The Hiring Process

0:04 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. We've all experienced the hiring process, whether as a candidate or a future supervisor. It's a pivotal time when every piece of information and observation can critically and significantly shape both parties' futures. Today, we're diving into one of the most crucial elements of building a successful sales team, hiring the right salesperson.

0:32 For business owners, sales managers, and recruiters alike, finding the perfect fit can mean the difference between growth, stagnation, or even misery. So let's explore a step-by-step hiring process designed to set everyone up for success, as Bill and I discussed the hiring process and other baffling beliefs on episode 650 of the Winning It Selling podcast. This is going to be interesting. I think that's probably one of the biggest worries of businesses is do I hire the right people?

1:03 Because it seems almost impossible to get rid of the wrong ones these days. We got to start there. And sometimes they leave unwillingly. Yeah, we let them go and find the door sometimes. But with all the rules we have now around hiring and firing, it's a minefield. I remember to take away from Susan Scott when we got around the show about a year ago, and that was we need to release them to industry and let them find another place to live.

1:28 That's right. That's right. Well, before we get into that, let's talk about the one thing by Gary Keller. This is chapter three called Success Leaves Clues. And he goes through a number of examples. I won't go through those examples because you should be reading the book along with us. But he talks about one product, one service, one person, one passion, one skill. I think he's trying to get us to focus. It sounds like it.

1:52 Yeah, he's making a good point of it. Right. And I think it's really interesting that so many of us try to do too many things. I think that Scott and I have started working together more closely where we've separated a lot of our task into things that we do better. And so we can get better at those tasks and faster at those tasks because I'm not trying to do everything. And that's the growth of an organization. But I think there's still, when I look at things, Scott, I think there's still a lot of things that we're doing too many things.

2:24 Right? And either we have to hire some things out to have them done by somebody who could do them faster and better. Or we have to make a decision to say that's not going to be something that we do. So what do you think about this one thing? How can we get focused without giving up what we want? And I remember, was it a Beck with, Harry Beck with? Yeah, I hear it back with him. We both read, selling the invisible. Yeah, many years ago.

2:48 And one thing he said in that is don't try to be everything to everybody when you're starting out as a consultant. I think the focus of one thing and prioritizing, and I think you can only have one priority. And I think he makes that clear in this chapter is there's only one thing that is a top priority. You can't have many priorities. Now your time and role will change throughout the day. So you will have one priority in different roles that you play.

3:13 And I think that's one of the things that I took away from the chapter is, there are different roles that we play and commit to the obligations, expectations of each role that you have and you will not disappoint the other people in your life. But no obligations you have and what your boundaries are and your roles and obligations are. I think the thing you talked about a lot in this also was that there's nothing wrong with getting assistance from other people.

3:34 To further your goals and their goals so that a good golfer has a good coach. The coach knows their role is to coach. The golfers is to get better and win the tournament. And when the coach thinks he becomes the golfer, then he gets out of his lane. What's the thing? Stay in your lane. Stay in your lane. Your lane, right? Stay in your lane. I think that's good advice for us. You had a couple of quotes in here that I liked on Focus.

4:05 There can only be one most important thing. Many things may be important, but only one can be the most important. And that's hard for us because we want to be good at everything. We want to be this Renaissance person who can do all these different things. But I don't think anybody becomes a champion by being good at 50 different things. Right. I agree. And one of the processes that I've learned many years ago is there's a lot of things that are important, but there's very, very few things that we have time to truly commit to.

4:40 So are you really committed to doing this? We know that it's important, but on a scale of one to ten, how committed are you to doing it? You can find out the priority in your life of that activity. And many of the examples are I decided I wanted to be the best at this thing. Right. Then I put my time and my focus and my practice into being the best at these things. And there's a certain joy in being very good at something.

5:04 Right. Even though you have to leave some other things behind. There's a joy in knowing that for you and I, knowing that we go into a sales situation, we're not scared. Right. We're comfortable. We're confident. We know what our process is. We've talked about it, you know, on this podcast for years, we've lived it for 30 and 40 years. And so when we go into those situations, one thing that I know is that the person that's doing the buying is a lot less experienced in this program than I am.

5:37 Yeah. Right. They don't buy every day, but I sell every day. Right. Right. And you work with buyers every day. Right. And so we understand, we have a greater understanding of what those buyers are doing. I know Scott's contemplating finding somebody in purchasing to have a conversation. Right. Yeah. I'm sure of on theirs, on there, because they have an expertise. Mm-hmm. And so sometimes those, you know, when you find an expert buyer, you have to be really on top of your game in sales.

6:08 Right. Right. Yeah. I'm looking forward to having a person like that on and really letting us see their playbook. That's right. That's what's going on. But I think one of the messages that I got out of this for salespeople, and I mentioned it last week, last episode, if you're not reading the books, if you're just passively listening to this and not doing anything different as a result of it, you're going to be frustrated because you're not changing.

6:37 The goal of the podcast, the goal of reading, the goal of going out and trying something new in the marketplace is to get better at what you do. And if you're not trying something new, I always use the skiing example. If you're never falling when you're skiing, you're never really pushing yourself. Right. You're on a hill that's too easy for you. You need to push yourself to a little bit bigger hill. Take a chance, get out on the edges of your skis a little bit, and maybe, maybe you fall.

7:05 Right. Right. Everybody's going to try something for the first time. I think about learning a musical instrument. I think everybody kind of sucks at it at the beginning, but the more you practice, the better you get, the more committed you are. You can get there. I remember as my mom was trying to get me to find some musical instrument, and there's piano that wasn't a trombone, my arms are too short at the time, clarinet, too many keys.

7:30 We tried singing, that wasn't going to work. And I really discovered that music wasn't my gift. Right. I can listen to it, enjoy it. I like to sing along poorly, but it's not going to be my gift. If you're not gifted in an area, it's going to be really difficult to develop a championship attitude and style in that area. Right. I think we should all play to our strengths and manage our weaknesses. And that's what Scott's going to talk about a little bit.

7:55 We talked about the hiring process. Right. Yeah. Sometimes weeding out people who shouldn't be in sales. Well finding a different role for them. Maybe they're more customer service, maybe they're more support. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. I think everybody needs those roles to be filled. Right. If you're, you know, there's nothing wrong with being a little uncomfortable, but if you're so uncomfortable that you're paralyzed.

8:17 Oh, yeah. Well, that's not a good area to be in. We need to be comfortable being uncomfortable. There you go. At times of adversity, I think we need to have an outlook of curiosity and interest. And know that we're in a safe environment. There's no more saber tooth tigers out there. And we just need to be prepared as best we can and be comfortable being uncomfortable. Yep. All right. Well, we're not going to yam around about this chapter three anymore.

8:43 Go find that one thing that you're good at. Get focused on it and start to become a real champion in it. So we're done talking about this. This is all the setup. And I think the setup is good. Every book has a setup and it gets you into what they want to talk about. And that's what we're going to talk about in two weeks. Next week, we're going to have a guest. Steve Keating is going to be on with us. But in a couple of weeks, we're going to do the intro, each chapter, either like four sections, Scott or three.

9:08 And each section has an intro. So we'll call those the intro and then the chapters stay in order. So it'll be chapter four. So intro one and chapter four in the one thing. To get another professional viewpoint, let's listen to a sales tip from Anthony. And joy 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.

9:36 In my first book, The Only Sales Guide You'll Ever Need, I wrote that you should at least wait four beats after your client is done speaking. And if you can practice this, you can give it eight beats, which is like this. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Okay, that would be a count of eight. Now, often when your client is speaking, they pause. And it sounds like they're done with their sentence. But what they're doing is trying to figure out what they're going to say next.

10:14 So if you give them that eight beat, that would be really good for you. But if you want to be a consultative seller, the first thing that you need to know is that you have to listen closely with interest. And I want to tell you about what I mean when I say listening closely with interest. A lot of times you hear people give you language. They say these words. They're trying to communicate something to you. But what you're really looking for is what they're not saying.

10:46 What does their body language say? How do they respond when you ask them a challenging question, like a high gain question? And you have to pay attention to what is not being said as much as you're paying attention to what isn't being said. And oftentimes, the thing that wasn't said is the thing that's going to cause you to either win or lose the deal. See me at thesalesblog.com or come out and say hello at LinkedIn. See you soon.

11:20 Or silence is not my best thing. It is powerful. But it is powerful. The practice. He talks about waiting four to eight beats. It feels like a long time. But I have learned over the years that your customer, your prospect needs the time to integrate and think. And if you feel every one of those with yammering, they'll let you do it. Right. Exactly. And when that silence and they're contemplating and what they tell you, you got to write that down because that's really important, whatever they say next.

11:56 So our topic today is on the hiring process. And I wanted to share the process I use with clients. I'm not a recruiter. But often I work with recruiters and recruiters don't really like me to be involved in the hiring process. I think sometimes we have contrarian goals. I want to find the best person for the job, for the role, for the company. And sometimes recruiters just want to get somebody placed and get compensated for it.

12:22 So that's my editorial comment that we can get on with the process. Yeah, I think we're very much more worried about how that salesperson works out in the long run. Yeah, it's an integral part of the entire sales team. And when I'm working with a client, I feel emotionally responsible for the success of the team. And I want the best person possible. And in some cases, I don't want to rush the clock. I don't want to try to beat the clock.

12:48 I don't find the best person. So here's the rule. So I want to, with sales managers, business owners, is always be recruiting, always looking for people to join your team. When you go out to dinner and you have a great server, consider talking to that server about what their career is. You did a really great job waiting on me. I'm kind of curious. Do you have a career in mind? Well, they might be a great salesperson. I spent many years in the hospitality business, food and beverage.

13:12 And that's where I learned how to work with people. So always be recruiting so you don't have to rush the clock. Well, what if I'm not ready to hire somebody? Well, you end up maintaining a pipeline of people that you're in touch with that maybe you can find other things for them to do. Okay. We both have a great network. We could find a spot to park somebody for a project somewhere. Maybe we have a project that we want to hire somebody for, not necessarily a position, but more of a project.

13:36 We can find out what it's like to work with them, how talented they are, what skills they have, and what their level of commitment is. And we can find a lot out about by working with somebody on a project. I can remember when my kids were all coming out of college and they all had internships. And I can't think of a better way for an organization to find out if they've got somebody who knows how to work. Yeah. This is the thing we're hearing about the younger kids coming out of school.

14:01 I don't know if it's Gen X, Gen Z, Gen whatever it is. Green generation. Yeah, I don't know. But I'm hearing a lot of complaints that they just have a very different work style and don't always fit in really well with the company's style or manager style. And so an internship can be a good way then for you to find out if you've got somebody who knows what they're doing and really just knows how to work because I'll tell you a work ethic, an attitude, and those sorts of things.

14:33 I know you're going to talk about those later, but they're really hard to train. Well in addition to an internship, think about people volunteering. And then you're going to have certain organizations. Maybe you want to dedicate some time to your church and you want to work in the childcare during services. And you've got a supervisor that sees how you work within a volunteer basis and how your intrinsic value is to do the right thing.

14:56 And when that person has influence or can be used as a reference or a testimonial for other people, you're demonstrating that commitment within that activity, even though you're not getting compensated for it. And that's an intrinsic motivation versus an extrinsic motivation. Successful sales people have an intrinsic motivation. They do it because it's the right thing to do. So segment one of the hiring process is really defining your needs.

15:18 Write a comprehensive job description based on the needs and expectations of your company. And this is really important. I want to really stress comprehensive job description. And you talked about the one thing I think about my first job description that I ever read. The last thing that it said was other tasks and duties as requested. I don't know if that's still under job descriptions or job postings. Or not, but that's where we really get distracted with against the one thing and we're asked to do other stuff because we're there.

15:46 So the foundation of a successful hire is knowing exactly what you're looking for. Start by asking yourself about the market. Is there prospecting or not? And not all sales jobs have prospecting. Are we going to B2B or B2C? What are the decision makers like? Are they professionals or are they parents? Are they customers or are they clients? Are we doing multiple transactions within a relationship or is it a one off? What is a sales cycle like?

16:11 Is it one visit or does the conversation require follow up? Those are two different personalities when it comes to a salesperson. Are they transactional or are they relational? Are you targeting small businesses and industrial clients or individuals? Does your ideal client need to excel in prospecting, closing or relationship building? Those are all things that we really need to consider. I use a sales person finder questionnaire with about 10 questions to ask the company leadership.

16:38 I start there. What kind of sales culture do you have? Do you have a sales culture? And if we don't really have a sales culture and we define a job description with focusing on a sales channel with revenue, we may be creating some ambiguity within the sales organizations. It's really clear. I find that when we add definition, we kind of avoid the default. And when we contemplate stuff, it's easier for us to really kind of imagine what it's that we're looking for.

17:09 Ask yourself about do you need someone comfortable with a high pressure sales environment? Or is the role heavily commission based or is there a mix of salary and incentives? So these are areas that people need to be comfortable with when we start with that job description. So this clarity not only helps you design and draft the targeted job description, but it also ensures that you attract candidates who align with your business goals, your values, your priorities, and most importantly, your culture.

17:38 What have you been through, Bill, when it comes to working with clients on hiring people? Or have you ever been in a position of hiring a salesperson? I haven't for many years. That's not been something that I focused on. But one of the things that I think companies could think about is if they have an inside and outside sales team is to hire somebody on the inside team with the idea that this person has the capacity or the capability eventually to joining the outside team.

18:05 And I think it's important to put pressure on those outside sales team that says there's a few people waiting in the wings here who really want your job and they're pretty good. And so you better get your work done because if you're not, we've got somebody ready to go. Exactly. And I think that does a lot for motivation. It eases the pressure on the sales manager because I'll tell you, I've seen sales manager Scott that won't get rid of somebody who's an underperformer because they don't want to do the work that's going to take to hire somebody.

18:36 Oh, that happens so often. That happens so often. Who else is going to do it? If I let them go, who else is going to do it? It's going to create more work on everybody. I got to go cover their territory for six months. Well, yeah, because you had nobody waiting in the wings. Right. You had nobody that you had been talking to. And now you have to start this hiring process from scratch. And what do you end up with? Somebody who's out on the road, somebody who's out in the marketplace already got fired by your competition.

19:01 And now you're going to because that's who you're looking for when you're looking for somebody with that experience. Right. Right. I think just looking at the interviewing process and you got to ask yourself, are you selling a product or service that people want and need or don't want and don't need? And I've been in a situation where I get that crisscrossed and I go from one product that people don't need that people need or that people want or that you know what they don't want.

19:27 And when that happens, then we start getting confused on how we end up persuading and influencing people because the sales process is different. So that has to match up. Getting into the segment two, you're now creating the interview process. So once the job posting is live and the application start rolling in, it's time to build a rigorous selection process. So start with the initial screening to filter out any mismatch clients or candidates.

19:53 And this can include reviewing resumes and conducting brief phone or video interviews these days. There's a lot of stuff that's virtual these days, remote hybrid positions. So we're doing a lot more on video. And it's important to do the visual sides and think about some of the observations, not necessarily what is always being said. But during the in-depth interview, you know, use behavioral questions to uncover candidates, true capabilities.

20:18 Here's a couple of examples. You know, walk me through how you close a tough prospect. I think most salespeople that love selling are going to brag about how they close somebody that's tough. I've got a few stories in that area. And when they say, no, thank you. This isn't a fit for me. And I walk out of the office and get on the elevator. I say to myself, I got them. And everybody's like, what? They said, no, no, no, I got them.

20:41 They're just needing to think about it. Needs to be their choice to call me tomorrow and say, yes. Or describe a time when you had to use your creative solution to close a deal. Tell me about your creativity. Tell me how you end up convincing somebody or motivating them. But most importantly, at this point where you're starting to have conversations with people, don't start telling them what you're looking for. Because all their answers are going to be, I can do that.

21:02 Yeah, yeah, I've done that before. Sure, I can do that. Bring it on. And then there's no experience behind that. It's just, yes, I want it. Yes, I can do it. And so often, business owners, when they're hiring salespeople, that can be some of the biggest challenges that they have is how do you interview people? So I use a screening questions. I have about nine of them. And I rate the candidates from one to 10 and to be able to determine who are the most highest rate by comparing all of them.

21:32 Because I can't remember all of them. Yeah, I think when you're, you know, the challenge is again, if you're getting yourself desperate, I must hire somebody quickly to fill this area, this territory. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to not be willing to wait for the best person. You're, you know, again, if you don't take Scott's advice to always be out recruiting, to be looking for opportunities, you're going to put yourself in a situation where you're going to hire somebody who's, I guess they're okay.

22:00 Mm hmm. They're not a champion. They're not a world beater, but they'll, you know, there are a piece of meat I can stick in there for, you know, like my goodness, this is too important to your job to be in a hurry. So really go through that process. But I think it's again much more effective if you found the person rather than you're getting all these resumes in that may or may not really reflect who this person is. Right.

22:26 Right. And those people are desperate for a job and they're just throwing it in to see if it sticks. And they have no intentions of ever getting hired, but they just have to fill out the job application or they hope to get a conversation. And they may not be the perfect fit and always be looking, always be recruiting. Getting into segment three now, we're evaluating some of their strengths and weaknesses. So one of the most effective tools during the hiring process is understanding how candidates play to their strengths.

22:50 I use an 18 question position finder. So this is the gauge, the preferences of the market and the type of customer that we're working with. So we've got questions like, how would you describe your sales process right now? Wow. I mean, that's interesting. There's a lot of variations in sales process. What is the goal of each appointment is a question that I like to ask and get a variety of different answers or describe how you keep your spirits up when you're facing rejection and adversity all the time.

23:18 And these are all critical and it's important to ask them because sales is dealt with rejection and adversity all day long. Yeah, if you don't have a sales process, you're just faking it as a sales person. And I've seen that question stumble people in classes and situations that we've been in what's your sales process. Well, I go to the client and I show them what we have and then they buyer they don't buy. It's like, okay, great process for walking out with nothing.

23:46 So I do think that those are good questions. When I was working with a client, we were hiring people for an engineering job and that meant they were fixing machines in a factory. And we bought a number of erector sets, okay, little small erector sets and said, okay, put this together. How long will it take you to put this together and follow the can you fall? Because we wanted to find out they know how to work a screwdriver.

24:12 Could they follow instructions? Could they could, you know, we had a part missing? Did they know that a part was missing? And, you know, so we did a few things to test them and see what their acuity was in a certain area. You know, there's the old story about, I think it was Zig Ziglar being on Johnny Carson. And he said, sell me this ashtray. Right. And he sold him the ashtray. Do you have the capacity to sell me a pencil and anything?

24:45 Tell me about my product here. You can find out if they didn't do any pre-approach. Right. If they didn't do any pre-approach before an interview, they aren't going to do it for your customers. Exactly. Exactly. Well, I didn't know that you wanted me to tell you that. If I would have known you were going to ask that question, I would have rehearsed and prepared for the interview meeting. Well, yes and no. You should have assumed that you're going into an interview.

25:09 Well, when I ask you, you know, what's your favorite salesbook? They say, well, you know, it was one, you know, I'd forgot the name of it. You know, if you would have told me that you wanted me to tell you what salesbooks I'm reading, I would have prepared for that before I came. Wait a minute here. You can't rattle off one salesbook, one podcast, one video blog that you read. How are you getting information coming in?

25:32 You're not learning. If you're not learning, you're not growing. We just, we got to struggle to avoid people like that. Yeah, my boss do a book of me once, but I never read it. Yeah. I decided after high school I would not read anything ever again. Yeah. You know, it's just, I don't understand. So those, that's what you're trying to screen out with these books. Exactly. Right? The people that have no commitment to their future, they just want you to feed them leads and they'll go and have a conversation with them and maybe something will happen.

26:00 Right. Right. Exactly. I mean, I'm not going to read these about that, but as you start getting into the final steps, you know, your questions are going to get a little bit in depth. I mean, we really want to find out some of their values, their priorities. We also want to find out close to what their daily routines are right now. How do they get distracted? Where are they most vulnerable? And when you ask questions about their past performance, they're going to give you an idea of what they're going to do in the future.

26:26 So ask questions like, you know, what motivates you to sell? I love the question. What do you love about sales? And selling, what do you love about it? And you're going to find out what motivates them. They say making money. There's got to be other questions to ask because there's so much more in sales than just making money. I've worked with a number of sales people in my life that for them making money was the greatest thing.

26:53 And inevitably, they were jackasses. Right. They were pitiful excuses for people. They would do things to make that money that would hurt the company in the long run. They'd say or do anything to close a sale. And so I do think you need to be careful about that particular motivation because those people will sell a lot. They will. They'll be committed to selling a lot for you, but you may end up paying a price with your customer relationships later on.

27:25 Right. A good salesperson is going to want to develop expertise in their product. They're going to want to find more about how they can achieve different goals and have a sense of accomplishments. They're going to want to make sure that when they're offering solutions, that they're credible solutions and that they can stand behind with a reputation. And all of that contributes to the success of a salesperson. I would be just as worried, Scott, about somebody who said they like people and that's why they want to be in sale.

27:52 Wow. Yeah. And that's why they want to be in sales. Right. They've got the wrong motivation. They don't understand sales. Right. Right. Yeah. I always say I love to be a problem finder and I love to be a problem solver. I love working with people to make their lives better. If I can find an opportunity to contribute a solution to make their life better, boy, that's very rewarding for me. That really, really is. And that's an intrinsic motivation versus an extrinsic motivation, which is about the dollar bill and getting paid for it.

28:25 I always know types of questions will tell you the most you are going to find out about that salesperson. Funny. About what motivates them to do that job. And I've been hired by clients coming in and I meet with three or four people and the questions vary depending on the candidate. And I've shared my system with some of my clients and they get to a point where, Scott, we can do it ourselves. And then they do and then they go, oh, it's not that easy when we follow your system.

28:50 I said, yeah, because you have to know how to listen and respond with another question to clarify what they just said to you. And if they're not clarifying what they said to you, then you're hiring ambiguity because if you don't know what they're talking about, you don't know what you're talking about and it requires a follow up question. So each interview is different. There's some consistency in the questions, but following up on those responses is very, very important.

29:14 Well, we laugh a lot, Scott, in classes and situations, we say if salespeople are as good at selling the product as they are at selling excuses, they would be a lot better. And I think when we're in those interview situations, we can hear what's going on that your client maybe can't. We can hear when they're trying to fool us with an answer. It may sound good to your client, but to us, it sounds like a load of crap. Right.

29:43 And we can see we have a much more sensitive salesperson crap detector than maybe that boss does. Well, I mean, just a simple reversing question when you're interviewing a salesperson is, could you give me an example or tell me more? Or that's interesting. What else? And how often does this happen? Or what have you experienced in this particular area? I love the question, what is the goal of the first appointment? And this is where you really find out do they have a goal in mind when they're meeting with somebody as a prospect?

30:14 This is how they sell. And when you find out more about how they qualify a lead and the sales process like you mentioned, Bill, it's so important because when you're hiring somebody, you're hiring all of their past experiences and you're also hiring their judgment and you're hiring their beliefs. So the more you can find out about what they believe and how their belief is going to impact their behavior, you're going to predict the kind of results that you're going to get.

30:40 And most of our clients are hiring a very independent person who's going to run a territory for them and have the expectations that they're going to use that asset properly without constant supervision. It's a difficult hire to make. Yeah, it is. And sometimes there can be a real mismatch between bigger companies and smaller companies. Hiring a salesperson from a big company that's well known, that has a brand is a lot different than hiring a salesperson for a small company that has no reputation at all.

31:12 But they offer a better solution. Now that's a different sales process. That's a different influence process too, is how you sell it. Let me tell you a funny story about that. So I'm teaching a class at a software company in Twin Cities and they had hired this young man who had been working at Oracle and we're teaching the class, his sales manager's in their number of other salespeople and every five minutes he would say, well, that's not the way we did it at Oracle.

31:37 Okay. That's not the way we did it at Oracle. By the end of day two, he got an opportunity to go back to Oracle. That's great. I'm not interested in changing. I'm interested in bringing that up on the past. We're not Oracle. That's right. You know, listen to the way that we do it. And if you have something that you want to add, but it was just constant, it was just, I'm like, this guy wants to go back to Oracle really bad.

32:00 Yeah. So yeah. Set them free. That's right. So I'd be happy to talk with anybody that wants to go over the hiring process, the questions, my welcome and email and hopefully we'll be able to have a great conversation and add value in building and expanding that sales team. All right. Thanks, Scott. That was a great session. We have some resources. We'll have those on the show page for Anthony Annarino. You can go to the sales blog.com.

32:26 We close up today. I found a nugget that I thought was pretty appropriate, a golden nugget from Herb Kelleher, the co-founder of Southwest Airlines, higher for attitude, trained for skills. And I think that's really true. I cannot, I've been training for 40 years. Other people, Scott, the hardest thing to train in is a new attitude. It is. Unless he or she makes a decision to change, that attitude is what you're going to get.

32:53 So be careful. Look for the attitude that you've got. And the other thing I would say is quit hiring for people that have experience in your industry. Industry. Yeah. Because the people on the street that have experienced in your industry have been fired by your competitors for a reason. Exactly. So go find somebody who has the ability to learn and they can learn your industry in probably two months. Yeah. Yeah. So true.

33:20 I love Herb Kelleher. I mean, just the wild turkey and cigarettes and the stories. He was great. Southwest Airlines was the fabulous company under his leadership. Not the same anymore without him. Nope. Not at all. So everything we talked about is going to be at winning at selling.com. Next week, no book club because we have a guest, Steve Keating. I think this will be his fourth time. I think it'll be fifth. Anyway, he runs a lead today blog that over a million followers.

33:46 Somebody really knows what they're talking about in sales. And he and I met a long time ago when we worked at Dale Carnegie together. So it was a great guy. Please subscribe. Share the podcast with your colleagues and on your social media. This is episode 650650. Go out and get better one skill at a time. Joyful selling.