by Nancy Calabrese | Feb 29, 2024 | Podcast
About Craig Lowder: Craig Lowder is a Founder and President of the Main Spring Sales Group, a specialized client acquisition consultancy focused on creating significant, predictable, and sustainable sales growth for successful Financial Advisors, Consultants, and Business Leaders, making a 6-7 Figure Income seeking a strategic senior-level sales executive on a part-time, contract basis to develop and execute sales strategy, including sales process development, performance management systems, and ensure sales execution. With a unique blend of foundational sales science & real-world experience, Craig partners with businesses and advisors to transform their sales trajectory, ensuring consistent, measurable growth in every endeavor. Craig has worked with over 50 companies in various industries, from retail to manufacturing, financial services to business services. He has increased first-year annual sales by 22 to 142 percent for every client. Craig is the author of two highly-rated books, Smooth Selling Forever and Trusted Advisor Confidential℠. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Craig.
In this episode, Nancy and Craig discuss the following:
- The secret of growing a company to 142%
- Shift to virtual Selling and digital self-serve
- Challenges in virtual Selling: Adapting to new technology, maximizing efficiency, and reducing the cost of sales
- From cold calls to warm introductions: Increasing touchpoints with prospects
- Overcoming challenges such as wrong people in wrong seats, lack of clearly defined sales metrics, and absence of sales processes
- Keys to building an effective sales team
- Importance of ongoing learning, open communication, mentoring, and recognition and reward systems
Key Takeaways:
- We are in a virtual selling and a digital self-serve world; the old days of in-person meetings have gone.
- The virtual meetings that are being held are shorter and more on point.
- The definition of cold calling nowadays is getting a list of names and numbers and just banging the phone and calling people.
- Too many salespeople give up after two or three times, and studies show it may take six or seven outreaches.
“There are a lot of opportunities for enhancement or growth in the company. A lot of it gets down to having a detailed sales growth plan that everyone is following, making sure that there are defined sales processes that everyone follows, which shorten sales cycles, improve conversion rates, making sure that there are sales success standards present, that are activity as well as results-based, and that there are targets which generally increases the level of activity that’s taking place, making sure that organizations have an ideal client profile, understanding the difference between a crow and a pheasant. So, they invest their time in marketing, lead generation, and lead conversion on those opportunities that are the best fit for them. And then finally, and most importantly, ensuring that they have the right people in their sales organization in the right seats.” – CRAIG
“The reality is, and I believe I said it in the article, there is absolutely no justification for a cold call. With all the technology available today, whether it’s LinkedIn, the focus of prospecting should be on getting introduced to the individual in the organization we’re targeting to warm up the call. So, there’s a likelihood that an individual will either return your call or respond to an email. I would say it continues because of the amount of, and I hate to say it, noise that’s out there digitally. If you remember back when you and I were doing this several decades ago, the studies were showing it took, you know, six to seven interactions for you to begin to develop a level of trust. Today, because of all that noise out there, it’s taking twice that number of touches before somebody’s willing to trust you. So, I think that the trend is that we need to be in more frequent touch with our prospects. The conversations, the emails need to be shorter with a very defined agenda and take a waypoint for the listener, the reader.” – CRAIG
“In my book, Smooth Selling Forever, I outline 12 reasons why significant predictable and sustainable sales growth will not happen unless you overcome 12 challenges. The top four include the wrong people in the wrong seats. We know that in a virtual selling environment, the role definitions, the makeup of the sales team’s skill sets, and experience have changed. Third was not having clearly defined sales metrics, activities, and results. The focus is typically on the results, but we must understand that results are lagging success indicators. We really need to determine the leading indicators of success, which are activities, their calls, their opportunities discovered, proposals or quotes that go out the door, and how healthy our sales funnel is, just at a very basic level. The second of the top four are no defined sales processes. I’m a firm advocate that you need to have clearly defined sales processes, which are technically the documentation of best practices of those responsible for the Selling. And there are at least three, if not more. One, new customer, new project. Two, existing customers, new project. And it could be upsold, cross-sell. The third is renewals or, re-business or reorder business. And they all have different paths that require different steps and may involve different people. But the bottom line in building sales processes is that the sales process needs to be congruent with your target audience’s buying process.” – CRAIG
Connect with Craig Lowder:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it’s Nancy Calabrese, and it’s time again for Conversational selling – the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today, and it always starts with a human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Craig Lowder, author of Smooth Selling Forever, a sales effectiveness expert with a 40-year track record of helping owners of small and mid-sized businesses achieve their sales goals. He’s also the founder and president of MainSpring Sales Group, which assists companies in need of a strategic sales leader on a part-time contract or project basis to develop and execute a sales strategy, develop sales process and performance management teams, and ensure sales execution. Craig has worked with over 60 companies and increased first year annual sales from 21 to 142%. Welcome to the show, Craig.
Craig Lowder: Well, thank you, Nancy. It’s an honor to be online with you here and have the opportunity to speak to your audience. [1:27]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Okay. So how do you grow a company to 142%? I mean, that number is just, you know, unheard of.
Craig Lowder: Well, there are a lot of opportunities for enhancement or growth in the company. And a lot of it gets down to having a detailed sales growth plan that everyone is following, making sure that they are defined sales processes that everyone follows, which shorten sales cycles, improves conversion rates making sure that there are sales success standards present, that are activity as well as results based, and that there are targets which generally increases the level of activity that’s taking place, making sure that organizations have an ideal client profile, understanding the difference between a crow and a pheasant. So, they invest their time in both marketing, lead generation, lead conversion on those opportunities that are the best fit for them. And then finally, and most importantly, ensuring that they have the right people in their sales organization in the right seats. And since COVID, that has changed dramatically. [2:53]
Nancy Calabrese: How so?
Craig Lowder: We are in a virtual selling and a digital self-serve world. The old days of in-person meetings has gone by the wayside, not entirely, but on-site meetings are less frequent than they used to be. Those meetings have been converted to virtual meetings. [3:23]
Nancy Calabrese: Yep.
Craig Lowder: like we’re doing right now, Zoom, Google Meets, Teams, etc. And many of the past telephone conversations are being converted into virtual meetings. And the interesting dynamic here, Nancy, is the buyers are driving this, not the sellers. I was privileged to be interviewed by Forbes a couple of years ago. And it was right before a McKinsey report came out and what was happening in the world. And the contributing editor of Forbes goes, oh, you’re pretty good. Forbes said the same thing that you are. Excuse me. Yes, Forbes said the same thing that you did. And I said, no, I said the same thing they did. I’m happy that I’m in line with them. And what they were saying, Nancy, is buyers do not want to meet with their sellers in person, they would prefer to meet virtually. You say, well, why is that? The net of it is they’re able to make better informed decisions. How so? Well, they’re now able to engage more individuals, more stakeholders in the qualification process. The meetings that are being held are shorter. and more on point. And in fact, a McKinsey study showed that in today’s world, a good portion of the buyers are willing to make million dollars plus decisions without ever having met in person with their seller. [5:06]
Nancy Calabrese: You know, it’s funny you bring that up because when COVID hit, all I heard, well, not all, but for many people, they complained they couldn’t sell over the phone, or they couldn’t sell virtually. And I, you know, I’ve been doing this virtually for decades. So, I know a sale can be done, you know, the way in which we’re speaking right now. And I think it was a cop out for many sales reps. You know, you have to kind of go with the flow. What do you think about that?
Craig Lowder: I agree with you 100% Nancy. You know, we all get comfortable in the status quo in what we’ve been doing for years. And you combine that with new technology that people haven’t been trained on how to use. They don’t have the right camera. They don’t have the right lighting. They don’t have the right audio. They’re not sure how to use virtual backgrounders. They’re not sure how to share screens etc. So yes, it becomes a cop-out. And the reality is, and I found in my own business, I was able to have more sales meetings in a day, basically back-to-back to back-to-back, with five to ten minutes in between meetings. And my cost of business, my cost of sales, went down dramatically. [6:29]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, yeah, the bottom line is you can achieve more doing virtual selling than if you had to hit a car and go, you know, to a site. And even, you know, virtual networking becomes more and more efficient that way. So, I’m in your corner for sure. So, years ago, I was on your website, you wrote a blog that caught my attention, the science and art of prospecting, and that’s music to my ears, because it’s all we do. You wrote that in 21. Has anything changed since then?
Craig Lowder: I don’t think dramatically, Nancy. The reality is, and I believe I said it in the article, there is absolutely no justification for a cold call. With all the technology that’s available today, whether it’s LinkedIn, the focus of prospecting should be on getting introduced to the individual in the organization that we’re targeting to warm up the call. So, there’s a likelihood that individual will either return your call or respond to an email. I would say it continues because of the amount of, and I hate to say it, noise that’s out there digitally. If you remember back when you and I were doing this several decades ago, the studies were showing it took, you know, six to seven interactions for you to begin to develop a level of trust. Today, because all that noise out there, it’s taking twice that number of touches before somebody’s willing to trust you. So, I think that what the trend is, we need to be in more frequent touch with our prospects. The conversations, the emails need to be shorter with a very defined agenda and take a waypoint for the listener, the reader. [8:40]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Well, I mean, I want to be mindful. Cold calling still works. It’s just another marketing channel that should be mixed in with every other channel that you’re doing to reach out. Because if you’re not picking up the phone, somebody else is, and you’re probably leaving money on the table. What are your thoughts on that?
Craig Lowder: I Yeah, when you talk about cold calling, and I think it gets down to definition, cold calling, I get a list of names and numbers and I just start banging the phone and calling people. The reality is it’s no longer a cold call if you’ve done your research on that organization or that individual and can specifically state some observations that you’ve had by reading the publicly available information. I don’t consider that to be a cold call or a blind call. And the old studies are showing cold calling is two to 3% conversion rate. I’m finding in the business that I do, if I do my research, I’m getting probably close to three out of four people that are responding to a call and or an email. And we do have to be more persistent. Too many salespeople give up after two or three times of someone not. [10:01]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. That is true.
Craig Lowder: not responding and studies show it to may take six or seven outreaches to them with different value propositions before that individual will finally return your call respond to your email. [10:16]
Nancy Calabrese: Yep, I agree with you completely. So why do business owners struggle in creating significant, predictable, and sustainable sales growth in the business?
Craig Lowder: That’s a great question, Nancy. I’ll give you a little detail around, but the high level is, because we are comfortable in our status quo, in building our future growth, we’re always looking in the rear-view mirror, in trying to leverage what has worked in the past. And when it’s not working, we kind of scratch our heads and say, geez, what’s going on here? This has worked for decades. So, in my book, Smooth Selling Forever, I outline 12 reasons why significant predictable and sustainable sales growth is not going to happen unless you overcome 12 challenges. The top four include wrong people, wrong seats. We know in a virtual selling environment the role definitions the makeup of the sales team skillsets, experience have changed. Third was not having clearly defined sales metrics, activities as well as results. The focus typically is on the results but must understand results are lagging indicators of success. We really need to determine what are the leading indicators of success, which are activities their calls, their opportunities discovered, there’s proposals or quotes that go out the door, and how healthy is our sales funnel, just at a very basic level. The second of the top four are no defined sales processes. I’m a firm advocate that you need to have clearly defined sales processes, which are technically the documentation of best practices of those individuals that are responsible for doing the selling. And there are at least three, if not more. One, new customer, new project. Two, existing customer, new project. And it could be upsold, cross-sell. And third is renewals or re-business or reorder business. And they all have different paths that require different steps and may involve different people. But the bottom line in building sales processes is that the sales process needs to be congruent with your target audience’s buying process. So, you need to start by putting your buyer’s cap on and understand how they go about making an informed buying decision and then build your sales process to how they buy. And first and foremost, most companies, in fact, I haven’t run into one in five years now that have had a detailed, documented sales plan for growth because they’re viewing their business highly transactionally. [13:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, well, how long does it take to develop a plan like that?
Craig Lowder: Well, by putting all the elements together, because if you’re looking, Nancy, at what we need to do, is number one, we need to develop the plan. We need to surround that plan with the sales enablement systems that support the plan, and we need to make sure that we’ve got the right people in the right seats. And when I talk to small and mid-size business owners, I say, this will typically take 60 to 90 days envision that there’s probably going to be another two to three months break in period before you see the proverbial hockey stick in terms of increased sales. And typically, I get the question back, well can you do it faster than that? And my response is, I can, but you can’t because this is interactive, and you’ve got a business to run and time and time again it takes 60 to 90 days although they say we want to get this done in four weeks. [14:34]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. So, what are the keys to building an effective sales team? What’s important?
Craig Lowder: Well, I have my top 10. Number one is you have to start by organizing correctly. Right people, right seats. You need to, two, is define the roles for each position in the sales department. What are the responsibilities of that role? What are they going to be held accountable for? What authority are you going to give them? And once you define what an A player looks like, you can then say, okay, what experience, what skills, and what personality traits am I looking for? So, it’s really building a roadmap to vet sales prospects as they come into the door. Third is creating a hiring system. Most companies do not have a sales hiring system. The larger companies who have an HR department may have a hiring system or process in place, but sales are different. And I’m working with two clients right now where that’s the case. The steps are different, the people involved that are different, etc. Fourth is having a documented onboarding plan. No company that I know of has a documented onboarding plan more than, let me pat you on the rump. We’ve hired you because of your experience. Go kill them tiger or they have a one-day, two-day, three-day orientation period. And having a documented onboarding plan, there’s typically a 30, 60, 90-day objectives to ensure that is done effectively. Bottom line, why do we do this? We want to find out right away if we’ve hired the right people, and we want to bring them up to competency as quickly as they can. Five is establish sales processes and sales success standards, which I just mentioned a while ago. [16:34]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Craig Lowder: Most companies don’t have that. I always, six, as I ask the question, does your sales incentive compensation plan drive the desired behavior? And the answer is one of two. Gee, that’s a great question. I’ve never thought about that. I think so, I hope so, but the reality, it’s not, because compensation plans need to be reviewed annually based on the sales growth objectives of the organization Seven, you need to have ongoing open communication up and down the line. We need to function as a team. Regular mentoring and monitoring are very important to ensuring that each member of the sales team meets their stated objectives. 10th, and I’ve alluded, or 9th, I’ve alluded to this, you need to create a team environment focused on winning. Too many companies are totally focused on the individual, and you find that individuals are in competition with other individuals. The best practices that are being developed are coming from ongoing learning in the marketplace, because as we know, the marketplace is dynamic. And 10th is to have a recognition and reward system. As much as we like to think that sales are always the primary driver, in many cases, it’s not. It’s about being recognized. It’s about being promoted. It’s about being given the opportunity to train some of our peers. It’s about giving a presentation outside the company, et cetera, et cetera. [18:15]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Wow. You know, Craig, you clearly love selling, so do I. I’m afraid our time is up. We could go on forever. How come my people find you?
Craig Lowder: Well, thank you for asking, Nancy. The best way to reach me is via my email, which is Craig, C-R-A-I-G, at smooth, S-M-O-O-T-H, selling, S-E-L-L-I-N-G, forever. Smoothsellingforever.com. Or you can call me directly at 630-649-4943.
Nancy Calabrese: Yep. I love the phone call. Pick up the phone people. Craig, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. And you know, we could have spent a heck of a lot more time. I hope you’ll come back in the future. We can kind of dive into some other sales topics. And for everyone out there, take advantage of Craig’s expertise. Don’t be afraid to pick up that phone folks and make it a great sales day. [19:28]
by Nancy Calabrese | Feb 28, 2024 | Podcast
About Mike Ulmer: Mike Ulmer is CEO of Catapult Bookwriting and the author of books about business, hockey, Canada, and leadership. Mike’s company, Catapult Bookwriting, has published Unapologetic Leadership by Dr. Kwadwo Kyeremanteng, Drop the Mic Marketing by Jason Hunt, Show and Tell Writing: A Great Short Business Book About How to Write A Great Short Business Book by Mike Ulmer, The Myth-Guided Mind: Unleash Your God-Given Genius At Work And At Home by Michael Hynes, The 50 Year-Old Millenial by Marc Petitpas and The 40 Ways Of The Fox by Ron Foxcroft. He has written for three wire services: the Thomson News Service, Southam News, and The Canadian Press. His work has appeared in Chill: The Beer Magazine, Saturday Night Magazine, and in a compendium of sports Stories called The Way It Looks From Here (2004 Knopf), edited by Steven Brunt. Mike’s book M is for Maple is, the bestselling alphabet book in Canadian publishing history. He has appeared in front of 20,000 elementary school students across Ontario and Alberta to talk about writing and everything Canadian. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Mike.
In this episode, Nancy and Mike discuss the following:
- Mike’s three-step formula for writing a book: Proposition, Backstory, Recommendations
- Importance of a book for business growth and personal branding
- The power of a book as a marketing tool and credibility builder
- Advice on starting the book-writing process with personal storytelling
- Tips on daily writing goals and word counts
- Views on deadlines and their effectiveness in book writing
Key Takeaways:
- Podcasting, blogging, and books form the Holy Trinity of communication.
- A book provides a 24/7 representation of your expertise.
- The key is honesty and vulnerability.
- People invest their time when they read your book; honor that.
“Because when you write a book, people are just so impressed. And I’ve been living off that for about 30 years. So, I’m going to tell you it’s true. There’s a disproportionate amount of prestige when you write a book. So, it’s really a great thing for a business. And if you’re the only person telling your story, then you’re the only story that counts.” – MIKE
“If you want to write the book, we can coach you and all that stuff. We can help you do that for a very reasonable cost. But if you want to just do it by yourself, that’s okay too. We also do that if you want us to write the book for you. But to answer your question, I don’t know if everyone can write a book, but everyone can figure out who they are, what they are, and why they do it.” – MIKE
“If you feel that your story is not worth telling, someone has gotten in your ear and lied to you because everyone has a compelling story. I make a living finding them. And that’s probably not going to be Jermaine to the hundreds and thousands, not hundreds, but thousands of people listening to your podcast. But here’s what is Jermaine. That person who told you haven’t got a story worth listening lied to you. Right. And that person should be consigned to the seventh circle of hell because people carry around that lie and build their beliefs on top of that thing. It’s like a faulty foundation. All you’re trying to do is build a good house, but if someone leaves you with that terrible foundation, you’ll never have a great house. Whoever told you you couldn’t write a book lied to you. Everyone can do it.” – MIKE
Connect with Mike Ulmer:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it’s Nancy Calabrese, and it’s time again for Conversational selling – the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Mike Ulmer, owner of Catapult Book Writing, a company that specializes in helping people write their business books. Mike’s-three-step formula for writing a great book starts with the proposition, an idea that is so compelling that it is impossible to resist. Next comes the backstory, the author’s journey toward that conclusion, and finally recommendations. Lots and lots of helpful tips for the reader. After a three-decade career in journalism, Mike began writing business and leadership books in 2021. He is the author of 19 books, including M is for Maple, the bestselling alphabet book in Canadian publishing history. Welcome to the show, Mike. I know we’re gonna have a great time.
Mike Ulmer: Oh Nancy, I’m so thrilled to be here with you, thank you for having me on. [1:24]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh, my goodness. So, I guess, you know, the first thing that comes to my mind is how would a book help a business grow? What’s you’re feeling about that?
Mike Ulmer: I think it’s essential. You’re seeing a lot of people podcasting, which is brilliant. I heard someone call the blogs, podcasting and a book, sort of the Holy Trinity. I think the thing about writing a book is the discovery that goes into it. I think I like to tell people that I charge you X amount of dollars for the clarity and I throw the book in for free because when we talk and Nancy, I’m terrible. I’ll hound you to get the real root of your story. And when we get that, that’s the proposition that you mentioned so kindly. When we get that and then the backstory and then that all the conclusions, all the, all the advice, you have something that’s your North star. And so, you can use it for your social media. It’s the title of your book. It’s your, it’s your podcast. It’s the title of your podcast and the theme of your podcast. When you must do an elevator speech, it’s that 30 second speech. [2:31]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay.
Mike Ulmer: When you must do something, a presentation, it’s steamed around that. It’s so much more. It’s really the answer to all those questions about social media that vex people. It’s super, super powerful. The thing about a book is it works for you 24-7. Listen, Nancy, I have made, I’m going to tell you this right now. A book gives you an unrealistic sense of importance. You’re nowhere near as important as that book is because it carries so much weight. [3:01]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Mike Ulmer: Because when you write a book, people are just so impressed. And I’ve been living off that for about 30 years. So, I’m going to tell you it’s true. There’s a disproportionate amount of prestige when you write a book. So, it’s really a great thing for a business. And if you’re the only person telling your story, then you’re the only story that counts. [3:20]
Nancy Calabrese: All right, so, you know, when I think about writing a book, and I shared with you earlier that I had a book written for me, if I had to do it for myself, I would be totally overwhelmed. And yet you say it’s easier than you think.
Mike Ulmer: It is because I think it’s easier just by those three things. Concentrate. So, where you start, Nancy, and I should also add that I do write books for people, but I encourage people to write their books because even if you don’t work with me, it’s so good for your business and so good for you developmentally personally is to find out what your story really, really is, that signature story. So that’s the first part. Where you start, Nancy, is your backstory. You write your life story. [4:06]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Okay.
Mike Ulmer: without the intention of presenting your life story in your book. Your story is all it does is confirm your conclusion. So, can I give you an example? Oh, sure. So, there was a woman named Annie Duke. She’s written a great book called Quit. And the premise of it is sometimes it’s a better idea to quit than to bang your head against the wall and pursue these things because you want to be that guy who never quit. Sometimes it’s a great idea to quit, to pivot. [4:35]
Nancy Calabrese: I want an example, yeah.
Mike Ulmer: So let me ask you this question. If you’re a mountaineer and you’re standing at the base of the mountain, what’s your goal?
Nancy Calabrese: Not to climb it. But obviously you want to climb it, right? Hit the top.
Mike Ulmer: No, you want to get back. Getting back is far more important than climbing the mountain because if you went to Kilimanjaro, you would find all these frozen corpses of people who thought that the only thing that mattered was climbing the mountain. And so, Nancy’s thing, and this is a great and brilliant demonstration of why you should pivot, why you should quit. But Nancy was, Nancy, I’m sorry, and she was a professional poker player. Who would know more about when to throw in your hand than a professional poker player? So, when she talks about her career in poker and what led her to poker and what led her to these conclusions, that backstory is super important because it qualifies that proposition. Sometimes you ought to quit. And the proposition is so great because it’s just so counterintuitive. And all the great propositions are counterintuitive. Like the four-hour work week. What a great idea. Who wouldn’t want to read a book about having a four-hour work week? So, I think if you look at these three and anyone, everyone has these tips, I think it can be made a lot easier. And I really hope it is by people looking at those three things. So, tell your backstory and you’ll figure out how your backstory ends up into your present story. I knew a guy. He, not far from me and he, I’m in Canada now and he, his parents made good money, but he always felt this financial insecurity. And so, he became very entrepreneurial. He was the guy that, you know, bought a six pack of Coke, and went to the construction site and sold it to the guys for more money. He was that guy, three paper routes, great guy, right? And he took business because he’s interested in business. And then he decided to take financial planning. So, nobody else would have to live. No other kid would have to live with that uncertainty of where the family money is. No parents would have to, no kids would have to. And so, the root of that trail was in that feeling that insecurity as a kid. And if we look at our stories, there’s always things that happen along the way that sort of led us to what we’re doing now. And so, when you write your life story just for yourself, write it for yourself and be as vulnerable, Nancy, as you can write all the hard things. And I know people don’t want to do that because it’s hard to be vulnerable, but it’s just you. You don’t have to use it in the book if you really don’t want to. But let me give you another example if I can. I did a book with a guy named Ron Foxcroft, fantastic entrepreneur, great guy. He invented this whistle called the Fox 40. It’s super loud and so it doesn’t have what’s called a P, a little bit of cork in it. And he’s done great. He bought a company called Fluke Transport, a trucking company. [7:40]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Mike Ulmer: He made their slogan, if it’s on time, it’s a fluke. Brilliant, funny, fantastic guy. Done well, really, well. Supports a lot of things. Very wealthy man, done great. But still working at 75, still putting out in 60-hour weeks at 75. And I noticed he didn’t drink. And I said, Ron, who was the alcoholic in your life? And he said, it was my dad. And he beat me once a week because he was a deeply unhappy man. My dad always said “Woulda. Coulda. Shoulda”. And he never reached his full potential. I never wanted to be like my dad. [8:19]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow.
Mike Ulmer: Okay, now we know. Now we know why you work 75-hour weeks. And so that thing that happened when he was a kid is key to understanding who he is now. [8:33]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. Talk about your background in book writing and journalism.
Mike Ulmer: Oh, well, I started when I was 20 years old. I took journalism at community college. And what happened there is I got a letter and said, congratulations, you’ve been accepted into the journalism program at Lambton College, which was my local community college in Sarnia. And even in the 80s, this was unusual since I had never applied. So, I went to my mom and said, what’s the deal here? I got this letter from Lambton College, and she looked very sheepish. And she said, well, I had to do something, could get you out of the house. Cause I was a bit of a deadbeat. And, and so she, well, in Canada, it’s called uttering a forged document. And I took Lampton, I went to Lampton college, and I’d love to tell you Nancy, that I was an immediate success, but I had no skin in the game. I flunked out my wife. I met my wife there. She graduated and still been a year ahead of me. She still is now. But I had to go out west and I got in a bit of an accident. I wasn’t injured, but I sort of got my head turned around and I decided I was working with Dynamite Nancy out in the bush. Even in the 12 minutes that we’ve been talking, any listener would tell you, this guy should not have dynamite. So, I went back, and I graduated and then I started, and I worked my way up. I always wanted to be a hockey writer. I always wanted to write about the Toronto Maple Leafs. I got my goal. I worked all the way through it. It took me many, many years then I reached where I wanted to be and then I blew it up. I did not know it at the time, but I had bipolar illness. The worst thing for someone with bipolar illness is to have a job like mine where I travel the world and rode on deadline and then had to get up for a plane the next day and travel between time zones and really pretty deadline-driven stress job. [10:32]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah.
Mike Ulmer: I had been sad before but so, what happened was you go to the doctor when you’re sad and the doctor does your presenting sad. So, the doctor does what they should do. They give you an antidepressant. And for a small percentage of people, that’s like putting air into a balloon that’s already full. So, you fill the balloon with air and naturally what happens is sooner or later, the balloon is either going to pop or it’s going to blow away and then it’s going to fly in the air and drop down on the floor completely empty. It takes people who have bipolar illness about 10 years to get the correct diagnosis. And they can do a lot of damage in those 10 years. So, I was lucky. It stalled my career, put it in a different trajectory. But I went to work for the people that own the maple leaves and the raptors and that. So, I’d done some good work, and they hired me, and I lasted seven years there. And then there was a new regime that came in. So, I didn’t know what I was going to do. They, you know, I left, and they walked me out, I should say. I didn’t leave because there was no question that I was to leave. So, they walked me out with this new administration, which was fine. They were very gracious, and they were really good to me, and I didn’t want to do what I was doing anyway. So, I don’t have anything bad to say, nothing but good things about what they did for me because I needed them at that time in my life. I was vulnerable and they hired me, and they were so gracious and accommodating. But anyway, I didn’t know what I wanted to do and then I went to B&I, Business Networking International. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. It’s a very powerful group. I went there and I met businesspeople, and I didn’t even know there was this cohort of people who were out there figuring it out on themselves. I’m not working for anybody else and having the courage to operate their own business and I think that is a very courageous thing to do and a very lonely thing to do and I said, these people don’t have a story because I would talk to them, and they had no idea. So that gentleman I talked about, he was in my B&I group, and we got that figured out in about 10 minutes. But I’ve been sort of trying to figure out how to help people find their stories. And so, I write books for people, which is sort of like ghost writing, except I hound the hell out of you, Nancy. Like I did with Ron, I’ll ask difficult questions and make you uncomfortable to get that great, great powerful story that builds something between you and the reader. Because Ron was a truck guy. No one has a trucking company, but a lot of people have had alcoholics in their life. And so, you build that trust by that really, vulnerable thing in their life. If they’re willing to share it, when someone reads that, you just bring a light into that person’s life because for the first time, maybe ever, they’re not alone. That’s super, super powerful. Anyway, I started doing that and I’ve been doing that since. I write people’s books for them, as I mentioned, which is great fun. As I also mentioned, I say, listen, I’m going to give you a clarity in your life that you’ve never had. [13:27]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Mike Ulmer: And I’m going to do that for X amount of dollars, and I’ll throw the book in for free. Because to my mind, the great benefit is the knowledge of who you are, what you do, why you do it and why you’re really, good at it. And once you know that you can communicate in unlimited ways. [13:46]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. Well, how do you know if you could even write a book?
Mike Ulmer: Well, a lot of people are intimidated by it. I think anyone can write a book. Just keep your sentences short. Don’t write any more than three. The idea that I don’t have a story that people don’t have a story is not true. Everyone has a story, a compelling reason. Everyone has expertise because they’re in business, you know? And so, everyone has those three elements. Now, what I do is I’ll interview you and this is one of my services and we’ll find those three things. [14:20]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Mike Ulmer: If you want to write the book, we can coach you up and all that stuff. We can help you do that for a very reasonable cost. But if you want to just do it by yourself, that’s okay too. If you want us to write the book for you, we do that as well. But to answer your question, I don’t know if everyone can write a book, but everyone can figure out who they are, what they are, and why they do it. [14:44]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, so what I’m hearing you say is when you consider writing a book, first start with your own personal story. Is that right?
Mike Ulmer: Yes, ma’am. Yes, absolutely. And be as honest and vulnerable as you can.
Nancy Calabrese: Well, what about pictures? Are they good to use?
Mike Ulmer: I don’t know. I don’t have a lot of pictures in the books that we’ve produced. You know, and here’s the important thing, Nancy, pictures tell your story and here’s the dirty little secret about stories. No one gives a damn. People don’t give a shit about your stories, but they’ll walk across the mountain to hear your conclusions. Your story might amuse them or entice them for 30 seconds. Your conclusions can change their lives. They might keep those conclusions and use them all the way through their lives. So don’t write with an eye towards telling your story. Although the only reason the story is important is because it validates the conclusions as we talked about, the conclusions being the proposition. [15:49]
Nancy Calabrese: Interesting. Wow.
Mike Ulmer: So, anything that doesn’t speak to that proposition that didn’t bring you to that point, leave it out. But that doesn’t mean some of the bad things that have happened are difficult or challenging things you’ve had in your life. You shouldn’t include. But it’s the proposition. That’s what people need and that’s what they want. And that’s what when you write a book and someone devotes hours to reading your book, and our books are short, they’re only 20,000 words. So, you can finish them in two hours. But if someone’s doing that courtesy for you, then you must reward them because they’re putting everything, they know in their life down. Their kids, their bills, their hobbies, whatever. They’re stopping just to listen to you. So, you must honor that. You must give them something really, powerful because they’re investing the most powerful, precious thing they have and that’s their time. [16:41]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Right. their time. What is a reasonable number of words to write daily? I mean, we all have other jobs, right? Other things to do. So, what’s your recommendation?
Mike Ulmer: I think if you can write 200 words a day. Now that’s not much. That’s a little bit more than a laundry list. If you write 200 words a day times five days, that’s a thousand words. Have I got that right? Because your sales, so you have a basic grounding of math. So, if you’re writing a thousand words a day, 20 weeks makes 20,000. If you can’t say what you want to say in 20,000, you’re not staying the right thing. [17:21]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Yeah, wow. And generally, though, so how long does it typically take to write a book? Your thoughts?
Mike Ulmer: That one is hard, Nancy, because I always say, how long is the piece of rope? It really depends on the commitment of the person writing the book. We can coach you, we can set a goal limit, a word limit, but I can’t speak to what that other person will do because that has to come from them. [17:48]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. I mean, do you believe in deadlines?
Mike Ulmer: Well, someone who had to work to one, deadlines worked for me, but they don’t necessarily work for other people. But you know, there’s a reason why in labor negotiations, everything is done at the 11th hour, right? We feel an urgency. So I guess the answer, the better answer is yes, I believe in deadlines. Because I got to tell you, Nancy, if I took your third kid, if you didn’t have 20,000 words, if I took that kid and brought them to Moldavia, you’d make your 20,000 words, so it’s a question of how important it is to you. [18:21]
Nancy Calabrese: He got it.
Mike Ulmer: Maybe, I don’t know, maybe you want to get rid of your third kid and have me taking them all to you.
Nancy Calabrese: You have… No! No, no. Oh my God. Listen, you know, we’re almost up with time. Tell…what is the one takeaway you want to leave the audience with?
Mike Ulmer: I want to lead the audience with this. If you feel that your story is not worth telling, someone has gotten in your ear and lied to you because everyone has a compelling story. I make a living finding them. And that’s probably not going to be Jermaine to the hundreds and thousands, not hundreds, but thousands of people listening to your podcast. But here’s what is Jermaine. That person that told you haven’t got a story that’s worth listening, lied to you. Lied to you. Right. And that person should be consigned to the seventh circle of hell because people carry around that lie and build their beliefs on top of that thing. It’s like a faulty foundation. All you’re trying to do is build a good house, but if someone leaves you with that terrible foundation, you’re never going to have a great house. Whoever told you can’t write a book lied to you. Everyone can do it. [19:36]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Well, they shouldn’t be in your life. Yeah.
Mike Ulmer: As long as you’re vulnerable and you’re truthful. And, and we talked about a formula tonight. Everyone can give it a go. I don’t know if you can, here’s, I don’t know if you can finish your book. I hope you can, but you can find out those three things with inquiry or having somebody ask you those questions. What’s your proposition? What’s your backstory? And of course, what kind of advice you can give. [20:00]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, great conversation. We’re going to have to continue this some other time. How can my people find you?
Mike Ulmer: Oh, thank you! Well, you can find me at MikeUlmer.com. That’s Mike Ulmer, U-L-M-E-R.com. And, and I love speaking with people and, and we can, if they’re interested, we can have a five-minute convo and I can well figure out what they, what their next step is. And if they’re interested in more than me arrange more and down the line, but I just for me, this is the best part. [20:30]
Nancy Calabrese: I love it. I love it. Thank you so much for spending time with us and sharing your wisdom about books. You know, before meeting with you, I never thought about the importance of having a book published. So, everyone out there, get online, get in front of Mike. He’s an expert in this. And you can also tell he’s a lot of fun to work with. So, until we meet again, make it an awesome Book Day, everyone, and we’ll see you next time. Thanks again, Mike, for coming on the show.
Mike Ulmer: Well, Nancy, thank you for having me. I had a great time.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, me too. [21:09]
by Nancy Calabrese | Feb 22, 2024 | Podcast
About John Lester: John Lester is the Founder of Attitude Selling, helping struggling organizations and salespeople become sustainable revenue creators. Throughout his career, John has been acknowledged as a transformational leader, specializing in revitalizing underperforming organizations. He possesses a deep understanding of opportunity development, excelling in identifying and seizing market opportunities to accelerate expansion and boost revenue through fostering collaborative partnerships, strategic connections, and new market segmentation. Having managed extremely large and complex accounts, John understands the importance of delivering quality, consistent service. He exhibits a unique talent for root-cause analysis, swiftly pinpointing the core issues clients face and articulating them effectively while establishing optimal courses of action. He recognizes that business is ever-evolving. John’s observations underscore the critical importance of aligning the organization along the “lead to satisfied customer” continuum for achieving large-scale, repeatable success in sales. John is also the author of “Winning the Inner Game of Sales: The Foundation of Success is Mindset.” Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about John.
In this episode, Nancy and John discuss the following:
- John Lester’s background and expertise in sales
- Sales as an art and the importance of human connection
- Challenges in sales and the impact of mental models
- The importance of understanding buyers and their psychology
- Difficulties solopreneurs face in sales
- Explanation of Attitude Selling and its focus on mindset
- The Sales Mastermind program and its purpose
Key Takeaways:
- Good salespeople help others achieve their dreams, goals, and objectives.
- All these mental models are in your head, and until you get them out, they won’t work.
- Wait a minute, if the person asks about price, wouldn’t it be worth figuring out why they’re asking about price right away instead of pushing that conversation away?
- You’re not going to make progress if you don’t get pushed.
“Sales is so amazing for a couple of reasons. One is because it is not a science as much as it’s an art. It is not practical as much as it’s human. And what you’re really dealing with in sales is human behaviors and human emotions. You can’t predict any of that. And that makes it so much fun. But the other thing that’s so amazing about sales is that good salespeople help other people achieve their dreams, their goals, their objectives.” – JOHN
“I would say the biggest misconception about the role of selling is that the seller needs to go, “Excuse me, but beat the living daylights out of the buyer into submission.” All right? Don’t. Stop. All right? It doesn’t work. But there’s so many. Sellers are told and taught, and hopefully not that much anymore, but told and taught that the buyer is uninformed, buys on price, and knows what they want. Stop! They were wrong, okay? The buyer buys because they think it’s a good deal. No, none of its true. None of its true. They all come into play, but none of its true.” – JOHN
“Great question, but it’s natural, and I want all the solopreneurs listening to take a deep breath. The solopreneurs, for the most part, start a business because they have some kind of expertise. Usually, it’s technical expertise, some kind of subject matter that they know about, whether it’s a physician, a psychologist, or a plumber. They go, “Hey, I want to deliver that expertise.” So, they understand their expertise, and again, this goes back to what I said in the very beginning: their expertise is a technical, definable offering. But the decision to buy their expertise is not technical; it’s not definable; it’s human; it’s behavioral. And so, they’re operating at this technical level, which is fine. Still, in order to sell, they have to change who they are to a certain extent and operate at the human level, and operate at the—I will say—political, not in the sense that everybody thinks of political, but political from the perspective of interaction. They’re not used to doing that. I mean, I don’t know how many schools in the country at any level offer such courses on how to come to an agreement, how to read another person. I don’t know anybody who does, but you need those things. We have lots of classes on accounting.” – JOHN
Connect with John Lester:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it’s Nancy Calabrese, and it’s time again for Conversational selling – the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with John Lester, the owner of Attitude Selling. He helps organizational change makers reinvent their sales processes so they can keep clients longer, get recommended more often, and upsell, cross-sell on a more consistent basis. He’s spent the last 40 years in direct selling, sales management, sales process improvement, and messaging. John’s work has ranged from very large fortune accounts, primarily in the financial services space to small firms trying to create a sustainable and repeatable sales process. Welcome to the show, John. Let’s get started.
John Lester: Thank you, Nancy. So happy to be here. Yes, let’s. There’s a whole lot to talk. [1:17]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, I know. So why is sales so amazing?
John Lester: Sales is so amazing for a couple of reasons. One, because it is not a science as much as it’s an art. It is not practical as much as it’s human. And what you’re really dealing with in sales is human behaviors and human emotions. You can’t predict any of that. And that makes it so much fun. But the other thing that’s so amazing about sales is that good salespeople help other people achieve their dreams, their goals, their objectives. [1:56]
Nancy Calabrese: Huh, I like that. I’ve never thought of it that way, but yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. Now, I know you have stated that many people are challenged by sales. You point out, they are not alone. So, most of what is holding people back is mental models built over the years. Can you go into that a little bit more? [2:23]
John Lester: Yeah, definitely. We all have, like it or not, so folks don’t get all upset about this. First, we’re human. The definition, one of the definitions of human is imperfect. So, we are all imperfect, of course, except for my mother-in-law, God bless her soul, but we’re not going to go there right now. All right, so we have prejudices, we have beliefs, we have all sorts of things that we grew up with. I mean, there’s enough studies out there to talk about the fact that somewhere along the lines of 60% of your personality is cast in stone by the time you’re five or six or seven years old. Which means that things are affecting you in the womb. All right, forget about when you get out and go to grandma school or kindergarten or whatever. They’re affecting you in the womb. Comments that are made, you know, may be offhanded by your parents, by neighbors, by relatives are interpreted by your immature brain completely differently. And so, you then have these things, and they keep getting reinforced over the years and over the years. So, I’ll give you a couple of examples. Don’t trust that person, he’s a salesperson. Might’ve been said when you were three years old. All right. Oh, oh, yeah, don’t go near them. They live in the black neighborhood. And I see this, I’m not trying to pick on anybody. I’m serious. This is the and its little stuff that happens like this. All right, advertising. Advertising is one of the greatest reasons we believe some of the things that we believe. Some of it negative, most of it positive because they’re trying to get us to buy a product or something. But again, this is all implanted into our brain. So, you’ll get things like, oh, I don’t have any value. Oh, I don’t know enough to go and talk to a CEO of a company that’s got 30 years experience. I’m 26 or 27 or 30 years old. [4:16]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
John Lester: I’m not an expert in that. How can I go in and speak? All these mental models are in your head. And until you get them out, and we’re not going to go back and say, oh, let’s put you through 30 years of psychoanalysis. Now, let’s just figure out what’s holding you back. Let’s figure out a quick fix to get around it. Let’s move on. That’s what I’m trying to help people do. [4:39]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Right. But how do you get it out of your head? I mean, how long does it take?
John Lester: I mean, I’ve had certain things that I can get out of people’s heads in minutes just because they didn’t think about it a certain way, because it was never presented to them that way. So, I’m going to give you one of my favorite ones. And again, the timing might be not 100% of this, but let’s say 60 or 70 years ago, okay? In Japan, bluefin tuna was considered a waste fish thrown back. Do you know what top-end bluefin tuna goes for at the wholesale markets in Japan? You’re talking thousands of dollars per pound. But it was, somebody then said, wait a minute, what’s going on? Why are we doing this? All right. There’s a, I just read this, this is so amazing. I believe its Asian carp were imported into this or brought into this country, maybe legally, maybe illegally. And now they’re overrunning our waterways in certain states. I mean, this is becoming a serious ecological concern. So, the restaurant industry is trying to figure out how to promote Asian carp on the menus, because they have no natural predator. So, yeah, so everything, yeah, I mean, right? Tomatoes were considered poisonous up until somebody said, wait a minute, I want some pasta. I mean, these are, yeah, early days, yeah, tomatoes were considered poisonous. It’s true. [6:10]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow.
John Lester: So, all of these things affect how we act and affect what we are willing to do and not willing to do. Oh, if I talk to this person about something, I’m going to be rejected. So how often do you think that person is going to talk to them?
Nancy Calabrese: Great. Wow.
John Lester: So, some of these things are easy to get across, some of them are harder. But I’ve had some good successes with folks in the five-week program that I run. And a lot of it is, people need somebody to tell them it’s OK to question something and they need somebody to pull it out of them. Because look, the truth of the matter is, when the thunderstorm comes, we all want to crawl under the bed. We all do. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if the house is burning, you might not want to be crawling under the bed. [7:04]
Nancy Calabrese: True. So what is the biggest misconception about the role of selling?
John Lester: I would say the biggest misconception about the role of selling is that the seller needs to go, excuse me, but beat the living daylights out of the buyer into submission. All right? Don’t. Stop. All right? It doesn’t work. But there’s so many. Sellers are told and taught, and hopefully not that much anymore, but told and taught that the buyer is uninformed, that the buyer buys on price, that the buyer knows what they want. Stop! They were wrong, okay? That the buyer buys because they think it’s a good deal. No, none of its true. None of its true. They all come into play, but none of its true. [8:05]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. Well, why don’t we as salespeople understand buyers?
John Lester: There’s, what I believe has happened is, we’ll take you back a little bit. The economy that we live in for the most part, now it has been changing over the last, I would say, 20 years, but for the most part was shaped by efforts that were made in the Second World War. Because the Second World War was all about taking the country and creating efficiency out of that country. And it was really from the perspective of producing arms and armaments for the war effort. And to some extent, we won that war because we were able to produce, and we were able to create supply lines. And Patton was very famous for this, was getting things to the troops that they needed to get to the front and to win. And you see this right now, you see in Ukraine, what’s costing Ukraine to lose right now is because they can’t get the armaments. What caused Russia to lose the war against Germany? The freeze, they couldn’t figure out how to work around that. Right. But we figured out how to overcome these obstacles, but what that required was it was a high degree of specialization and a high degree of intense management. Now, who is going to then become your political leaders after a war in the successful war, it’s the people that were fighting the war for you. So, who was the biggest example of that? Eisenhower. Eisenhower came out of the war. What did he become? He became president of the United States. Alright, wow, something must be here. Ooh let’s take this into management psychology and now let’s figure out how we can push people and push people and push people and push people and produce and produce. How do you do that? You push people. Oh, let me learn the six ways to get somebody to say yes so that when they say yes on the seventh time, they’re buying a million-dollar product from me. You know what? To a large extent, it worked. It really did. [10:05]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
John Lester: And it’s in the literature, it’s still in the literature, it’s still being taught. I was, and I don’t want to go crazy with this, but I can’t, I was sitting listening to a quote unquote, sales trainer yesterday in a webinar and he was talking about, well, if the person asks about what the price is in the very beginning, you got to figure out a way to push that conversation away. Wait a minute, if the person asks about price, wouldn’t it be more worth it to figure out why they’re asking about price right away? [10:36]
Nancy Calabrese: Right, yep. Nope.
John Lester: You’re going to hide from it? I mean, can you imagine walking to the supermarket tonight? Oh, I think I’m going to make a roast chicken tonight. Let me go, hey, Mr. Butcher, how are you, man? How much is chicken today? I’m well. You know, it’s an interesting question that you ask how much chicken is today. Why would you ask that question? What are you kidding me? You serious? But we still have these, and we still teach this kind of, there are very few people that I am aware of that are teaching selling from the perspective of respect for the buyer and teaching selling from the respect of yourself as an individual. So, we have these again models, they’re ingrained into society. We have all this text that’s out there. You have people like, what’s his name, Jordan Belford, you have Wolf of Wall Street, you’ve got all these kinds of people, who really have made money and they’ve done very well with this high-pressure approach. But they’re also highly marketed. So, people believe, oh, highly marketed, hmm, there must be something there. In certain cases, yes, there are certain cases where you can do that kind of stuff. But for the average person, it doesn’t work. [11:50]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. So why do so many solopreneurs have difficulty with sales?
John Lester: Great question but it’s natural and I want all the solopreneurs listening to take a deep breath. The solopreneurs for the most part start a business because they have some kind of expertise, usually it’s a technical expertise, it’s some kind of subject matter that they know about whether it’s a physician or a psychologist or a plumber and they go hey I want to deliver that expertise. So, they understand their expertise and again this goes back to what I said in the very beginning, their expertise is a technical definable offering but the decision to buy their expertise is not technical, it’s not definable, it’s human, it’s behavioral. And so, they’re operating at this technical level, which is fine, but in order to sell, they have to change who they are to a certain extent and operate at the human level and operate at the, and I will say political, not in the sense that everybody thinks of political, but political from an interactions perspective, they’re not used to doing that. I mean, I don’t know how many schools in the country at any level, you know, offer such courses on how to come to agreement, how to read another person. I don’t know anybody who does, but those are the things that you need. We have lots of classes on accounting. [13:10]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Well, sales is all about psychology, really, right?
John Lester: It’s all about psych. It is all about psychology. And the other piece that I’m taking it to, Nancy, so this is where it’s important, so much of psychology and so much of what we teach in general is about doing it to the other person. So, psychology is the other person. And what I’m saying is what we need to be spending time on is what’s going on in my head before I start to worry about what I’m doing to the other person. So, I’m just taking it one step deeper. [13:44]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. So, I love your company name Attitude Selling. Why is mindset so important in sales?
John Lester: Because how you approach something, as I said before, we all have these preconceived notions, those are all our mindset. And what I’m saying is you’ve got to change that mindset and have a different mindset. My mindset every morning when I wake up is, who am I going to help today? It’s not what am I going to sell today? It’s whose life can I make better today? [14:17]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. I love that.
John Lester: The sales come, but the sales come. Because people want help, especially, oh my God, especially now. People are crazy, they want help. But you don’t have to say to them, oh, you know, I’ll help you fix my, you go, hey, look, I’m here to help you. And they go, hey, cool, what can I give you back? Give me back money, because that’s what we use, fine. [14:37]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. You know, I said before, mindset is so important in sales, but I think it’s important in life, period. Right.
John Lester: It’s the same. It’s really the same. All everything that I talk about and everything I teach is applicable to life. I’ve just decided to help my tribe and my tribe is people who need to sell. Doesn’t mean, you know, that it’s not going to work for you somewhere else. I give you an example, another example quickly. I spent 18 years as a certified motorcycle instructor. So, I took people who had never been on a motorcycle before and taught them how to ride successfully and how to navigate traffic. All right. [15:16]
Nancy Calabrese: And you had no experience?
John Lester: Oh no, I was heavily trained. No, I had experience, I had been riding and I went through an extensive training, and I would go through training every single year to upgrade my skillset. But what I found most interesting about it was not just that I enjoyed motorcycling more, but my car driving changed. [15:37]
Nancy Calabrese: How so?
John Lester: Because my mindset changed about driving. My mindset changed about where I was looking, how I was reacting, when I was reacting, how I was braking, how I was turning, how I was, all of those things. So, all of a sudden it translated. So, anything that I convey in the sales arena should convey to personal. Because at the end of the day, as my great friend Wayne Gere said, two people in a room, one walks out sold. [16:09]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Huh.
John Lester: Well, that other one could be your child. Could be your neighbor.
Nancy Calabrese: What do you mean by that anyway?
John Lester: Everything that we do as humans, whether we think about it or not, results in somebody a little more than the other person agreeing with the other person’s perspective. It just is. So, two people in a room, they’re going to have a conversation, hey, good seeing you, George, hey, good seeing you, Sam. One of them is going to walk away a little more convinced of something the other person said. It’s normal. It’s natural. So take advantage. Take advantage of it. [16:49]
Nancy Calabrese: Never thought of it that way. Yeah, really. So, I know that you have several programs. One program is your sales mastermind. I think you mentioned another program. Why don’t you talk a little bit about them?
John Lester: The one I really want to talk about for this audience is the Sales Mastermind, because this is really my concern for individuals. So, the solopreneur, the entrepreneur, the professional salesperson who’s not making it. I wanted to create an environment where somebody could come in of their own free will, not being told by their management, not being told by, you know, their HR department or anybody else like that, where somebody could come in that said, look, I need to get some stuff resolved. I’m not sure what the problem is, but I need to get this stuff taken care of because I don’t want to be scared anymore. I don’t want to wake up in the morning sweating, getting up. I don’t want to be scared to go talk to quote unquote Mr. Big the buyer. I want to understand what the buyer is thinking. I want them to come to this on their own. And that’s the mastermind. Now, what’s really interesting about us as human beings is we need a couple of things. We need somebody to keep us accountable. We need somebody to push us we need direction. So that’s what the purpose of the Mastermind is. It’s to help people start to realize these issues, start to come to terms with these issues. If they don’t come to terms with these issues on their own, they will never come to terms with them. [18:16]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Huh. How long is the Mastermind?
John Lester: I can tell mastermind is five weeks. We meet for, after the five weeks.
Nancy Calabrese: Okay. And then what happens after the five weeks?
John Lester: It’s up to the person. Do they want to just go off on their own? Are they so sick and tired of listening to me that they want to leave? That’s fine, I’m only teasing. Or do I keep them in just a group, a larger group of just, hey, you want to come in and talk about something this week or next week. So, you can stay in a group facility, larger group facility for as long as you like. But the mastermind is very focused. There are four or five things we focus on. We get through them in the five-week period. I’m going to tell people that are listening right now, I do push you. I do. Because you’re not going to make progress if you don’t get pushed. [19:05]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay. So, the moral of the story is unless you’re looking to work, unless you’re looking to work, don’t join the group.
John Lester: Right. Yeah. Don’t join the group.
Nancy Calabrese: I can’t believe we’re up with time, John. You know, I love sales. I I’m guessing as much as you do. How can my people find you?
John Lester: Yeah. So AttitudeSelling.com is my website. And go there, look around, look at the Mastermind, see if it makes sense to you. You can contact me with, there’s a calendar link on there, there’s my phone number on there, there’s my email on there. Reach out. I had somebody come into a session I was doing the other day, they said, I don’t know why I’m here, but it looks interesting. 45-minutes later, they’re going, I can’t believe this was the best session I’ve ever been in, you’ve really helped me. I like to do that for people. I love it when people smile and go, wow, you helped me. I like it when they give me money too, but that’s going to happen if I help them. [20:01]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. So, my takeaway from you is sales is all about helping, not about pushing.
John Lester: It is all about helping. No, it’s not. But there is a little pushing Nancy because none of us like change, but it’s pushing in a helpful way. Now, let me throw something out to your audience because I know you’ve got a great audience of motivated people. I’m going to do something I haven’t done before. I’m going to do an offer of a special Mastermind. So, if your audience wants to get four or more of their friends together and do a mat and have me do a mastermind with them for them as a group. I’ll cut out a special mastermind, it can be as few as five people, but nothing less than that, and I will give them a killer price just because I know I will have fun. [20:58]
Nancy Calabrese: Cool, cool. You hear that everyone? Look, I just really want to say a huge thank you, John, for sharing your expertise with me and the audience and people listening in take advantage of this man’s expertise and his generous offer. So, until we speak again, I want everyone to make it an awesome sales day. See you next time. [21:28]
by Nancy Calabrese | Feb 20, 2024 | Podcast
About Chet Lovegren: Chet Lovegren is the Founder & Head Sales RX’er of The Sales Doctor, a company that helps clients prevent their revenue bleed from archaic training, coaching, and implementation practices. After working for 7+ years as an individual contributor, Chet started The Sales Doctor in 2020 as a way for salespeople and sales leaders to take a ‘prescriptive’ approach to diagnose and solve problems in their go-to-market strategy. Since then, he’s helped companies raise over $100M in VC Funds and seen over 125 professionals perform at their best, get promoted, and achieve their true earning potential. His foundations and teachings are a combination of his 11+ years in the go-to-market space, both as a seller and leader. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Chet.
In this episode, Nancy and Chet discuss the following:
- Importance of prescriptive approach in sales
- Comparison of sales strategies to medical diagnosis
- Significance of onboarding for new sales reps and managers
- Use of technology in improving hiring processes
- Importance of measuring performance and engagement
- Strategies for identifying and nurturing future leaders
- Advice on managing and leading sales teams
Key Takeaways:
- 90% of what I do is an aggregate of all the information I’ve taken in, eaten the fish, and spit out the bones.
- Try a lot of things and see what works best for you.
- The forgetting curve: within 30 days, we forget 87% of what we learned.
- Empathy does not mean a lack of accountability.
“I like to use the idea of prescriptive because if you’re a doctor and you are doing it right, it’s not a one-size-fits-all all. And the best doctors who have done the most critical work in saving lives have dug deep into the core problems, not solving for symptoms. But why are these symptoms happening? Because you think about if you have a fever, you’re gonna have similar symptoms as if you have a cold, their shared symptoms across certain problems or diagnoses, right? And my favorite saying is a doctor who provides a diagnosis without examination is guilty of malpractice. I think many LinkedIn gurus do this, but many sales teams do it for their opportunities and customers. And if we want to be transparent, honest, value-driven salespeople, let’s walk the walk and not just talk the talk. And so, you have to dig deep into what’s the problem that my customer thinks they have, what’s the problem I know they have because I’m the subject matter expert, what’s the gap in that way of thinking, and how can I get them to think, not understand my point of view critically? You know, we’re in politics season, and I’m sure everybody’s watching all these debates going on.” – CHET
“Yeah, I think one of the best ways to do this is with software. I’m not one to typically plug software, but there’s a tool called Yardstick. Founder Lucas Price has built this incredible tool that helps increase the collaboration between hiring managers, department heads, and maybe individual contributors who are also interviewing people for the role and helps them collaborate in real time so that they have a foundation once that new hire starts to be able to go back and measure, do we have who we thought we had? This way, you can essentially know who you have faster, know if they’re the person you hired, and if they’re not, work with your HR team to get them out of the seat and get somebody in who will be. Because that’s the unfortunate thing.” – CHET
“I’m okay accepting no when making 50 cold calls a day. You want to make 20 cause that’s what’s comfortable for you, and you can do that because you’re sending more video messages and doing much more personalized email outreach, and it works for you; that’s great. Cause I have another rep who can’t convert anything via email, but they’re fantastic on the phone. And so, I say, if it’s working for you, prioritize that. Do we want to try to upscale you on cold email writing? Sure, but if you’re booking 20 appointments monthly to make a hundred cold calls a day, I’m not opposed to that. You’re hitting your number, which might be what you’re good at. And so, I do want to make you better at cold email writing if there are gaps that I recognize, but there’s a whole bunch behind that with email deliverability that might’ve also happened with that gentleman. So, I think it’d be okay with no, but expect why. And remember that empathy does not mean a lack of accountability; you’re not a bad person if you want to instill some accountability in your process. Still, you must pull back the books, use a data-driven leadership model, and show people why accountability is in place. And don’t manage to the bottom 20% of people who don’t want to be at your org anyway. Stop making rules and things that they must follow. Make rules and processes and accountability for the 80% because all you do when you’re reactive, and you manage to the bottom 20% is the other 80% of people that want to be there feel like they’re getting squeezed out and they quit, and they go take $5,000 a year to work somewhere else.” – CHET
Connect with Chet Lovegren:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it’s Nancy Calabrese, and it’s time again for Conversational selling – the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Chet Lovegren, aka the sales doctor, the SDR leader and host of the SalesRx podcast gives sales reps insight into how to effectively time block, where they should focus energy, and tips for opening that conversation with prospective clients. With over 11 years of sales and sales leadership experience, Chet started the sales doctor in 2020 as a way of providing a prescriptive approach to revenue problems and struggling go-to-market strategies. Chet has helped build out sales processes and teams that led to companies successfully raising over a hundred million in venture capital funds. And he provides professionals with the right dose of practical and tactical info needed to stop the revenue bleed from archaic practices and methods. Welcome to the show chat. You know, I love speaking about sales.
Chet Lovegren: Yeah, thanks for having me and that was the best-read intro. Prescriptive always seems to trip people up, but you did a great job with that one. I know it’s a very nonnative thing to throw in when we’re talking about sales, but you nailed it. I want to I want to applaud you and throw like a rock star track on in the background or something. That was incredible. Yeah. [1:49]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh my God, please. It’s practice, practice. That’s it. But okay, I guess my question, let’s start with prescriptive. Why prescriptive and how does that help teams?
Chet Lovegren: Yeah, that’s a great question. I like to use the idea of prescriptive because if you’re a doctor and you are doing it right, it’s not a one size fits all. And the best doctors who have done the most critical work in saving lives have really dug deep into the core problems and not solving for symptoms. But why are these symptoms happening? Because you think about if you have a fever, you’re gonna have similar symptoms as if you have a cold their shared symptoms across certain problems or diagnosis, right? And my favorite saying is a doctor who provides a diagnosis without examination is guilty of malpractice. And I think a lot of LinkedIn gurus do this, but also a lot of sales teams do this to their opportunities and to their customers. And if we want to be transparent, honest, value-driven salespeople, let’s walk the walk and not just talk the talk. And so, you have to dig deep into what’s the problem that my customer thinks they have, what’s the problem I know they have because I’m the subject matter expert, what’s the gap in that way of thinking, and how can I get them to critically think, not understand my point of view? You know, we’re in politics season and I’m sure everybody’s watching all these debates going on. [3:24]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Chet Lovegren: And you can tell the difference between a good debater and a bad debater is that good debaters say, this is my policy, this is my stance, and this is why. But it’s like, okay, you’re not getting me to think critically about why I should be thinking that way as well. You’re just trying to get me to understand your point of view. And I think that’s what we do a lot as sellers as well, is we try to get people to understand our point of view, instead of asking them to think critically alongside us, thereby justifying our subject matter expertise. And so, it gets a lot deeper than just like in my business, oh, you’re struggling to generate pipeline? Must be cold outreach problems. No, it could be 10 million other things. So, let’s dig deep into the process together and find a solution. [4:01]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Before I forget, I downloaded one of your offerings, the top five most common sales objections. And I shared it with my team. In reading it, we all want to ask you, were you or are you Sandler trained?
Chet Lovegren: Not officially, but I think that a lot of the methodologies that I’ve kind of learned from, all kind of start with Sandler, right? Gap selling is a real big one. And that was something where, when you actually look at gap selling, it’s just kind of another version of Sandler. Most every methodology now is a version of Sandler or Hoffman, if we’re really being honest with ourselves. And I always tell, I tell my clients that too. I say, 90% of what I do is an aggregate of all the information I’ve taken in, eat the fish and spit out the bones. Really only 10% is my own ingenuity and creativity added on top of that, which I think as sellers we should be doing as well. Try Challenger, try Gap, try Sandler, try Hoffman. Go back to Ziegler if you want to and take some of those principles. Try a lot of things and see what works well for you. [[5:09]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Okay. Now, traditional sales training. You’ve heard horror stories about that. Why doesn’t that work?
Chet Lovegren: Well, there’s this interesting principle called the forgetting curve. And with the forgetting curve, especially when you think about whether you’re hiring an outside person to come in and train your team, or you’re doing training and enablement internally, we don’t typically continue inspecting what we expect or what we train around. And I think every seller listening to this would agree. How many times have we gone through a sales training? And a month later, we’re not even talking about the same topic, but we haven’t really improved much. And that’s reactive leadership. And so, it takes a lot of commitment and intentionality behind what we want to train people on and why we want to train them. And unfortunately, a lot of the enablement resources out there just don’t make sense. Like, why would I enroll my people in a 12-week program where they meet once a week for 12 weeks? Because thanks to the forgetting curve, within 30 days, we forget 87% of what we learned. So, in week five and six, we’re trying to teach SDRs advanced tactics that build off a foundation we learned in week one that we don’t even remember. And it goes the same for new AEs or AEs that need a refresher, AEs moving into the enterprise space or frontline managers. It happens all the time. The other alternative is video courses. Well, unfortunately, video courses are very low engaging. People do them on their own time. And typically, if there’s like some sort of testing module at the end, you can just guess the answers until you get through. And so, reps aren’t really inclined to put a lot of effort and intentionality in there. And somebody could say, well, top reps will. Well, maybe, but I know a lot of top reps, when I’ve been through those video trainings myself, where they’re like, yeah, we must do our 10 minute a day video module training, just click to the end, you probably already know the stuff. And it was in orgs where people would just tell you what the answer was. Hey everybody, I already went through mine this morning, here’s the three answers, you know? And it’s just, you know, so you either have long programs that are highly engaging, but people forget the information after, you know, and it’s a 90-day program, or you have these low engaging, you know, volume plays where people just don’t really get a lot out of it. So, what I try to do is simulate the environment in which people learn the most and retain the most, which is onboarding. And we typically structure our virtual boot camps to be an hour a day for a full week, five days straight.
Nancy Calabrese: Oh really?
Chet Lovegren: And then yes, and then we create a 30-day follow-up call because we get in this repetition where every day you’re learning something for an hour. And if you break out any of the modules, whether it’s cold outreach, which our prospecting bootcamp can go for SDRs and AEs, especially if AEs are full cycle, our sales bootcamp, which we call AE Academy, AEs can go through discovery, deal management, negotiation, and follow-up. I mean, those are four different modules, and you have five days of learning. And you see people showing up every day. By the fifth day we get there, we all feel like friends and we’re laughing and we’re having fun. And we’ve retained a lot of the information, and they can put it into practice while they’re going through it. Instead of waiting for them to go through you know, a community led program by a, you know, LinkedIn guru that basically takes them three months to get through and you’re not seeing results as fast as you want to. And they forget most of the information. We try to compact the information and make it more valuable and retainable. And then we like to do the follow-up call after 30 days. Okay, you put it into practice. What are the nuances that you’re facing? What can we talk through as it pertains to that company and that motion specifically. [8:53]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Why is onboarding so important for new sales reps and managers?
Chet Lovegren: Well, I think the biggest thing is it’s your way of setting expectations for what’s to be required. Now that doesn’t mean that most companies do it well enough, but this is your opportunity to say, hey, the thing we’re paying you to do, this is what it is and this is what it’s required to be successful. This is the level of knowledge you must have, retain, and execute upon and also build upon to be successful. You go through buyer persona training, like those are always adjusting. So, if you have, let’s say four buyer personas, and you’re selling logistics software, you have warehouse manager, operations manager, building manager, and let’s call it a CFO maybe, or financial leader that your buyer personas. That’s also you are saying, I expect you to be up to date with those buyer personas challenges because they change over time, which means regularly meeting with people in CS, listening to QBRs, hearing what the future state looks like for our customers when we win them. And I think that’s why onboarding is so important because it’s as much an enablement time period as it is an expectation setting time period. So, I encourage any leaders in a performance-based role, sales or CS typically, make that a part of it. When you’re building your onboarding playbook and your enablement materials, make sure that it’s as much an expectation setting exercise as it is a knowledge transfer. [10:28]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you know, finding the right salespeople, it’s like a needle in a haystack. You know, it’s hard to know 100% when you do hire somebody if you’ve really made the right hire. So, is there a way, you know, to, I guess, snuff out the wrong hires earlier?
Chet Lovegren: Yeah, I think one of the best ways to do this is with software. I’m not one to typically plug softwares, but there’s a tool called Yardstick. Founder Lucas Price has built this incredible tool that helps increase the collaboration between hiring managers, department heads, maybe individual contributors who are also interviewing people for the role and helps them collaborate in real time so that they have a foundation once that new hire starts to be able to go back and measure, do we have who we thought we had? And this way you can essentially know who you have faster, know if they’re actually the person that you hired, and if they’re not, work in hand with your HR team to get them out of the seat and get somebody in who will be. Because that’s the unfortunate thing. [11:37]
Nancy Calabrese: How does it do that though? I don’t understand.
Chet Lovegren: Yeah, so it’s got this really cool intuitive way of basically taking everything you’re probably already doing with like an HR tool when you’re hiring people, scoring, writing notes, things like that. But making it go beyond that process where now every 30 days, those same people are coming back to it and re going through the ratings for the person as a colleague or as a direct support. And when those scores start to slip, there’s coaching that’s provided on, hey, well, is it an observational thing? Is this like a motivation thing that needs fixed or is this a strategic thing? Or did we fail somewhere along the way in onboarding? And it gives you a much better way to measure that performance throughout their first 90 days than just getting their first 90 days and the frontline manager’s like, well, I don’t really think this person’s working based on some data points, but now we must talk to HR. Now we put them through a program the next month then maybe we put them on a PIP, then we get them out at around the six-month mark. If you’re measured quarterly, that’s even longer, right? So, the tool kind of helps people ensure that, they kind of have who they thought they had. And if they have that person, great, we can continue to measure that performance above and beyond that and help them make the case for promotion later. But if we don’t, we can kind of move them out of the role quicker than you would in a standard PIP process where SDRs if you add SDR higher, it takes six to eight months to get them out of the role, typically. An AE it’s a little longer than that. And so, this tool helps you do that kind of within the 90-day mark and it’s by providing you, I mean, you could probably, you know, I’m sure some people can hack it together inside their HR software, just setting up different processes or even managing it on the spreadsheet. [[13:26]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. Yeah.
Chet Lovegren: But the benefit above and beyond that too is everybody thinks they have the right hiring questions, but there’s also hiring questions that are provided, that are relevant to your business and your actual motion. And so, there’s a lot to it. I’m probably not doing it justice because we’re not on a demo for them, but I think finding ways to leverage technology and get people collaboratively together and actually get them to have a commitment to it. Like, look, VPs, heads of sales, CROs, I realize you’re busy, but if you want to have a hand in the hiring process, then you got to have a hand in the hiring process. And that requires you to take notes and score the conversation. I’ve worked at companies where my higher ups wanted to have a hand in the hiring conversation and then I go, hey, where’s Nancy’s scorecard? Oh, well, Nancy was great. Okay, well that’s fantastic, but how are we going to measure that across the four people that are part of this hiring process if you’re not going to do the five minutes of note taking and leg work that it takes for us to effectively measure this? And so, you have to make sure that you get that part right and that everybody’s as equally brought in. [14:27]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Chet Lovegren: And if not, then hey, just step aside if you don’t have time for that and let us handle it and trust us to handle.
Nancy Calabrese: Oh, so do you think performance metrics should be the only thing considered when thinking about who to promote?
Chet Lovegren: Not at all. And I think performance is important in contrast to the rest of the people on their team. But the devil’s also always in the details. I’ve met plenty of reps that go to club that you dig deep into their process and it’s kind of eye-opening. And you’re like, oh, well, yeah, if everybody was doing that, everybody would probably hit club, you know? There might be some preferential treatment. There might be some ways that they’ve figured out how to work the CRM the right way that other people aren’t. I’ve even caught top reps deleting data out of the CRM, putting it on a spreadsheet and manually working it until it became an opportunity and then creating the opportunity in the CRM so that there were no touch rules behind it that anybody could track. So, I’ve seen it all. And that doesn’t mean that everybody who hits 120% of quota is gaming the system. But there’s a very good opportunity that if, I think of it like Wells Fargo. There’s a reason Wells Fargo was doing great in the banking system and then they got caught. And you see this time and time again when companies, Theranos is another great example, right? When something is too good to be true, you kind of dig into those details a little bit and you see a little bit more. So I think it’s interesting that we have a million ways to measure someone’s performance, but we don’t have many ways to measure someone’s participation and engagement. [16:02]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Chet Lovegren: And so that’s something that while anecdotal, I think leaders need to put a bigger focus on. And it’s not enough to just say that’s what we should do. Well, how do we do it, Chet? Well, give people the opportunity to lead certain meetings in every form and fashion. If a sales leader is leading and doing the majority of the talking in the weekly sales meeting, you’re doing it wrong. Find ways to integrate your people and people that are showing signs of being a potential future AE, if they’re an SDR or a senior or commercial or enterprise AE or even your next frontline manager, find ways to integrate them into the conversation sooner rather than later, and have them kind of show and prove because the whole other side of professional development and career advancement is the skillset of being able to also show others how to do it. So, if I’m going to move an SDR into an AE, fantastic. I also want to make sure that person knows how to present, knows how to present to a group, knows how to talk about ROI because when I have another SDR that I want to promote into AE, guess who I’m going to buddy them up with? The person who already did that. And I’m giving my SDR that’s moving into AE a little bit of practice for how they would conduct a demonstration or presentation with a prospective customer, right? So, I think we have a million ways to measure someone’s performance, but no way to measure someone’s participation and engagement. I always look at it like Simon Sinek’s trust-first performance graph if you’ve ever seen that conversation. Top right corner is high performer, high trust. And we tend to value that person. But if you go into any organization and ask who’s the jerk, they’ll typically point that person out immediately. The high performer, sorry, high performer, low trust. High performer, high trust is a unicorn. But what organizations like the SEALs treasure is the medium performer of high trust. They’ll take that person over the high performer or low trust any day. Because as they say in the SEALs, I might trust you with my life, but do I trust you with my wife? So that was always a, I always look at it that way. Like I’m okay taking someone who hits 80 to 90% of quota and moving them into another role or a promotion. If I see other things from a participation and in an engagement, um, factor that I think makes it relevant. And I’ve seen plenty of good SDRs become terrible AEs and I’ve seen plenty of bad SDRs become great AEs. So it’s, they are different skill sets. [18:20]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Chet Lovegren: They are different skill sets. Some of it crosses over and bleeds into the other, but it doesn’t, it’s not, it shouldn’t always be an indicator of if this person’s gonna have success at the next level. There are process and anecdotal things that you need to witness first, above and beyond just hitting quota.
Nancy Calabrese: Last question, I mean, why do so many sales teams have a hard time building a solid culture around accountability and performance? What’s the issue?
Chet Lovegren: Because we’re in this phase right now in let’s call it corporate America, where we think that empathy means a lack of accountability. And so, we’re told that by trying to keep people accountable, we’re not being empathetic. And that couldn’t be farther from the truth. If anything, you know, it’s like Uncle Ben says to Peter Parker, with great power comes great responsibility. I think of it the same way. With much empathy, you know, much accountability is also required to whom much is given, much is required, right? And I think the first thing I would recommend for leaders is in that motion, we should always be okay hearing no, but we should always expect why, and a solid why. And I think a lot of leaders just go, no, this is the process, this is how it is. I had a salesperson at Pavilion, and she was like, look, I’m just not very comfortable cold calling. And she would do well beyond her number from cold email and video messages on LinkedIn. And I said, look, that’s great. Keep doing what works for you. In fact, I could probably learn something from you that would help the team do better on cold emailing and video outreach. That said, when we do start seeing a dip in that performance, we’re going to have to make up those activity numbers with some cold calls. We’re going to have to do it a little bit more my way, you know? But if it’s working for you this way, that’s fine. [20:15]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Chet Lovegren: I’m okay accepting no when it comes to making 50 cold calls a day, you want to make 20, cause that’s what’s comfortable for you and you can do that because you’re sending more video messages and doing much more personalized email outreach and it works for you, that’s great. Cause I have another rep who can’t convert anything via email, but they’re fantastic on the phone. And so, I say, hey, if it’s working for you, prioritize that. Do we want to try to upscale you on cold email writing? Sure, but if you’re booking 20 appointments a month for making a hundred cold calls a day, I’m not opposed to that. You’re hitting your number and that might be the thing that you’re good at. And so, I do want to make you better at cold email writing if there are gaps that I recognize, but there’s a whole bunch behind that with email deliverability that might’ve happened with that gentleman as well. So, I think it’d be okay with no, but expect why. And remember that empathy does not mean a lack of accountability and you’re not the bad person if you want to instill some accountability in your process, but you need to pull back the books, use a data-driven leadership model and show people why the accountability is in place. And don’t manage to the bottom 20% of people that don’t want to be at your org anyway. Stop making rules and things that they must follow. Make rules and processes and accountability for the 80% because all you do when you’re reactive and you manage to the bottom 20% is the other 80% of people that actually want to be there feel like they’re getting squeezed out and they quit, and they go take $5,000 a year to work somewhere else. [21:39]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, I can’t believe our time is up. I could go on forever with you, Chet. How can my people find you?
Chet Lovegren: Yeah, LinkedIn is a great place. On my LinkedIn I have access to a bunch of my resources. You can check out my Linktree. There’s a newsletter, there’s free downloads. Sounds like you and your team already downloaded one of those resources. So pretty much, pretty much everything’s there. Yeah. [22:03]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh yeah. You’ve got a ton of material. I say go to your website.
Chet Lovegren: Yeah, that too. You can get to my website from my linktree. If you just want to go there directly, it’s https://www.thesalesdocrx.com/.
Nancy Calabrese: Cool. Everyone, he’s great. Chet, thanks so much for being on the show and sharing your expertise. I know you said you were a little jet lagged before we started, but it didn’t sound like that to me. [22:31]
Chet Lovegren: Well, that’s what three cups of coffee will do to you. But thanks Nancy. It was a great conversation.
Nancy Calabrese: Oh, okay. Oh, it was great. And everyone make it a great sales day. We’ll see you next time. [22:41]
by Nancy Calabrese | Feb 16, 2024 | Podcast
About Manuj Aggarwal: Manuj Aggarwal is the Chief Technology Officer of TetraNoodle Technologies, a company he founded in 2000 that provides startups with technology consulting and ongoing education. Manuj started as a factory worker in India, earning $2/day, and ended up in the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies in Canada and the USA. Located in Vancouver, Canada, TetraNoodle has served clients ranging from startups to large corporations. They are focused on empowering businesses with Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities. They are an end-to-end service provider for all AI and technology solutions. They do whatever it takes to enable AI capabilities for your organization. Whether building data engineering pipelines, enabling cloud migration, developing data products to validate AI models, or performing QA, they provide the full spectrum of services necessary to succeed in your AI plans. They work with three kinds of customers: Early-Stage Startups that want to embed AI into their products, Small and Medium Businesses that cannot have their own AI teams, and Large Enterprises that need AI expertise to guide their teams. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Manuj.
In this episode, Nancy and Manuj discuss the following:
- Manuj’s background in technology and AI
- The concept of data being the new oil and AI being the new engine
- How AI can be both beneficial and potentially harmful, depending on its use
- The overlap between technology and human psychology
- The need for businesses to embrace technology, particularly AI, to stay competitive
Key Takeaways:
- Data can now be converted into dollars.
- You can create powerful solutions once you understand how to utilize data and use AI to crunch big numbers.
- AI is a tool to help you be creative faster.
- We are entering a vast new era of a new way of doing work. Every company is going to be a technology company moving forward.
“The world always values useful resources. So, we consume oil. That’s a very valuable resource. We consume food. All kinds of materials that we consume are resources. And people who own that resource can charge money for it. Now, if you look at platforms like Facebook or Twitter, they are, or even Google, giving away everything for free. You can use most of the Google products for free, Facebook for free, and Twitter for free. So, how are these companies making so much money? Yeah, by advertising based on the data that they collect on you.” – MANUJ
“Yeah, every business grows based on a few factors. One is whether they have a great team managing the business. Another one is whether they have good brand credibility in the market. Another one is whether customers are coming in regularly into their storefront or what have you. All of these take a massive amount of skill and energy. You need to find trained people, experienced people. But imagine if you could use AI to supplement their capabilities. So, let’s say if you have a team of five people and use AI to double their productivity in the next 30 days, right? That means your business will grow double within the next 30 days.” – MANUJ
“See, the thing is that AI is analyzing data and recognizing patterns in that data. So, our world is complex. So, I’ll give you an example. So, let’s say a child, a 10-year-old child, touches a hot stove. They will know that they shouldn’t touch it next time because it will hurt. So, our mind has learned one data point. And it has become intelligent now that this is the wrong action to take. But let’s say that child is in the middle of Antarctica, and they are wearing heat-resistant gloves, and it’s really chilly out there. And now they touch the stove, it will feel warm and pleasant, not hot. So now their mind is learning that, OK, even there are variations of this situation. So, if the parameters are correct, it may be OK to touch the hot stove. Right? Yeah, so our mind collects this data and then understands these patterns. But let’s say extrapolate that to large problems like climate change or finding a cure for cancer or anything like that. There are millions and millions of parameters involved in that.” – MANUJ
Connect with Manuj Aggarwal:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it’s Nancy Calabrese, and it’s time again for Conversational selling – the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Manuj Aggarwal, the founder and chief innovation officer at Tetra Noodle Technologies, an elite AI consulting company. With a remarkable track record of driving transformative change, Manuj has touched at least 10 million lives and generated over 500 million in value through his expertise in technology and AI. He has shared his insights at the United Nations alongside distinguished figures like the Secretary General and Nobel Peace Prize winners, President Obama and Bill Gates, have recognized his work. And with four AI patents to his name, Manuj is the perfect mentor to guide you through the transformative potential of AI and its benefits for businesses. Welcome to the show, Manuj. I’m so happy to have you.
Manuj Aggarwal: Thank you so much. Thanks. Excited to be here. [1:28]
Nancy Calabrese: My goodness, I guess my first question is, how did you get involved with AI?
Manuj Aggarwal: Well, I’ve been in technology for about 30 years, building software for startups to large corporations. And I have always tried to stay at the cutting edge of technology, learning new technologies as they come out. And so, AI, I mean, a lot of people don’t know this, but AI has been around for at least two to three decades now.
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Manuj Aggarwal: And yeah, yeah. So when I started noticing the power that AI can generate and create in the world, I started getting involved in it around 2007 or so. [2:20]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay. And so, I know that you state it’s the invisible currency. Data is the new oil and AI is the new engine. Explain that to us.
Manuj Aggarwal: That’s right. Yeah, see, the world always values resources which are useful, right? So, we consume oil. That’s a very valuable resource. We consume food. All kinds of material that we consume, that’s a resource. And people who own that resource can charge money for it. Now, if you look at platforms like Facebook or Twitter, they are or even Google, right? These platforms are giving away everything for free. Like you can use most of the Google products for free, Facebook for free, Twitter for free. So how are these companies making so much money? Yeah, but advertising based on the data that they collect on you. [3:26]
Nancy Calabrese: Alright. Great. Well, advertising. I’m going to go ahead and close the video.
Manuj Aggarwal: Okay, so data can be now converted into dollars.
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. I mean, it’s just scary. You know, it’s funny you say that because I was on a news website and up popped up a store that I shopped from. And I’m like, this is weird. I was just thinking about going there. So how did they know to pop it up?
Manuj Aggarwal: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, these are the kind of things, as they collect data, they can almost predict behavior, or they can understand people at a very deep level. And that applies in both good scenarios, bad scenarios, because the good part is it leads to new discoveries, new drugs for diseases, new ways of solving big problems, all of that. The idea is the more you understand data, the more data you collect, it is a powerful, powerful resource now in the digital age to convert that data into something tangible, something valuable in the world. [4:34]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Well, what’s the bad side of it, though?
Manuj Aggarwal: Well, I mean, see, any technology can be used for good and bad, right? So, the point is once you understand how to utilize data and use AI to crunch big numbers, like, you know, understanding data is itself a complex problem and AI can help with all of that. And when you combine like human creativity with the intelligence of the machines, you can create some powerful solutions. But the idea is to recognize that this is the new age we are entering of the humans supplemented by machines and data is a very, very important resource. [5:19]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. So, we mentioned earlier that you feel there’s potential of AI and its benefits for businesses. Can you explain that?
Manuj Aggarwal: Yeah, every business grows based on a few factors. One is whether they have a great team managing the business. Another one is whether they have a good brand credibility in the market. Another one is whether they have customers coming in regularly into their storefront or what have you. All of these take massive amount of skill, energy. You need to find trained people, experienced people. But imagine if you could use AI to supplement their capabilities. So, let’s say, if you have a team of five people and use AI to double their productivity in the next 30 days, right? That means your business will grow double within the next 30 days. [6:31]
Nancy Calabrese: Yep. Wow. And so how do you use AI to do prospecting? How does it work?
Manuj Aggarwal: Yeah, see, what is prospecting? Prospecting is talking to as many people as possible and saying: “Hey, it seems like our interests are aligned. It seems like we have the solution to your problems. How will you like us to have a chat?” Isn’t that what prospecting being? Now, to do that, a human being needs to be good at communication. And it doesn’t come easy because there’s a lot of factors like fear of rejection, because if you talk to like 100 people, many people may not even respond nicely to you. [7:21]
Nancy Calabrese: Well, it’s a no business, that’s for sure.
Manuj Aggarwal: Yeah, yeah. And now if you can supplement that with AI, then you can expand the capacity of the same human being by giving them an ability to, you know, take actions at a faster pace. Maybe, let’s say we are sending a personalized invite to somebody and saying: “Hey, I’d like to talk to you about this we start to use cookie cutter solutions”. But if we can use AI to personalize it very quickly, then I can be very productive, and my results can be much more effective. [8:07]
Nancy Calabrese: Yep. Yeah. So, what I’m hearing is it just helps you be more efficient, correct?
Manuj Aggarwal: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, just like any other technology, right? Like, take for example, a car, a car will help you go faster. You know, a crane will help you lift heavier weights. It’s just like that. Yeah, is a tool to help you, you know, be create faster basically.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Is there a story that the audience would find interesting?
Manuj Aggarwal: Story about AI?
Nancy Calabrese: You, AI, anything.
Manuj Aggarwal: Lots of stories. It depends on what kind of story will you like. We can certainly share. We can start.
Nancy Calabrese: Well, how about your story from the early days, how you got involved?
Manuj Aggarwal: Sure. Yeah. So, my story starts in India. I grew up in a small town, and I was trying to figure out what to do with my life. And my career started working in a factory, and I learned quite a bit there. But it was a very, very difficult life, six days a week, 12 hours a day. And what I did was I realized I got some inspiration from some business magazines. And I realized earlier on that for me to improve my life, I will need to acquire a valuable skill. And, and at that time, you know, computers and software were just sort of coming up in India, but I got involved in it and I loved programming. I loved software. And then one thing led to another, you know, I started working with a lot of startups, a fortune 500 companies started working on some really impactful projects. And through all this, I had various personal experiences where I felt quite depressed with life and almost suicidal at one point. So, then it was sort of a wake-up call. I was like, okay, there is something wrong that I need to really address. And so, after a while, I was trying to figure out what to do. I talked to a lot of therapists and psychiatrists and all that. But I ultimately found some relief in meditation. And I slowly started to learn how our mind sort of creates a reality around us and all of that. And as all these things were happening, I sort of recovered from that phase through meditation. And, through my involvement in AI and understanding the human mind, I was able to bridge the connection between how our human psychology works, our neuroscience works, and how AI interacts with it. It’s a fascinating dance we play with AI and human mind. And so, the idea is to use this bridge to solve some real big business problems that typical businesses face. [11:13]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. So, you said earlier that AI has been around for about two to three decades. How did it first materialize?
Manuj Aggarwal: See, the thing is that AI basically is analyzing data and recognizing patterns in that data. So, our world is a complex world. So, I’ll give you an example. So, let’s say a child, a 10-year-old child touches a hot stove. They will know that next time they shouldn’t touch it because it’s going to hurt. So, our mind has learned one data point. And it has become intelligent now that this is the wrong action to take. But let’s say that child is in the middle of Antarctica, and they are wearing heat-resistant gloves, and it’s really, chilly out there. And now they touch the stove, it will feel warm and pleasant, not hot. So now their mind is learning that, OK, even there are variations of this situation. So, if the parameters are correct, it may be a OK decision to touch the hot stove. Right? Yeah, so our mind is collecting this data and then understanding these patterns. But let’s say extrapolate that to large problems like climate change or finding cure for cancer or anything like that. There are millions and millions of parameters involved in that. [12:42]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. Fascinating stuff.
Manuj Aggarwal: So now the human mind is not able to find these patterns in that big of a complex world, but machines can. And so, when you ask me, you know, how did it come about? Humans have been, you know, since the 1960s, as we started getting into the computer age, we started collecting data, we started analyzing patterns. And so, AI has gone through various naming, you know, names in the industry. But now we are at a point where it can simulate human intelligence. [13:21]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. Well, what names were they?
Manuj Aggarwal: I mean, data analytics, you know, yeah, so.
Nancy Calabrese: Got it, understood. So, tell me a fun fact about you.
Manuj Aggarwal: Yeah. Fun fact about me, I love to travel. I’ve been to, I can’t remember, like, maybe 20-25 countries and yeah, I love to travel and want to continue to explore the planet.
Nancy Calabrese: Lucky you, I love to travel as well. I don’t do it enough, but somebody’s got to do it, so it might as well be you, right?
Manuj Aggarwal: No, everybody should be able to do it. I mean, that’s something that I also sort of preach and teach, that whatever you want in life gives you what whatever you want out of it. So, if you want travel, you get travel. [14:15]
Nancy Calabrese: Yep, I agree. I agree. Is there something you would like me to spotlight, anything you want to talk about?
Manuj Aggarwal: Well, we are in the middle of an AI revolution. Right now, it’s just the beginning. AI is going to add about $10 trillion to the world economy by 2030. So, this is a great opportunity for small business owners to really get ahead. A lot of people I talk to, they say: “Oh, I missed the internet boom, or I missed the smartphone boom”. And now, they have a huge opportunity in front of them to ride this AI wave. And if they want to ride it, then yeah, get in touch with me. [15:04]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. Now, you know, I think probably everybody’s heard of chat GPT, but are there other, you know, AI tools that you would recommend?
Manuj Aggarwal: I will recommend go with the big ones like chat GPT, BARD, for visuals, mid-journey. Now chat GPT-4 can also do images. But for specific things, try to, there’s going to be like a flood of AI tools in the market now. So, try to look for your specific problems, what problems you’re trying to solve. Second thing is gone with tools from reputed companies, because what will happen is there’s going to be a huge number of tools available in the marketplace. And they may be run by one guy in the basement. And if you start relying on that tool for your business, and if that tool doesn’t survive the next six months, your efforts will be wasted. So, focus on reliable companies or people who have the credibility guys, because it’s very, very early on right now. [16:15]
Nancy Calabrese: Sure, that’s good advice. So, tell me something true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Manuj Aggarwal: Well, I think I find a lot of resistance a little bit on these concepts about how technology and our human psychology overlaps. And it’s scary to a lot of people as well, but it is the reality. And it’s interesting debates I get into when I discuss this topic with people.
Nancy Calabrese: Oh, interesting. So how does it overlap though? Help me understand that.
Manuj Aggarwal: See, I mean, see AI is consuming the data that humans are producing and it is getting smarter based on what we are doing in the world, right? And then our humans’ actions are generally influenced by the information we consume. And the information we consume today is heavily produced and controlled by AI itself. [17:21]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, it’s amazing stuff. You know, I can’t believe we’re almost up with time. What is the one takeaway you want to leave the audience with?
Manuj Aggarwal: Well, the takeaway is we are entering a huge new era of a new way of doing work. We have already experienced a few things in the past two, three years. So, you will continue to see radical changes happening in society. So, my recommendation is to stay vigilant and start investing in technology. Every company is going to be a technology company moving forward. So that is my advice. [17:58]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. So don’t be afraid of it. Learn it. Welcome it into your business and into your world. Is that right? Cool. How can my people find you?
Manuj Aggarwal: Yeah, absolutely. You can go to my website manujagarwal.com or find me on LinkedIn or just google my name. I’m easy to get hold of.
Nancy Calabrese: And well, you must spell your first name for the audience.
Manuj Aggarwal: Yeah, yeah, M-A-N-U-J it’s Manuj, uh, and the last name is A-G-G-A-R-W-A-L
Nancy Calabrese: Awesome. Thank you so much for spending time with me and sharing your story. I totally find this fascinating and based on your recommendations, I’m really going to welcome AI. I guess for me it’s just a little overwhelming. Do you find that people react that way in the beginning?
Manuj Aggarwal: Yeah, absolutely. You know, every radical technology that comes by is overwhelming for us. Like, I remember the first time I logged onto the internet through that noise making modem. I didn’t know like what was happening. It was so overwhelming to me. Because even when I remember the websites were so simple, like ugly websites. But still it was overwhelming to figure out, okay, what is happening? Where do I go to find information? But slowly it became the way of life and that’s how technology is. But the idea is to start embracing it. [19:35]
Nancy Calabrese: Yep, embrace it. Don’t walk away from it. Okay, folks reach out to this gentleman. He is world renowned. He’s the expert in AI. And as he’s recommending, embrace it. Don’t be afraid of it because this is going to be the future of the world. So again, Manuj, thanks for being on and for everyone out there. Make it a great AI day. We’ll see you next time. [20:03]
