Moving from Rep to Manager

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. As a salesperson, have you ever said behind your sales managers back, I can do a much better job than they can. Be careful what you wish for. It may look more glamorous than it really is. There are some pros and cons to being a salesperson versus a sales manager than you think.

0:30 So listen up as we try to encourage and discourage a shift in your responsibilities, as Bill and I unpack moving from rep to manager and other sub-line statistics on episode 674 of the Winning It Selling Podcast. I don't know, Scott, the list of things I've said behind my sales managers back. No. They have to start my own business so I didn't have a sales manager to report to. Well, you know, you think about it, the highest, greatest weakness that salespeople have had a high need for approval and they want to be like versus striving to be respected.

1:07 And you think about the role of a sales manager. They're constantly getting beat up in some cases, but we'll talk about that after we cover the book today. That's right. And think about why many of your sales managers got promoted. I had one that was promoted because he was a brother. Oh, okay. He became a sales manager. He was a brother. And I had one that was the best salesperson. Yeah. They weren't the best manager, but they were the best salesperson.

1:29 So I think we're going to talk about some of those fun things. Before we do, we got to cover chapters 10 and 11 of the sales perspective by Jimmy Zuggsworth. And these are good chapters. I like these. I like this book. I would advise it if you're just following along, but not reading to pick up sales perspective and get into it. So we're talking through this chapter, the five C's of every sales experience, care, connect, clarify, confirm and commit.

1:55 We've done four of them. Now we're on to the chapter 10, which is commit. And the subtitle is specific next steps, agreed upon outcome. And I like how he starts this chapter off Scott. He talks about a story where he was finishing a presentation and the prospect says, Okay, great. I'm going to have to discuss this with my partner. And he knew that he didn't even know there was a partner. And so he missed that important question.

2:23 In addition to you, Scott, who else is going to help you with this decision? Exactly. That is in one of Scott's top 10 questions you ask prospects. And that is episode 616 of winning at selling. So if you want to get into that in more detail, go to chapter or to episode 616. So anyway, instead of going for the close, he says go for commitments. And what are each of you is going to do as a result of this? Summarize what you're going to do and commit. What's your thoughts on that?

2:57 I love it. I think that it's reaffirming what he covered in the previous chapter, which is really closing that gap and really understanding everything that's in the way of them making a commitment and decision. You've come this far. Now, let's just work on completing it. And if you just summarize and you confirm, it's going to make it a lot easier for you to commit. And I think that's the philosophy of this chapter. Yeah, I think so too. Now, one of the things I do to get commitment on a complex sale, I don't do this on every sale, but on a complex sale, after our first meeting, I'm going to send a letter of understanding.

3:33 And that letter of understanding summarizes what we talked about, usually summarizing their key issues. And then it also goes into a list of here's what I said, I was going to do before our next meeting. Here's what you said you were going to get to me before our next meeting. And so everybody knows what their role is. And I think a lot of times that's missed and you get into that second meeting and it's like, well, you never sent me the XYZ list. So now what do we talk about?

3:59 Right. Exactly. There's no agenda. There's no topics. There's no common areas that would create a discussion in doing that. Right. Because we both thought different things. Right. Have you ever walked out of a meeting and you're like ambivalent about, well, what did we talk about? What do we go with here? Yeah. What are we going to do next? And I think a letter of understanding or just an email outlining that, which is similar to that.

4:23 It talks about what are the commitments. And I think what Jimmy's trying to say here is keep growing your commitments until the sale happens. You do this for me. I do this for you. Each time that goes back and forth, you're joining together in a more complex relationship. And that complex relationship says to the customer, I can't just drop all this. I've done too much work. Right. We're too far to just say no. And now what are we going to do instead of saying no? Okay, let's get more commitments for each other.

4:56 Let's make sure Bill and Scott can do what they say that they're going to do. And I think that's what really happens is this bond is being developed. You talk about trust a lot. And so that trust comes from what? Actions, commitments, understandings, expectations, fulfilling them. All of that contributes to trust. So that's a that's a commit part. You got anything else you want to add to that? Yeah, I think commitment and I think some people are still warming up to my position of stop.

5:25 Helping people start working with them. I think about this particular chapter. And when I started selling real estate, I got a four sale by owner to list their property with me. And three weeks after it was on the market, I got a call from one of the agents that showed the property and said, are they still interested in selling? And I said, well, of course they are. I mean, yeah, why? Well, the house is a mess. And, you know, I went over and talked to the sellers and, you know, the house was a mess. And I said, what's going on?

5:50 And they said, well, you said you were going to help us sell the house. Well, my expectation was not cleaning up the kitchen and making the beds and cleaning up the family room before showing. That's your job to have your house prepared for a showing. Well, you said you were going to help us. That's not commitment on both parties to a common goal. Well, and that's also a misunderstanding of what each person was supposed to do. Exactly. Right. When you said you were going to help them, they thought it meant you were going to come and clean every week.

6:19 Exactly. Exactly. Which is ridiculous on the face of it. But we've run into many ridiculous situations where people have expected things that are ridiculous. Right. I think one of the things that you do really well in our appointments, Bill, and as tough as it is in some of the conversations and how the appointment is starting to wrap up is you are always very consistent about setting the next step and setting the next appointment while we're all there.

6:43 And sometimes that is even difficult and we want to avoid it. Here's what's even more difficult. Try to get that wheel turning again after you left the room. It stopped. It's not moving anymore. If you had made an appointment, the wheel is still turning. They have the option of canceling it. And then you know it's probably at a dead stop at that point. We're dealing with that right now with an end. We thought we had a meeting with them. They said I got a big problem I'm dealing with. Let's postpone this for a couple of weeks. That was six weeks ago.

7:14 We keep trying to re-engage and now it's difficult. So don't do that to yourself on purpose. Right. Right. Instead, go ahead. Take the pain of setting that appointment while you're there. As tough as it is, work it out and commit to doing it. It's going to be a lot easier. I think it's easy. We got our phones with us right now. Let's take a look at our calendars. They're in the mode of saying let's keep this going. Right. And if they are not interested in keeping and going, guess what they're going to tell you? I really appreciate you coming in. I'm not sure if there's enough here that we'll be able to grab onto and use in the future.

7:51 I want to think about it. Maybe talk to some other people. If there's enough interest with some other folks on the team, I'll be happy. The first one to send you an email, give you a call, we'll schedule another meeting and maybe involve other people. But right now, I just don't think it's going to fly and I don't want to waste your time. I'm grateful for that. And you know what? That took a lot of guts and courage from their part to do the same thing as we're trying to do when setting another appointment.

8:11 So have the guts, demonstrate your commitment and schedule the next appointment before you leave the room. All right. We're going to leave it there for commit and go into chapter 11, which is Finish Well, handling objections and follow up and follow through. And he starts again. He likes to start with a story I do too. So I like his writing style. There's a girl named Heather Dorna Den who was a track runner for the University of Minnesota, which is where Jimmy and Scott and I are all from.

8:39 And she fell down in the track meet and usually, you know, you're winning by 10th of a second, right? So it's pretty much over if you fell down. Well, she got up and worked her butt up and she actually won the race. And she said, and she persevered and they said, what were you thinking about? She said, my family was in the stands and they were cheering for me and I couldn't give up. He's using that as an example of do you persevere? And I like his quote. He says, can you hold your head high when you've done everything to the best of your ability and still not close the deal? And I think so often we look back at a deal and we go, I should have done this or that.

9:20 And that means you weren't following up well. You skipped a step. Yeah. And I think debriefing sales calls is going to make the improvement a lot more evident. If you're not debriefing sales calls, you don't know what you're going to change the next time. You don't know what's working or not working. You've got a debriefing sales call after you have a meeting. And I'm going to go into one step ahead of you here moving from sales rep to sales manager, sales manager. This is your job.

9:47 Your job is to go on sales calls with people and see how they're doing things and applaud them for things they're doing well and suggest to them that there's things that they could do differently or better. Scott and I have learned so much in the past year and a half of working together on calls of things I'm now doing that I didn't used to do, things that Scott's doing that he didn't used to do, that we are learning from each other and we're perfecting our sales process through that.

10:15 I had 30 years of sales experience. Scott had 20 years of sales experience. Yes. So we can get better at what we do. And a lot of it is we get lazy. In place. So we skip things because, you know, hey, this is good. We're finding things that we could have done better just in the last couple of weeks. So it's crazy. I know you talk about what are the things that drive you. Jimmy says, how do you want to be known? He wants to be known for integrity, service and competence.

10:42 You had three words. I want to be known for my commitment, my compassion and what was the other one? Memory? Memory, your memory. Not that dizzy. So I want to be authentic. I would be the same person that you talked to as a friend as you talked to in the roles that I play. And that's just, you know, kind of leading with integrity and I overlap that one with integrity and I was, you know, want to be known for being committed and compassionate to.

11:10 Yeah, that's great. That's great. Now he goes into talk about he's going back to the early part of the book, his ESP method value service and trust. The five C's of every sales experience care, connect, clarify, confirm, commit. If you're skipping those things, if you're skipping any of those steps, if you have a sales process and you're skipping steps, you know what you're not doing. You're not finishing well. You're not following up and follow. That's, you know, the follow up and follow through. We talked about it a little bit earlier in this one project we're working on.

11:42 We needed to commit better. We need to change the conversation in order to get things going again once they had stalled. So be creative. There's another C you can add. Right. Some creativity to what you do. When things are stuck, you're expected to change the nature of the conversation, not the customer. They're glad to just move on to something else. So he talks about handling objections in this area. I'm going to go through his five questions. And again, his handling objections isn't answering. That's what I liked.

12:15 His handling objections was asking better questions. And here's the questions he has that he uses to handle objections. Tell me more. What do you mean by that statement? What else have you heard? Is there more about this idea that you would like to share with me? In addition to that, are there any other reasons why you won't consider what I have to offer? That's an interesting question and one that I hear often. So he generally talks about questions he asks to delve deeper rather than getting and starting to answer because quite often the first objection is not the true objection.

12:55 Exactly. Amazing how these objections also correspond and overlap with negotiation techniques. So you think about a nibble and somebody always asking for more. Jimmy's approach to an objection is besides that. What else have you heard? So now you're getting more information. So you're starting to see kind of an overlap between sales techniques and negotiation techniques and handling objections. And I love the influence on both of them as you're having a productive conversation. You've made it this far. I mean really objections are buying signs. Let's close the gap as Jimmy talks about and figure out a way for the solution to look ideal and have enough value where they end up running out of check and paying the price.

13:37 One of the ones I use that's pretty tough for people to use but I'm hard sometimes and they'll say well can we get this for 10% less? And I'll say sure what 10% of the project would you like me to cut out of this? Right. And they say well I don't want to cut anything out. I'll say well you can't expect me to give you the same value and just lower my price. And they look at me stunned because most sales people go sure I can give you 5% off because they were told they could go 5% or 10% or whatever to get the deal.

14:08 And instead they just give away 10%. Yeah I read a Brian Tracy quote and I got to believe it had to be 30 years ago. And the line was if it was free would you take it? And the answer is always yeah. Well why would you take it? Well because it would do this, this and this. I just told you exactly what they want to buy from you. Okay so we've identified what the problem is. We've identified the need. I just haven't done a good enough job of explaining the value of what this is worth and what other people have paid for it and a dollar so that you get the value in exchange for the dollar.

14:44 And I can just imagine them sitting across and you would you take this if it was free. Oh yeah. Of course I would. Why? All right now let's talk about how much so. It's just we're talking about price is all we're really talking about. Yeah well there's an old joke about that but I'm not going to use it. Okay good. All right next week no book club. We're going to have a guest and in two weeks we're going to start into part three of sales perspective.

15:09 Your new world sounds interesting. It is it is and then we're going to be starting a new book and and looking forward to that. Today our topic is moving from rep to manager and build you want to kind of go into a story about this with. Don't do it. We had a client as a sales manager hired us we did a great program with them it was a medical. Great program. And great guy. We just had so much fun working together preparing delivering following up it was just one of the most exciting engagements Bill and I had and after we did the fifth session.

15:46 Reinforcement staff the sales manager said I guys I got news for you. I have been so inspired that I want to start to carry a bag again and be a salesperson and I'm tired of people dumping trash on my desk. And I don't want to do the paperwork anymore it be a sales manager so I'm so I don't I don't enjoy he said I don't enjoy the things that sales managers have to do. Yes. That was interesting. It was just right out of left field from from Bill and I and I was like God I didn't think that that was that would ever happen but that's one of the you know the the catalyst or the inspirations of this topic.

16:21 So what I want to do is I want to go through the pros and cons and then I want to follow up and kind of categorize a couple of the cons and kind of give some strategies if this is a route that you want to go if you're a sales person and you want to be a sales manager. So some of the pros one pro is deep product and customer knowledge they understand the offering customers and the pain points firsthand. So true. Nobody probably has more product knowledge in the industry than the sales people in most cases.

16:51 What's the con to that you know they lack leadership training they may not have the skills to coach manage conflict or lead a team. So you've got great product knowledge but you don't have the leadership training. Next one is and you don't always have Scott you don't always have the leadership. Let's say that you don't really have an urge to be a leader you know quite often if we take our best sales person they're kind of like this lone wolf out there quite often.

17:22 And what they like to do is go out there and do their own thing so think about whether you want to be a leader. Do I want to lead a group of people do I want them to bring my problems you know you talk about managing conflict. Do I want to deal with their conflict. Oh Bob's doing messing around in my territory or I know but that company is headquartered in my territory so I get in. Do you want to do all that if you enjoy it then maybe you have the chops to be a good leader if you don't enjoy it maybe you shouldn't do it.

17:53 So yeah yeah and part of this is the setup to be able to make sure that it is something that you're prepared for and you can find some joy in it and you can feel fulfilled when you get through it too. And I think what Scott saying is don't expect your company to give you leadership training. We're not seeing a lot of that for sales leaders. You got to have a personal drive and desire to want to do this role it is not an easy role.

18:17 The next one pros credibility and influence you know they have internal respect peers and their leadership. Great of course they do the con challenging peer dynamics managing peer. The con is challenging peer dynamics managing former peers can create tension and favoritism. Any sales person that's ever been on a sales team recognizes this favoritism and somebody has it better often they do and they didn't deserve it. Even if you're not being favorites they see any advantage that you give any decision you make that goes against them as favoritism.

18:57 And so you better be ready to deal with that. And you do you do have some deep seated favorites people that you got along with and you got people that are jerks to you when you were a sales person and you're just not inclined to help them as much because you're a human being and I think you have to be careful that. This peer dynamic Scott is in every sale any any promotion to leader. I deal with it all the time when I'm working with production people somebody gets promoted.

19:26 Well now everybody that he went bowling with every week works for him. And now it's a challenge because of the peer dynamics and and and the people trying there's people trying to take advantage of your friendship. Right. Right. Yeah and sometimes friendship can evolve out of a work relationship I worked for a company and I'd get invited over on Sunday to watch the ball games or you know the football games and I was on the sales team and I think some people knew that some people didn't it didn't really matter.

19:57 I want to do my job and I did my job great too but I also had a personal relationship with my sales manager too still to this day. And that's 30 years later. Right. Right. But what I'm saying is that people know that. Yeah. I think that's favoritism and and again you sometimes you can't help yourself because you like a person you they treat you well. Yeah. You treat them well. So exactly. I have common beliefs. Alright.

20:22 So next one pros you know faster ramp up time they already know the company culture systems and processes. True. The con is that they struggle with I the cons they struggle with identity shift. They may have trouble stepping back from selling to focus on leading. Oh boy. Yeah. And we've seen it before where sales managers come off from the sidelines they jump in the game they put on a helmet and they play a few plays.

20:48 It's just doesn't happen in the real world of football. They have to lead by influence. So they have to be able to shift their identity. I've seen some where they keep the biggest customers for themselves. Yeah. So now this oh I had these big customers I'll give you my territory Larry but I'm going to keep you know Giganto corporation. No thing that made the territory worth having. Right. The only thing I built the whole time I was there.

21:19 So we call those house accounts. Yeah. Now we do. Yeah. Those are house accounts. Nobody gets a commission on those house accounts. Well sometimes sometimes companies make the mistake of thinking they can make a player manager. So now I'm a player and I'm a manager. So now everything I do for myself has seen this favoritism and I'm probably am doing those things for myself. And so now I'm mixing two of these things together.

21:45 Right. The favoritism toward myself and the fact that I'm going to screw up and try to play all the time because I enjoy that and I don't enjoy managing as much or I don't. I maybe don't feel competent at leadership. So I fall back into sales. What's the peer principle? We always tend to fall back to the area where we feel most comfortable and confident. Mm hmm. Exactly. Exactly. The next pro is boosting morale and motivation.

22:13 It shows a clear path to career growth, encouraging performance and retention. That's a real good strength. A good pro. The con is that's a different success metrics. So they must transition from personal performance to team performance. Yeah. And that's very similar to the identity shift. We'll talk about that a little bit later. And the last pro is mentorship potential. You know, they can teach from experience and model successful behavior within their team of other salespeople.

22:44 And when they do onboarding, sometimes the most seasoned sales person is the one that trains the new sales reps in, not leadership. And I think leadership needs to train the reps in because leadership needs to find the expectations of the culture and the company to be able to do that. And I think that's a great thing to be able to define habits that support that. I think this mentorship, this mentorship potential is only there if that sales person knows why or how they make sales.

23:13 And, and I've used this example before. One of my favorite ball players was Kirby Puckett. They asked him, how do you hit so well? He said the ball is just that big man. It's just so big you just can't help but hit it. And not good coaching advice for someone who doesn't see the ball that big man. Right. But then it looks like a peanut and they're trying to swing at it and it's moving. Yeah. And, and so you can't teach what you don't understand.

23:37 Quite often that middle level sales person who had to work hard to learn what they know, they're a better movement. They can teach better than that, that natural. Because they're able to communicate the process. Well, they show what they had to do. Right. Well, they have to do something to get better. They weren't just a natural. Wow. And they knew why you had to do it. What's the motivation? What's the reason for doing it?

24:02 It can get emotional and very logical when you know the reason as to why something is important. And you can make the... If I'm a lousy hitter and I have to work to get it to hit 250, I had to figure something out. Right. If I'm just hitting everything out of the park when it comes, when they start throwing me a curve ball I haven't seen before, I don't know what to do with it anymore. So I think that's the challenge with this mentorship potential.

24:27 And a lot of this is what you and I have seen is that they take the top performer and they make them the sales manager. And those skill sets aren't always aligned. Right. And that's the con part of it. Is that the team loses a high producer. And if the transition fails, both roles suffer. We've lost a sales person and the sales manager is not doing a very good job at leading the team anymore. That is, and that we see all the time.

24:55 Frequently. It happens quite frequently. So let's work on leveraging the cons. If this is something that you truly feel called to do, here's how to make it work. So let's say that you want to take on this challenge. I'm going to go over to the cons. I'm going to grab the first two. Lack of leadership training and challenging pure dynamics. I want to break it down into three areas. Learning the difference between management, leadership and influence.

25:25 So we manage things, items and assets. We lead people in teams and we direct them. This is a positional leadership of being sales manager. And this is from a respectful role. And in corporate speak, we may call this accountability. So when you lead people, you have to hold them accountable. Totally agree with that. You have to hold them accountable. You also have to coach them. But first, if we're talking about the lack of leadership, you need to be able to create a culture of accountability.

26:02 However, I think there's another step and that's the third step and that's influence. Influence can change behavior, outlook and beliefs. This is the coaching part of the sales manager's job. This is where you start as a salesperson before you take on that role of a sales manager. And this could be a year in advance. You are having that influence within the sales team that you're working with to be able to develop other people at the same time.

26:32 They're working on developing you. And when you have influence within the team, you're going to have respect and you're going to have followers. And believers and advocates when you become the sales manager. And that's something that really shows whether you should be a sales manager. If you spend some time as a salesperson coaching other people, if people come to you and say, Hey, Scott, can you help me through this problem or take a look at this proposal for me?

27:00 But that top sales person, if you're the sort of person that when somebody comes to you with that kind of request, you say, Hey, I don't have time for that. I got another. I got too many appointments to be myself. You're probably not. You probably shouldn't become the sales leader because you don't want to do that. You're not open to that influencing of other people. So look for look at yourself thoughtfully and think, are these when people come to me?

27:22 Do I want to help them? Do I want to coach them? Do I want to build them? Or do I want to just go out and do my own thing and be a lone wolf? That should help you decide whether you should move on towards sales manager. Yeah. I have enough time making my quote. I'm not going to come over and help you make your quota. You're on your own. It's good. You're on your own. It's your territory. Right. Those are not sales manager potential people.

27:42 They don't want to be a sales manager. They want to be a contributor and a top producer. Nothing wrong with that. Every sales manager needs those people. Don't throw stuff in their way. If that's what they're going to do is they're going to work hard and commit to making quota, don't make it difficult for them. But there are some people that want to go on a ride alongs. A colleague says, Hey, I'm having a little tough time with this prospect.

28:03 You might ride along with me. Sure. That's sales management potential right there just by doing that. Coaching is influencing other people's beliefs. Beliefs change behavior. Behavior gives us the outcome. Within this leadership, you're creating accountability and you're creating coaching opportunities for them to develop their skills. Here's an example of a coaching opportunity. Let's say that you're working with a colleague and they keep saying, I can't or I can't do this or I can't do that.

28:34 They're automatically rejecting the opportunity to improve. Instead, they need to be telling themselves, I don't know this yet. I need to learn. I need to find out this information. The objection has it's already been defined and this is where learning begins and this is where growth comes from. But nobody ever wants to be in a position of growing because they know that when you grow, you take on more responsibilities.

28:58 Who wants to take on more responsibilities this day? We're not looking at growth as an assessment of priorities and the need to practice delegation. When we get into assessing our priorities and we start prioritizing and practicing delegation, we are starting to grow and a sales manager that is involved in delegating things to other people. They're going to have more time coaching and performing this transformation on an outlook and an attitude of, I can't do I will and I will learn because now I know what I need to change.

29:37 I think another good idea in this area is for sales people to be involved in associations. You and I have been involved in the professional sales association over the last many 13 years. 2011 is when I took it over and you're the president now. The union of sales people were involved in associations and they took on a leadership role. How much they would learn working with other board members and becoming the leader of the group because when you're the leader of the group, you can't fire your employees.

30:07 You can't fire your board members. They're volunteers. Right. So you need to work on influencing them to achieve the overall goal of the association. It does sadden me at my age, 59 years old, to be able to look at some boards, some associations and just to see the lack of 20 year olds that are contributing and learning and developing their leadership skills by committing their time and energy. And the company is not supporting those sales people to get involved in associations to be able to learn those skills.

30:39 I was involved when I was in my 20s and it had a big impact on me today. So I want to just close with this particular section on leadership is if you're a sales manager, think about who your successor is. You got to pick somebody within the sales team that's going to be your successor and build them up to take your job. And don't look for someone who is just great at sales. Right. You got to be able to mentor somebody that's going to be your successor because your strength in leadership is going to be found in the successor.

31:09 You can look at any Fortune 100 company, you can get up to the Fortune 10 companies. And I think we had lunch with somebody and they were talking about when you come into a big company and you're out of college, they identify the CEOs within the first five years of working at a company and they decide if they're going to fast track them or not. And there's not a lot of people that get fast track up to the CEO level. Yeah.

31:32 Well, I think a couple of good books that you might want to read. I'm a John Maxwell trainer and coach developing the leader within you, developing the leader around leaders around you both good books. John C. Maxwell developing the leader within you and developing the leaders around you. Yeah. Very, very good books and good philosophies on that. Well, they're talk about influence. It's about influencing not about telling people what to do.

32:03 Yeah. Yeah. The next ones that I want to put together is struggle with identifying your identity shift and then you have a different success matrix. I kind of talked about this a little bit earlier, the cat. The coaches can't put on a helmet and run a few plays. So you have to be able to encourage your salespeople to work with them to get lead sources, go out, encourage them, help them get their own territories and to be able to develop that into their particular niche and work on the leading indicators before we can enforce the lagging indicators.

32:39 So we're going to have to really work on giving the salespeople credit when they do something on their own because they created it. And that is going to be contagious. And you're going to make measuring your successes as sales manager based on the productivity of your individual sales reps and the overall sales team. And as I want to close on this topic is, you know, when you're really working within an organization, you're dealing with a couple of things.

33:02 You're dealing with people, which can be politics and you can be dealing with the process, which is part of the systems and management. But really what is most important in this role is that you seek influence. So as a salesperson, within a team, if you want to be a sales manager, think about how you're influencing the other people to generate greater results for the team, for the company, et cetera. And those are the skills that you're going to develop when you become a leader.

33:28 Anything you wanted to add as we close up this topic? Thank you. Set it all. Wonderful. Well, we do have a resource or an idea for you that you'll find on the show page. We were given or we were placed on the best 100 sales training podcasts. We're number four on that and we'll put a link to that. So we're proud of that. So we were on number three on the sales management podcast and number four on best sales training podcast.

33:58 That's quite a compliment. And we're just so grateful. And then, you know, this may be because of AI, but you know, somebody found us and others did too. And we're just grateful to be invited to make an impact on your selling results. And, you know, thank you for listening for all of our listeners. We finished up a golden nugget. This is from the great bear Bryant, coach for Alabama for many years. You win games with your strengths, not your weaknesses.

34:24 So go out and focus on your strengths. Let your weaknesses go by the wayside. If you do enough with your strengths, you'll get things done. Yep. Everything we talked about will be at their website, www.winningatselling.com. Next week, no book club because we're going to have a guest and that guest is Jason Talley and he is going to discuss using podcast to supplement training. Please subscribe and share the podcast with your colleagues and on your social media.

34:52 If you're so inclined, give us a five star review. This is episode 674. Go out and get better one skill at a time. Dry full selling.