Special Guest Kristie Jones

0:03 Thank you for joining us on the Winning It Selling Podcast. I'm Bill Hellkamp of Reach Development Systems, and with me is Professor Scott Plum of the Minnesota Sales Institute. The top 10% of sales reps don't stop working because it's 5 p.m. or the weekend. They understand the work they put in outside of the workday makes the difference between being on top or being part of the other 90%. The work they put in outside of work is to sharpen their mental, physical, and spiritual game so they can perform at their best professionally.

0:36 They know they own their own income and create the life they deserve and desire. They need to be at the top of their game every day. If you want to learn how to make this happen, stay tuned as Bill and I discuss the work to get to the top doesn't happen at work and other interesting information on episode 630 of the Winning It Selling Podcast. Scott, this is going to be a great interview. I've been reading the Christie's book and we're going to have a lot of fun together.

1:09 We're pretty well aligned so we'll have to find things to disagree about. That's going to be the day. We've got to do that disagreement stuff. The friction. People like that. That's right. But before we get started, just announcement no book club this week because we want to give the time to Christie but continue to read More Sales Less Time by Joe Conrad. Next week we'll do part six pages 29 through 31. Our next book is New Sales Simplified by Mike Weinberg and we might talk about Mike a little bit because Christie and he know each other.

1:39 Before we go into our topic today, let's hear a sales tip from Anthony. Enjoy and learn from the sales tip from Anthony by Anthony Enorino, a highly respected international speaker, best selling author, entrepreneur and sales leader. Hey, it's Anthony Enorino. Get rid of the legacy approach in a book that I wrote called Elite Sales Strategies. I'm going to grab this for you and I'm going to give you the five rules that I think that you should follow to help you get rid of the legacy approach.

2:11 Here's what I want you to do. When you sit down across from your client, you don't mention your company's name and any mention of that will cause them to leave the room. Okay, maybe not true but let's pretend that's true. You may not mention any of your clients including any testimonials or any results that you've gotten them. And then number three, you are prohibited from talking about your product, your service, your solution.

2:39 All of those things are not important to your client at this point. Four, any attempt to develop rapport is going to be a violation and you will never see this client again because they're not into that kind of thing. They're trying to find somebody who knows more than they know. You can ask no questions about the client's hot button, their problem, any of those things or else you will be dropped out of a trap door and you will be in the garage and you'll have to leave.

3:11 You have 25 minutes to do this. So this is the book Elite Sales Strategies but I do want you to know that these five ideas will have you in a better situation because you're other oriented and you're working on their problem, you're teaching them the things that you know about that problem and it's important for you to know that you have to have a better understanding of the client's problem than they do. See me at dsalesblog.com or come out and say hello at LinkedIn.

3:42 See you soon. It's kind of fun Scott. We're getting connected with so many different authors and Chris is one of those authors Mike Weinberg, Anthony and Arino. Yeah. So it's nice to align with people who are at the top of their game. Right, right. So our guest today, Christy Jones, author of Sell Your Way In is a speaker coach and sales process consultant. Companies hire Christy to elevate their sales organizations because most sales leaders and professionals are discouraged and frustrated about anemic, pipelines, low close rates and missed targets.

4:18 Christy's willingness to get her hands dirty and take no prisoners approach when helping customers drive more revenue from their sales and customer success teams is what makes her so valuable to her clients. Her mission is helping companies find top talent as well as creating a sales accountability culture to ensure revenue growth. Christy is passionate about coaching sales teams and leveraging their superpowers to reach their full potential and she wants representatives and sales leaders to identify and body the practices and characteristics of the top 10% achievers.

4:50 Welcome, Christy. Welcome. Got it. And Bill, thank you so much for having me on. I'm super excited. Well, we are too. I've been reading your book as I mentioned before and I just love the way you're right and we'll tell everybody where they can get that book because I would recommend it right away. Thank you so much. It's been a very exciting journey and the book launch has been fabulous. I've heard some other authors.

5:10 If you think you had a tough life trial writing the book. Yeah. It's been so true. I think it is so true. In the introduction, Christy, you talk about the top 10% of achievers from the other 90%. I'm just really curious. Could you define that? What does that mean? Yeah, I think that the top 10% are at the top 10% of their profession. They're outselling their coworkers and their competition. And I think there's, you know, I live in the SaaS world.

5:39 And as you know, because I know you interview guests that are living in that same world, we're missing quota in the SaaS world and we're missing it big time. And I think some of the reasons why we're missing it is that sales professionals are putting themselves in the wrong sales role, selling the wrong thing into the wrong industry, working for the wrong company and the wrong sales leader. I don't think that's the 100% of the reason why we're missing quota, by the way.

6:01 I think venture capital has something to do with that as well. I'll call them out on the carpet. But I walk into companies all the time that the people are either not passionate about what they're selling. They don't truly understand a complicated product that, you know, the technical or complicated product that they're selling. They don't love the industry. They don't love their boss. And if you're not aligned with all of those things, how would you ever reach the top 10%?

6:27 Well, I think the real reason that people aren't making their sales quotas because of inflation and people aren't buying and what other whiny things do. And their territory and their territory is not. Their territory is no good. Yeah. That's right. That's right. And everybody's already bought the program that they want. They don't need a new one. And I don't know. What do you say, Scott, that if salespeople are as good at selling as they are at making excuses?

6:50 Well, every conversation a salesperson is involved in is they're selling something and sometimes they're selling excuses up. Sometimes they're selling products out. But yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it is tough. It's difficult to get into and maintain that top 10%. I think that's the whole notion of your book, Christie, is that this isn't going to be easy if you want to live in this world. But you have some actions. Let's start off when they're I like to get down to what are the things I need to be doing differently or better to start to move myself.

7:23 Maybe I'm a 70%er instead of a 90%er. But I need to move myself from this world and I want to move into that world and I'm willing to do the work. What's the work? The work is lifelong learner. So you're always looking for more information, whether that be about your profession, at selling your industry. I ask an interview question. If you interview with me, here's a freebie. I asked this interview question, tell me which of your prior companies have provided formal sales training to you and what did they teach you?

7:54 And the answer I hear 60% plus the time is I haven't been provided formal sales training. And so the follow up question I ask you is, so what have you done for yourself? And top 10%ers haven't answered that question. And the other 90 don't. Right? And I think they're a big stammer. Yeah. They're not taking care of. They're not owning their own career and their career path. Other things that the 90%ers do is what Scott referenced earlier when he was reading part of my book, which is the work to get to the top actually happens outside of work, not inside the four walls Monday through Friday, nine to five.

8:27 And so they're at the gym every morning at six. They have a spiritual or religious practice. Their circle matters. And sometimes people are not on the journey with them. And so they need to be thrown back into the water. They make sure that they are off social media or put their phone down for a period of time every day so they can be present with the people that they care about. They eat well. They're getting eight hours sleep.

8:52 So those are the kind of things when I ask another interview question here just second freebie of the day, name three things that you do consistently, regardless of the company you work for or the sales role that you're in, that you truly believe if you do these things, you'll be successful. And the things I just listed are what I hear from top 10 percenters every time. I can separate them out just by asking that interview question.

9:12 Right. I was listening at some of your interview questions last night when I was reading. And what I really liked about them is it seems that you're trying to get to their character and not to whether they sold something the last time they were out there. And I think that's what Scott and I have been talking to our clients about too is so often they say, well, who should I hire? And we say hire somebody with a great character because you cannot, you can't train them their character.

9:36 And we've trained a long time and somebody who's lazy, put them through a two day sales course isn't going to make them unlazy. Oh, that's right. Sometimes they resign. They knew the sales training is coming and they quit. Oh, coach too tough. Take me out of the game. I can't take any sales development training right now. And they leave. They're threatened with that option of developing their sales skills. Yeah, I, for sure character integrity, one of the Christiisms that you'll find in the book is you can't fix character flaws and integrity issues or what mama broke.

10:10 And I truly truly believe that. But I'm also looking for traits. So character, sometimes I, I mean, I try really hard to uncover that in the interview and sometimes that's again, sales professionals or professional interviewees. So buyer beware. Right. Right. Exactly. But, but traits, I can actually, I can actually uncover traits because the traits are the things I just mentioned, right? And one of the things I didn't mention, but if you think about all the things I did mention, they all have one thing in common and that's discipline.

10:41 And so I can interview for discipline. Right. Because if you're not disciplined, you're not going to get up, you know, you're going to roll over and hit the snooze button on the alarm when it goes up at five thirty or you're not going to, you know, you're not going to eat healthy when given choices at the restaurant. You know, you're going to stay up too late watching the Democratic National Convention last night. Right.

10:59 So let me ask you this because this is a question we get a lot. And I think our listeners would be interested when I'm hiring, how important is industry experience versus these traits that you're talking about? Because so many people want to hire for, let's find that industry experience. Yeah. I do think there are certain industries, Bill, that that are you do need someone who might have some familiarity. But in general, I don't believe that that's true.

11:27 So I believe if you have, you're looking for people who know how to sell, who have discipline around sales processes, who have figured out how to personalize and customize other companies processes. So hopefully you walk into a company where there are formal documented processes. Sometimes you won't. But if you do, you need to know yourself well enough and your sales superpowers and secret weapons in order to customize or tailor a personalized those to play to your strengths.

11:53 And so I'm looking for people who understand that. So you know, one of the other interview questions I ask is take me through your sales process, start to finish. And people will slip in things like, I spend a lot of time doing X because I'm good at it, or this is where I really shine. And I do as people with their sales superpowers and I don't think enough sales professionals understand that because understanding your sales superpower lets you change outcomes.

12:17 Well, I think it's important if you're, if you're good at something to try to put yourself in situations where you're doing that more, and then that becomes more fun for you, it becomes more comfortable. And so if you have a way of finding customers that's not making phone calls and you hate making phone calls, then find the customers that way, you still have to find them. That's correct. That's right. But that that may not be your superpower, right?

12:42 But it may not be your superpower. Social, maybe your superpower networking events, maybe your superpower trade shows conferences, even lots of things. Yeah, that being said, I did have a boss who said you still have to do the 20% you hate so you can do the 80% you love. There are going to be some things in there that you just don't like to do, but you've got to get competent at them. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the success of sales training and sales development is reinforcement.

13:09 Is there a technique or anything that you've used to be able to reinforce some of the techniques that you introduced in the book? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I read everything that Malcolm Gladwell puts out and right, and that 10,000 hours of practice he talks about, you know, and that's intentional practice. So I'm a big college basketball junkie. I'm a Jayhawk. So plenty of good basketball in my life. But nothing frustrates me more than seeing people get to the free throw line and Mr.

13:37 Free throws. Yeah. I'm like, you've been doing that in your, in your, you know, down the street at the elementary school in your driveway or whatever, since you were old enough to hold a basketball. And I do think that repetition. So, you know, I think repetition and doing things. I do think that works, right? I play sports. I have muscle memory around a lot of things. I grew up playing racquetball competitively. And when I switched to tennis in my twenties, I had muscle memory from racquetball that allows me to have a really nasty forehand slice.

14:06 And undo that. Right? I mean, when I first started taking tennis lessons, the coach pulled me aside and she goes, nobody comes in. She's like, you played tennis before? And I go, huh? And she goes, well, where nobody has natural slice coming out of the box. And then I told her what I had previously done. She goes, oh, you've already got muscle memory and I can't undo that. So in sales, I take that, I take that sports analogy that I just gave you.

14:28 And I say, but in business, it's mental memory. Right? Instead, like if you do something over and over again, then you will gain mental memory around it and it'll just become, you know, second nature. It'll just be a knee-druck reaction. Yeah. I think we've, we've certainly run into people that have learned the same lesson every day. Instead of learning something new, it's the same lesson they're learning every day over and over again.

14:52 It's a, it's a groundhog day effect. Instead of getting better, I'll ask people what's your, what's the, what's the objection you get the most and they'll tell me, oh, I get this one all the time. And I'll say, well, so what's your strategy for working early to not get that objection? Oh, I never thought of doing that. It's actively handling the objection over and over again. Right. So you have no good answer for it because it should have been answered at the beginning.

15:21 So they just keep learning the same lesson. It's so true. Yep. I call it proactively handling the objection. If you know what's coming, why wait for it? Yeah. So a lot of the things you're talking about with these traits and this, this balance that you're trying to, to find as that top 10% or, you know, keeping yourself active, spiritual, learning, you know, prospecting, doing all the things that you need to do. It seems that, that it's difficult to stay in some kind of balance that we're going to get out of balance at times.

15:55 Is that okay? Or are we trying for this perfect balance of all of these different things that we're trying to accomplish in our lives? No, out of balance is going to happen, right? But those of us who have habits and disciplines will get back into them. So the last three weeks that you can imagine for me has been super crazy on top of everything else. I moved my mother from Kansas to St. Louis with three weeks before my book launch as a result of her age and her aging issues, but I needed her closer to me.

16:22 And so, you know, the day before my book launch, I spent Monday at the assisted living facility, helping the movers, you know, place furniture and move her stuff that we, that we packed up on Saturday and Sunday. I haven't seen cardio in about four or five days, but it is on the calendar today. And it needs to be on the calendar. And I haven't seen orange theory in about four weeks. And they have called because I'm such a regular.

16:45 They called and they were like, is everything okay? And I said, life is crazy right now. But but those of us who already have established those habits, I mean, I've been exercising since I was 14. I started playing competitive racquetball at 14. So I've been a cardio junkie since then. And I know that it's part of, you know, it started my stress, it's part of my stress relief. I'm in a mastermind group and we met yesterday afternoon for ladies.

17:08 And I'm the only one who exercises at night. Everybody else exercises in the morning. And statistically speaking, those who exercise first thing in the morning are more consistent with it. And I get it. I just need it to defrag my day, as I call it, I need it to be able to separate my professional from my personal and I can take that 45 or 60 minutes of exercise and do that. And then I come back and I'm in a different place.

17:31 But but it was funny because again, I'm that mastermind group obviously is top 10. I'm a person. And one of the women was talking about how she has a virtual trainer that they do it on Zoom two times a week and she opens up her cabinet that the right behind her is on our zoom screen and she says, here are my freeways and my bands and my whatever. And one of the other ladies is like, can I have his name? But she and I are going to be at a comp one of the other ladies and I are going to be at a conference for the women sales experts in Denver in October.

17:56 And she said, do you want to stay on over the weekend and do some hiking? And I said, absolutely, sign me up. I'm in. So like, you know, I'm surrounding myself with the right people. So I so I don't get out of balance for too long. Right. I mean, because of the people that because of my circle and the people that I surround myself with, I'm not no one's going to let me out of balance for too long. They're going to be like, Hey, like time to do this.

18:16 And that desire to do it starts to pull you back because you enjoy it and you find the value in it. And that's the thing we have to, whether it's education or getting better in any way, we have to see the value in it so that we do it for ourselves. That's right. I mean, again, I feel better. Right. I want to do it because it makes me feel better. You know, I want to eat well, I want to do all of those things because I know that I'm going to feel better and and I'm going to be at a, you know, and I'm going to be at a better place.

18:43 I can't be the my best for you and for my clients. If I'm not feeling my best, right? I mean, if I'm expected to give 100% every day, you know, I want to get close to that or I want, you know, I mean, I, you know, I charge a lot of money for the consultants that I do and everybody deserves to get their money's worth. But if I'm not at my best, then they're, then that means I've cheated them. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. We just had a call yesterday, Christy, great call.

19:08 They have a young person who is just starting to move from estimating to sales and project management. So what would you advise somebody like that do to really establish themselves? He's taking the place of people who've had 30 years of experience in all these relationships, right? And trying to work that book of businesses, the newbie, trying to cover for the for the very experienced person. So so how, how, what would you tell them?

19:36 What's the first five things you'd have them do to start start off right? Um, slow roll, right? I mean, you don't know what you don't know at that point. So don't come in guns of blazing or bull in the China closet. That's probably, you know, particularly with the people on the other end who've had a long-term relationship with the person before them. So I would slow roll that in. I would ask a lot of questions, um, because that's how you're going to figure out what you don't know is by asking questions along the way.

20:04 I would find a mentor inside the building. I'd also find a mentor outside the building. So I'd make sure that, you know, somebody with industry experience or the company experience, you find it doesn't matter actually what department there and it could be finance. It could be, you know, marketing. It could be who knows? I mean, it could be operations, but somebody who's been there long enough to be able to answer some questions, everybody likes a go-to person.

20:26 And I think when you're new, it's nice to have somebody who can point you in the right. It may not be, they're not going to be able to answer every question, but they will know who will be able to answer those questions. So I think getting somebody inside, you know, an inside advocate, if you will, as well as somebody outside the company, because sometimes you just got a vent. Sometimes, you know, sometimes you've had a bad day and you don't want to go to the person inside the company.

20:46 You want to go to somebody outside the company. And then I would say- So I need somebody to be honest with. Yeah, right? Yeah. And then I think it's all the things that I mentioned kind of rolled into one. So like be taking care of yourself, right? Self-care. Like there's nothing more stressful. What do they say? Like the top three things that are most stressful in life are new jobs, moving, and the death of the beloved one, right?

21:09 And so like that's at the top three, like a new job or a new position in the company. Like that's one of the most stressful times of your life. So you need to be getting your exercise, getting your sleep, eating well, you know, you know, spending time with people that care about you and that will support you. Chris, you've got a lot of experience in sales training and advising and coaching. What are some of the biggest trends that you're seeing right now or some of the biggest challenges that people are experiencing that they have to approach differently in order to become successful?

21:38 Yeah, I do think that quotas, like, you know, the quota situation is challenging right now for lots of people. I walk into companies all the time. I got my hands on a CRM system yesterday with a new client and I didn't get all of the things I wanted. So I reached back out to the administrator and say, I don't think you exactly understood what I wanted. I want to be able to snoop around. So I need high level admin access.

22:04 I need super admin access. I want to be able to snoop around because I'm hearing excuses, like you mentioned. I had a one-on-one call with a sales rep on Monday and I heard a lot of blame in the delivery team. And I said, well, when we meet next week, I want to see the business plan for the remainder of the year, including pipeline because when your pipeline is anemic, I mean, how are you going to quote out? Like, if you don't have 4X or 5X your pipeline.

22:30 So like I tell people, I said, this isn't rocket science and I'm not some sort of sales fairy. Like I can tell you right now, if you have a four-month sales cycle, if you're going to hit your December goal, like I know today and you know today. So what are you going to do if you don't have enough pipeline? Again, like the sale, I call them the sales lever. So maybe you can make some impacts. Average sale may need to be higher.

22:55 If your pipeline is anemic, you may need to sell a higher average sale. Your close rate may need to be better than it is. Your sales cycle might need to be shorter than it currently is. So I mean, those are the three sales levers that you can pull. And I always want people, I call it knowing your personal sales map. So again, a lot of times I walk into companies and sales later, I ask them. Like what's the average sale?

23:14 What's this? What's that? And then I said, and who's out of the box? Higher or low? Right? And so and do they understand that? Do they understand that their close rate is 10% higher than everybody else's? Do they understand that their average sale is $15,000 higher than everybody else's? Because they don't need the then they don't need 4x. They need 3.5x. Right. But so many times like I teach sales map all the time, I have a worksheet.

23:40 I teach it all the time to clients because sales reps don't know how to calculate their own sales math. And I do it on when I was a sales leader, I did it on a rolling 90 90 90 day basis. So at the beginning every month, that was our one on one. The first week of every month was reviewing last last month, but also going back and doing the sales math for the previous 90 days because your averages change all the time. When you talk about that anemic sales funnel, it reminds me so often we see that half the funnel is just garbage.

24:11 It's just crap that's been sitting around, taking up mind space and we advise them, get rid of the crap so you can really see what your funnel looks like. You run into that quite often. Oh yeah. Listen, I wrote a blog post called stalled is not a sales stage. But I interviewed for a fractional sales leadership job. Like I started my consulting business in 2016 and they were client number three. And the CEO was like, Oh my gosh, we have five to six million dollars on pipeline and this that and the other.

24:44 And I should have known that that was my big red flag, right? Because they weren't hitting their quotas. And I was like, huh? So I sat in on the first, that first 30 days, he continued to run the sales meetings. He had been playing sales leader. And I just kind of listened in. And I think it was the second, maybe the second week we were doing, we're going through pipeline and the second week's meeting. And I was, and then by then like, you know, my brain was working again because I was overwhelmed in week one.

25:08 And I'm like, I'm hearing all this and I go, I'm sorry, like Jeff, you mentioned that there was five to six million in pipeline, but I'm just not seeing that. And he's like, Oh yeah. Well, three million of that is installed. I go, what? What's stalled? They're like, Oh, well, that's where we put all those deals that we think will close at some point. And I was like, Oh my God, what have I gotten myself into? What is happening?

25:33 And they truly like, and I, but here's the funny thing guys. I hear this all the time. And they don't always say it. I mean, they literally they had a stage called stalled. Yeah, I don't know. We see it that blatantly. But here's what I do here is, well, yeah, I don't want to close that out because I don't want to get, I don't want to get, you know, lose track of it. I don't want to get, I don't want to get lost. And I go, well, if you're CRM hygiene's fine, then you're going to schedule yourself a follow-up call for three months out.

25:58 And you're not going to get, get, get, I go plus when you close it is lost, you can run a report on closed loss like every 30 days or every 60 days or every 90 days. Yeah, you're funnels of fantasy. Yeah, send it to marketing and let them deal with it. Exactly. So if I say marketing jobs to keep them more and more, you're off fishing for new things. That's right. But see if we got that pipeline full of maybes. I don't need to fish for new things because I got all these stuff in my pipeline.

26:23 Yeah, those rose colored glasses are lovely. Aren't they? And until until December 31 comes around. Or until a sales manager starts to actually challenge you on what's going on with this. But again, we talked about salespeople that are good at shaving the facts a little bit. They are, they are professional sellers. That's right. Yeah. Well, sometimes they're unfaithful historians too because they're not remembering the past accurately.

26:53 So a lot of times we'll run into and I bet you have to the situation where the company says, okay, you did a great job last year. Your quota is 10% higher. Assuming that you only work 90% last year and you have 10% of work to do. So what do we do when, because the company is going to increase the quota. Yeah. You have a good, you have a good producer. They're shaking their head because they actually had a great year and now they got to do 10% higher than that great year.

27:20 How do you help them get that 10%? What are some steps they can take? You talked about increasing the size of each sale. The three levers. Go over those three levers again because that went pretty fast. Yeah. I mean, that is what I'm going to ask them. So the three levers are your ACV, your average contract value, your average sale, your close rate and your sales cycle. How quickly are you closing deals? And so I don't want to just, I want to take their superpower, right?

27:47 Because this is again, back in the day, like one of the first books I read out of college good to great. And that's what this is, right? We don't want to take a D skill and try to make it an A skill. Like if you just cannot get that sales cycle below 90 days, there's probably nothing I'm going to say. Maybe I got some tips or tricks for you, but inherently you just like a slower role, right? But if your average sale is 10% or 15% higher than the rest of the team, we can probably work with that.

28:15 That's your good. That's your B plus. I can probably get that to A by talking about how do we start higher? How do we have those conversations about price and money earlier? So yeah, I mean, I want people to understand where they really succeed in those sales levers. What's the easiest thing for them to do? Like where's the thing that they're most comfortable with that has worked well for them in the past? It really is knowing your superpower around some of those things.

28:42 So that's really, that is where I would start. And then here's things that people never, ever have formal processes around. How about a referral strategy? How about a formal referral strategy? How about your best customers or your best referral sources? How about some of the things that you haven't done? Scott, you talked about industry, industry and association networking type things. When I onboard new reps for clients, I do, I onboard them in four specific areas and this is the order in which they go.

29:13 And number one is industry. And the first two or three days, we teach them about the industry. And then we teach them about where their company fits in the ecosystem of the industry, right? So where do we play? Where's our swim lane? Where's our specialty within the ecosystem of the industry? Then I teach them product, then I teach them sales tools, and then finally I teach them sales process, the sales process of the organization.

29:36 But there's so many other places, Bill, that they can go look for opportunities. 10% really isn't a lot. That may be in some people's cases, two more deals in a 12 month period of time, right? I mean, I call it breaking it down to the ridiculous. So I like to take that big scary 10% number and go, oh, well, that's 2.4 more sales a year. Where do we going to find 2.4 more sales? We probably need, again, eight opportunities to find 2.4 more sales.

30:08 So where are we going to find eight more opportunities? That's not even one a month. Right. Yeah, when you break it down to the ridiculous, it's easier to manage than looking at a big number to try to overcome within a year. So it's just that incremental growth, reinforced over time. I think that is the real secret of the sales success. I love learning about onboarding systems. And you've got a system to do that. What are some of the challenges that you're seeing onboarding people these days in the marketplace that maybe didn't exist 10 years ago?

30:39 Lots of things. Where do I start? Like most people don't have a formal onboarding. Mm hmm. Right. I mean, they think they do. But one of the things that's super frustrating to me is so under those four categories, so industry, product, tools and process, I have three subcategories on how we learn those things. Self-directed learning, instructed-led learning and OJT on the job training. Right. So under those four categories, you're going to have self-directed learning.

31:05 Somebody needs to come in face to face and teach you some things. Again, where do we fit in there? Here's our Salesforce training, but how do we use Salesforce here at the organization? That's the instructor-led part. And so I think what I'm seeing more and more is four newbies are sitting in front of their computer for five or six or more days doing self-directed learning only. You know, sessions have been recorded, list of the recording or list of this gong call or, you know, here's a webinar that we did, list of this.

31:35 And I'm like, that is horrible and very lonely onboarding experience. It is. But they can check the box office says that they were trained in that area. It doesn't mean that it's going to work, reinforce or stick, but at least we check the box on that. Yeah, the other thing that's I'm on my soap box on currently is I believe that the art of sales is becoming extinct. We're spending so much time on the science of sales, AI, automation, data.

32:03 We think we can manage, we think we can just manage the sales team through data. I am a data check. I love a good number. Don't get me wrong. But the art of sales is disappearing. When I, you know, if people have been trained, if they say they have been trained, they say things like, well, I've learned how to, you know, make a cold call into our industry, but maybe not just make a cold call, right? Like what are the, you know, they're, people are teaching sort of the specifics, but not generalize sales training that I grew up with.

32:30 And you guys probably grew up with, you know, I think back to IBM, right, when you talk about like, who did you want to hire? You want to hire people from IBM? They were, you know, they've been amazingly trained or some other companies. And there are some companies out there doing well and doing it right. But in general, I think what's happening and this is why I'm concerned is right now we're not, we're no longer teaching or we're very, very rarely teaching the art of sales, like communication.

32:54 How do we do a true discovery? How do we make our demo, our software demos interactive? You know, how do we deal with the dissenter in the room? Like this is, this is, you know, decision by committee. Every committee has a dissenter, right? How do we handle the dissenter when there's four people in a room and we have a dissenter and that dissenter speaks up? People don't know how to deal with stuff like that. We're not teaching our sales professionals.

33:14 And then because we love to promote the top sales professional to sales leader, the thing you know, and lose our top sales professional. Yeah. Well, we, not only do we lose our top sales professional, now we have an undertrained sales leader, right? Because they were not properly trained as a sales professional. How would we expect them to turn around and train the next generation? And so at some point the art of sales is going to become extinct if we don't, if we don't make a change right now.

33:40 Well, this has been great Scott. I think you have one last question. Yeah, I do. I'm going to run out of time here. Right. I can tell obviously just in this interview is a lot of information that's in the book and I really encourage people to check it out. The question that I like to ask all of our guests is I'm kind of curious what author, book person has had the greatest impact on your life. The person that's had the greatest impact on my life was my father.

34:05 You know, someone who owns their own business. He was an owner broker of a real estate franchise and, you know, he modeled everything, right? He modeled the work ethic. He modeled the communication, you know, challenging. You know, that's 1099 employees. You don't own them. They hang their shingle wherever they want. You mentioned that you were in real estate before. So, you know, so, you know, making sure that we were that, you know, that the office was filled with top performing real estate agents, but you had to keep them happier.

34:31 They would just go down the street to the remax office so they didn't like what was going on at our office. Right. So, you know, dad, we never, we talk shop around the kitchen table. And so my brother and I, no surprise, are in sales. He became an individual contributor and I went down the sales leadership path. From a book standpoint, I'm a burnay brown junkie. I read everything that she puts out. Again, no, again, back to the art of sales.

34:55 People are not teaching the psychology of sales either. And when you listen to someone like her as a professor at the University of Houston and she's a data chick, so everything she talks about is data driven. But she talks about the human psychology and human psyche and the things that really, you know, stumble people and make them tick. And so I like to read those type of books, you know, that have to do with psychology because it all relates back to sales.

35:20 Well, so true. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Again, this has been a great interview. Really enjoyed it. We want to make sure that our listening audience can get access to the things that you would recommend. So is there a website that you'd like to suggest people go to to learn more about maybe your book or what you're doing out there? Absolutely. If you go to sellingyourwayin.com, that'll land you in a subsection of my website.

35:45 So sellingyourwayin.com will tell you where to get the book and then you will have landed on KristiKJones.com, my website. So if you get in, get in through the sellingyourwayin.com, you'll have all the information you need. All right. Excellent. Well, we'll make sure that's on our show page for you. As we close up here, we've got a golden nugget, our quote for the week. This is from Stephen King. Talent is cheaper than table salt.

36:09 What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work. And I was inspired by Kristi's book to find a hard working quote. I love it. Again, everything we talked about is going to be at winning at selling.com. And this is episode 630. Next week, our book club is more sales less time, part 68, chapters 2930 and 31. And our topic is dealing with the toughest B2B customers, kind of like Kristi talked about the, the aggravator in the room.

36:38 So please subscribe, share the podcast with your colleagues and on your social media. This is episode 630. Go out and get better one skill at a time. Joyful selling.