Special Guest - Jason Talley

0:04 Thank you for joining us on the William Selling Podcast. I'm Professor Scott Plumb of the Minnesota Sales Institute and with me is Bill of Health Camp of Reach Development Systems. Scott and I have been pouring our knowledge and experience into this podcast for over five years, with the hope that sales professionals would be able to use this information to sell more and win at selling. And that sales leaders would be able to augment their own training with the ideas presented in our podcast.

0:30 While we've spoken to many of our listeners, we finally decide to let one of them share his results. So prepare to hear an echo of your own experience as Scott and I welcome sales leader Jason Talley to examine how he is using podcasts to supplement training and other idealistic impressions on episode 675 of the Winning at Selling Podcast. I've always said this before Bill, but you write very intriguing intros. I'm looking forward to the conversation with Jason, but before we do that, we are doing the book sales perspective by Jimmy Z.

1:07 And no book club today because we want to give the entire hour half hour to our guests, Jason. You're being a panic when you said hour. Hour. The entire two hour segment to Jason, we could make it two parts that good. Next week when we get together, we'll be doing chapters 12 and 13 on part three. And this is one of two episodes left that we're going to be doing the book. And then we're going to have our next author, Mitch Larson is going to be coming on our next book is The Power of Purpose.

1:37 So if you go to the show, notice you'll be able to see a link to that and it's an Amazon. But if you know the title, you can find another outlet says well. The whole different kind of book is a workbook style. It kind of forces you to write some of your ideas in. I hate to write in books. You're a book writer. Well, I used to do that. But now I write in all my books because I want to be able to create that inspired friction.

1:59 Well, I read something and write down what I think of. And then I put the two of them together and then I can own it. I can own it because it's my style. It's my application of that content. And I knew he'd say that. I don't like to write books. Okay. All right. Before we start that argument, let's welcome our guest. Jason is a 30 year veteran of industrial distribution. Most of those years were spent in sales, but then he took some time to work at other parts of the organizations like organizations, logistics, supply chain, quality product management found out he was better at sales.

2:31 So he went back, got out of the desert of data analytics and went back into sales operations. Now he's looking forward to developing the next generation of salespeople at the same time delivering new clients to the company through a complex sales acquisition process, which I'm anxious to hear about. So Jason, welcome to the Winning It Selling podcast. Oh, thank you. Thank you both. Yeah, you had me a little nervous there with an hour.

2:56 I have more notes prepared. I'm sure we could go that long. After 30 years, there's plenty of stories that can be told that can go a long time. That's right. Well, good. Well, it's fun to have you on the show. And I think we always start off with your history. And so you've gone to a lot of different areas. Why just circle back to sales and revenue generation? And what does your journey look like that's brought you here?

3:26 Well, you know, like he said, it's been 30 years. I've done just about everything within the company. I've been with the same company now for 27 and held a lot of roles. 2018, they asked me to start up and work with some colleagues on sales operations, which is more data analytics and identifying trends. And I truly think the only reason they chose me to do it was because I was the only sales rep that could do a V look up and a pivot table.

3:57 Most guys didn't know what a denominator and a numerator was. So I did that and worked in the different areas of sales operations. But I got the itch to go back because there's only so much you can do saying here, take this data and use it. And then you want them to use it if they don't. You get personal frustration. So I was able to get back into sales and during the pandemic, I think a lot of us started listening to more podcasts and things.

4:34 So I was listening to some on sales operations and I got some information out of it. So when I decided to go back into sales, I started looking for some sales podcasts as well. Went through some early ones. They were really bad. It was just people being very arrogant, talking about how much money I made and I did all these great things. Yeah, more stories. More stories. Yeah. But nothing really concrete. And then I came upon you guys.

5:07 You're probably the fifth or sixth that I clicked on. And what I liked about it was you actually gave content and lessons and you were real people that actually talked about your failures in the past. So I have a lot more evidence in that area. So that's. Well, I do be a short show if we only talked about our victories. Yeah. I mean, I've got a lot of failures that I can talk about. So I'm like, yeah, here's some kindred spirits.

5:34 People screwed up from time to time. So I really appreciated the content that I had and I started sharing it with the people I was working with as well. So some of them picked up on it. Some of them right. But I still use it to this day. Well, that's great. Thank you so much. We appreciate that. And we, we had a great time chatting with you. Jason was in town and Scott and I got together with him for breakfast and just had a great time talking about sales.

5:59 And I think when you're in sales and you went out of sales into all these different areas, you kind of have that desire to carry the bag again, didn't you? Yeah, I did. You know, I'm a competitive person. When you get older, you can't play sports anymore. When I hit 50, I couldn't make a basket on the basketball court. My kids quit, quit picking me on their team during pickup games. So I'm like, well, I guess I'm done with this.

6:25 So I really need to, you know, you got to fuel that competitive fire and you got to do it. And for me, it's with sales and, and competing with other people and, and trying to win. So I wanted to get back on. And I'm also somebody, you know, I learned a long time ago when I got better at sales. It was, you have money was a driver, but if you focus all your time on just making money, you should just be a used car salesman, which is, you know, the perception is the worst type of salesman just trying to push, push, push and close.

7:00 But you really need to try to bring some value to people. If you bring value, you know, all the other good stuff will come. And so I wanted to get back and share some of those experiences with our younger team that we've been hiring into a, into a development program here. Well, when you're leading these younger folks that you're bringing into the company, what contrast are you seeing between some of the season ones? Maybe they're, they're 10 to 15 or maybe even 20 years compared to some of the new folks that you're bringing in.

7:29 What are some of the things that you're seeing as a leader between the difference between those two generations? Ah, the two generations. Well, luckily the younger generation is a blank slate. I think we've all seen it as we've, you know, we've hired people from other companies. Well, sometimes they bring good stuff with them, but then other times they bring some of their other baggage with them as well. You know, so we're trying to change the whole culture here of moving to more of, and you said it earlier, of a friction Scott with the challenger sales type of approach where you, especially on complex sales.

8:09 And that's what my team does is the large complex sales and try to challenge them with their preconceived notions of what they really want because, you know, maybe they, maybe they don't know the newest technology. Or what we can bring to the table these days. They're still thinking about the last deal they, they signed eight to 10 years ago. And, you know, so we need to, we need to bring a focus that way. So now some of the older guys, yeah, they've had success doing it other ways.

8:39 Mm hmm. And sometimes that brings a friction between me and them as well of, yeah, I know you've had success the other way, but let's try to have more success going forward. Using this process instead. So, yeah, we found that a lot recently that people will, will make mistakes in selling and still sell sometimes. And then they think what the end, and what we say is they make just have just enough success to think that their poor way of doing it is a good way of doing it.

9:09 And as you say, if we do it the right way, maybe we'll have more success. Yeah. I mean, that's the scariest thing when somebody had success with their first sale. I think he talked about it in the Jimmy Z book, his first chapter. He had success and then tried to do it over and over. But it's like, you know, it's like betting on six and on through that. Well, maybe a hit. These other 35 times you're going to lose your money.

9:33 Right. Right. Are you seeing any challenge with the younger generation? And I think you're right. They are more open to new ideas. But also one of the things we found is that they don't seem to like to participate as much live. They seem to be happy enough to do things online. And I'm wondering if you're seeing that's a conflict with your customers. If they want to see people live or if they're happy to be doing everything on zoom.

10:01 Yes, they are more happy. They're more happy to do text messaging and that sort of stuff. But they do like the experience. Once you get them out in face to face opportunities with prospects, they like to see that aspect. And without some industrial sales, one of the neatest things that we get to do is go out into the factories and see how things are made. And how our products are being used so that once somebody gets a taste of that, if they're not, you know, curious and.

10:37 And, you know, wanting to see more. Maybe they're not made out for being in sales if they truly just want to sit behind the desk. You know, I had a sales meeting. And the sales meeting two weeks ago. And, you know, one of the things I brought up was I've never spoken to anybody that ever won the salesperson of the year. With them saying, yeah, I just sat here at the desk and people called me. And that's how I won the award. You got to do stuff.

11:04 And that's how you are active and you and you make some sales. We're often asked to evaluate candidates on their sales positions. What are some of the key attributes that you look for when it comes to professional podcasts on helping sales people kind of strengthens their areas on their weaknesses? Is there something that you're seeing podcasts being effective or a need where salespeople need to learn or evolve within a certain area?

11:32 Well, I think with any training, I can listen to podcasts all day. But if I don't apply anything that I've heard or learned, it doesn't make a difference. So for me, what I really like is having some information that I can then take back and apply or a lesson. You know, I actually used Bill's example of where he has everybody reach as high as they can and use the marker. And I was really surprised at how the young people really liked that.

12:10 Especially when they did the third time around and they were still able to get a little bit higher and hitting their potential. So, you know, the fact that I'm able to use some of the stuff from your podcasts, it's some great little lesson plans that I can put together and not only work with the younger team, but the older team as well. So for sales podcasts, I would say put it in a usable form. Don't just tell these long-winded stories about some great success you had without some real details that you can use.

12:44 No, there goes the second half of the show. Well, what are some of the you talked about liking that we do lessons rather than just conversation? What are some of the areas that you found to be the most useful? Well, a couple here, you'll like this quote versus proposal. We had a whole two and a half, three hours of this in our sales meeting, walking through. Now, I prepared for it, actually going back, listening to the podcast again, and then rewriting all my notes of how we wanted to present it and trying to change the mentality of sending out quotes, quotes, and hoping to get a win to making the quote just part of the proposal.

13:36 And having a much more depth because then if somebody asks you to change your price or says you're 5% too high, you actually have something to go back to and say, okay, if you want me to change your price, I can take this out or I can change my proposal in such a way no longer am I paying the freight? You know, those sort of things and you have negotiating abilities with it to do. So we're really pulling back on allowing reps just to do market basket quotes.

14:09 We had a lot of discussion on I don't want to do market basket quotes anymore. Let's do the proposal first and then do the quote. They can qualify us. We were a very big company. We're $23 billion. So we're pretty qualified to do a lot of this stuff. Our prices are going to be fine. If we know what they truly need to solve their issues. Yeah, I think it's interesting. If you don't do a proposal, what do you talk about?

14:40 Just go through the line items and say, what can we discount for you? Yeah, exactly. That's all you have is you're talking about price at that point. And you get lumped in and you get commoditized and what exactly is what does the price mean? Does it mean I'm delivering everything? Does it mean I'm and we do a lot of managed inventory programs or we're putting product in bins? You know, do we control the size of the bed or does does the client control the size?

15:11 How often are we delivering? You know, all those things that you need to have all that lined out or you have nothing to negotiate your price with. And those are all the differentiators. Yeah, absolutely. That's what proves our program is a little bit better than the other people, not just our prices. Well, that's something that's had the greatest traction, I think, when and Bill developed this, you know, quote versus proposal.

15:37 And it's been the most receptive of our listeners and every time we've done a program together, it has the biggest impact. So since you incorporated that, Jason, what's kind of the result that you've gotten out of doing a quote versus a proposal? What are some of the different outcomes? Well, it's still fairly new. So one thing I can tell you is we're doing fewer quotes. You know, I brought this up two years ago with the company because I was running the quote eating.

16:04 And we had new sales reps and I said, do not think that you're successful because you walk out with a quote. And some of my colleagues are like, oh, hold on. No, don't say that to them. And we want to be excited about a quote. I go, I don't get excited about a quote because all that means is you're transferring that work on to me and my team. You know, and just because you're turning in stuff doesn't, and you think you're busy doesn't mean that we're really successful.

16:35 So we're doing fewer quotes and, you know, what everybody complains about is everybody brings quotes back. And then they go, oh, our quoting is too slow. Well, yeah, because they're, you know, they're doing, you know, even at a good hit rate, you're at 30%. You're doing 70% of work that's going to amount to nothing. So you want to try to limit that as much as you can and really qualify your quotes beforehand to ensure.

17:03 You're in sure you're working on the most. Most opportunistic projects there are out there to win. I think you have to do a pretty bad job as a sales person to finish your presentation up and you say, Hey, can I send you a quote. And they would say no. How much they don't like you? Sure. Send me a quote. Don't cause nothing. Yeah. No. No. So, so it's not qualified. What the heck? Send me a quote and the sales person's doing a little dance.

17:36 Hey, they let me quote them. So what? Well, and what's the easiest way for a buyer to get a sales person all their office? They slide a piece of paper across. Hey, quote this for me. You run out and go, I got a quote. I got me one. I got me one. Almost a sale. Yeah. Like buying cards for it's, you know, all I need to do now is have the best price. And then I win. Yeah. Yeah. So you talked about earlier, you qualifying, doing fewer quotes and I'm guessing your win rate went up when you were starting to do more qualified quotes and probably short in the sales cycle too.

18:16 What are some of the advice that you have on qualifying quotes better? Well, that's where you really need to do more work in discovery. You know, we have a six stage sales process. Stage five is really the discovery area. We go six to six down to one. But stage five is where you got to spend your time. Don't jump right to receiving the quote. Understand, understand who all the stakeholders are and qualify it that way.

18:45 We had a great meeting a month or so ago where they brought in six different people. You know, the buyer was the main person, but he brought in somebody from quality. We go, why are you here? Well, I'm here to make sure our buyer doesn't do a stupid job and sign up with somebody that doesn't give me good quality. You know, that's perfect. That's where you start understanding the different people and what they want. You've got to understand all those people because at the end of a very large complex deal, one of them could be the person that says, no, I don't want to do it.

19:21 And you've done all this work and you negotiated prices and stuff. And you think you're going to win and somebody out of the blue comes in and crashes at all. And the good thing too is by having all those people in the room, you're getting all of those stakeholders in so you can find out which one is receiving the most value from you. Challenge when we only work with purchasing is they're only looking at price, but they're not looking at how, as you say, it affects quality or it affects, you know, we had one client that we worked with that the way they were packaging the product before they sent it was the was a differentiator.

20:00 So it was easier to put on the manufacturing line. But it would have known that if we hadn't talked to the manufacturing people. Exactly. And for me, the greatest sale I can make is where I get that friction amongst all the other stakeholders where people there, the material manager, the quality person and engineers are going sourcing heck with your prices. I want that guy to supply me. So you work it out. Don't worry about your PPV as much.

20:30 How much you're saving because they're managing the bins. Yeah, exactly. So that to me is the perfect sale. And then you then you're able to get a good competitive pricing model for the services that you provide. Wow. Fascinating Jason. You've done work in different departments within an organization. What are some of the things that you've learned being in sales that you've carried from other departments that you've worked in that you're now applying in sales, anything that you can share to just draw some context and contrast between that.

21:02 Well, it's easier for me when I'm sitting on the other side of the desk because I've been in the purchasing role. I've sent out RFPs and sometimes what I'm asking for isn't the right thing. So I've learned when I'm sitting in the sales role to really question and try to understand what problem or what they're really trying to get to because they may have written their RFP incorrectly because I've done it myself and I've had sales people come back and go here.

21:36 You're crazy. You're never going to get a good price or never going to get the service options that you're going to get. So what's also helped me is on the quality and on the product side for us. I'm big. I'm trying to understand what quality levels that we're that they are expecting. You know, is it a PPP or is it some other level of quality because in our industry and in manufacturing PPP is like Kleenex. Everybody will throw that high level of quality out for anything.

22:10 But do they really want it or do they just want a piece of paper to put in their file to say, I, they know what I want. They're going to give it to me. And we get trapped by that sometimes where we don't ask all the quality questions up front. And at the end, we've given a price that doesn't include that quality level. And then right at the last second, they go, Oh, by the way, I need PPPs and this, this and this. And you may have to go out to a whole new supply base to be able to get it.

22:40 And there's a different price. So I'm going to bring a few different strings together because you mentioned the word RFP or the initials RFP. And that really relates me back to quoting answering RFP is kind of like quoting. We had one client who had one person who answered 50 RFPs a year and they would get one of them. And they thought they were doing a good job. And we spent time trying to convince them that this was not a good ratio.

23:06 And they insisted on sticking with it. But what's your advice about answering RFPs? How do we know which ones are going to be the most valid for us? So we can move through that, that junk that is just where we're just cannon fodder to fill out an RFP. Well, for me, if we're not able to go in and get into the plant and really start doing the discovery, we're not going to fill out the RFP. No, and they don't give you access.

23:37 Yeah, if they're not giving you access to find out what they need, then all their, they're just using you as the third person on the RFP or we refer to it as the rabbit to try to just drive down prices. You're never really in contention that if they're not willing to give you the time and access to try to understand what they need, why do it? Right. You know, in for a sales guy, it's easy. Have somebody fill out the RFP for him.

24:10 If you send that over to the Quoting Department. This looks like a good one. That's what I like. That's what I like the judgment. This one looks good. It feels right. Yeah, or we need to do it because we need to still be on the list for three years from now when we may actually have an opportunity. Yeah. Yeah, we need another. We need another Patsy. So we should be a part of that. Yeah, exactly. Scott, you wanted to ask some questions about candidates and stuff like that, for Jason, for new people coming up.

24:47 Yeah. Yeah. What are some of the things you're looking for? You've mentioned kind of the newer people coming to the company that don't have experience as much. What are some of the, the skills or the attitudes or the behaviors or the outlooks that you look for when you're hiring new people that have never been in the business before? Well, there's, there's two things that I really look for. One is curiosity. They naturally curious and want to find out stuff and, and it's not anything that I discovered on my own. Actually, our owner, the professor, Professor Worth.

25:23 His yacht is actually named vibrant curiosity. Our model for many years was vibrant curiosity. He talked about how you got to be curious and go find more products to sell and, and understand what your customers need. So if they're not curious, they can be introverted, extroverted, doesn't matter. You know, big talkers aren't great salespeople. You got to, you got to be listening and you've got to ask good questions. So, but if they really want to learn and part of it is continuing their learning by reading and, and other things are trying to get better.

25:59 Now, the second thing that I look for and we talk about, we actually talked about it at our sales meeting is what do you do? How do you motivate yourself when you've hit that wall? And it's the, you know, I'll clean it up, but it's the what the heck moment that you get when you wake up at 5 30 in the morning and you go, Oh man, having another terrible day. I'm not hitting my sales numbers. I'm not, not making my goal. I keep trying everything I can. And we've all been there. Yeah. Yeah. We've all been there. What do you do? What motivates you to keep going to push through and recommit yourself.

26:40 So we talked about that. We gave some different stories of what, what it takes to go forward. And, you know, I gave a story of years ago. I was probably 2001, 2002. We had a customer. I was in Illinois at the time. And small little place. We had a contract with the large plant in Ohio. We did a million dollars a year. We were there every day. My plant was $55,000 a year. And of course, I wasn't going there every day to see them. Well, the buyer was mad at me.

27:18 My sales manager called me up. Oh, you're going to lose my account because you're not going there every day. And, you know, I was early in my marriage. So obviously there was friction from time to time there. So I did go every guy would do. I knocked off early and sat down at the bar to have a beer. I was really, really, really excited about my life. Well, of all things in walks, Leon Spinks. No, those that don't know, you know, he won the 1976 gold medal fought Muhammad Ali in his eighth fight one in 1978 one, the heavyweight championship.

27:53 But he had hit hard times. And he'd lost his son. He was living in government housing, not far from me. And he was there. And smile on his face. Very happy. And he sat down next to me and laugh him and joke him and asked me if I could buy him a beer. And I went, boy, here's a guy that used to be on top of the world. Now he's not. And he's still happy and can joke and stuff. So I bought him a beer and I didn't finish mine and I walked out and went home.

28:25 And I saw my wife and, you know, recommitted myself to doing what I need to do the rest of the rest of the time. And, you know, I go, no matter how bad it's going to get for me, I've never seen what he saw. And he had a great attitude. You know, so you got to keep your good attitude and you got to push forward that way. Yeah. Wow. This is a great story to kind of get ourselves near our clothes on as we start to run out of time. Scott, you have the question you like to ask all of our guests.

28:55 Every time we have a guest on the show, Jason, it was like to ask them, what book or author or person has had the greatest impact on their life or their sales career or their career overall? Well, two, the first one was given to me by actually a customer of mine, Larry Katanzarite, which was Jim Collins, good to great. And it really taught me just different concepts of building a team, building a company, and never sat never being satisfied with just being good. How do you how do you really gain momentum.

29:33 The second one was given to me by my dad back in 2002, which was the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell. You know, and I've since then I've read just about all of his books, listened to his podcasts. So just great ways of learning about leadership that way. And, you know, you can be a boss or you can be a leader. You know, I'd rather be a leader than a boss on things. That's great. I'd rather be a leader than a manager. Yeah.

30:04 You know, we often hear horror stories about business people who aren't good to their teams. And it's really refreshing, Jason, to hear someone who not only is concerned about their teams and being a leader for them instead of a manager, but also somebody who wants them to succeed. And that's what I really got out of this conversation with you. How much you desire to have your team succeed and do things in the proper way, not for yourself, but for their own success.

30:31 Absolutely. I've gotten to the age where their success is my success. And I want to pass some things along. Wow. That's profound. I love your outlook on bringing people into the company and looking for what really is going to make a big difference in their success as a salesperson, but also in their life as a person in the different roles that they play. So you're a great inspiration and a great leader to the folks that meet you early on in their career.

30:59 Well, thank you so much for being part of the show, Jason and Scott. We have a few things just to wrap it up. Yeah, our next book is called the Power of Purpose by Mitch Larson. There'll be a link in the show notes. So check that out. And again, we're starting that Mitch is going to be on the show in three weeks. So we're going to start by interviewing him. And then we're going to dig into the book. Our golden nugget is good judgment comes with the experience. And a lot comes from bad judgment.

31:24 I wrote a case that you brought in experience because I wasn't really, I didn't know that when I put the quote together. But good judge from experience and a lot comes from bad judgment. I was just listening to a podcast by John Maxwell. Quite interesting that you mentioned him. And he said the only good experience is evaluated experience. If you don't think about what happened, you can't get better from that experience.

31:51 So you will make mistakes. Things will go bad. As Jason mentioned, you'll have those what the heck moments. But are you going to figure out what you did and do something better? So great quote, Scott. Thank you so much. All of our information is going to be at winning at selling.com. Sometimes you need to put the three W's in before that will come up. It's the show notes are there. Next week, our topic is going to be on start or wait. What should I do? And this is managing that late gratification or immediate urgency. And we're going to be doing the book sales perspective, chapters 12 and 13.

32:25 Please subscribe and share this podcast with your colleagues and on your social media. And we'd be grateful if you gave us a five star review and posted a favorable comment. If not favorable, please tell us directly. Go out and get better one skill at a time. Joyful selling.