Special Guest Mike Weinberg - 5-year Anniversary Show

0:04 Thank you for joining us on this special five-year anniversary episode of the Winning and Selling Podcast. I'm Professor Scott Plum of the Minnesota Sales Institute and with me is Bill Hellkamp of Reach Development Systems. Sales managers have a tough job, pressure from upper management to increase sales, handling customer problems that have escalated, and most importantly, getting their sales teams to get out of the office and do some real selling.

0:28 It's not easy and there are plenty of frustrating issues to overcome. So put on your big boy pants as Scott and I welcome author and sales management expert Mike Weinberg to discuss the frustrations of sales managers and other fantastic philosophies on episode 661 of the Winning and Selling Podcast. Well, I'm really looking forward to that conversation as we've had Mike on the podcast before. That was episode 587 back in October of 2023 if you want to look it up.

1:00 But this week we are not covering the book. We are doing the book study, the one thing by Gary Keller and when we get back together next week, we'll be covering chapters three or part three and the intro and chapters 13. So stay tuned for that. So I just want to mention some of the things with this is our fifth anniversary. 261 shows got 130 hours of sales related content. Thank goodness. Wow. I didn't think I had that much in me.

1:28 I didn't either. I bet there's some repeated ideas there. I'm sure you said something more than one. Something wise. Yeah. All good stories. 70 different guest appearances, including before and again now today, Mike Weinberg, Frank Cespinis, Mark Hunter, Steve Keating, David Hoffeld, Anthony Enorino, Victor Antonio, and Robert Jolie. So we've had some great people join us. We've been very very pleased to have all their input.

1:55 Yeah. And we've covered 17 books for a total of 4,178 pages of content. Our podcast since the life and its conception, 483,603 downloads. 483,000. You missed 483,600 numbers. OK, I don't do. 183 plus 600. Download. And we are in the top 1% of all podcasts worldwide. Now, keep in mind there are over 3 billion podcasts. It does help us. The more podcasts, the higher we go. Everybody started podcasts. Larry did one podcast, did one show, and never got back to it again.

2:34 So tremendous accomplishments, Bill. And if I can say, I have really enjoyed working with you during the last five years. And learning your content has really made me a better person. I'm really grateful for the time we started. Well, Scott, I appreciate that. And I was singing today what a great friendship we've built over these years, which we just had kind of a casual relationship before. And we weren't even sure we wanted to do it together.

2:55 So this is good. But let's get on to our guests. That's kind of the show notes. Let's get on our guest, Mike Weinberg. Wow, Mike Weinberg loves sales. Before launching his own firm, he was a top producing salesperson in three companies. Today he is a consultant, coach, speaker, and author and specializes in new business development and sales leadership, which we're going to talk about today. His passion is helping companies and people win more new sales.

3:24 I like the new sales part. Quit being order takers, right? Make us spoken on five continents. He's got to get to Antarctica, I think, yet. And the author of four Amazon number one best sellers, including the new sales simplified, which we just covered in our last book. It was our book before this one. And it was terrific. New sales simplified, which has been named the top five sales book of all time. Sales management simplified, which income management declared as the one book that every sales leader should read.

3:53 And this latest book, which I was happy to read also, the first time manager colon sales, these achieve the number one best seller in three categories upon its release. Hey, Mike, welcome back to the Winnie at Selena podcast. And thanks for being our guest on the fifth anniversary show. Oh my gosh, thrilled, humbled, honored and happy anniversary. I could listen to you guys do your intro and share your history all day.

4:16 That was really fun. So what a treat. Thank you. Thank you. They're all real numbers too. We didn't do any of that. As statistics. I'm going to pull them right out.

4:26 Pull those statistics out. Those are government statistics, as well. Well, you have gone from working with salespeople, being a salesperson, coaching salespeople, and you're really focusing now on managers and your latest book, first time manager sales was so good. I'm hoping we could talk about some of these frustrations that sales managers deal with the things you're hearing from them out in the field that they're trying to deal with with their salespeople.

4:52 Maybe through that we can help sales manager know they're not alone. And for salespeople to quit screwing up and start doing what sales managers need to be done. So this will be a nine hour episode. If we're talking about sales management, how long do we have? They don't sell anything.

5:09 That's an important thing. The only thing I want to add just as a as a seed to plant in the listeners' minds, you know, he said sales managers frustrations with their people. I want to also spend the sales manager around 180 degrees and say sales managers frustration with their clueless bosses. And sometimes the goofy people in the C suite who have completely lost sight of what the frontline sales managers are supposed to do and therefore bury them and crap every day.

5:35 And that's the thing I remember from both your book, your book and your podcast, the crap that falls on their desk. Yeah, it's unbelievable. It's crazy. It's unbelievable. So I cannot wait to explore these topics with you. I will come and I want to say I have, I really changed my focus. As much as I'm a sales hunter by trade. And I was a top sales person in a bunch of companies and, you know, my first book is what put me on the map, new sales simplified, how to bring in new business, how to hunt.

6:01 That's my passion, helping salespeople and sales teams win more new sales. But I learned the hard way because I was naive and arrogant and cocky and a little young when I started consulting. If you don't deal with sales leadership and culture, and if the frontline sales managers don't get the big stuff right, accountability, getting the right people on the team, quickly identifying underperformance, running good team meetings, pointing the team.

6:24 They don't do all the their their key things, right? Nothing changes all the sales training. And today we, you know, fancy words, we have enablement. That's not really nice. Except it doesn't stick unless the managers are doing their jobs and doing it well. And that's why my own podcast, my events, when I'm 70% of what I'm doing right now is with people who are leading sales teams. Mm hmm. You know, one of the things that Scott and I have learned the most just recently, as we've started to work together closely, is sales managers have good intentions on following up on sales training, but they don't.

6:57 And if you don't do some kind of follow up and have have some kind of a long process, which helps them to make this material stick, nothing's going to change for them. It's just a hopeful process. 100%. And you know, here's the problem. It's not like sales managers aren't working. In fact, in a lot of companies, I mean, the sales managers are working two or three acts of the volume of the salespeople. Mm hmm. They're, they're doing all the work.

7:20 They're the ones working 70 hours a week, processing 200 emails a day, right? And the salespeople are half a virtual working with their feet on the desk or playing with their fantasy football lineups. And that's a whole lot of them. Yeah, it's a whole other conversation. Yeah, it's their, their, their, the world, I feel like has lost sight of how the sales managers move the needle on culture and results. And I'm screaming as loudly as I can to anyone who will listen, we've got to recover the fundamentals because that's how we're going to get back.

7:47 That's how we'll get back to it. So let's talk about those fundamentals. What are the fundamentals that you're seeing from a sales manager standpoint that the sales team just aren't getting done that they need to start to refocus because they have a responsibility to. It's not the guy standing over them with a whip that's got to make them sell. Oh, definitely. And I'm not a fan of the whip. I mean, I do all of my sales management coaching through the eyes of a sales person.

8:10 So I, you know, the sales manager has a huge job to encourage the heart to kick the ass, to point the team to encourage the whole accountable, to observe, to give feedback, to strategize on targeting on productivity on deals like we could talk for days about sales management priorities. But you, you know, you started to go down a path there. And when we spoke, you know, earlier to prep for the show, one of the things you talked about, you know, that you see a lot of sales managers that are playing order taker, right?

8:36 And you said they're also playing account manager, right? And I read, you know, I, we talked about it. And then I read your question. I mean, we were when we were prepping you sent me that document. And it's so interesting because those are two of the biggest sales sins. And what I'll tell you is you lump them into one question, but they're completely independent topics. Okay. We have wimpy, wimpy sales, salespeople that don't own their process because they're not being coached or mentored by their manager.

9:00 And they do play, you know, order taker, price, order, not consultant or value creator. And then total separate thought, we have people who play account manager that are supposed to be growing the business. And those people have forgotten that your job was not to care for a piece of God's earth that was entrusted to you or to, you know, care, take a territory, right? Or an account list or to babysit a big customer and support them like a glorified customer service rep.

9:30 And there are so many nice kind relational and dare I say weak salespeople who get their jollies by being busy fighting fires and over serving their friends because they're trying to keep people happy. Wow. And they say stupid stuff to their, their customer like, Hey, here's my cell phone number. Anything you need you call me. I'm your personal concierge. I'll jump at a moment's notice. Right. And not that that's a bad thing.

9:55 But oftentimes what I find is the weaker salespeople gravitate towards the service side of the business because it's a really convenient excuse of why they didn't have time to create new opportunities to fill the pipeline, to prospect, to create advanced and close new deals. Well, that's right. And I'll pause there because I could go for a day on where we just started. So I'm sure you have a few thoughts. Well, I think that's what I think that's what's most important that you're talking about and you focused on on new sales, win more new sales.

10:26 And we can't just keep going back to the same people over and over again and trying to pump them up all the time. A boss of mine said you got to do the 20% you hate. So you can do the 80% of your love. If the 20% is prospecting and finding new people to talk to and starting those new discovery conversations, you know, that's what you got to do to get that new sale started. But most salespeople who have what we would call a hybrid sales role where they have an existing book, a portfolio, a territory, an account list, that they've been entrusted to maintain.

10:58 They have forgotten that job one in sales is to grow revenue. They don't let us make this much money. They don't pay us allow us to earn. And it earned is the keyword extra for babysitting. And what happens is salespeople go to bed on Friday night with a clean conscience because they put in their 40 hours and they drove a lot of miles. And they made a lot of sales calls or they fought a lot of fires or they helped out the operations folks or they saw their friends or they ran out orders.

11:25 Those are really nice things. But I argue job one is to drive the business. And the only way to get new sales is you cross sell or upsell existing global accounts. So that's new sales or you get new customers, people that don't buy from you, but they look and feel like they should. Those are ideal profile prospects or some people call the ICP right ideal customer profile. So the new sales either cross sell, upsell, penetrate, growable existing accounts or get new customers.

11:52 There are only three verbs that matter. I say this every day. I said it earlier, there are three verbs, create, advance and close. And if a person whose job is sales, spans a disproportionate amount of their time, not creating, advancing and closing, but over serving and running out parts and onboarding and chasing invoices and other crazy things that keep them busy today. But they don't add to the pipeline, advance the pipeline or close deals.

12:19 We're screwed. And it's, it's, it's, some of it comes down to accountability. We can go down those paths, but there are salespeople and I, I say this to get a laugh, but it's, it's not funny. Like I joke, they're overly concerned with putting out fires. When some salespeople are actually arsonists, they're not just looking for a fire to put out as a convenient excuse why they didn't have time to create pipeline or close deals.

12:41 They light small fires or if there is one, they fan the flame or throw it fuel on it because it keeps them really busy and makes them feel really important. And it's so dangerous because those people tend not to bring in the new numbers. Right. And it's vicious. And they're, and their skit, their skills start to dull because they're not talking to new prospects. They're not being relevant in today's marketplace. And as they start to become friendly with their accounts, then they become needed.

13:07 And now leadership says, I can't get rid of that salesperson because of their book of business has exceeded what 20 or 25% were worried that that salesperson, if they leave, they're going to take that book of business with them. So how the seems like leadership kind of tolerates those ineffective salespeople that become account managers. What are some of the things that the sales managers can do to prevent that from happening within the process?

13:28 Well, I'm sales team. That's a million question. But professor, I can't, I can't blow by what you just said. I think you said their, their muscles or their senses begin to dull. They're sales skills, you know, conversational skills relevant in the marketplace. I've had two clients use this phrase with me in the last year. They're new business development muscles. Yes. At at your feet. Yes. Because they weren't being used because even there was so much demand to go back to go back to a bill with saying earlier where they're playing order taker.

13:55 Right. So they didn't know how to create. They forgot how and they just lived in reactive mode, you know, hoping that the leads ferry would drop an opportunity on their desk, right? Or, or the during COVID when we had supply chain challenges on the industrial side, right. And on the tech side, we had so much demand that was driven by COVID. They were salespeople who have no idea how to sell or create an opportunity who made their numbers or went to president's club because demand was so high.

14:19 Millions dollars. Yeah. You know, the last two years, the tide went out. Yeah. Right. And just rates go up. The, the, the party ended. Things slowed down. Both last year was so painful for both. I, I was clients on both sides. I, in my mind, I divide old economy, industrial selling technology. But they both had similar pains last year for different reasons. And it was, but because the, the slowdown just affected and we exposed the fact that there were sellers out there that really lost the ability to go out and create opportunities.

14:50 They were just fulfilling demand. Right. And it's really a scary, scary situation. So I just had to jump in because when you, you talk about the dulling of the senses, right? What sales managers are seeing now with some of the people on their teams don't have what it takes to sell. The, the people never had to or they were never mentored. And some of these kids were hired during COVID. Yep. They've worked from home. They've never been in a sales office.

15:12 They've never been mentored. They've never been around experienced people. They've just been lucky. Mm hmm. And now they're going, Oh my gosh, what do we do? It's, I mean, there's some heavy lifting to be done from our side to help people right now. Right. Well, that whole, that whole create role is the difficult part. It's what really means that you're a salesperson is it. If, if everything's leads and old customers and you aren't creating anything, you're not worth a bit to the sales process because creating is what you're supposed to be doing and then advancing and closing come from creating.

15:47 But if you're not creating. Preach. Yes. But this, this is the problem. When I wrote my book, Sales Truth, which I think maybe my best, best, right in book, but it's my least selling. No one buys it. Um, but the whole premise of the book was the most valuable sales people are not sitting around waiting or chasing opportunities. They're creating them. They have a list. They have a calendar. They dedicate time. It's, it's a, it's a mindset and a skillset that I'm here to grow and develop.

16:13 I'm not here to babysit or respond. Mm hmm. And the inbound marketing people and the social selling nut jobs and all the people for the last decade that preached the garbage to salespeople that that gullible week salespeople wanted to hear. We don't go interrupt people. Don't prospect. Don't be proactive. They, they did a lot of damage and a lot of salespeople took it to heart thinking, oh, if I'm, if I'm a cool celebrity and I make videos of myself or I comment on LinkedIn all day, I'm going to pick up business.

16:41 Right. Well, that worked for about 5% of the salespeople usually tech jobs, but it's easier than doing the work because it's because that's not sales work. And I 100% with you. It's bullshit. So it's fun. One of the outcomes that I see with those order takers, salespeople is that you ask them a question, what problems do you solve and they're concentrated on solutions? While we create this palm, whether base chemical that's used in drilling rigs out in the, what, what problems do you solve?

17:07 You're so caught up in your solutions. You're so caught up in dealing with accounts that you don't even know what problems you solve anymore. So how do you, how do you become a problem finder when, when, you know, they're supposed to be out there looking for opportunities? I've taken your create advance and close to a saying of create more opportunities and leverage the opportunities that you create. And, and when you just concentrate on that every single day, that's when you start really feeling your, feeling your pipeline.

17:32 What, what you just asked them. That was a pregnant question. I mean, that's packed. There's so much in what you just laid out because when I hear you say, like, what are they doing? What happened? What, you said they can't articulate the value. One way it's messaging its story. They're talking about what they do, what their solution accomplishes for the customer. Right. So there's a whole issue in messaging and value.

17:55 But the second thing you started to go down the path was they run crappy sales calls because they're in spray and pray, show up and throw up demo. Let me tell you about our features, our company, our background, and they're so lame at discovery or playing consultant problem solver value creator. So if you take the three things we just talked about, yeah, living in reactive mode where we're chasing, not creating. Pathetic messaging.

18:20 That's not about the issues we get dressed with the outcomes we achieve, but it's about our company and our product or our history and awful ineffective sales calls where we're talking instead of learning and we're pitching instead of probing. I mean, I could go on, I got some elevation going here. I'm going to fly. Like, like, you all this conspires. And then we have crappy sales management. That's not holding people accountable and not a coaching or sales managers with their head and in the screen, like CRM or email jockey.

18:49 You want to know why we have sales problems? I mean, you and I, we just laid out the reason I have so much business. It's because this is broken in 80% of the organizations right now. Yeah. And no one wants to tell the truth. Right. Right. Well, they don't want to do stuff now. I'm loud. My blood pressure is going through the roof. And nobody seems to want to do the hard work of getting the sales started. Whether it's the sales leadership or it's the sales, individual sales.

19:18 As I sit here and I, you know, it's like waiting for the phone to ring. Just isn't going to, isn't, isn't creating anything. And it's so frustrating to you were talking about a sales message. We worked with accounts in the past year and so many of them. We said, what's your sales message? What's your story? We are XYZ company. OK, what's that mean? We are XYZ company and we've been in business for a thousand and fifty years.

19:43 And everybody knows this. Well, what do you do? But well, you got competent. We are XYZ and what used to mean something. The venture capitalists sucked all that out of their company 10 years ago. They don't have that engineering anymore. They don't have that backup anymore. COVID killed their supply chain, so they don't have the value stream they used to. And they don't even know what they're selling. Yeah. Yes, it's been really painful.

20:11 I mean, you're you're you're talking real life. And here's the thing that gets me. If you look on LinkedIn and LinkedIn is a cesspool, I'm just going to say it. OK? LinkedIn does a terrible job managing their own platform. It's full of spam and bots and fake accounts. My LinkedIn inbox because I want every list in the world is unusable because of all the garbage that goes in there. But you know, the barrier to entry to do what you do and what I do is very low.

20:33 And you have a LinkedIn profile and an internet connection. You could be a thought leader and put out a lot of garbage. You could pump out new VONNonsense, as I call it. And a lot of people fell for it. And you know, Bill, I love when you talk like this because what what I'm seeing happen, we've been really kind of doom and gloom. Let me bring some positivity into this. The tide is turning. I see it in the people and following a LinkedIn and I see some of the newer fresher voices that are going back to the fundamentals.

21:02 You know, what's a really hot topic on LinkedIn right now? Prospecting, yeah, traditional prospecting and how to use the phone. And a lot less people are talking about automated stuff and sequences. And they're realizing that was marketing sales is still personal. Every requires effort and creativity and contextualization and a human connecting with another human. And when you have an empathetic like live human, that's good at that kind of thing, everything changes.

21:28 So while while I have been blasting the industry, there are new young voices. There's a guy I follow on LinkedIn named Jason Bay. You should get Jason on your show. I think he's probably the brightest young star in the sales world. He's 35 years old. And he takes all the fundamentals that I preach and that you believe on the basics of selling. And he's he's incorporated new approaches and technologies and modern ways of selling.

21:55 And we would agree with him 100% of what he's doing. And he's incredibly popular. And I'm seeing more voices like this where there was a dearth of new young voices over the last decade. Everyone was playing this. Let me get famous game and I'll teach all this nonsense because, you know, it's a flavor of the day. So I am encouraged that there has been a resurgence of back to basics because we lived through this bizarre decade of sales fantasy land.

22:18 And I think now we've we've kind of come back to what's real and what's true. That's so refreshing, Mike, to hear you really in a way, talk about sales automation.

22:27 Sales automation and these broadcast emails and the sequencing and these following up just takes the conversation and the relationship out of the transaction. And we want to be able to have multiple transactions within a relationship, but we don't know how to talk to people anymore. And when we try to go for efficiency over effectiveness, I think we're taking shortcuts and we're selling out on the value of having a sales person involved in a relationship to be able to guide a prospect from a problem to a solution.

22:59 And sales automation, I've just I've disliked it from the beginning because it takes away that interaction between a salesperson and a prospect. I would challenge listeners to just rewind 30 seconds and listen to the professor and say that again, because that is it. And it we got lazy and we listened to the nonsense and what what was pathetic marketing somehow became sales, spamming people with automated sequences and then bumping it back to the top of someone's inbox and and asking them to connect with you on LinkedIn and then immediately pitching them with some garbage or doing all these other techniques that provided no value for the client.

23:37 It gave sales a worse name. It was completely ineffective and salespeople would thought that was their activity. Yes. And they didn't lift the finger basically scorecard. Yeah, but that was we're measuring the dumbest little activity things that had nothing to do with sales persons, creativity, humanness. One of the things I like to say is we're talking about prospecting. The reason the phone has made a huge comeback in the last couple of years of it because no one's using it.

24:02 And if you're normal and you have some empathy and some excitement and you can drip value nuggets and you show some persistence, you're demonstrating that you actually care enough about that person to attempt to get a hold of them where you're putting yourself on the line. The effort required to call somebody is what a thousand times greater than pushing send on an email. Yeah. We're playing around on social media for fun.

24:23 Like, so the good news is and I'm proud of this. And my colleagues and I that were popular in the last decade with our books and the back to basics, we killed a lot of the charlatans. They're gone. The founders, the pioneers that bragged about the social selling movement that put on them, they're all out of the business. Well, they did their thing. They came, they made their money for eight years and they're dead because they were preaching garbage.

24:46 And I'm proud to say that those of us that were preaching the fundamental are still standing with more business than we know what to do with because the world still needs simple sales truth. So I'm as frustrated as I am with the C suite that's lost sight of the sales manager's job and buries them and crap and drags them back to back to back virtual meetings and assigns them all this stuff that has nothing to do with coaching or holding people accountable, which I would argue in sales management.

25:11 The sales manager has two levers to deploy every day. Accountability, job one and coaching, job one A in my latest book. And you and I are on video. So I'll hold it up. I don't know. I just can't see it. The first time manager sales, the first place I gave advice was chapter three, where I said your first job is holding people accountable and it's not dirty and it's not wrong and it's not politically incorrect and sales people should be on the high and it's some safe space.

25:36 Looking at a sales person's results and pipeline is normal. Any sales person is not comfortable with that. Probably shouldn't be in sales. And then very closely behind that is job one A, which is our next job after we've held them accountable is helping them get better at their job. And that's what we used to do in the old days, right, when we would work alongside people and we'd watch them and we'd help them prepare for meetings and we'd go to meetings with them and we'd observe and we'd help a little.

26:02 And then after we would debrief and then we'd sit down and work on their skills. And that's all lost our today because companies decided managers should sit and virtual meetings or play around and see our as opposed to watching people work in plain coach. And I'm done. Mike drop. What else do I need to say? Like if we if we're not doing accountability coaching, what the hell is the sales manager's job? Right. Right. Well, here's what here's what Scott and I started to do just in the last few months and we have required any training we do to have five follow up sessions with their sales people and the sales managers are astounded by the reports.

26:39 We're getting from their team going out and using these ideas that we're giving them, which shows me that you're 100% right. They're not hearing these stories every day because they're not out there with them. They should be they should be doing this all the time and asking their people,

26:56 what did you do? What happened? How did the sale go? Tell me the story of your of your interaction so we can learn from it and get better. And that's all we're doing. And and the last comment we had was boy, this training was a real home run. The training wasn't a home run. You guys are brilliant. The what's what's what's bizarre is that three old guys sitting around recording a podcast have to tell people, you know what would really work?

27:20 Let's go back and do what we did 25 years ago. Why don't you work with your people? Why don't you act like a manager and a coach and observe them and stick around and ask follow up. And I mean, it's the fact that we have to get paid by people to tell them what we're telling them is frightening to me. But they've the world has lost sight of what moves the needle and what drives culture and results. So it's it's funny to hear you, you know, sharing these stories of what's working right now because I see the same things that you're saying.

27:50 And there are people that are getting it. Right. It's encouraging. Well, it's just sounded when people come to asking questions of my customers. What a great idea. I'd never thought of that before.

28:03 You know, it is a little scary that that's a novel concept, right? When we're coaching like, oh, but you know, to tech people, it's and honestly, it's the tech people that ruined it. Right. It was demo first. Ask questions later. Oh my God. I had a job. I this story is in early and New South simplified. I tell my nightmare of trying to become a tech millionaire as the internet bubble was bursting in the year 2000. I was about a year late and I went to work for a company, you know, where I got a bunch of phantom stock options.

28:30 Yeah. That were worse, less than the piece of paper they were printed on, you know. But I remember sitting down with my boss and he's like, yeah, you know, just get get these meetings and you go on there and you do our little presentation and our demo and I looked at him like, what do you mean? We're going to go present a demo in the first meeting. Like, unless we have a whole discovery session early on in the meeting to understand what they're trying to get done so we could tie what we're presenting and what they need.

28:55 You do to solve a problem, help them overcome a pain or achieve an outcome. They're looking to get like, how what else? No, no, he goes, you don't, you don't, he tells me you don't understand. That was the old way of selling everybody needs what we have. You go in there and you do our little pitch. You show them, you show them our pictures and tell them how great we are. Now smart, we are. And then you demo this thing and they're going to buy it.

29:13 Right. And you know, 10 months later, the company was out of business. And, and I'm like, that's not that's put me on the path to being a sales coach. And the rules didn't change just because some idiot in technology thought, I'm really smart. I'm going to show them how to demo. I've seen those demos. I've coached those demos. And now on page 492, which is gray also, you enter five digits here. And then you go to page 4,090.

29:45 I got a question. I know, no, we'll save all those for the end when you're already dead. Yeah. Oh my God, I've tried to teach them, you know, you're in this demo, be open to questions, ask the people, will this work for you?

30:02 Oh, we don't want to do any of that questioning during our demo. They might have something that we're not ready for. I hear the same thing, Bill. You're so funny. Yeah, I don't want to get in a conversation because I'm uncomfortable. Right. So you don't want to have a conversation. So what is sales then? I mean, the whole thing is a conversation. You're interrupting my prepared presentation. No questions until the end.

30:22 They might ask me something. I've memorized all of this. I don't care what you say as a customer. I've got something to say because I prepared for this. I'm sorry. You asked a question. We have to go back to page one. Here's here's a. You only have one route and you threw me off. So here's another topic that Bill and I have learned in the States marketplace, Mike, is that a lot of sales people were just doing quotes and throwing them over the fence.

30:43 Oh, over the fence. Yeah. Yeah. And when Bill and I, when we do these reinforcement sessions, we tell the group that, Hey, after this. Bull day session or two day session, we're going to have five follow up sessions and they sit up in their chairs going, you mean it's not over when we leave today? Nope. It's not over. And then all of a sudden they become engaged and they're like, Oh, no, we're going to be held accountable to this.

31:04 Yeah. And then when we work on the application of the content and the reinforcement out in the job, it's amazing what the managers are seeing in their salespeople and how happy their salespeople are because they're being held accountable to the content that we just presented to them. And it's almost like a new dog learning a new trick and they're so happy when it's all over with. And so that's, that's an incredible sort of revelation.

31:29 But here's one thing with the quote and proposal has changed so much in the way that our salespeople have done business, have we worked with them. Because the sales proposal includes the situation.

31:41 It adds context to the solution where the solution has value. Save that again. Repeat that sentence. I got it here. So good. The proposal adds context. So here's the challenge. Here's the goal that our customer wants. Here's the prescription and the solution that we prescribe based on the discovery step. And based on this, this is what we're proposing as an outcome and what you can have is valuable because it solves a problem that they've recognized.

32:07 The prospects have recognized and now they're willing to change because people buy for their reasons, not ours. I think we can so confuse on that. I know it's your show when I'm going to play host for a minute. Yeah. Everyone go back and listen to that again. This is a problem. Listen, I live in this world every day. I'm trying to tell salespeople, you don't get paid to do proposals. Right. And if you're, and I say this all the time and they look at me like I've lost my mind, I say just because a customer or prospect asked you to do something, that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do or the right time to do it.

32:36 Exactly. So someone falls in love with you after five minutes or they're looking for a price. And they say, we need a quote. We need a proposal. That is not the right time to do it because we don't even know what they're looking for. And you don't know what their struggle is and how can you contextualize it? And what the professor just shared was brilliant. If your proposal doesn't tie into the problems that you're solving for the customer in their current state, as it's ready to say, or what their desired outcomes are in their future state.

33:00 And you can't articulate that. I would argue, not even proposal, I'm going to go back a step. You shouldn't even be showing them your solution. You should pre-presenting nothing if you don't understand what their situation is. Because then you're just a robot. You are a vendor pitching a product. You are not a consultative problem solver. Dare I say trusted advisor, which is the pinnacle of what all salespeople want to be.

33:24 If you go in in presentation and proposal mode, or you have asset and you have kind of clients bring me in and they're like, Mike, our win rate is awful. We're winning one out of 10 proposals. Yeah. Yeah. And I look and I'm like, okay, let's take a look at what you're doing. Well, they shouldn't have never gotten in the proposal stage with three quarters of those prospects. They're not qualified or they don't have the problem.

33:46 But the salesperson is rushing and skipping all these steps. And one of my favorite books is, let's get real or let's not play from 26 years ago,

33:55 by Han Kalsa. Yeah. And one of the things he teaches so well, and I mean, I cried reading that book. It's that good. Yeah. And he says, sometimes you got to slow down the way you sell to speed up the sale. Mm hmm. It's counterintuitive, but that's what professionals do. But let's tie this back to sales management and coaching. I think the reason so many sellers sell like amateurs is because nobody's watching them. And the manager is going to virtual meetings on some other topic,

34:24 where their head is in the CRM screen and they're not there in a model, under mentor or to give feedback and say to the salesperson, hey, you know, just because the customer asked you to do this. It does. You know, there's no law that they have all the chips. I believe in mutuality. Let's level the play fields. Hey, hey, customer Dave Kirtle taught me a lot of this baseline selling. Yeah. Hey, customer, that's exciting that you want to see proposal.

34:45 Can we back up a little bit? Why are we talking to each other? Right. And why don't you take me here? What's going on? I love that you just say, why am I here? Why am I here? What are you trying to? I do this in my own meetings. I'm like, when you come speak to us, I'm like, let's talk. Oh, and then my next question is, what are you trying to solve for? I don't know. Can you do training for us? What's an agenda? Like hold on, slow down.

35:04 What do you mean agenda? Why am I talking to you? Right. What are you trying to get done? And that conversational business consultative, whatever the thing is that we all did intuitively naturally when we got into sales and we're mentored is gone. Yeah. Yeah. I don't understand. I don't even I want you guys to talk because I'm sure I triggered you with so much. I don't understand why you wouldn't want to do it. To me, the most fun I have in selling is the discovery conversation and finding a way to tie my solution into those needs.

35:35 And if I'm not doing that, what the hell fun are you having at this thing? You're taking a quote, you're giving it to inside sales, they're throwing it back to them. Maybe they buy it. Maybe you call them in six weeks. Oh, did you? Oh, okay. I don't know. You know, you just take an orders. They don't need a sales person. Yeah. That's then they just need all the bots and all the crap and we'll just let the computer. Bill, this is my take and I'm curious for Scott's angle.

36:04 The sales managers aren't doing their job and the people that are in charge of the sales managers are not yelling at them about people development. They're yelling at them about the forecast and about CRM compliance and other things. And we have an entire generation of people who sell like amateurs. Because sales managers don't observe in coach and the consequences are deadly. You're right. Because the only thing I could tell you is when I was 25 years old and got into sales, they put me in the car with a bunch of old guys and I had to watch them sell.

36:39 And then they sent some of the old guys to me when I got my own territory and the old guys got in my car and watched me sell. And if they didn't like what they saw, they'd be like, hey, I'm going to run the next one. I want you're rushing to get to the product. We got it. We got a linger over here and we got to identify some problems and we got to go in the back door and we got to do this and we got to do that. And that art of mentoring and developing and coaching and modeling is gone.

37:07 Because sales managers too busy with tools and tech and virtual meetings. And the world has changed. And somehow I'm hopeful that what we're preaching is going to have a resurgence. It's worked in sales. I see it's starting to come back to the fundamentals, but we need the crazy people in the C-suite who are tired of underperforming sales leaders to wake up and go, maybe we should go back to letting them do what really matters.

37:34 Like get the right people on their team and coach and do accountability. That's my message. Right. Getting back to something that I've learned when we had Anthony and Arina on the show is he said the goal of a sales person is to create interest and curiosity. First step in a conversation, create interest and curiosity. And then the prospect starts asking the sales person questions. And here's where the unpaid consulting comes in.

37:57 We're now the prospect is so interested and curious about what the sales person has. And then the sales person gives in when they create the interest and curiosity and fires a quote over the wall just talking about price instead of a total comprehensive solution with a proposal and a plan. Oh Scott Scott, I'm going to stop you. I wish they would do at least a quote half the time they give away the solution in the meeting.

38:19 Oh exactly. I'm so excited about having that. You told me what your problem is like let me tell you how I'll solve that for you. Right. Right. Right. How much is that worth? That 15 minute conversation and you want how much money for that 15 minute conversation? We've heard about the plumber stories on that's it. But here's the overarching challenge in sales. The sales department is the greatest mystery. Nobody really knows what goes on the sales department.

38:42 Every other department in a company is easy to manage because it's operational. You get into sales. Now it's relational. Now you have to manage people in their emotions on sales people so that they go out and they pass on that enthusiasm to prospects and build a relationship with the prospect with the company through the sales person. That's I think the biggest challenge within a sales department. What solid. I'm loving this conversation.

39:07 This is real life. This is real life selling. You know, this is it. I'll tell you one quick story. About two years ago I was getting ready to do an event in London with a couple buddies from South Africa, Tony Cross and Alan Versteko. I think like the sales manager in Googers on this planet. I love these guys. I these are the guys I talk sales manager with. And I'm interviewing them and Alan says something crazy. And I won't even attempt to South African accent.

39:32 And he talks so fast. But he basically said we stink as sales managers today. So we were better sales managers in the late 1980s. And I looked at him and I said Alan in the late 1980s. I was drinking a lot of beer with a fake ID in high school in early college in upstate New York. And he goes I mean as a as a job in the late 1980s. And I said why is that? He said it was before email and before cell phones. And in those days what we were called was an infield manager.

40:02 And all we did was work, rotate around working with our different people, observing them. We'd go in the day before and we'd prep with them and we'd hear about their territory and we'd prepare for all the meetings we're going to have and we'd get in their car and we'd go make sales calls and we'd see what was happening. And occasionally we would model a sales call. But mostly we would just observe and we'd jump in a little bit.

40:22 And then after we would do critique and debrief and we'd work on strategies. And we'd just cycle through our people and all we did was proactive development, coaching and accountability. And today those are the behaviors that no one has time for. Yeah. And the weird thing to me, this is my mystery is that no one in the corner office is yelling at the sales manager for canceling coaching or not doing mentoring or skills development.

40:45 It's what I call when I'm doing a workshop proactive, developmental, non-urgent coaching. Like you have a new person doesn't know where the bathroom is. Of course you're going to coach them. You got a huge, huge opportunity to manage your jumps in coaches. Beyond that though, the proactive developmental, the kind that moves the needle on performance and gives managers tremendous satisfaction. Like the joy you get is when you inherit someone who's a rookie or an underperformer and because you're investing in them, you turn them around or you build them up and now they're a rock star.

41:18 Right. That type of coaching is the one that's gone by the wayside and it's because there's no pressure to do it. It's the first thing sales managers cancel when the crap hits the fan and they get overloaded and there's a lot going on. They don't, they don't coach. Right. And we see the impact and I don't think coaching is more important than accountability. I think it's almost equally important. But if the two levers are accountability, stick in their nose and their results in their pipeline and coach and helping them get better and managers do very little of either of those.

41:47 Mm hmm. It's not a mystery to me that sales are struggling and culture's not what it should be. Mm hmm. Period. Yeah. I think we've been yelling at this episode.

41:58 That's okay. Early in the morning, we're going to do it already. I thought we had an eventing. How about, how about this one that Scott and I both ran into when they need a new forklift driver, the salesperson gets to do it. When they were down a truck driver, let's take that, that $60,000 or $100,000 salesperson out of the field and have them drive in trucks for $15 an hour. Right. And that shows us, and it goes back to what you said early on about all this crap that falls on the sales manager's desk, we don't really believe as leadership that salespeople do anything.

42:31 They don't create anything. They don't make anything. So if we take them out of the field to drive a truck for a week, nothing's going to be different. I use that story. I can't believe we actually thought about driving the truck for a week. I had a, I had a client where I was doing this long term cohort for six months getting these people long story, but they were using the video content and I was meeting regularly with them virtually.

42:51 And then we got in person a couple of times. And this one salesperson from the northwest was telling the story that she, and there are very few women in this industry. So it was cool. And she was a woman because it had even more perspective. She was one of the few salespeople or people in her whole facility that had a class eight driver's license. Okay. And regularly when they were when they were short on, on deliveries of mass of this massive equipment that this dealership sold, they would tap her to come in and drive the truck and run out deliveries to deliver these, you know, crazy pieces of equipment.

43:24 And at the same time, they were frustrated at her sales results. And they spent the money to put her in the program with me. Well, you think I was going to let that happen. You've seen the phone calls I was making. I'm like, what the hell are you doing? She's not free labor. Right. She's not your truck driver. Get a truck driver. You know, they call me in. This is the thing. Oh, Mike, can you help us get more new sales?

43:43 I'm like, maybe. Can I see your people? And then can I ask how what you're burning them with? Mm hmm. I mean, what the, this is the weirdest thing. It's a title. It's chapter five and I book sales truth. It says to win more new sales requires focus on winning new sales. What a kind of a. I put the screenshot of that title page of the chapter. And people look at me like, what are you a freaking idiot? Like, I'm paying you real money to tell me this.

44:07 Like, this is the most obvious thing. And I'm like, isn't that obvious? Because I see your salespeople carrying around a fire hose. And I see you tasking them with driving the truck or the forklift, as Bill was talking about. And here's the thing I never tell my client this till their, their check cash is like I clear the check clears the bank. Yeah. Right. But the number one reason sales team are not picking up more new business, it's not a lack of talent.

44:28 And it's not a lack of skill. It's a lack of focus. They're working. But they're not working on those three verms we talked about a half hour ago. They're not creating new opportunities. They're not advancing. They're not closing. They're working. They're fighting fires. They're doing deliveries. You're using them, Mr. CEO as free labor, because you're a cheap bastard. Or you read some book on lean and you want people doing nine jobs.

44:52 I'm sorry. Selling's a full time job. And you, you sucking them in to wipe the floors or use the forklift to pick orders is not helping you drive more business, although you may think you're being efficient. Right. Exactly. There is that efficiency over effectiveness. How can I make those 14 follow up calls today if I'm driving a forklift or doing deliveries? What is that going to do to the reputation that I have when I fulfill a promise or don't fulfill a promise?

45:18 I promise to call you in two days because when I left a message, I said, if I don't hear from you in two days, I'm going to call you. And you don't make that follow up call. Right. The patient drops significantly. The momentum stopped. And all of a sudden you don't stand out. How many messages do I get from salespeople? And I never get a second call ever because I don't return the voicemail message. And I want to see, boy, if it's important, they're going to follow up and they're going to call me again.

45:41 Then I can count on somebody. I'd like to follow up. I had drive the truck this week. Why? I can't make those calls because I can't do. I'll do it in two weeks and then they'll say I'm not, I'm not accountable. So I have bad news. We have time at the end of our time. Running out of time. Yeah. So we've got just a few minutes to wrap things up, Mike. Any final thoughts that you have that you, we were going to ask what your favorite books are, but our favorite books are New Sales Simplified.

46:09 You have great taste. You're not only handsome. You have great taste in books and authors. My, here's the wrap up. It's one, everything we talked about today is simple. There was no calculus required here. Right? No one even a calculator or an abacus. Like there's no long division. We're talking about fundamental behaviors, but that's number one. Number two is I want every sales leader to hear this. You're the key. You're the key to driving results and you're the key to creating and maintaining a healthy, high performance sales culture.

46:40 And you can do that. Even if there's all this crap going on around you, you can be the, the protector and the shield of your team and you can point them in the right direction and you can set tone and culture and lead energizing team meetings and spend your time either holding your people accountable or working alongside them to coach them and help them get better. And if managers would just do those few things we chatted about today, they will see sales lift and they will really enjoy their job a lot more.

47:08 And isn't that what we all want? More job satisfaction and more results. Absolutely. Let's keep it simple. Yeah. Right now. Thank you, Mike. This has been a terrific 45 minutes. Oh, what a great conversation. And we're going to have a link to Mike's website. It's Mike Weinberg dot com. And our golden nugget today is see if you can recognize this one. A healthy sales culture values accountability and results. Who said that?

47:31 Oh, Mike Weinberg said that. And he did not know that that was the quote of the day. But how did he come out of the gate right away? Accountability accountability accountability. I believe increases morale. It increases standards and it makes people feel like they're on a winning team. I just love how accountability can be implemented effectively through a good sales leader. So what a great conversation. Mike, so grateful for the time and to celebrate our five year anniversary.

47:56 And to have you on. Could have had a better way to do that. No, just an absolute joy. Yeah, totally my treat. Thank you. I can't wait to listen at this and point my own audience to this episode as it releases. Oh, that'd be brilliant. You guys are brilliant. And I love the work you're doing for our community. So thank you. Oh, thank you. All right. So for all the information, the links go to winning at selling.com. This is episode 661.

48:19 And next week we're going to be talking about who defines the marketplace. And again, the one thing by Gary Keller would be doing part three, the intro and chapter 13. So please subscribe and share this podcast with your colleagues on your social media network. Go out and get better one skill at a time. Joyful selling.