of International for the combined organizations. Love it. And, you know, I was there and, you know, I was a shareholder of Covey. So I thought I was, you know, set for life. Of course, the stock price and, you know, that industry, Franklin was heavy into planners. You know, a physical planner. You buy them retail, et cetera. They had retail stores. And, you know, of course, that world, you know, changed dramatically for all of us. Everybody, you know, personal digital assistant. Now we have our calendars online. So, you know, the stock price sort of followed suit. Left there in 99.

And then shortly thereafter started this company, Acumen Learning. So we're about 25 years in business now. And it's been, you know, it's been a fun ride. Now have, my wife and I, Karen, have six kids. We've got three daughter-in-laws and nine grandkids. Wow. And that's kind of the center of my life, to be honest, John. This is good stuff. I mean, you know, our vision statement is that we believe work is an important part of life and it should be meaningful. So that really motivates me and drives me. But behind all of that is, you know, really my family. Yeah. That's, and that's where it should be, right? I did a post about Father's Day and I'm like, look, sometimes being a dad is a thankless job.

You know what I mean? You're in the background for the most part in a lot of things. But, you know, when you take a step back and realize, you know, what you built and the family and that and what you're working on or what you're working for, every minute is worth it. Every minute. And so, you know, with me and my daughter, so I actually wrote a book with my daughter. It's called, I Want to Be in Sales When I Grow Up. Yeah. It was at six years old, working with her, like selling Girl Scout cookies. And out of all the things that I've done in my career, that's probably one of my favorites. You know, it wasn't to make money. It was purely to work with her. And, you know, we donate all the money to charity, her favorite charity, World Wildlife Fund.

And every day she reminds me of my why, if you will. Yeah. What a great legacy, you know, to have a book with her. Yeah, it's fun. We're actually doing now. So it's funny what we're doing now because, you know, she's 15 and we're going to talk about AI and the impact this is having. But, you know, I look at college right now, traditional college, and I kind of scratch my head and I'm like, ah, in a couple of years, I don't even know if it's really going to be a thing. But I told her, I go, look, I want you to have the college experience because I think the social education of college is really, really important. But I just don't want you to be dependent upon that degree because I don't know if that degree is going to be even valid in four years if, you know, if it is.

And the same thing, I'm like, I want you to have a job, like an actual job. Like I actually want her to sit in the cubicle and like get in shitty meetings and that type of thing. Because I always tell you, you got to learn the rules before you can break them. Yeah. And, but I don't want her to be dependent upon that, that job for a paycheck. So I want to show her how to build, how to create. And so we're going to take this book and finish the arc with it because my publisher has, they went out of business. And so I have like 2000 books in my garage. And so we're going to actually start, you might appreciate it. You'll definitely appreciate this. We're going to start by looking for sponsors to donate a box of books, like 24 books to kids to help them start their own businesses.

So we're going to kind of run through that and I'm going to show her how to vibe code apps and, you know, how to market and how to ideal custom, you know, figure out who to go after for sponsorship. So out of, like I said, out of all the things I'm working on right now, that's the one I'm most excited about. So no, I love that. I, a future passion project for me, we'll get a business and financial acumen into high schools. There you go. I mean, kids, they don't understand debt. They don't understand what happens when they charge in a credit card. Um, you know, they don't have some of the basic understanding of finance and, and obviously, you know, you've got great professionals out there that like business acumen and it, you know, it sinks a lot of businesses, sinks a lot of organizations.

Yeah. And sinks a lot of people. I mean, that's why, like, I look at high schools. I'm like, what are you teaching? Like, they're like home ec is gone. You know what I mean? Like all these life skills, like how to balance a checkbook. Like, why can't we teach these kids this before throwing them into college? It's, you know, I, I do a calculator for, um, kids going into college. I go, could you please, before you make your decision on what college you want to go to, just run through this little simple calculation here. And it's a, and it's now powered by AI, but it's like, okay, what college do you think you want to go to? Okay. What's the, what's the, you know, what's the cost of that college for four years?

Okay. What percent, how much do you have to fund? Right. What's an average APR for that? And then it goes through in the cost of living and what, what's the average job of that degree at that college? What's your average salary coming out of that? Okay. Well now cost of living, where do you want to live? And it cranks out this number at the end and it says, okay, if you want to go to that college with that degree and you have to fund 75% of it and get that job, you're going to be living in your parents' basement for the rest of it for the next 30 years of your life. So just understand that that's what you're choosing. Yeah. So now they need that dose of reality. We've gotten sort of into the tradition of, you know, I graduate high school, I go to college.

And as you mentioned, the world is shifting so fast around what businesses really need to date, need today. And they're having to retrain most of the people they hire because they don't have the specific skills they're needing for the business. College just didn't give them that. Now college also, you know, can build a love of learning. Yep. You don't need college for that, but it can help with that. They can also help build curiosity. But, you know, again, you don't need college for that. So, you know, it still has some useful purposes, but I love really sitting back and let's make sure you understand the financial implications on that. Please. And that's one of the things I was really curious about.

So, you know, after listening to you, going through some of your podcast episodes and everything else, when it said, when you, um, let's see, frankly, president, and you said the company had 11 consecutive years of negative cashflow. Was that, was that like, how did a leadership company, it looked like the leadership company was severely lacking business acumen. And so like, how did, how did that even happen? And then, and what was the light bulb for you that was like, wait a minute, holy shit here. Yeah. We're losing money. Every company kind of ebbs and flows on money here. But when did, when did it become apparent to you that business acumen was the issue here? Well, so it's interesting. Um, I joined the, uh, Covey leadership center.

I mentioned in 89 and Stephen M R Covey, this would be Stephen Covey jr, the son of Stephen R Covey, who now is a world renowned expert on trust and the speed of trust. Okay. Um, and his book bestsellers, the speed of trust. So, uh, when he took over as president and this would have been in the early to mid nineties, I'm thinking, oh, about 93 or four, he took over a CEO and I took over his role, uh, managing the worldwide consulting business. And when he took it over, um, he had realized that kind of the former leadership of the organization had been really, uh, emphasizing, uh, personal wealth and income as well as sort of the other leaders of the company. And so they got it kind of into this, you know, vicious cycle of, well, you know, let's make sure we take care of ourselves and everything else will work out.

Well, when Stephen Covey jr took over the company, the company was in tough shape, never been, you know, well-managed to that point from a business site. Now we'd grown, um, you know, the revenues had grown dramatically, uh, you know, the book, the content, seven habits did really well, but the ability to manage the back office operations, you know, to manage payroll, things like that, the discipline just really didn't enter in. So he had to do that. And one of the first things he did as the new CEO of the Covey leadership center is he recognized that everybody had to have business and financial acumen. So, uh, he bought the book, um, uh, finance for the non-financial manager, you know, had everybody in the organization read it.

Some kind of took to it and some were like, wait a minute, you know, we're, we're a mission driven organization. What's this about finance? And so there was, there was some pushback on that, but in the end, you know, he realized that's what he needed to do as the CEO. And then he and I both left the organization about the same time. And he actually started this company, Stephen, our company, uh, Stephen M. R. Covey. And I started this in 2002 with the idea that, Hey, when we ran an organization, that's what we knew is important, uh, we thought it was a topic that was very relevant. So that's where we started. So that, but the, and then when you made that switch, you said you went from being like a VP or head of it.

Now you're making cold calls 10 hours a day, right? When you started, that was at the part where you had to kind of, we've talked really before we got on here about getting humbled here. What was, what was that transition like? And why all of a sudden was it the market that was brutal right there? So you had to do that or you just really just to get the business going, you felt like you needed to double down on your efforts. Yeah, no, it was a startup. And, uh, uh, I was in a shareholder of an owner at Covey. And when it was acquired by Franklin Quest to become Franklin Covey, I had, uh, you know, stock, I had a lockout period for a couple of years. And, uh, by the time that lockout period came to stock and, you know, really diminished.

And so, um, you know, I had left thing and I was set for life and all of a sudden I wasn't. So I went to what I knew. So I started this business and so I'd gone from running, you know, a hundred billion, you know, revenue business plus, uh, over a thousand employees to, I was starting this, you know, training and consulting company kind of on my own. And I had a couple of employees, but I was the primary guy trying to drive. It was every day, at least 50, 60 cold calls. And, um, and that was humbling going from, you know, a multimillionaire. Thought I was set for life to, okay, I've got to make a business go. And I am picking up the phone every day at cold calling, humbling, very humbling. And as I mentioned earlier, John, it was really good for me.

Yeah. Um, I had too much, too young, I think. And, and my ego was bigger. I still struggle with, you know, it was bigger than, you know, it should have been. And so in hindsight at the time I thought, oh, you know, why me, you know, um, but in hindsight, man, I'm grateful for it. Uh, it, it forced me back into, um, you know, leaning into, to work and the basics of the business. And as the company has done well, it's, it's, um, given me the confidence that I, you know, the, the Covey experience wasn't a fluke that I really could start and run a successful business. So in hindsight, I'm grateful for those lessons. Have you ever, um, have you ever listened to Matthew McConaughey's green lights?

I have. Yeah. Like that. So I wish you'd run for office. I do too. But that book, um, same thing. I, I mean, we talked about this before we got on, I do a very similar experience and it actually just happened to me recently with what happened with 2023 and, and even what happened right now with AI and how like all of a sudden I came back from Q1 and my pipeline was empty and I'm used to, you know, I've been doing this now for. 30 years almost. Right. And I built a brand enough where a lot of inbound came and, you know, I trained prospecting and I always did, but I didn't have to, I just did it because I wanted to and keep the pipeline. And I, and then I looked at my pipeline and it was dead empty.

I'm like, God damn it. All right, let's get after it. And, and, you know, force my way back into existence. Like I did back in 2023, back in 2020. Right. And those experiences, when they kick you right square in the teeth about like, whether it's your fault or not. Right. The economy doesn't matter. You have two choices. Right. And, and the other choice isn't one for me. So I, it's, there is no choice. Like I don't, I have a, I, I, you know, just recently I got a job offer to, you know, you know, to change, to help a company change their into the AI world and redo their entire. And it's a half a million dollar comp, you know, $600,000 comp. And I'm looking at it and I'm like, okay, there's security there.

You know what I mean? And I could easily do that job with my eyes closed, but I'm like, it's not an option for me. Yeah. I just can't, like, I can't have a boss. And so betting on yourself. Right. And, and I think when you, were you a hundred percent commission at that effectively when you made that switch? Cause it was your company. Oh yeah. Yeah. Matter of fact, I was putting money in for at least a year and a half before I started pulling any. And I credit my wife who had faith in me when I was not quite sure, but she says, no, you got this. Yeah. And so stuck with it and ended up being a great financial move for me. Love it. So, so again, business acumen, right? Well, actually another point that stuck out.

Hey John, can I say one more point? I did a recent video on our YouTube channel and on my LinkedIn page about what would I tell myself if I could go back to the startup, you know, of this business and, and what I kind of cited in this is that I wish I would have had more faith in my abilities and also faith that things would turn out. Okay. Um, to this point I'd been through sort of five, you know, big economic events, you know, 87 black Monday. Um, and then it was, uh, nine 11 and then you had the.com bust and then a big one was the global financial crisis in 07, 08, 09, and then COVID. And by the time COVID hit, I'd finally realized that, you know what? And I told my team, I said, look, um, we're going to get bumped and bruised, but we're going to figure this thing out.

This was early in COVID when everybody just thought, well, we have no idea where this is going. In hindsight, it's easy to say, oh yeah. You know, we knew things were worked out, but I remember distinctly in the middle, in the beginning of COVID, it was like, holy smokes, I have no idea where this is going, have no idea what will happen. But I had the confidence because of history and I'd learned over and over again. And I told my team, I said, look, we're going to keep the team together. Um, we're going to get bumped and bruised, but we're going to figure it out. And we did get bumped and bruised, but we got through it. And so that's what I would kind of some advice I'd give to my early self and anybody starting a business is have more faith, trust that things will work out.

If your head's down, you're working hard, doing the right things, you know, have a bit more faith and trust. Yeah, it's a, I think I saw a round table and I think it was, um, Tom Hanks, there's like, same ask the question, like, Hey, what would you, and, and he's, I think his quote was this too shall pass. Yeah. He's like, things are going awesome for you. You're on the top of the world. This too shall pass. You're at the bottom of the barrel and you're thinking everything's going to be, you know, this too shall pass. And it'd be funny, you bring up, you know, the figure it out mentality. These just came in. Uh, so I have a make it happen tagline, right? That's kind of been my, for years. But I, I switched it up or I've added to it and it's now.

Figure it out. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Especially right now. It's such a relevant statement and mentality, mentality. That's where people need to be. They really do. And I, and I think that's the key, right? It's like, and that's the challenge I have right there. So we can get into the business acumen with kids, especially kids coming out of school right now, because I, I, I worry a little bit that the figure it out mentality has, has, um, gone away or, or been significantly, uh, reduced because you and I, and you know, we can look at history and I'm talking like an old man right now, but you know, I think our generation, give or take, cause you're around probably my age. You know, I hit 50 recently.

Um, you know, we were one of the last generations to figure it out. Like the Gen Xers, right. With the latchkey kids, you know, we were home parents were like, just don't kill anybody. We'll see a dark, you know, that type of thing. And so we were forced to figure it out. Like there was no options. There was no structure to what we were doing. Whereas now, you know, my daughter, I can see it and I do everything to fight this, but you know, every minute of every kid's life is structured. You know, they go from school to this hour, this hour, then they have the soccer practice from this hour, this, and then they have their homework for two hours and they have their iPad for 30 minutes. Then they have this.

And then on the weekends they do this. And so every minute of these kids lives. And then, and by the way, then they're taught to the test, right? It's no more critical thinking. And, and so they get out into the real world and they have a boss like you and I say, figure it out. And they look at you sideways. Like, what do you mean figure it out? Like, tell me what to do. Yeah. And that's the systems of processes where the gut, you know, it's yeah. Right. And, and the problem is, is like for us, like you say, oh, you, you know, you want me to tell you what to do? I'll tell you what exactly what to do, do this. And then, and then we give them scripts and templates and those types of things. And they just do the script and they do the template.

So how are you fostering? Cause I think a lot of business acumen, uh, is based on figuring it out. I mean, there's obviously some fundamentals there, but how are you helping people figure it out and, and kind of reverse engineering some of the business acumen pieces of this to lay the right type of foundation so they can be more dynamic in conversations? Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, there was a big surprise, uh, when I started this, uh, company, um, cause I thought that the idea and the concepts and the principles of business acumen would be well understood throughout an organization, except for sort of that entry level. So the, the, the idea was let's sort of target that level and very quickly found out that the gap of business acumen, this isn't just for sales.

This is all employees is a lot bigger than you'd ever imagined. Uh, you can go very senior and some very well-known companies. We've worked with 34, 35, the fortune 50, some of the most well-known companies in the world and the gap in business acumen, even at VP levels is surprisingly big. Now people are expert in their function. I mean, they're great IT people. They're great at operations. They're, they're great at sales, HR, et cetera, but that gap and understanding how their actions impact company results and how do you drive business results, you know, that connect with what a CEO is trying to accomplish in an organization, that cap is just big. And so thankfully for us, it means we've got a much bigger market.

Sure. So part of it is, um, is coming in and helping people. So I, I define business acumen as understanding how your company makes money or your client makes money and then making good decisions, um, around that money making process or provide, uh, services and products that will help your clients solve their business challenges. So in a lot of ways that we're finding that's creating engagement in organizations because people want to know that how they matter, how they make a difference and how they contribute in a company. And so part of what we're doing is not only good for a company because you've got people making better business decisions. It's also good for the culture because people are more engaged with that line of sight of here's me, here's what the company needs, and they can see how they connect to that.

So we, we really come in and help them really understand a five driver foundational model. Um, and once they get ahold of that and apply it to their own business, their own financials, et cetera, um, we help them really connect themselves to the business that they're involved in or to the clients that they're selling to. So let me ask you this. Let's from a tactical standpoint, cause I agree. You know, I think that, you know, any leader, whoever comes to me and says, how do I get my people to, you know, believe or, or, or work as hard as I do. And I tell them, first of all, don't ever ask your employees to work as hard as you do, unless you're going to give them 50% of the company and, and, you know, shut up.

So, um, but you know, I, I always tell them, look, if they don't, if you don't paint a vision for them of like how they fit into this equation, they're just going to do their job. Like if people don't feel like they're part of something bigger and they understand it, then they're just going to do what's on their, on their, you know, on their job description. Um, if you get them bought into the vision, but that to me is like vision and direction where we're going, right. From a, from a, how they make money standpoint, I want to bring this down to pricing. I want to get very specific with a question here as it relates to pricing. Um, there's two coins, there's two sides of this equation, right?

Especially in the SAS world, pricing is like, uh, so discounting is a huge problem across the board and especially in SAS, because, you know, the dumb business acumen part of this is, uh, does it really cost you Salesforce another $1,500 to give me this license? Of your stupid software. That's up in the cloud. Like that, no. So the, so the question has always been for me, like how much should a rep know where pricing comes from, right? Should they know about the R and D investments and these types of things and all that stuff so that they can articulate that from a business acumen standpoint to a CFO when they're having that conversation, or should they stay rather ignorant of the price and all the nuances of how they come up with that price so that they can kind of plausible deniability here.

It is what it is. That's our price. Where are you on that specific one? I'm more of an advocate for disclosure and for them understanding the implications. Yeah. Uh, you know, for example, if they, if they drop pricing by 3%, they might think, boy, that's a negligible discount. Not knowing that that, that may impact your profits by 20, 30, 40%, depending on, you know, how profitable your organization is. So I think they need to understand that. And this is one of the things that is, we're working with salespeople that they need to understand that, um, a small discount or even holding price or a small increase in price can have a dramatic impact on the profitability of the organization. And I, I think when salespeople understand that, they say how that works in their own company, they see how it might work for their client.

I think they'll do better when they know better, they do better. Yeah. It's probably one of my favorite, um, you know, I got a testimonial recently. I reached out to a client, we did some negotiation training and I was like, Hey, you know, is there any way you can quantify some of this stuff based on what you were tracking? And he's like, and it was funny, you brought up that number. It was like, it was like 3.2% reduction in, in price, uh, or in discounts from last year. And, you know, again, same, I was like, okay, that's, that's adorable. You know, 3.5, that's okay. But I was like, could you macro that out a little bit? Like, what does that actually mean from a dollar figure standpoint? And he came back with a $4.3 million number.

Yeah. Yeah. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what? Like you literally measured between this year and last year, that 3.5%, 3.2%, it meant $4.5 million to your bottom line. He's like, yeah, absolutely. It's like, holy shit. Yeah. Right. And I think you're right. Like once you realize that, then you realize like why layoffs happen, why we're at where we are with this and why we have to make these investments. So you talk in your book about what is the five business drivers. So you, you, you had two books right now. You have, uh, see the big pitch. No. Yeah. See the big picture is your first one, right? Yeah. 2012. 2012. And that was the five business drivers, cash, profit, assets, growth, and people.

Yeah. So do you go through the, each one of those and like what they actually mean within the business? Yeah. And we do. And the origins of those five business drivers is important because cash, profit, and assets, first three drivers simply reflect the three financial statements, cash statement of cash flows, profit, the profit, and loss, and then assets, um, the balance sheet, you know, assets, liabilities, net assets. So while we're teaching these five drivers, they're basically learning first three, they're learning about the three financial statements. Growth is there because shareholders expect it builds value in a business, attracts the best employees. And then right in the center of that model is people.

And so engaged employees meeting the needs of customers or anticipating the needs of customers drives cash, profit, assets, and growth. So I think it's important that every employee knows how their company is performing around the five drivers, um, how they stack up with their peers. Sometimes you think, Hey man, you know, we're doing really well in profitability, not realizing that they're actually at the low end as they look at their industry. So they need to understand how they stack up with others. And then most importantly, um, John, they need to understand what they can do in their role to improve and impact each one of those. And then the link for us in the sales side is, you know, as a salesperson, do you know how your solution or product will impact and improve the business results of your client?

And so that's, that's the big link, you know, for us, uh, and what we believe is really missing in the sales process that there's a lot of great sales methodologies out there. And most of them assume that the salesperson has business acumen, like in spin selling, spin selling on the situation, you know, you're trying to find out about the client's business. It's assuming when the client tells you, Hey, we're really trying to focus on cashflow. It assumes that you know what that means. And you also know to, to improve cashflow, you know, in the challenger sale, um, you've got to have deep understanding of your client's business. Well, it's assuming, you know, again, if you hear about inventory turnover, you'll know what that means and how your product or solution might support the improvement of their inventory turnover.

And so we just find that that part is missing that salespeople are so focused on their, you know, their features and benefits, you know, their product or service that they're not able to make the connect of here's how we can improve your business results. Is there one of those five that you find that, um, people understand the least or is it pretty much across the board? They're, they're, they're rather relatively ignorant across the board of all of them. Yeah, that's a great question. Um, you know, probably they get the growth because, uh, you know, if you had to pick one of those for most, you know, large companies, probably growth is going to get the number one attention profit number two.

Yeah. And so the ones that they probably understand least, um, would probably be cash, cashflow and probably the asset driver, you know, getting good use, uh, out of your assets, having the right arm out of assets needed to run the business. But the ones that, that I would say that they probably ought to get much more understanding around is probably profitability. Okay. Um, because I think people are so focused, you know, especially in the sales role, they're so focused on the top line, um, that they often ignore, you know, the bottom line and, um, you know, you can't ignore that in a, in a, in a business today. Well, and that's why they default to discounting, right? Because it's easy and they don't really understand the implications of that.

That's a, I mean, small, basic things. I always tell people like tell reps, I go, could you just do me a favor if you're going to discount, which I hope you don't, but if you're going to, I get as part of the game. Could you just not use a round number? Like bring some intelligence to it. Don't, don't, don't grab one out of the air. Well, because it's because like, as soon as somebody says, as soon as a sales rep gives me a 10% discount, I know they know nothing about negotiations. They know nothing about profitability. They just went to the max of what they were allowed to do. I tell them, I'm like at a bare minimum, give them like a 6.47% discount. Make it seem like you've thought about it a little bit, or there's some type of strategy around your discounting schedule and give yourself extra room.

So you can go up to a 9.84% discount before you have to get your manager involved. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. I'll say another one that I think from a salesperson's perspective that they need to have a better understanding is cashflow. Salespeople have no idea the impact they have on cashflow because a customer doesn't owe you money until they've received an invoice and what they've received is, you know, is accurate. It meets their need. The product or the service, it meets the specification. Then they owe the money. And if a salesperson isn't savvy to getting the invoice out on time, making sure everything's right, making sure the client understands the invoice, making sure the client agrees with the invoice, they're not going to even start the clock and the client's going to wait 30, 60, 90 days to pay it.

And so you can have salespeople out front, you know, generating sales, but the good ones also have a sense, or at least they're using their team or their staff or somebody is also watching how fast are we going to get paid on that deal? Because you can have companies that really look good on the P&L, but cashflow wise, they are struggling. So let's, let's dig into that for a minute. Cause do you know, um, uh, my friend Todd Capone by any chance? I don't. So you should, uh, I think you'd love his, uh, his book is books on negotiations called transparency sale. And in, when it comes to negotiations, it's, um, he actually, it's all about transparency and what he does is, and this is negotiating for the contract itself, not negotiations.

So what he says is he he'll give the client the price, whatever it is based on what they said. And he said, look, here's, here's what our standard rate card is. Um, I know you're probably going to want some flexibility here. Let me explain to you what's important to me. Right. And what, and what he says in the way he phrases it, I love it. He says, this is what I'm willing to pay for. So instead of give you a discount for it, this is what I'm willing to pay for, um, long-term contracts, that's important to us. So I'm willing to pay for those. Right. So if you want a three year instead of a two year, we can get creative, um, size of deal, right? So if you want, you have 50, you know, a hundred instead of 50, that's important.

Um, payment, uh, when we get paid is really important. So, you know, if we can do upfront payment, I'm willing to pay for that. But then the one, this is what I want to dig in with you. He says, forecast predictability. And this is business acumen. He says, look, I'm willing to pay for forecast predictability. So if you can tell me that you will sign by the end of this month, I'm willing to pay for that. And the reason I love that is because most sales reps will say, Hey, if you sign by the end of the month, I'll give you a discount. And then when the end of the month comes and inevitably the client doesn't sign, because I always tell the reps, what do you think happens at the end of the month?

Their end of the month happens and their lawyers are dealing with contracts that will make them money or cost them money. Where do you think they're going to spend their time? They're going to spend their time on the ones that make them money. And they're going to prioritize those as opposed to the ones that cost them money. And what are you going to do? Take the discount away next week? Because like, like everybody who tries to do that, I'm like, what did your profitability change over the weekend? Like piss off, like a final week. Yeah. So the way he phrases it is like, I'm willing to pay for forecast predictability. Cause that's important to us. Cashflow is important to us. So how do you like from a business acumen standpoint, how do you kind of coach reps on, on leveraging discounts in a way that is a business acumen conversation over a, here's a discount signed by the end of the month scenario?

Yeah. Well, I, it's a great question. I think part of that is for them to understand the cash conversion cycle for organizations. So I get that full amount. There are some companies that have a very long cash conversion cycle. If you think like pharma company, could you explain just, just because I'm clear, could you explain cash conversion cycle just to make sure I'm clear? Oh, what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's the time between you, when you start expending cash to develop the product or service to when you actually collect the money. Okay, cool. So think for example, um, I'll start with Walmart, Walmart, Walmart, you know, you go buy a gallon of milk at Walmart, you give them cash right in the spot.

They probably aren't going to pay for that gallon of milk for 30 days. So Walmart has a very short cash conversion cycle where they're actually getting their cash about the same time they're spending it. Or they're getting the cash before they even have to spend for it. Very good cash conversion cycle at a Walmart, um, contrast that to a, uh, pharma company. It takes 11 years and a billion and a half dollars for a pharma company to get its return on cash. So at the very beginning they're doing trials, you know, they got scientists, they got at formulae us, they're creating this new, and, and many of them don't even make it to market. So by the time a drug gets to market, they've expended a lot of time and energy before they're even going to get paid for that, you know, that product.

Very long cash conversion cycle. So when salespeople start thinking in terms of what, what's our company's cash conversion cycle, and they recognize that, you know what, before we even get paid from the sale I'm making, I've been getting a salary. We've been manufacturing the product. We've been investing in the, uh, the service that we're providing. And we've been doing that some cases for years before we actually get paid for this deal that we just did with you. So part of it is that mindset that they're recognizing the cost to deliver that product just didn't happen the day I delivered it to the client. You've been investing in that spending, you know, on that for a period of time. So part of it is getting the mindset for a salesperson that, well, we really do have a cash conversion cycle.

And the sooner we can get paid, uh, we're well-deserving of getting it paid at least within 30 days. Matter of fact, if somebody, uh, I found myself with a couple of clients when they wanted 60 or 90 day terms saying, now just help me understand, you know, my sales team, I've been paying them all long, um, and, uh, we've been investing in this product. You know, we're going to send you materials and things like that. We we've already paid for that. And so for you to delay that 30 or 60 or 90 days is actually suggesting we've already spent all the money for that, that explained for me the fairness and pushing that to say 60 days, 30 days. That's standard. I get, but going to 60 days, help me understand that from a fairness standpoint.

And I've done that a couple of times with clients that I trusted, the relationship was good. And we were at a point where I could be that direct, but, but backing up a minute, having my salespeople understand that mindset, I think helps them realize, uh, why a discount, um, it shouldn't be thrown out as quickly it is. And then also I walk through the impact a discount has on the profitability of the company. And so it's part of that mindset that in their mind, uh, they're coming not from a, well, I should give a discount because they expect it. It's coming from a, well, from a fairness standpoint, let's look, let's look, uh, at it from that, uh, from that view, if you will. Yeah, I think that I will tell you one of the things that pisses me off the most as a small business, professional services, you know, cash based business for what I do is delayed payments.

I, I, I've, I've personally ruined relationships because that, because they took way too long paying and we had a great relationship. It was awesome. And then all of a sudden 60 days, and I have a three strikes and you're out rule. I tell my COO, like, obviously at 30 days, ping him an email. I don't even need to know at 40 to five days, ping him an email and CC me. And it's 60 days, give it to me. And I go, and I literally go straight to the CFO. And I say, if you don't pay this bill, I'm going to put your name on blast on social. I don't care who you are. I don't care what type of company you are. I got 400,000 people following me. I'm a cash based business. You're a massive, huge organization that has massive profits here.

And you're screwing around with little guys like me off. And I, and like, literally it's the one thing that I have zero tolerance for. I mean, I guess there's tolerance for that extra 30 days there when they, when they try to play games. Oh, well, sorry, the invoice and we didn't our system. And we have, we have to kick off the process again. I'm like, shut up, pay the check, write the check, send it in the mail tomorrow or else I'm going to lose it. So, well, that's the bold approach, John. I'm sorry. Well, it's just because it just pisses me off so much when I realize what, because of business acumen, because I know they play a lack of fairness in it. Yeah. There's a lack of fairness. And I know they play the games on the backend to try to figure out their own profitability for the product, you know, for the public market or whatever it might be.

And I'm like, you can't do that on the backs of small business owners who are trying to literally make payroll every single month. Yeah. So for me, it's, it's a, it's a non-negotiable when it comes to that type of thing. But yeah. So let's talk about the new book. First of all, why'd you write the, the, the new book and, and what was, what's the evolution of it? Yeah. So the first book 2012 seen the big picture. Fortunately, it was a number one, a wall street journal. New York times bestsellers that that certainly helped our, our recognizability by the way, a little tidbit for others out there. We actually self-published it so that we own the rights to it and we use them like brochures, you know, so we can print them for, you know, a couple of bucks and you can spend that much on a nice brochure.

So we followed that same kind of model with the new book and, and why business acumen for sales success, probably 25 to 30% of our clients, of our participants in the classroom are salespeople. And so, well, everybody sees this gap. It's the sales organizations and there's such a shift. It's having to move from the person that come in, can come in and, you know, really be a product expert to somebody that can come in and be a trusted advisor. Um, and you're only a trusted advisor. If you really understand how to, um, help your clients solve their business challenges. Um, and, and again, you know, that gap is pretty big. I, I listened to one of your former podcasts where you said, um, you were talking about, um, uh, AI and you see AI helping probably the top 10 or 20% because they won't use all the information about a company as a crutch and kind of come in and say, well, here you go.

And regurgitate it. They'll use it to then come in and, and help them identify how, um, your product or solution will help them solve their business problems or help them achieve their business goals. You know, what keeps, um, our clients up at night is their business, um, and how they're going to perform, how they're going to meet their objectives. And if we can help them solve those, um, either challenges or help them find opportunities to achieve the results, that's where you become trusted. That's where you come valuable and needed. And so that's where the genesis of this book came from. We recognize salespeople really, um, we're hungry for this. We're seeing a greater need, especially now.

And so, you know, uh, we, we launched it in January. So the timing of it was pretty good. Yeah. I'd say what are, what are some of your kind of key concepts of the book that, uh, people can kind of chew on for a little bit? Yeah. So, um, kind of the, we, we call it a field guide, you know, so to speak, the first half is going through the five drivers again that we go through. Um, but you know, in the kind of a truncated form, if you will. And then the back half is how do you use that then to better position what you do as a salesperson to your clients? So we've got a methodology that we walk through. Again, we're not trying to replace any of the great sales methodologies out there. They assume you've got business acumen.

We're just helping the salesperson now develop that business acumen and how to apply it, um, to their clients. So some of the keys are, um, matter of fact, if I, if I had two things is salesperson says, so where do we, where do I start? I'd say first, um, you need to be curious and current about what's happening in the broad business and economic world. Yep. You know, if you're calling on a client and they just had their earnings call yesterday and you didn't know about that, that's a big miss. Or if you're calling on a client and terrorists were just announced that might affect where they're, you know, doing their manufacturing, they're kind of like, are you here to help me to even know about us?

So number one is be curious about business in general and the current, you know, economic environment that that's the world our clients live in. They're swimming in that. That's what's on their mind. That's what keeps them up at night. Um, number two, you need to understand how to, uh, read a set of financials and understand the implications and how to improve the results on the financials. So that's, that's where I'd start time every day, find a business website or, you know, something that you, that gravitates for you, um, from being current on business, you know, wall street journal, um, you know, is a good one. C and M business, uh, the economists can kind of give you those, you know, broad sense of what's going on.

Then make sure you know how to read a set of financials because that's the language executive speak. That's how they're measured performance wise. Um, you know, that's how, uh, their investors are tracking their success or not. And once you have that, then preparing for a client as well, make sure, you know, you've got the most current, um, kind of understanding of what a CEO is focused on. If it's a publicly traded company, listen to their earnings call, their prepared remarks from the CEO. Take you five minutes to read that. And it screams, here's how to sell to me. Cause they were outlining. Here's our performance. Here's what we're trying to do. Here's what we're struggling with. I mean, if they're not publicly traded, AI could still help you find some sound bites.

If not go to a competitor. That's what I was just about to say. That AI, like before reading a 10k or any report, it's like, oh God, what a snooze fest here. Like, uh, now you pop it in AI and just be like, pull out the key factors here that are most relevant to what I sell and help me understand how to, you know, frame that in a way that makes sense. And that's easy. Like five minutes you can do it now. It's ridiculous. So salespeople ought to get that AI, you know, kind of summation really quickly. The key is, can they translate that data into now? How will that help you solve some of your, how can I help you? Solve some of those challenges that you've just outlined from the data. That that's the big difference in a salesperson today.

Everybody can use AI. Like you said, it might become, um, or what'd you call it? It might actually, um, retard salespeople who use it as a crutch. It absolutely does. But for the good salespeople, they'll use that to then, uh, create their positioning and, you know, their source of, uh, you know, help for the client. Well, you said curiosity, right? I think that is, uh, if there's business acumen is, is something that I think is sorely missing. I think the superpower of the future is curiosity because if you're genuinely curious about a company, about a business, those types of things, AI is an absolute superpower because you could just go down. Well, tell me more about that. Explain it to me.

Like I'm five. Why would they care about this? How does my solution actually help align with this? Does my solution actually align with this? You know what I mean? Like where on my, where on their list would be my solution from a prioritization standpoint and why, and how can it help them achieve the bigger priorities? If you're that curious, this AI stuff is like my business acumen, even after being in this for 30 years and stuff has taken a leap because now I'm like, Oh, now I cannot like, instead of a surface level understanding of a lot of stuff, I can be like, you know what? I need to know about that. Let's, let's go down that rabbit hole for the next half hour here. Yeah. And, and to your point of like this routine, I think everybody should have a little bit of a routine every morning of following current events and that type of stuff, but also picking something, anything to, to educate themselves about for 30 minutes or whatever it is on AI, because just that collection of knowledge as you go, first of all, it makes conversations far more rich.

And, and it also puts you in a position where you can be curious with the client because I never take whatever AI tells me as gospel. I take it as a, as a benchmark or as a foundation to then talk to the quote unquote expert client to say, Hey, Kevin, you know, I've been doing some homework and notice you're doing this, that, and the other thing, but I'm a little curious on this part of what keeps you up at night, not what keeps you up at night. Right. Cause I think those that I said it before and I'll say it again, I think the three most insulting things you can say to anybody right now, tell me about your business, tell me about your priorities and what keeps you up at night. I honestly think those are the most insulting things you can say because you can ask AI all of those and it will give it to you in seconds.

And then you use it to validate as an anchor and not necessarily just open the generic dumb question. Well, that's absolutely right. Boy, that that's table stakes nowadays, you know, having that basic understanding. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, um, the, the, we'd talked about this before we got onto is to say, you know, the, the, the, the failure of, of our education system is not giving kids the base fundamental understanding of finance and business and how to make money and profit and those types of things in high school. How do I even balance a checkbook? Uh, you know, most kids don't even know how to do that at this point. So, you know, hopefully this book and what you're working on, all of these, give the ones who didn't get that exposure, uh, in school, a little bit of exposure now so they can level up because right now is not a time to sit back and wait right now is the time to get after it.

And if you can figure out a way to level up on business acumen on sales skills on all of it, you got to get going. I mean, I'm thinking of how easy it is for maybe an 18, 19, 20 year old to get a credit card. Yeah. Right. Who there's a good chance they don't understand interest. And if they're getting an 18% interest rate on a credit card, man, they can get into trouble in a hurry. And so some of those basic, you know, business and financial understanding and acumen skills and in junior high, high school, there are big gap there as well. So let's end on this. Cause this is the funny one. I, cause I use this as a joke, but man, and I'm wondering where you were with this from a business acumen standpoint, right?

So 2023. Okay. Not so long ago, you know, we were both in the tech start boom. Right. And I joke that I wish I had paid a little bit more attention in my econ class in college about what interest rates meant. Yeah. Cause in my dumb lack of business acumen mind, my credit card interest rate, my home mortgage interest rate, like, okay, who cares? I didn't make the connection to venture capital and all the money and how money was basically free for 10, 50, 12 years. It was free, which is what drove that massive growth of the SAS and the tech industry. And I remember seeing the tea leaves of like interest rates. Oh, they're going to go up a little bit, but I, it, I, it didn't connect with me how severe that was going to be.

Did you see that one coming? Um, no, had I, I'd probably be a billionaire today because I had a, you know, I'd have bought all the instruments that would have, you know, allowed for that. Although, you know, you knew they had to go up because at some point, you know, interest rates, you know, uh, after COVID, you know, 2001 and two had come down so low, they were in half. I know Google, for example, bar borrowed, I think $200 million at like a half a percent. So you knew that wasn't sustainable, but you know, uh, like you said, had you really realized that they would be jumping like they have been, you could have taken advantage of that, you know, with some investments in the financial markets.

But I think the surprise is, um, and the, you know, geopolitics right now is continuing to drive inflation, which is going to drive. Now they're not talking about interest rate cuts. They're considering interest rate increases because of inflation, you know, and again, um, but those are kind of things that, uh, you know, our salespeople need to understand because that's the world our clients are swimming in instead of looking at future rates coming down so they can invest more. It's now, boy, are we going to have to hold off on investments because interest rates are going up, borrowing costs are higher. And, um, so, yeah. And I think that one alone is something that people need to understand way more of.

And it's, you know, in history is its best, he is your best teacher in the, in, at the end of the day. Yeah. But, you know, I, just like you, I'm sure, you know, I try to share what I know and all the mistakes I've made so that people, you know, coming up don't have to make nearly as many. Um, but I remember my wife, uh, said, you know, she talks about the day that she met her father-in-law, um, and it was, it, they were waiting, her mom and her, you know, now husband, uh, were waiting in line separately for a bank. Uh, back in the early, like late seventies, I think it was early eighties, uh, to get a loan at like 13 or 80s. Yeah. Like at the 18%, like they were waiting in line to get a loan at 18%.

And I refinanced right before the, at 2.75 for my house, I'm sitting on a 2.75, 15 year fixed. Like I will never sell my house, right? Like I will never go buy another house because why the hell would I with this thing? I'd rather rent it out than, you know, that type of thing. So those types of things like that type of perspective starts to perk up a little bit when you start to see this inflation and those types of things. Cause I'm like, okay, like now, now I've been there. All right. What's, what does that mean? And what's interesting, you know, they're calling it a K economy right now. K as in K like that, because the stock market is doing well. AI is driving the stock market right now.

Uh, politicians might want to take credit, but it's the stock market that's driving AI, that's driving the stock market, but the average person, because of inflation, they're buying, they're purchasing power is going down. And so you're seeing the rich get richer and the poor get poor. And so, uh, you know, that's another reality that I think is going to manifest itself more directly as the average consumer is not able to spend. Um, they're going to have to pull, you know, they're going to pull back on their demand. That's going to start impacting businesses. That'll start impacting stock price, et cetera. So we're in a bit of an AI bubble as it relates to the stock market. Like Micron yesterday dropped 10% today.

It's up 10, 11%. I mean, the, the swings are wild, but, um, AI is sort of, I think masking some possible fundamental demand challenges that might be in the, in the marketplace and propping the, the stock market up, um, a bit artificially, um, potentially. So, well, I, and we, let's, let's say this for another episode, but I, I need to get an understanding. I still can't wrap my head around the revenue versus profitability of some of these companies. Like it, you know, the fact that open AI lost $33 billion last year. Like, I just do not understand how you make that up. And, and I like, they're betting on like, the only thing I can, I can think of here is that they're betting on the full replacement of white collar workers to, to get the payback for this massive investment that they're giving in data centers.

And like the massive losses that they have. Cause I just, it doesn't compute that, like that level of loss. I understand if you're, you know, a couple million bucks, you know, a few million bucks and you're growing and okay, Uber, great. I still don't understand the Uber finances and those types of things. But this AI is, is so upside down on profitability versus revenues. And I don't ever see the revenues catching up. There's no way that they can make up that kind of revenue by charging you and I 20 bucks a month for our subscription of chat GPT. Like there's just no way. Yeah. There's going to be another transformative model that's going to take effect. SpaceX, same thing. Yeah. SpaceX went public at a multiple of sales because there's no profitability.

There's no like, there's a possible, like, I mean, all the regular, I mean, we're going down a rabbit hole, but like all the regulations now are being thrown out the window. Like the, it's just, that's why it's scary. It's almost like I want to, I, I, a while back, I took a chunk out just because of the, the, you know, the uncertainty of what was going to happen. And I just bought a house in Costa Rica. I was like, well, at least I have an asset because like that, you know, yeah, it's tangible. And I might lose a few bucks, but I'm not going to lose it all. Right. And I'm, I'm this close to being like, ah, uh, there's, we're headed, like, this isn't headed in a great direction here. And there's, there's a crash coming, whether we like it or not.

And I just don't want to be the one holding the bag when it does. So, uh, I'm, I don't know if I'm the big short guy anymore, but with the, you know, if I can short the market and that's smart about it, but I'm getting pretty on, on, on, on easy with where things are right now. Yeah. It's, it bears watching. My, my move is, um, I buy a, I look for a stock that I like, I like the fundamentals. I buy it and then I hold it for years. So, you know, my AI plays or, you know, Micron, fortunately I got it at 10 bucks a decade ago. It's 1,200 bucks today, but it's just a long-term philosophy. And if you're in thinking long-term then over time, you're going to be safe. You know, you'll take some hits, but over the long-term you'll be okay.

That's why I like, I bought this house in 2007 and it was right at, right at the peak of right before it all crashed. And everybody was like, oh my God, I can't believe you bought your house at the highest point, you know, and it's all crap. I'm like, I'm going to be in this house for the next 30 years. Yeah. I honestly couldn't care less what happens next year, the year after it doesn't matter. I'm here for 30 years. Yeah. Now, you know, if I was trying to buy and sell today, I'd be having a heart attack. But you know, to your point, the long-term play is I think all of us got to have that, but you have to be, have to have the patience for it. Because a lot of people get freaked out by it and sell way too early and then don't get any, like they probably sold Micron yesterday.

And now all of a sudden they're pissed because it's like, shit, it's back up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So awesome. Well, Kevin, this has been a fun conversation, my friend. Where can people find out more information about the book, about what you're working on and everything else? Yeah. Yeah. So our website is acumenlearning.com. You can follow me on LinkedIn at Kevin Cope. Of course, we got the book, Seeing the Big Picture and the new book, Business Acumen for Sales Success. Anyway, I appreciate the time with you, John. This has been a fun conversation for me and hope to interact again in the future. Likewise, my friend. So I appreciate you coming on and everybody else. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

And like I always say at the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today. Because no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, if you make somebody smile, you know you had a good day. And the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much. And I will see you on the other side. Hey, thanks again for listening to the show and for all your support throughout the years. This is one last reminder to check out my training programs at jbarrows.com or leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform or G2 if you've already gone through my training or sign up for my newsletter. Any of those will help ensure I can continue to bring you free content and great conversations like the ones you just heard without having to know you with sponsors.

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